Holly Sklar, Washington's War On Nicaragua

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BOSTON
PUBLIC
LIBRARY
Washington’s War
on Nicaragua
Holly Sklar
South End Press Boston, MA

Copyright © by Holly Sklar 1988
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used without permission, so long as the total number of words does not
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Cover by Lydia Sargent
Manufactured in the USA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sklar, Holly, 1955-

Washington’s War on Nicaragua, Holly Sklar.
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-89608-296-2 : $40.00. ISBN 0-89608-295-4 (pbk.) : $15.00
1. United States—Foreign relations—Nicaragua. 2. Nicaragua—Foreign relations
—United States. 3. Nicaragua—Politics and government—1979- 4. United States
—Foreign relations—1977-1981. 5. United States—Foreign relations—1981-
I. Title.
E183.8.N5S55 1988
327.7307285-dcl9 88-IOI6O CIP
South End Press, II6 St. Botolph St., Boston, MA 02115

Contents
Acknowledgements
Map of Central America
Map of Nicaragua
Introduction 1
“Purifying” Nicaragua • Sandino to Somoza
1. Carter Strikes Out 7

Revolutionary Tremors • “Democratization” • Pressure Building • The
People United • Another Kind of Palace Coup • September Uprising •
Mediation • Plebiscite Ploy • Contrapreneurs at Somoza’s Service •
Patriotic Front • Panama Canal Connection • Final Offensives • “Let’s
Do It With Grace” • Sandinista Triumph
2. Fleeting Coexistence 35
Logic of the Majority • Fail-Back Strategy • Military Scrap • $75 Million
• Year of Literacy • Conflicting Logic • Foiled Plot • “Exporting
Revolution” • Salvador Refrain • Fonseca Gulf Incident • Suspension
3. Reagan Strikes Back 57

Santa Fe Tales • Reality Check • Stand By Your Dictator • Self-Fulfilling
Prophets • No Business as Usual • White Paper • “Revolution Beyond
Our Borders” Revisited • Finding I
4. The Avengers 75
September 15th Legion • World Anti-Communist League • Moonstruck
• Singlaub’s WACL Warriors • The Argentine Axis • La Tripartita • The
RIG and the Proconsul • Enders’ Dead End •
Taking the War to Nicaragua
5. Semi-Secret War 97
Finding II • Miskito Front • Rigging Human Rights • Tightening the
Screws • Slide Show • Blowup • Projecting Paranoia • Transition •
The Wrong War • Pastofa’s Southern Front
\
6. Fire, Smoke and Mirrors 123
Target Jalapa • Base Country Honduras • FDN Facelift ♦ Boland I:
Flashing Yellow Light • Buying Guns and Journalists • “Death
Swooping Down” • New Phase • Reagan Storms the Hill • Sticks and
Stones • Managua By Christmas? • Trampling Democracy • Gunboast
Diplomacy
7. Shockwaves 149
Trained Piranhas • Pentagon Specials: Yellow Fruit and Night Stalkers •
Target Grenada • Nicaragua Next? • “Stepped Up Intensity” • Mining
the Harbors • Fleeing the World Court • Kissinger and Other
Maneuvers • Aftershock: Boland Cutoff
8. Terrorist Manuals 177

Implicit and Explicit Terror • Fifth Columns • Criminals and Martyrs •
“A Bullet is Sharper Than Words” • Freedom Fighters Manual • Rogue
Manual? • Outlaw State
9. Ballots, Bullets and MIGs 189

Reagan’s Mythical Mandate • Cruz Control • Campaigns • Nicaragua
Votes • Democracies and Double Standards • Pluralist Opposition
Voices • The MIGs are Coming! The MIGs are Coming! • Cold War
Ghosts • Policy Tilts
10. Fm a Contra Too! 217

The Strongmen • Holding Body and Soul Together • Partnership with
Apartheid • Saudi Pipeline • Dollars from Dictators • North & Company
• Cut-Outs • Private Aid Auxiliary • “Public Diplomacy” • Psywar at
Home • Channelling Contrabutions
11. The Enterprise and Other Fronts 251

Yellow Fruit Seeds • The Enterprisers: Secord-Wilson Orbits • Air
Central America • Just Say Uncle • Trojan Horses • Red Herring •
Brinkmanship • “Humanitarian Aid” • Enterprise Liftoff • Southern Eront
12. Hits, Guns and Drugs 281

La Penca • Pieces of Puzzles • Pumping Smoke • Bluffs and Suits •
Drug Propaganda • The Contra Connection • Stranger than Fiction
13. Contadora, Contradora 299

An Urgent Appeal • “Drop Dead or We’ll Kill You” • Trumping
Nicaragua • Foreigners in “Our Own Backyard” • “Who Negotiates with
a Cancer?” • Borderline • Peace is War • “Democratization” • Swing
Shift: Congress Contravenes World Court • Intensive Care • Avoiding
Regional War • History Made in the South
14. Under the Coverups 321
Removing Fingerprints • Smoking Plane • “RR was Briefed” • Gullible’s
Troubles • Damage Control • Miami Stall
15. Diversions 339

Cleansing • Fall Guys • Beating Around the Bush • Watchdogs with
Blinders • Assaulting Civil Liberties • Home-Grown Terror • It Can
Happen Here • The Myopic Majority
16. Crosscurrents 365

Signs of Escalation • An Invasion Scenario • New Contra Fronts • The
Closer You Get: Peace Summit • Peace Panic • Contratortions •
Mirandized • Airborne Diplomacy • Cease-Fire? • Come Back to
Jamaica • Mining the Internal Front
17. Openings 393

Self-Righteous Intervention • Self-Determination • Building Bridges
Chart: Central America: Economic and Social Comparisons 1979-1985 64

Box: Reagan’s Contradictions 337
Appendix A. The CIA’s Blueprint for Nicaragua 399
Appendix B. Central America Peace Accord 401
Bibliography 405
Notes 411
Index 453
Acknowledgements
My special thanks to Fernando Menendez for translating and transcribing

numerous taped interviews; Ros Everdell, William LeoGrande, Betsy Cohn, Louis
Wolf and Chip Berlet for critiquing the manuscript; David Brooks for research and
interviews in Mexico; Amanda Lorio and Stephen Grun for their hospitality and in¬
sight; Lydia Sargent for the cover; and Todd Jailer and South End Press for their
patience as I reworked the book to cover major new developments and their produc¬
tion speed once the manuscript was completed. Thanks also to Judy Appelbaum;
Deborah Barry, Coordinadora Regional de Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales,
Managua; Central American Historical Institute, Washington, DC; Data Center, Oak¬
land; Susan Dorfman; Xabier Gorostiaga, Institute Nacional de Investigaciones
Economicas y Sociales, Managua; Luz Guerra, Central America Resource Center,
Austin; Laura Henze; Institute Historico Centroamericano, Managua; Peter Kombluh,
National Security Archive, Washington, DC; MADRE, New York; Maya Miller; North
American Congress on Latin America, New York; Cory Paulsen; Michael Prokosch;
Dan Siegel, Christie Institute, Washington, DC; and all those who agreed to be in¬
terne wed for this book.
Introduction
By their very nature, covert activities, or special activities, are a lie. There’s
great deceit—deception—practiced in the conduct of covert operations.
They are at essence a lie.
Oliver North, Iran-Contra Hearings, July 7, 1987.
General Smedley Butler led American marines into Nicaragua eight years
before the Russian revolution of 1917. He died before Oliver North was born.
Butler is a Marine Corps legend. He earned an extraordinary two Congres¬
sional Medals of Honor, the nation’s highest military award for bravery. As a civilian,
Butler was also a legend. He exposed a fascist conspiracy to stage a coup against
Franklin D. Roosevelt and criticized the congressional committee that investigated
the plot: “Like most committees, it has slaughtered the little and allowed the big to
escape.”^ Butler unmasked the “war-mongers, dollar-patriots, war profiteers and
military chiselers.” He warned of “the evils of provocative militarism” and called for
restructuring U.S. armed forces to serve a truly defensive mission. “As a soldier,”
said Butler, “I long suspected that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life
did I fully realize it.”^
Reflecting on the notion of war as a racket, Butler wrote in 1935: “It may seem
odd for me, a military man, to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me
to. I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of our country’s
most agile military force—the Marine Corps...And during that period I spent most
of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for
the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism...
“Thus I helped make Mexico.. .safe for American oil interests in 1914.1 helped
make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect
revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for
1
2 WASHINGTON’S WAR ON NICARAGUA
the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify
Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I
brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I
helped make Honduras ‘right’ for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in
1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
“During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell
racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, promotion. Looking back on it, I feel
I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best could do was to operate his
racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents”'^
Such candor would be enlightening today. The blunt truth is that blaming
Nicaragua for provoking U.S. intervention is like blaming women for rape: They
flaunt their independence. They hang out too much on the wrong block. They prac¬
tice promiscuous nonaligned relations. They say no to the contras, but they mean
yes. Somehow, Nicaragua has asked for it. What passes for debate in Washington
is largely an argument over how much Nicaragua has asked for it, and what’s the
best way to give it to them. In Washington’s war on Nicaragua, lies are as neces¬
sary as guns.
“Purifying” Nicaragua
U.S. marines have intervened in Nicaragua numerous times since the 1850s
when they policed the country for Cornelius Vanderbilt and other patrons of Manifest
DestinyTake Smedley Buder’s experience. In 1909, General Juan Estrada, the
governor for Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast, led a revolt against Liberal President Jose
Santos Zelaya, a nationalist modernizer. Backed by U.S. investors and Conservative
Party leaders Emiliano Chamorro and Adolfo Diaz, Estrada established a provisional
government at the port of Bluefields.
New Orleans was Estrada’s base of supply for arms and recruits. American
mercenaries, such as Captain Godfrey Fowler of the Texas National Guard, instructed
the rebels in the use of machine guns and commanded troops in combat. The Taft
administration turned up the heat by breaking relations with the Zelaya government.
Hoping to preserve Nicaraguan sovereignty, Zelaya resigned the presidency in
December 1909 in favor of Jose Madriz. The U.S.-backed rebellion fared poorly. By
May 1910, Nicaraguan government forces recaptured El Bluff, at the entrance to
Bluefields Harbor.^
The U.S. Navy declared Bluefields a “neutral zone” and landed marines to
deter Madriz from retaking the port. Smedley Butler provided this first-hand account:
“Near Bluefields was the property of a large American gold mine, whose stock was
owned mainly by Pittsburgh financiers and partly by the then Secretary of State,
Philander C. Knox. President Madriz refused to recognize the validity of the gold
mining concession and 225 Marines immediately were dispatched to Bluefields to
‘protect American lives and property.’ I commanded those Marines and in order to
be sure that there was an American life to protect in Bluefields I made certain the
Introduction 3
local consul was on the job. There wasn’t another American in miles. The technique
of raping this country for American financiers demanded that the revolutionists have
the true cause of patriotism on their side. Consequendy, we marines soon developed
the puppet revolutionary candidate for President, Juan J. Estrada, into another
George Washington...
“The Marines bluffed the government forces out of Bluefields and with 367
revolutionists held the town. The government forces outside the city wanted to at¬
tack. I called upon the government generals to forbid them to shoot at the city.
American lives would be endangered...
“Naturally the government forces gave up in disgust and retired to the town
of Rama some miles down the trail from Bluefields. But the State Department rep¬
resentative who wanted the revolution run on the level, demanded that Estrada,
Diaz and Chamorro go after the government forces and defeat them. This they were
loath to do.
“They wanted to set up their own government right there and start levying
taxes at once. But the State Department’s orders were that the revolutionists must
win the revolution. Else how would American interests be safe?
“Finally the revolutionists were convinced that they should attack Rama and
defeat the government forces. We sent an American beachcomber on ahead to Rama
to be sure there would be another American life to protect and then re-enacted the
farce of Bluefields. The government forces were bluffed out of the town, the
revolutionists entered. We forbade shooting by the government forces and they
finally melted away, convinced of the hopelessness of opposing the revolutionists
backed by the marines. The revolution ended then and there.”
Madriz fled the country. “Everybody was happy,” wrote Butler. “The gold
mines and fruit companies operated unmolested, and canal schemes were plotted
all over the country for years.
Butler again led marines to Nicaragua in 1912. This time they went to battle
to save the puppet government headed by Adolfo Diaz. One rebel leader refused
to surrender: Benjamin Zeledon, the former Zelaya general whose Liberal Party for¬
ces held Masaya, a town near Managua. When Masaya fell. Major Butler wired Ad¬
miral Southerland, the commander-in-chief of the U.S. forces which included eight
warships: “Government forces have captured Zeledon and have asked me if we
want him.. .If you direct I can have Zeledon sent back here under guard or protected
by my men in Masaya. Personally [I] would suggest that through some inaction on
our part some one might hang him.” Apparently wounded during capture, Zeledon
died under mysterious circumstances. His body was paraded through the streets on
the back of a horse.^
The intended lesson was fear. But in Augusto Cesar Sandino, the event in¬
spired a nationalist spirit. Sandino later wrote: “At that time I was a kid of seven¬
teen and I witnessed the crushing of Nicaraguans in Masaya and other parts of the
Republic by North American filibusters. I saw Zeledon’s body buried in Catarina, a
town near my own. His death gave me the key to our country’s plight in face of
North American piracy; so we see our war as a continuation of his.”®
President Taft portrayed the 1912 invasion in the rhetoric of “Dollar

Diplomacy.” He told Congress:
In Central America the aim has been to help such countries as Nicaragua and Hon¬
duras to help themselves...It is obvious that the Monroe doctrine is more vital in the
neighborhood of the Panama Canal and the zone of the Caribbean than anywhere else.. .It
is therefore essential that the countries within that sphere shall be removed from the
jeopardy involved by heavy foreign debt and chaotic national finances and from the ever
present danger of international complications due to disorder at home. Hence, the United
States has been glad to encourage and support American bankers who were willing to
lend a helping hand to the financial rehabilitation of such countries because this finan¬
cial rehabilitation and the protection of their customhouses from being the prey of would-
be dictators would remove at one stroke the menace of foreign creditors and the menace
of revolutionary disorder...
During this last revolution in Nicaragua, the government of that republic having ad¬
mitted its inability to protect American life and property against acts of sheer lawlessness
on the part of the malcontents, and having requested this government to assume that of¬
fice, it became necessary to land over 2,000 Marines and Bluejackets...
Since the reestablishment of peace and order, elections have been held amid con¬
ditions of quiet and tranquillity. Nearly all the American Marines have now been
withdrawn. The country should soon be on the road to recovery.^
The United States self-righteously exempted itself from the label “foreign.”
Smedley Butler rigged the 1912 elections to return Diaz to power, writing his wife
Ethel, “Today, Nicaragua has enjoyed a fine ‘free election,’ with only one candidate
being allowed to run—^President Adolfo Diaz—^who was unanimously elected. In
order that this happy event might be pulled off without hitch and to the entire satis¬
faction of our State Department, we patrolled all the towns to prevent disorders..
Some one hundred Marines remained in Nicaragua for the next thirteen years to en¬
sure “peace and order.” The revolving Diaz and Chamorro governments obedient¬
ly followed the dictates of U.S. proconsuls. Customs collectors and bankers who
induced Nicaragua to go into debt to pay for projects controlled by Americans. “Dol¬
lar Diplomacy” was loansharking writ large.
Sandino to Somoza
In 1926, rebellion again rocked Nicaragua. This time, it was Sandino who
refused to surrender to marines sent by President Coolidge.
Coolidge’s occupation of Nicaragua was not a popular one. In January 1927,
Senator Burton Wheeler, a Montana Democrat, introduced a resolution calling for
U.S. forces to withdraw. He told a New York rally sponsored by the Non-Interven¬
tion Citizens’ Committee that “‘protection of life and property’ is the classic mask
worn by dollar diplomacy when it turns its face toward the American people.. .The
State Department has literally gutted the sovereignty of Nicaragua. At this moment
it has the little republic hog-tied...Every strategic post, fiscal and military, is in the
hands of the appointees of the State Department.”"
Introduction 5
The prior pretext for U.S. intervention—the “menace of foreign creditors”—

was passe. The Coolidge administration tried out a new one: the menace of com¬
munism. Mexico was accused of plotting with the Russians to establish a hostile
“Bolshevist regime” in Nicaragua—“a Bolshevist wedge between continental United
States and the Panama Canal.” That early Red scare produced more ridicule than
fear. Many suspected Washington of setting up Mexico for war because of its threat
to nationalize the holdings of U.S. oil companies.^^ (In 1914, Butler’s marines went
to Mexico to make it “safe for American oil interests.”)
Butler described the military’s role in producing Red scares as part of the ef¬
fort “to make the common people military minded. He unveiled the “domestic
brand” of military intelligence as “mainly unadulterated Redhunting. Hence intel¬
ligence officers cooperate more or less openly with such bulwarks of home defense
as William Randolph Hearst, Ralph Easley, Harry Jung of Chicago and such organiza¬
tions as the National Security League, the American Vigilantes and the Order of ’76
[racist, anti-Semitic and anti-union forerunners to rightwing groups discussed in later
chapters].
“The intelligence men further justify their jobs by spy work on radical gather¬
ings, by attending public forums in an attempt to detect political or economic heresy,
by keeping tabs on various suspects, and by smelling out what they consider to be
subversive activities everywhere.” Butler called on military intelligence to be con¬
cerned with “the true domestic enemies of our nation—hunger, injustice and ex¬
ploitation” and “not the subversive shadows of their own creation.
Sandino’s six-year guerrilla war against U.S. marines was the Vietnam War of
its day. In 1933, the Hoover administration pulled out the troops, leaving behind a
powerful National Guard headed by Anastasio Somoza Garcia.* Somoza was nick¬
named “El Yanqui” for his Philadelphia-bred English and his pro-American oppor¬
tunism.^^ He declared, “I’ll give this country peace, if I have to shoot every other
man in Nicaragua to get it.”^^
Having won the withdrawal of U.S. troops, Sandino signed a peace treaty with
President Juan Sacasa and disarmed most of his followers. They received land to
develop an agricultural cooperative in the Coco River valley. In Febaiary 1934, na¬
tional guardsmen began taking up positions around Sandino’s Wiwili encampment.
Sandino went to Managua to insist that the Guardia comply with the peace agree¬
ment and respect the constitution. On February 21, after dining with President
Sacasa, Sandino was picked up by guardsmen and executed. The Guard then as¬
saulted Sandino’s followers at Wiwili, slaughtering some 300 men, women and
children.^^
In June 1936, Somoza staged a coup and founded a dictatorship that passed
from father to son to brother. The elder Somoza was shot in 1956 by a poet named
Rigoberto Lopez Perez who was killed at the scene. Thousands of Nicaraguans were
arrested and tortured in the post-assassination roundup, among them La Prensa
publisher Pedro Joaquin Chamorro.
“Chamorro was lucky,” explained author John Booth, “for he escaped the even
more diabolical tortures suffered by his companions: electrical shocks...repeated
near-drowning, lifting or dragging by a cord tied around the genitals, imprisonment
*Nicaraguans use the mother’s family name as a second surname.

in a coffin-sized cell, or time in the Somoza family’s private zoo. This last method
incarcerated prisoners, for months in some cases, in barred cages open to the
weather, next to lions and panthers, in the garden of the presidential residence.”
Held in a cell at the end of the garden, Chamorro observed how “in front of these
animal cages often strolled the current president of the dynasty, Luis Somoza, and
his brother Anastasio, with their wives, relatives, and children.. .carrying their dolls
and toys.”’®
The Somoza dictatorship lasted 43 years, until the heirs to Sandino set
Nicaragua on a different course.
1
Carter Strikes Out
Somoza believes that God has given him Nicaragua for a hacienda and
its citizens as its peasants.
Venezuelan ambassador to the Organization of American States, 1978.^
Over a period of years, we sent over fourteen thousand men through

various military training programs in the United States...Due to our close
association with the U.S., Nicaragua was often referred to as “the little
U.S.A.” of Central America.
Anastasio Somoza.^
Obviously the Carter administration did not want the United States to lose
control over the political, social and economic destiny of Nicaragua. And
when they began to realize that, in fact, Somoza was no longer viable they
began to worry about the possibility that the baby could be thrown out
with the bathwater.
Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto, May 9, 1986 interview with author.
From the memoirs of former President Jimmy Carter and his top two foreign
policy advisers, you would barely know that during their tenure Nicaragua had a
revolution. Carter discussed Nicaragua only briefly on 5 out of 596 pages in Keep¬
ing Faith; former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and former National Security Ad¬
viser Zbigniew Brzezinski each gave Nicaragua a cursory mention on two pages in
their respective memoirs. You would never know that Carter officials worked
vigorously to derail the Nicaraguan revolution and, having failed in that, tried
desperately to substitute the revolution’s caboose, Somoza’s conservative opposi¬
tion, for its Sandinista locomotive.
7
As Brzezinski noted, Carter’s views on foreign affairs had largely “been formed
during his time with the Trilateral Commission.”^ Top State, Treasury and Defense
officials were drawn from trilateralist ranks. Made up of political and business elites
from North America, Western Europe and Japan, the commission works to
strengthen the cohesion and dominance of the Western alliance in a changing world.'*
For two decades following World War II, the United States possessed overwhelm¬
ing global economic and military supremacy. This Pax Americana was cut short by
a revitalized Europe and Japan, a Soviet Union with superpower status and Third
World movements seeking self-determination.
Trilateralism counseled accommodation with the Third World instead of relent¬
less confrontation to restore the status quo. In Brzezinski’s words, the Carter ad¬
ministration was “not trying to build dams against the forces of history but rather to
channel these forces in a positive direction.”^ Accommodation is a form of interven¬
tion that relies on reform and selective repression to keep leftists out of power and
employs cooptation and selective pressure to manage and weaken leftists once in
power. Accommodationists assume the West can beat the Soviet Union through
economic competition relying on trade, aid and investment—provided the United
States does not default. Initial policy toward Latin America was guided by the recom¬
mendations of the Commission on United States-Latin American Relations chaired
by trilateralist Sol Linowitz. A former chairman of the Xerox Corporation and am¬
bassador to the Organization of American States, Linowitz served Carter as a
negotiator for the Panama Canal treaty. Carter’s first priority in Latin American rela¬
tions.^
Carter policy toward Nicaragua reflected the trilateralist principle: “a minimum
of social justice and reform will be necessary for stability in the long run.”^ In
response to Sandinista revolution. Carter officials tried to find that minimum of
reform. They found out that a minimum was not enough.
Revolutionary Tremors
General Anastasio “Tacho” Somoza Debayle was the third Somoza to rule
Nicaragua as a family franchise in the U.S. orbit. Schooled in the United States since
childhood, married to an American and more comfortable speaking English than
Spanish, Somoza once remarked, “I know the U.S. better than my country.”®
A year and a half before Somoza’s ouster, the Wall Street Journal observed:
“‘Tacho,’ a West Point graduate who took control of the country in the mid-1960s
after the death of his older brother Luis, always has stressed his strong ties to the
U.S. and his fierce opposition to communism. He and Luis allowed the U.S. to launch
its ill-fated Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion from here, and he even offered to send troops
to Vietnam. (At times, the U.S. presence here has lacked subtlety: A picture of recent
U.S. Ambassador Turner Shelton, for example, adorns the Nicaraguan equivalent of
a $3 bill.)”"
Carter Strikes Out 9
Relations were especially cozy during the Nixon administration. Somoza repor¬
tedly sent his mother to Washington with $1 million for Nixon’s reelection cam-
paign.^° Turner Shelton, above-mentioned ambassador to Nicaragua from 1970 to
1975, was an associate of Nixon’s close friend Bebe Rebozo and billionaire Howard
Hughes. Hughes was living at the top of Managua’s pyramid-shaped Intercontinen¬
tal Hotel when the great earthquake sent him fleeing.”
The 1972 earthquake devastated Managua; the Intercontinental Hotel was one
of only a few buildings left intact in the downtown area. Somoza siphoned off relief
money and profiteered off grossly inadequate reconstruction. “The earth opened,”
recalled American nun Mary Hartman, and “peoples’ eyes opened to the complete
corruption of the government.” Residents who received none of the relief goods
donated from abroad saw the National Guard selling them later.^^
The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), named for Nicaraguan hero
Augusto Cesar Sandino, was founded in 1961. The Sandinistas catapulted into world
attention in 1974, raiding a Christmas party honoring Ambassador Shelton. Shelton
had already left, but Somoza’s brother-in-law, who served as ambassador to the
United States, was one of many prominent hostages. After three days, the FSLN won
$1 million in ransom, the first national broadcast of Sandinista views and the release
of fourteen political prisoners, including Daniel Ortega, freed after seven years in
Somoza’s jails.
Somoza imposed a state of siege and waged an intensive counterinsurgency
campaign with support from the United States and CONDECA, the Central American
Defense Council made up of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. A
death squad named the Anti-Communist League of Nicaragua helped with Somoza’s
dirty work.^^
In June 1976, a more human rights-conscious U.S. Congress heard testimony
about widespread torture, rape, killings, mass arrests and disappearances. Liberal
politicians wanted to cut off aid to Somoza. The Ford administration’s ambassador
to Nicaragua, James Theberge, began meeting with opposition leaders such as La:
Prensa publisher Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, a leader of the new Democratic Libera- ^
tion Union (UDEL). But Somoza’s days were not yet seen as numbered.
A year later, the Wall Street Journal QAîy 31, 1977) ran a two-page advertise¬
ment headed, “Nicaragua: An Investor’s Dream Come True.” Nicaragua was sold as
“a Country Where Foreign Capital is Nurtured; ‘Yanquis’ Feel at Home.” The “good
investment climate” offered freedom of remittance on profits and capital, freedom
from capital gains and dividend tax, and “low-cost abundant labor” which “takes
pride in its task.” The U.S. Department of Commerce predicted that “Nicaragua will
continue to enjoy political stability and a bright economic future.
In Somoza’s investor’s dream, one baby in eight died before their first birthday.
In a country with abundant arable land two out of three children were under¬
nourished and two out of three peasant farmers were completely landless or had
plots too small for subsistence. Export crops soaked up 90 percent of all agricul¬
tural credit and used 22 times more arable land than that for growing basic food
crops for domestic consumption. The paltry per capita income of about $830 was
many times that earned by those on the lower levels of the economic pyramid. The
poorest half of the population received 15 percent of the national income; the
poorest fifth received about 3 percent. The richest 5 percent enjoyed 30 percent of
the income and a higher share of the wealth, education and access to health care.
In Somoza’s investor’s dream six out of ten deaths were caused by preventable and
curable diseases. Over half the population was illiterate.
While on a visit to Costa Rica, Anastasio Somoza Sr. heard his hosts boast of
the schools they were building. “I don’t want educated people,” he retorted. “I want
oxen.”*^ His sons carried on in his footsteps.
“Democratization”
Somoza’s state of siege took its toll. Many FSLN leaders, including founder
Carlos Fonseca, were killed and many others were forced into exile. “When they
felt that we were hard hit, scattered and divided, they [the United States and Somozal
decided it was time for a democratization plan,” said Sandinista leader Humberto
Ortega, now minister of defense.’^
With the FSLN apparently wiped out, the Carter administration announced in
June 1977 that it would not sign a new military aid agreement with Nicaragua un¬
less there was “an improvement in the human rights situation.”’® On July 28, the 51-
year-old Somoza suffered a heart attack and was flown to the Miami Heart Institute
for treatment; Luis Somoza had died of a heart attack at the age of 44. The dictator
and his dynasty looked strikingly vulnerable. Carter’s new ambassador, Cuban-born
sociology professor Mauricio Solaun, arrived in Nicaragua in August and extended
U.S. efforts to reach out to non-Sandinista opposition leaders.
Somoza returned home on September 10 and lifted martial law nine days later.
As recounted by Robert Pastor, Carter’s director of Latin American and Caribbean
Affairs for the National Security Council (NSC), a debate ensued in the Inter-Agen¬
cy Group on Human Rights and Foreign Assistance—chaired by Deputy Secretary
of State Warren Christopher—the central forum for Nicaragua policy at that time.
The State Department Bureau of Human Rights, headed by Patricia Derian, opposed
releasing aid to Nicaragua while the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs favored aid
as a “carrot.” Christopher “decided that having achieved the U.S. objective of get¬
ting Somoza to end the state of siege, the United States could not disapprove aid to
Nicaragua. On the other hand, the Administration did not want to approve aid and
lose important leverage to try to obtain free elections. Christopher chose to keep
the options open: the United States would neither approve nor disapprove aid. The
United States announced it would not provide any military aid until further progress_
was made in human rights; however, the law required the Administration to sign
the 1977 military aid agreement [worth $2.5 millionl before the end of the fiscal year
[September 30], or the money would revert to the treasury and future leverage would
be lost. There were no similar constraints built into the economic aid laws, so the
Administration merely postponed that decision.”’^
Washington wanted Somoza to agree to step down at the end of his official |
presidential term in May 1981. With the Sandinistas out of the picture, the elections
would result predictably in a successor government led by business elites aligned
with the United States. Ambassador Solaun “felt that it was impossible to create a i
political center in Nicaragua without retaining part of the large Somoza political ap¬
paratus in public life, but he thought it was possible to remove Somoza and his
closest family members and associates. He acknowledged that it would be somocis-
mo sin Somoza—the same system, but without Somoza—at least for a transitional
period. (In mid 1978, the Carter administration oversaw just such a system-preserv- f
ing succession in the Dominican Republic, when then-dictator Joaquin Balaguer was j
forced to concede electoral defeat to reformist leader Antonio Guzman.) ^
The Sandinistas, however, had not been eliminated. With the lifting of martial f
law, popular protest multiplied. In October 1977, the FSLN launched a military of- '
fensive, attacking National Guard posts in several towns including Masaya, about
fifteen miles from the capital. The Guard barracks of San Carlos, on the southern
end of Lake Nicaragua near the Costa Rican border, was the target of Sandinistas ^
from the Solentiname island religious community led by Nicaraguan poet and priest
Ernesto Cardenal.
“Three of us who took part in the assault on San Carlos were women,” a com¬
batant recalled, “and when the news broke I think it inspired other women to believe
that they could join in the revolutionary struggle. We were also Christians, which
had a great impact on Nicaraguans. It added a fresh dimension to people’s idea of
the Frente Sandinista.”^’
Somoza received another blow on October 18. A group of respected!
Nicaraguan priests, businessmen, academics and other professionals issued a state-1
ment insisting that the FSLN must be part of any solution to Nicaragua’s problems. 1
The group, based in San Jose, Costa Rica, became known as Los Doce, the Group |
of Twelve. Its members were (post-Somoza government positions appear in paren- 1
theses): Sergio Ramirez, lawyer and novelist (government junta member, elected j
vice president in 1984); Miguel D’Escoto, Maryknoll priest, director of social com¬
munications for the New York-based Maryknoll Society from 1970 to 1979 ^foreign
minister); Fernando Cardenal, younger brother of Ernesto Cardenal, Jesuit priest,
founder of the Revolutionary Christian Movement (director of the 1980 Literacy
Crusade and the Sandinista Youth Organization before becoming minister of educa¬
tion); Carlos Tunnermann, lawyer and former president of Nicaragua’s National
University (education minister, then ambassador to the United States); Ernesto Cas¬
tillo, lawyer (minister of justice); Ricardo Colonel, catde rancher (vice-minister of
agricultural development); Enrique Boltodano, large coffee producer (comptroller-
general); Joaquin Cuadra, investment lawyer (minister of finance, then president of
the Central Bank); Casimiro Sotelo, architect (ambassador to Canada); Carlos Gutier¬
rez, a dentist who maintained his practice in Mexico; Felipe Mantica, a businessman
who dropped out of the Twelve before Somoza’s overthrow; and Arturo Cruz, of¬
ficer of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington (Central Bank presi¬
dent, July 1979-May 1980; government junta member. May 1980-March 1981;
ambassador to the United States, March-November 1981). Cruz left the government
and was a contra leader until 1987. Three other people joined the Twelve before
Somoza’s overthrow: Roberto Arguello Hurtado, lawyer (president of the Supreme
Court, then ambassador to France); Edgar Parrales, priest (ambassador to the Or¬
ganization of American States); and Reinaldo Antonio Tefel, academic (minister of
social welfare)
The Group of Twelve, explained Carlos Tunnermann, “undertook the interna¬
tional work, to visit governments and international organizations, to make known
i that” the Sandinistas “were not terrorists, that they had taken up arms because it
\was necessary and that the terrorist was the government and the system.
Another group, more conservative than the Twelve, also formed. Headed by
Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo, the Commission to Promote a National
Dialogue included, among others. Monsignor Pablo Antonio Vega and Alfonso
Robelo, president of the business group then called the Superior Council of Private
j Initiative (COSIP). As described by New York Times reporter Shirley Christian, the
Dialogue’s supporters “were people who wanted, or were willing to accept, a phased
change that would not disrupt the economy and other aspects of Nicaraguan life.
They talked about reaching some kind of agreement with Somoza whereby he would
agree not to run again when his term as president ended in 1981 or would step
aside sooner in favor of someone else from his party or the National Guard, with a
guarantee of free elections at the end of 1980.”^'* (Christian’s place as Washington’s
favored chronicler of the Nicaraguan revolution was reinforced when the U.S. In¬
formation Agency gave out hundreds of free copies of her book at the 1987 Inter¬
national Book Fair in Managua, which was open to the Nicaraguan public and
publishers from around the world, including official organs of the U.S. Govern¬
ment.)^^
Wealthy Nicaraguans hedged their bets on Nicaragua’s future, setting up secret
bank accounts in the Cayman Islands to transfer millions of dollars outside the
country. The contra network would later use the same Cayman Islands Bank, Banco
de America Central (BAC), and the same system of Miami “pass through” accounts
and Panamanian shell companies.
Pressure Building
Events quickly outpaced Washington and the Dialogue. On the morning of
January 10,1978, Managua was jolted by the assassination of LaPrensa editor Pedro
Joaquin Chamorro. Thousands turned out for the funeral and later that month COSIP
threw its support behind a three-week national strike; in February, COSIP expanded
and changed its name to the Superior Council of Private Enterprise, COSEP. On
February 2, the FSLN briefly captured Rivas and Granada as well as the counterin¬
surgency camp in Santa Clara, Nueva Segovia.
While the Sandinista movement gained momentum, the Dialogue’s meeting
with Somoza, planned for February, fell apart. “In addition to their outrage,” wrote
Christian, “a strong sense of fear swept businessmen, politicians, and trade unionists
as they realized that what had happened to Chamorro could happen to them. They
had always known, or suspected, that the National Guard treated the poor in a
repressive manner...but they had felt themselves reasonably secure to carry out
peaceful opposition. They had known they could be thrown into jail for a few weeks
but had never expected to be killed...But Pedro Joaquin Chamorro was not a
peasant. He had been one of them...Even those who were politically ambivalent ^
now thought that Somoza should go because he could no longer provide the one
thing that made strongmen attractive: public order.. .Above all, they now hoped the
United States would step in and play its traditional role as arbiter of power strug¬
gles in Nicaragua.
That traditional arbitration had never promoted the interests of the poor, who
had suffered and died in the Somoza yoke. It would be no different this time around.
The Carter administration was divided over how fast and far to push Somoza.
Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Terence Todman provided a
conservative counterweight to Ambassador Solaun’s Somocismo without Somoza.!
On February l6, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Sally Shelton inadvertently ex¬
posed the shallowness of human rights policy in testimony to Congress: “Althoughf
problems remain, it is our opinion that marked progress has been manifested since!
early 1977.” The National Guard behaved “in a generally restrained manner” follow¬
ing Chamorro’s assassination and had a “duty,” she said, “to protect the population
from terrorism and acts of violence.” Continued U.S. assistance for the Guard was
necessary because it helped provide a “sense of security which is important for so-j
cial, economic and political developments.” Miguel D’Escoto challenged the U.S.l
view, testifying that at least twenty people had recentiy been killed; women ^
demonstrating peacefully were beaten with chains wrapped in newspapers.^
The first mass insurrection took place at the end of February in Masaya’s In¬
dian community, Monimbo (about 20,000 residents). Somoza sent his son, Anastasio
Somoza Portocarrero, known as El Chiguin (the Kid), to reimpose control. El
Chiguin, educated at Harvard and trained at the U.S. Army Command and General
Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, commanded the elite troops of the mis¬
named Basic Infantry Training School (EEBI) modeled on the U.S. Special Forces.
“The Guardia entered the barrio,'' recalled one Monimbo resident, “and at¬
tacked us with tanks, armoured cars, helicopters and heavy machine-guns. People
defended themselves with machetes, contact bombs Ihomemade bombs made up
of such items as sulphur, gasoline, nails and pebbles], sticks and whatever else they
could lay their hands on.”^^ In Humberto Ortega’s words, the Monimbo uprising
“was the soul of the masses on a nationwide scale and became the heart of the in¬
surrection that was to take place throughout the country.”^
Somoza told a loyalist rally on February 26 that he would retire as chief of the
Armed Forces and turn over the presidency to an elected successor on May 1, 1981.
But elections had come and gone throughout the four decades of Somoza rule and,
in Nicaragua at least, few expected the next election to bring an end to the Somoza
dynasty. In March, Alfonso Robelo established the Nicaraguan Democratic Move¬
ment (MDN), a party of reformist businesspeople and professionals. In May, UDEL
and the MDN formed a new coalition, the Broad Opposition Front (FAO).
The administration, meanwhile, released $l60,000 in military credits to cover

the purchase of equipment for a Nicaraguan military hospital and made the economic
aid decision it had postponed the previous September, Most of a $12 million aid
package was released in the form of loans for rural nutrition and educational
development with the rationale that it was aid for the needy and not for Somoza.
Representative Charles Wilson (D-TX), an influential conservative member of the
House Appropriations Committee and a leading member of the so-called Nicaragua
Lobby, had threatened to block action on other administration foreign aid requests
if Nicaragua aid was not approved. Former NSC aide Robert Pastor explained: “Al¬
though the response by the Guard to the riots [s/d represented a serious concern,
Somoza did not reimpose martial law or censorship of the press” and “the United
States had made such loans to countries with worse human rights records.
The People United

Three tendencies had emerged within the FSLN in the 1970s, with different
approaches to revolutionary strategy. The Prolonged Popular War (GPP) tendency
saw the revolutionary struggle as a long war of attrition led by a guerrilla army in
the countryside. The Proletarian tendency stressed a prolonged struggle centered
around urban workers and the poor. The Terceristas (Third Force or Insurrectionists)
thought a prolonged struggle was unnecessary; a series of armed strikes could spark
a popular insurrection. They advocated building a broad-based coalition, led by the
FSLN, among all anti-Somoza forces, including those in the business class. In June
1978, the three tendencies reached preliminary agreement on strategic unity.
In July, student groups, the women’s association (AMPRONAC), unions,
professional associations and traditional left parties joined with the FSLN to form
the United Peoples Movement (MPU). Among them was the Nicaraguan Socialist
Party (PSN), the major communist party, which had earlier opposed armed struggle
and allied with UDEL and the FAO. As a study commissioned by the Reagan State
Department observed (contrary to Reaganaut rhetoric), “The Moscow-line Socialist
Party had judged that the situation was not ripe for revolution, and had consequent¬
ly condemned the Sandinistas’ insurrectionary strategy as adventurist.”^^
The MPU program outlined radical political, economic and social change. It
called for “a government with the representative participation of all political,
economic, labor and cultural forces committed to raising the country from the stag¬
nation, dependency and underdevelopment imposed by the dictatorship and its al¬
lies.” It sketched an economic program “that corresponds to the social necessities
of all Nicaraguans.” The new “government will begin negotiations to obtain foreign
aid from any country, regardless of ideology” and develop a comprehensive Agrarian
Reform program “to put an end to the formation of latifundios 2ind to institute, with
the lands expropriated from the Somoza family, a program of cooperatives and state
enterprises.” Women “will be incorporated on a large scale into all economic, politi¬
cal, social and cultural tasks (establishing the principle of equal work for equal pay),”
Measures will be taken immediately “to end illiteracy.. .Programs of teacher training
and school construction will be increased so that there will be no valley or district
without access to education.” The new unity government “will initiate health and
hygiene programs.. .and will eradicate the diseases which now ravage children and
affect great sectors of the population, such as malaria, gastroenteritis...as well as
those diseases caused by malnutrition and hunger.” A national army will be created
“which will watch over the national interests of the people and the defense of the
nation. It will cease to be an instrument of repression...
Leading members of the Group of Twelve returned from exile; a huge crowd
greeted them at the airport. Trying to stanch his loss of international support, Somoza
did not arrest the returnees. In mid July, he received a letter from President Carter,
which was supported by Brzezinski and sent over the objections of State Depart¬
ment officials. The letter, dated June 30, applauded Somoza for his human rights
and democratic initiatives at a time when the State Department was receiving reports
of increased human rights violations by the National Guard.^"*
When Ambassador Solaun delivered the letter in mid July he advised Somoza
to keep it confidential. In an account of his overthrow, Somoza noted that the let¬
ter “came at a time when I needed encouragement, and particularly from the United
States.” Its “contents.. .if publicly known, could assist me greatly in warding off my
other enemies. I was not interested in a collector’s item.” Somoza later came to see
the letter as a ploy, “designed to give us a false sense of security.
Dear Mr, President:
I read your statements to the press on Juhe 19 with great interest and appreciation.
The steps toward respecting human rights that you are considering are important and
heartening signs; and, as they are translated into actions, will mark a major advance for
your nation in answering some of the criticisms recently aimed at the Nicaraguan govern¬
ment.
I am pleased to learn of your willingness to cooperate with the Inter-American Com¬
mission on Human Rights...
The Commission will be favorably impressed by your decision to allow the mem¬
bers of the so-called “Group of Twelve” to return to peaceful lives in Nicaragua. The
freedoms of movement and of expression that are at stake in this case are among the
central human rights that the Commission seeks to protect.
You have spoken about a possible amnesty for Nicaraguans being held in jail for
political reasons. I urge you to take the promising steps you have suggested; they would
serve to improve the image abroad of the human rights situation in Nicaragua.
I was also encouraged to hear your suggestions for a reform of the electoral sys¬
tem in order to ensure fair and free elections in which all political parties could compete
fairly. This step is essential to the functioning of a democracy...
I look forward to hearing of the implementation of your decisions and appreciate
very much your announcement of these constructive actions. I hope that you will con¬
tinue to communicate fully with my Ambassador, Mauricio Solaun, who enjoys my com¬
plete confidence.
Sincerely,
JIMMY CARTER
According to Pastor, the letter was a watershed for U.S. policy. It “impelled
Brzezinski and Carter to focus on Nicaragua for the first time.” After the letter—ând
the subsequent takeover of the National Palace—Nicaragua was seen “as a politi¬
cal-security crisis, and the Human Rights Bureau was excluded from the central
deliberations, although it continued to play a role in defining the State Department
position.” A “mini” NSC Special Coordination Committee (SCC) met frequently to
define Nicaragua policy; principals included Pastor and Assistant Secretary of State
for Inter-American Affairs Viron “Pete” Vaky and, above them. Deputy National
, Security Adviser David Aaron, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher and
their bosses Brzezinski and Vance
Another Kind of Palace Coup

! The FAO released its program on August 21, calling for a national unity govern¬
ment to succeed Somoza; it did not envision the radical restructuring of the economy
endorsed by the MPU. The next day, the FSLN seized the National Palace with a
small squad of guerrillas dressed in National Guard uniforms. The National Palace
housed Nicaragua’s congress and key government agencies such as the Ministries
of Interior and Finance. The Sandinistas captured over 1,500 people including
Somoza’s cousin, Luis Pallais, vice president of the congress and director of the
government newspaper, Novedades, and Somoza’s nephew, the son of National
j Guard chief Jose Somoza, Somoza’s half-brother.
Eden Pastora, who rejoined the FSLN in fall 1977 after spending four years as
a fisherman in Costa Rica, was a leader of the palace raid. Dora Maria Tellez, now
minister of health, conducted the negotiations for the Sandinistas. Archbishop Oban-
do y Bravo served as one of the church mediators. Immediately after the takeover,
Major Mike Echanis, an American mercenary advising the National Guard, urged
Somoza to storm the Palace. Somoza refused to risk the death of so many supporters.
“Mike the Merc” Echanis, who died shortly after in an airplane explosion, was a
Vietnam veteran and martial arts director for Soldier of Fortune, a mercenary
magazine and organization which would later support the contras.
I When the Palace action ended on the morning of August 24, the Sandinistas
j had won the release of 59 political prisoners, including Tomas Borge, the FSLN’s
only living founder, now minister of the interior, and Doris Tijerino, one of the first
women to join the FSLN, now head of the National Police. Both had suffered severe
torture.
i Thousands of Nicaraguans lined the highway to the airport where two planes,
provided by President Carlos Andres Perez of Venezuela and General Omar Tor-
rijos of Panama, waited to take the guerrillas and freed prisoners out of the country.
Anyone could see now that the Sandinistas had become national heroes. An FSLN
communique, printed in Novedades as part of the settlement, warned of Somocis-
mo without Somoza and called on the population to prepare for the final offensive.
As Humberto Ortega put it, the FSLN moved to “harness the avalanche” of rising
popular resistance.^
The raid was timed to upset a planned National Guard coup against Somoza.
On August 28, Somoza arrested 85 alleged conspirators.^^
September Uprising
When insurrection broke out in September 1978, Somoza tried to shoot his i
way to peace with “one of the most barbaric military attacks ever perpetrated against /
a civilian population in the history of the Americas.. .^hen it was over, four out of
seven of Nicaragua’s largest cities lay partially or entirely in ruins.An estimated
5,000 people were killed.
One by one, ending with Esteli, the Guard laid siege to the rebellious cities,
cutting off food and utilities, and bombing and strafing by air. Guardsmen then car¬
ried out “Operation Clean-Up.” The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
reported that “many persons were executed in a summary and collective fashion for
the mere reason of living in neighborhoods where there had been activity by the
FSLN; young people and defenseless children were killed.” It was “a crime to be a
male between the ages of 12 and 30,” said one refugee.^^ j
In Matagalpa, reported Amnesty International, guardsmen castrated the owner
of the Hotel Soza before machinegunning him and his whole family. “In some areas,”
said Amnesty, “all males over fourteen years old were reportedly shot dead.” A
Newsweek reporter described how “after retaking Leon, Guardsmen executed five
teenagers—three boys and two girls—in the street. The victims were forced to kneel
and were summarily shot.”'*^
Before Somoza’s forces reoccupied the cities, the FSLN led a strategic retreat,
minimizing guerrilla losses. Sandinista columns were swelled by young men and
women fleeing the wrath of the Guard and new supporters emerged in the cities.
Questioned later about the great loss of life and destruction in the September upris¬
ing, Humberto Ortega replied, “[It] was the only way to win...We simply paid the
price of freedom. Had there been a less costly means, we would have used it.”'*^
Mediation
The September insurrection prompted the Carter administration to take more
aggressive action. Assistant Secretary of State Vaky believed that “only the United
States could solve the problem of Somoza, and that it should use whatever force
necessary—barring assassination—to remove him.. .He argued that the United States
needed to get in front of events and assemble a coalition government,” lest the situa¬
tion polarize further and lead to a Sandinista victory.
Pastor and Anthony Lake, the State Department director of policy planning,
argued that the United States should not go to Somoza or any chief of state and ask
j them to step down. Pastor “doubted that Somoza would step down just because the
1 United States asked him. I suspected that he might be taping his official conversa¬
tions (which he confirmed in his memoir), and that hours after our representative
‘talked turkey’ to him, we would all be hearing it on the evening news. The
President’s Press Secretary would then be questioned the next day: ‘If President
Carter is committed to the principle of nonintervention, why is he trying to over¬
throw Somoza?’...Carter would look foolish and impotent. Somoza would have a
good laugh. In my mind, these were all powerful reasons for not being too explicit
in seeking Somoza’s departure. Vaky believed that if we were clear and tough
enough with Somoza, he would not try something like that, and would simply
leave...Vaky also discounted the domestic political fallout, believing that could be
managed.”
Carter, Vance and Christopher opted for a less forceful and more multilateral
approach: mediation. Deputy National Security Adviser David Aaron suggested that
the administration “look into the idea of a peace-keeping force during a post-Somoza
^period to reassure the National Guard and to keep the situation from being
^dominated by the Sandinistas.”^'*
On September 23, the Organization of American States (OAS) approved a U.S.-
led mediation initiative taking the form of a so-called International Commission of
Friendly Cooperation and Conciliation. U.S. envoy William Jorden, former ambas¬
sador to Panama, met with Somoza and urged him to cooperate with the media¬
tion, an effort which, he acknowledged, might lead to Somoza’s resignation. Somoza
secretly taped this and many other conversations with U.S. officials, reproducing the
transcripts in his book, Nicaragua Betrayed, which was published by the John Birch
Society press. Western Islands.
Jorden warned Somoza that Nicaragua was “gradually becoming dangerously
polarized...! am not talking about the Sandinistas where there is obviously a
polarization, but other elements in the society, political and [economic]. We are ter¬
ribly concerned that everything you have built up, and your brother before you, is
in danger of being destroyed. And that means the political structure, institutions.
The economic prospects don’t look to us to be very good...Obviously the opposi¬
tion to your government is widespread...If it were only the Sandinistas, the situa¬
tion would be manageable, but it has developed into something quite different.. .The
actions that you have taken have ended the violence for the mom.ent, but we are
persuaded it is a temporary thing. I have very good reason to know that the San¬
dinistas are active. They are getting support, they are recruiting people, and it is
[ only a matter of time before they start again...
“It is our judgement that we are in something of a downward spiral. There
will be moments when it looks better, but I think it will go downward again and
the situation will just gradually get to the point where perhaps total chaos could
occur.”
Jorden told Somoza, “The possibility of your departure from office before
1981 is one of the possibilities that has to be considered. I am not saying it has to
be done, I am saying it has to be considered...We would like to work towards a
solution that is dignified and smooth, as graceful as possible.”
Jorden made clear that Washington was worried about the whole region, ar¬
guing, as the Reagan administration would later, “unless something is done to cor¬
rect the situation and work towards a solution, I think that it does clearly play into
the hands of Communists and Castro. I think that they are hoping that this will be
a situation that they can use and establish a base in the mainland and go from there.”
Somoza told Jorden at one point, “You will excuse me for saying this, it is
painful for me to say it, but I don’t trust the United States anymore.” However,
Somoza said later, “I want you to know that I’m doing my utmost to accommodate
the United States without losing my pants.
Playing for time, Somoza accepted the mediation. The United States,
Guatemala and the Dominican Republic formed the Commission of Friendly
Cooperation and Conciliation. William Bowdler, then director of the State Depart¬
ment Bureau of Intelligence and Research, represented the United States. “No one
seemed to notice,” wrote author Karl Bermann, “the curious (but apparently ac¬
cidental) coincidence that both OAS mediators represented countries in which the
United States had intervened to thwart revolutions in prior decades. The choice of
Bowdler, however, was definitely not accidental—3. former National Security Coun¬
cil member, he had helped set up the new government in the Dominican Republic
during the intervention by US troops in 1965.”^ Somoza had contributed troops to
that invasion.
Bowdler’s general instructions were to promote and assist negotiations be¬
tween Somoza and the FAO and to preserve the National Guard.'*^ The FAO was
represented in the mediation effort by Sergio Ramirez of ihe Group of Twelve, Al¬
fonso Robelo of COSEP and Rafael Cordova Rivas, president of UDEL and a
prominent lawyer.
Ramirez recalled the mediation effort as an attempt to “preserve the core of
the system—^National Guard, the economic establishment, the links of the system
with the United States...with the goal of isolating the Sandinista Front.” But, “this
first attempt of the Carter administration to change the course of history in Nicaragua
failed.
The Group of Twelve split with the FAO in late October over the FAO’s will¬
ingness to accept a continued role for Somoza’s Nationalist Liberal Party and the
National Guard. Other reformist groups such as the Independent Liberal Party (PLI)
and the Popular Social Christian Party (PPSC) followed the Twelve out of the FAO.
Members of the Twelve went back into exile. Arturo Cruz, still working in
Washington for the Inter-American Development Bank, disagreed with the decision
to split with the FAO.
The United States pursued negotiations with the depleted FAO and put some i
pressure on Somoza by influencing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) tol
postpone a decision on $20 million in credit for Nicaragua. “American officials are 1
known to believe that a political solution to the Nicaraguan conflict can be reached
within several weeks,” the Washington Post reported.'^^
Plebiscite Ploy
Somoza would not resign. Instead he proposed a plebiscite, the outcome of

which he could determine as the dynasty had determined elections before.
Washington would only push Somoza so far so fast. In mid November, the ad¬
ministration decided not to block Israel from supplying arms to Somoza, believing
that without new weapons and ammunition, the National Guard might be routed
quickly by the Sandinistas: “If Somoza goes, we would prefer him to go peaceful¬
ly. We would not like to see him toppled in an armed revolt.”^
On November 13, the administration held what Pastor called “its first high-
Ilevel intense discussion on Nicaragua”; the setting was the NSC Policy Review Com-
jmittee. Vaky and Bowdler advocated finessing the plebiscite idea and applying
sanctions to force Somoza to negotiate his departure in accordance with the FAO
plan. Brzezinski, Vance and Christopher recommended transforming the plebiscite
into a fair vote on Somoza’s staying in power or stepping down, and Carter ap¬
proved.^*
“Moderate and leftist opposition leaders,” observed New York Times reporter
Alan Riding, “are distressed by their growing conviction that Washington beUeves
the country’s deep crisis can be resolved by replacing the Somoza dictatorship with
an equally conservative, though less brutal, successor. They think Washington, fear¬
ing ‘another Cuba,’ is searching for stability rather than for social and economic
change or even human rights—repeating, as they see it, American policy during its
occupation of Nicaragua between 1912 and 1933, and its subsequent support for
the Somoza family.”^**
Bowdler led the mediation effort to fashion a final plebiscite proposal on
December 20, which the FAO accepted. If Somoza lost an internationally-supervised
plebiscite scheduled for February 1979, he would resign and leave the country. An
interim president approved by the Somocista congress would serve until an FAO-
dominated “national unity” government, excluding the Sandinistas, selected another
interim president to serve until an elected president was inaugurated in May 1981,
at which time Somoza could return to Nicaragua. The National Guard would be
reorganized. If Somoza won the plebiscite, the FAO would become a “peaceful op¬
position.”
General Dennis McAuliffe, the head of the LI.S. Army Southern Command
based in Panama, joined Bowdler on December 21 in urging Somoza to accept the
compromise plebiscite plan. “We on the military side of the United States,” said Mc¬
Auliffe, “recognize that we have had strong and very effective friendship with the
military officers of this country and with you in particular. We do not want to throw
that over, so to speak.. .But we do recognize.. .that the situation has changed. Speak¬
ing very frankly, Mr. President, it is our view that peace will not come to Nicaragua
until you have removed yourself from the presidency and the scene..Trm just tell¬
ing you that from the way we look at the situation, your presence in Nicaragua is
a symbolic thing and as long as you remain in Nicaragua, you will attract terrorists
and violence.. .If you follow the plan suggested by the United States, the leftists and
communists will not take over and we will have a moderate government. What Fm
saying Mr. President, is that we [will] have a moderate government that does not
have the name Somoza,”
McAuliffe assured Somoza of the continued importance of the National Guard;
“We think the Guardia has the capability, certainly the officers are very well trained,
and their attitudes are excellent. They will be able to assure peace and tranquility
in the country.””
The day after Christmas, Vance convened a Policy Review Committee meet-l
ing with McAuliffe, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, General Smith of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Aaron, Pastor, Vaky, Bowdler and Solaun. They discussed how to
pressure Somoza to accept a plebiscite plan he didn’t control. Carter approved a
phased array of sanctions to be implemented if Somoza’s response was negative.
After further mediation, during which Somoza tried to modify the plebiscite plan to
make it more susceptible to manipulation, the FAO broke off talks on January 19,
1979.
At a Policy Review Committee meeting on January 26, CIA Director Stansfield
Turner argued that Somoza had built up the National Guard during the mediation,
the FSLN had lost support and were refocused on a longer-term armed struggle, and
the moderate opposition was also weak. He “judged that the chances of Somoza
remaining in power until 1981 were better than even.” But the consensus position
was summarized by Brown: “the longer Somoza stayed in power, the higher the
chances were of a radical takeover. The only question was when the Sandinistas
would assume power.”” There was agreement to go ahead with sanctions.
The administration announced on February 8 that it was withdrawing the U.Sf
Military Group, terminating military aid (it had been suspended), withdrawing Peacq
Corps volunteers and cutting the embassy staff from 82 to 37; no new aid would be!
considered. These actions were largely symbolic. By then, Israel was the Nationalj
Guard’s chief supplier. Other current and future arms sources included Argentina,
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Chile, Brazil, Taiwan, Portugal, Spain and South
Africa.” Critics outside the administration urged, unsuccessfully, that Carter support
an international arms boycott, investigate U.S. mercenary activity and cut Nicaragua’s
beef and sugar import quotas.
The Carter administration appeared to forget Jorden’s warning about a
downward spiral. As the National Guard waxed in control over the country after the
September insurrection and negotiations collapsed, U.S. involvement waned. U.S.
intelligence predicted that the Guard could defeat any new Sandinista military of¬
fensive.” Ambassador Solaun resigned after being recalled to Washington in late
February, and the post went unfilled for many months.
With the failure of the mediation effort. President Perez of Venezuela at¬
tempted, with support from Panamanian leader Torrijos, to have Somoza’s cousin
Luis Pallais lead a coup. The coup, contemplating Somoza’s consent, would install
a national unity government with the participation of Eden Pastora. Pallais refused
to approach Somoza with the idea and he denied it publicly when Torrijos leaked I
the plot.” When the more conservative Luis Herrera Campins succeeded Perez as I
president in March 1979 he reduced, but did not discontinue, Venezuela’s secret
supply of arms to the Sandinistas.^
Contrapreneurs at Somoza’s Service

Years before the Iran-contra scandal brought him notoriety as an arms dealer
associate of Richard Secord, CIA officer Thomas Clines offered private security and
intelligence services to Somoza—apparently without the knowledge of CIA Direc¬
tor Stansfield Turner7^ Clines asked Edwin Wilson, the former CIA agent later con¬
victed of selling arms to Libya, to meet with Somoza. At the time, said Wilson,
“everybody in the agency wants to help Somoza, but they want to do it covert¬
ly... [They] were willing to help Somoza behind the scenes.”^
Documents obtained by US. NewsS World Report show that Wilson and Clines,
on separate occasions in 1978, offered Somoza a $650,000 security and intelligence
operation; Somoza found it too expensiveRep. Charles Wilson arranged and at¬
tended Edwin Wilson’s (no relation) meeting with Somoza in Miami in early 1979.
Rep. Wilson “said he had been socially acquainted with [Edwin] Wilson...and con¬
sidered him to have ‘a good track record.’” Although no agreement resulted from
that meeting, associates of Clines did arrange a subsequent deal with Somoza.^^ Ac¬
cording to one account, Somoza agreed in early 1979 to a contract with Clines to
provide intelligence and assassination services and supply weapons, ammunition,
aircraft and explosives beginning in March.(The Clines-Wilson-Secord connection
is discussed further in chapter 11.)
An undisclosed number of U.S. mercenaries, such as Mike Echanis, assisted
Somoza. According to U.S. government and military sources, four former Green
Berets and Navy unconventional warfare specialists living in Fayetteville, North
Carolina, near Fort Bragg, were recruited to work for Somoza in “counterterrorist”
operations, including the infiltration and sabotage of opposition groups and assas¬
sination of Somoza opponents. One of the four. Chuck Sanders, told friends that
the CIA had “made arrangements” to work with them. The four men were killed in
a plane crash in late 1978.^
As of June 1979, at least five Miami-based Cuban exiles were serving as top-
level officers of the National Guard, according to a Somoza government source. One
of those was Anselmo Aliegro, half-brother of then Florida Democratic Party Chair¬
man Alfredo Duran. Some 25 other Cuban exiles were reportedly engaged in com¬
bat for Somoza.After interviewing Nicaraguan refugees on the Costa Rican border,
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Aberto Consalvi reported that U.S. mercenaries had
committed a number of atrocities.^
Patriotic Front
In February 1979, the Group of Twelve and United Peoples Movement created
the National Patriotic Front; the Popular Social Christian Party and the Independent,
Liberal Party joined. The Patriotic Front united around a statement of principles em-1
phasizing national sovereignty, democracy, justice and social progress. As a precon¬
dition for “effective democracy,” it demanded “the overthrow of the Somozal
dictatorship and eradication of all its vestiges, rejecting all maneuvers that imply the !
continuation of the system of 5omoc/smo without Somoza.”^^ t
The Patriotic Front led mass protests and organized for the final offensive. The
MPU had developed a system of parallel power—peoples’ power—inside Nicaragua,
defending against and challenging the dictatorship with a strong grassroots base of
Civil Defense Committees (CDCs), Christian base communities and popular or¬
ganizations. CDCs, organized by block and neighborhood with democratically
elected zonal steering committees, ensured that the population would be better
prepared in future confrontations with the Guard.
The CDCs collected medicines and first aid supplies, and trained older men and
women in rudimentary first aid skills to tend the wounded. Basic foodstuffs were stored
up, and reserve water supplies located. “Sandinista dining rooms” were organized where
the combatants could come for nourishment during the fighting. “Security houses” were
designated where key FSLN leadership could meet.
Every person accepted a task. Some watched and reported on National Guard move¬
ment. Others reported the activities of Somoza’s spies. Older persons and young children
acted as messengers between the Committees in different blocks and neighborhoods,
maintaining constant communication between the CDCs and the FSLN. The Popular
Brigades—combatants who had not formally joined the FSLN—^took responsibility for
being ready at a moment’s notice to dig street trenches and take up the street bricks to
build barricades. Stores of home made weapons, such as molotov cocktails and “contact
bombs” were made. Students built arsenals of arms and munitions seized in temporary
take-overs of National Guard command posts.
Because the National Guard entered any private home at will, and often resorted
to aerial bombardment or setting fire to whole neighborhoods in order to force people
into the streets, the CDCs established evacuation passageways by connecting each house,
through hidden wall openings and tunnels.^®
On March 7, the Sandinistas announced “the irreversible and unbreakable unity '
of the FSLN” and the appointment of a nine-person National Directorate with three
representatives from each tendency: Daniel Ortega, Humberto Ortega and Victor
Tirado of the Terceristas; Jaime Wheelock, Luis Carrion and Carlos Nunez of the
Proletarians; and Tomas Borge, Bayardo Arce and Henry Ruiz of the GPP.^^
Fighting mounted and so did Somoza’s increasingly desperdte repression. Still,
the Carter administration envisioned a Nicaraguan future without the Sandinistas. In
April, Sergio Ramirez traveled to the United States to attend the Latin American \
Studies Association annual conference: “We stopped in Washington” to try and meet
with U.S. government officials. “Nobody wanted to talk to us.”^°
Panama Canal Connection

In mid May the United States handed Somoza a carrot more hefty than earlier
sticks: approval of a $65.6 million IMF loan over the objections of Senator Edward
Kennedy (D-MA) and others. On May 20, Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo
broke relations with Nicaragua and encouraged other governments to do so, decry¬
ing the “horrendous acts of genocide” committed by the Guard.^^ (Costa Rica had
broken relations with Somoza in late 1978 over border disputes.)
The Carter administration was less concerned with alienating the liberal
Democrats in Congress who opposed aid to Somoza than with alienating the con¬
servatives who supported aid to Somoza and opposed the Panama Canal treaty.
Their rallying cry was raised by candidate Ronald Reagan in the 1976 primaries: “We
built it, we paid for it, it’s ours and we should tell Torrijos and company that we are
going to keep it.”
Carter saw the lack of a new Canal treaty as “something of a diplomatic can¬
cer, which was poisoning our relations with Panama” and hurting the U.S. image
throughout Latin America. It took a bruising political battle to win Senate ratifica¬
tion by a razor thin margin in March 1978. Ahead lay more battles to pass House
and Senate legislation to implement the treaty. “Some members of the House,” wrote
Carter, “saw a chance to trade Panama treaty votes for support for [Somoza’s] falter¬
ing regime.
Nicaragua Lobby leader Rep. Charles Wilson threatened the administration
with “rough treatment” on the treaty bill.^^ Even more important was Rep. John Mur¬
phy (D-NY), chairman of the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee with
jurisdiction in Canal matters. Murphy was a childhood friend of Somoza’s since their
days together at La Salle Military Academy in Oakdale, New York, and then West
Point.
“Tacho was a man’s man,” remarked Murphy, “tlie kind of a man you like to
have a drink with, to go fishing with, and the type of person everyone respected,
not only for his strong personality but also for a very keen intellect.(Murphy was
indicted on June 18,1980 on conspiracy and bribery charges resulting from the FBI’s
ABSCAM investigation. He was convicted and served sixteen months in federal
prison./^
House opponents, said Carter, “tried to block the treaties by claiming that
Panama was giving aid to the opponents of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, whom
they tried to picture as agents of communist powers. To hear the ‘evidence,’ the
House of Representatives held its first secret session in a hundred and fifty years,
but it seemed that no new information was presented. In May 1979, Carter repor¬
tedly told Panamanian President Aristedes Royo that because of the Nicaragua-
Panama link, “the administration could not do anything about Nicaragua until the
canal treaties cleared the House. U.S. sources, while conceding that had been an
inhibiting factor, said that Carter was speaking at a time when the internal Nicaragua
situation was quiet.
The House approved an administration-Murphy compromise Canal treaty bill

on June 21, but more battles loomed as the House and Senate enabling legislation i
was reconciled. Carter did not sign the final Canal legislation into law until Septem¬
ber 27, two months after the Sandinista victory. ^
Final Offensives
The FSLN launched the final offensive on May 29, 1979 with a series of coor- s
dinated attacks followed by the call for a national insurrection and general strike.
“From September until we launched the offensive in May,” explained Humberto Or¬
tega, “the brunt of military activity was borne by the guerrilla columns of the Nor¬
thern Front and the ones in Nueva Guinea, in rural and mountainous areas...From
a strategic standpoint, as of May Somoza had already lost the war. It was only a
question of time.”^®
Until April, the U.S. Embassy was telling Washington that Somoza could ^
probably survive militarily, but that month the defense attache, Lt. Colonel James
McCoy, provided a more pessimistic assessment based on “the repudiation of i
Somoza by the entire population. According to Pastor, the administration did not ;
recognize that it was truly the final offensive until mid June. The CIA’s initial assess- ;
ment was that the fighting could conceivably develop into a second insurrection on ;
the level of the September crisis, but it would not be adequate to displace Somoza.®° i
Leon, the second largest city, was liberated on June 4 under the command of
Dora Maria Tellez, head of the FSLN’s Rigoberto Lopez Perez western front. Women
then made up an unprecedented 30 percent of the guerrilla force. Like Nicaraguans
elsewhere, Leon’s residents often fought with machetes and homemade bombs.
There weren’t enough guns to go around.
The day Leon fell. Pastor and U.S. Ambassador to Panama Ambler Moss met
with Torrijos and tried to dissuade him from taking further action against Somoza
“in order to ensure passage of the Canal legislation” and persuade him to stop send¬
ing arms to the Sandinistas. “It’s too bad the United States is always so slow to recog¬
nize new realities, and that you didn’t have the foresight to buy a share of Sandinista
stock when I was first offering it,” Torrijos told them. '
“General,” said Pastor, “we have not come to buy Sandinista stock, but to try |
to get you to sell yours.” Torrijos tried to explain that the offensive would succeed.®^ '
Somoza declared his last state of siege on June 6. At a Carter Policy Review
Committee meeting on June 11, the general view was that the war was a standoff,
the Guard would probably survive the current round of fighting, but Somoza would
probably not be able to serve out his term. Brzezinski proposed that the United
States issue a statement calling for “self-determination for Nicaragua and an end to
the violence”; issue forceful private and public warnings to cease the arms flow to
both sides; and “begin quietly exploring with other Latin governments the idea of
an inter-American peace force that would only act in conjunction with Somoza’s
departure.” The Pentagon was asked to look into military contingencies with the '
I understanding that the United States would assume most of the responsibility for
[ such a force
The CIA concluded on June 12 that the Guard was weaker and the Sandinis-
tas stronger than was thought previously. Time was running out. The next day, the
U.S. Embassy began evacuating Americans. On June 14, at U.S. request, an Israeli
\ ship loaded with arms, for Nicaragua turned back.®^
The Provisional Government Junta-of National Reconstruction was announced
in San Jose, Costa Rica on June 16. Its five members were Daniel Ortega of the FSLN,
j Sergio Ramirez of the Twelve, Alfonso Robelo of the FAO, Violeta Barrios de
’ Chamorro, a director of La Prensa and widow of the slain publisher, and Moises
Hassan, MPU leader and former dean of the National Autonomous University of
Nicaragua. Andean Pact countries—Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and
Bolivia—announced that the FSLN guerrillas were “legitimate combatants,” a form
^ of tacit recognition. On June 18, the junta issued its first proclamation, spelling out
' an extensive program of political, economic and social reconstruction. By then,
I many Somocista politicians and officials had moved into the safer quarters of the
jlntercontinental Hotel adjacent to Somoza’s headquarters, known as “the Bunker.”
, Washington desperately launched its own final offensive to block a Sandinis-
• ta victory. The new ambassador to Nicaragua, Lawrence PezzuUo (previously based
I in Uruguay), called on Luis Pallais in Washington on June 18 to tell him the new
U.S. strategy. According to Pallais, the United States “wanted Somoza to resign in a
‘statesmanlike’ manner after helping to arrange for a national reconstruction govern¬
ment that would include representation from the Nationalist Liberal Party, the Con¬
servatives, other members of the FAO, and the FSLN. Individuals
mentioned...included Alfonso Robelo; Adolfo Calero [director of the Nicaragua
Coca-Cola Companyl; Archbishop Obando y Bravo; and Eden Pastora—but none
of the more radical Sandinistas.” Elections would be organized within a “pruden¬
tial” time with the help of the OAS. The National Guard would continue under new
leadership.®^
! Somoza responded the next day. He would resign under the conditions of an
I orderly transition overseen by the OAS and exile without threat of extradition in the
United States. Again, events outpaced Washington. On June 20, ABC television
reporter Bill Stewart was murdered in cold blood at a National Guard checkpoint.
Stewart’s crew filmed as he was ordered to his knees, then to lie face down on the
ground where he was suddenly shot in the head. The footage shown on American
television reached millions who had not seen, or been moved by, earlier evidence
of the Guard’s brutality. Telegrams and phone calls from outraged Americans poured
into the White House. “One consequence of the tragedy,” observed Pastor, “was
that it quieted the thunder from the right in the United States.”®^ Today there is a
monument to Bill Stewart in Managua.
The CIA predicted on June 19 that Somoza would last a week or more; it would
I repeat that assessment four more times at approximately weekly intervals. At a Spe-
1 cial Coordination Committee meeting that day, Brzezinski, Vance, Christopher, Vaky,
\ Pastor, Turner, PezzuUo and General David Jones, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
'discussed Nicaragua. Brzezinski, explained Pastor, asserted that “events in Nicaragua
would impact on U.S.-Soviet relations and on the President’s domestic political stand¬
ing, particularly in the South and the West. Then he crisply defined tlie^pb[ective
for U.S. policy—to move Somoza out and create in his place a viable government
of national reconciliation. The question was how to accomplish this goal.”
They debated the proposal the administration would bring before a special
session of the OAS on June 21. Vance said the chances of gaining approval for a
peacekeeping force were “slim.” Christopher and Vaky suggested that after Somoza
left, a government of national reconciliation could invite help from the United States.
Brzezinski questioned whether the Guard or the government would hold together
long enough to preclude a peacekeeping force. Brown and Brzezinski, said Pastor,
“proposed that the President be informed that the discussion introduced two unat¬
tractive but possible alternatives—a Sandinista victory or U.S. intervention.”
The State Department drafted Vance’s speech for the OAS, omitting any^^
reference to Cuban involvement in Nicaragua or the “peace force.” After consulting!
with Brzezinski, Carter “wrote both points into the text.”®^
As Vance presented it to the OAS on June 21, the U.S. proposal called for:
“formation of an interim government of national reconciliation acceptable to all
major elements of the society; a cessation of arms shipments; a cease-fire; an O.A.S.
peacekeeping presence to help establish a climate of peace and security; and a
major international relief and reconstruction effort.”
Vance’s speech referred to “mounting evidence of involvement by Cuba and
others in the internal problems of Nicaragua.” But in testimony before a House sub¬
committee shortly after, Vaky admitted that Cuba was “not the only or even the most
important” FSLN supporter.®^
The U.S. plan generated heat, not support. Mexican Foreign Minister Jorgej
Castaneda declared, “It is not up to the OAS or anyone else to tell them how they
should constitute their government once they knock down a dictator.” Provisional!
government representative Miguel D’Escoto, given a seat in Panama’s delegation,!
denounced the plan as “an attempt to violate the rights of Nicaraguans who havej
almost succeeded in throwing off the Somoza yoke.”^
“For the first time since its origins in 1948,” observed historian Walter LeFeber,\
“the OAS had rejected a U.S. proposal to intervene in an American state.. .The ghosts
of past U.S. interventions could not be laid to rest; if North Americans had poor[
memories the Latin Americans did not.” Viron Vaky “accurately observed that the
OAS rejection ‘reflected how deeply the American states were sensitized by the ,
Dominican intervention of 1965, and how deeply they fear physical intervention.’”®^ i
“I returned from the OAS meeting to the White House to brief Brzezinski and
found him in a very different world, contemplating military intervention,” recalled
Pastor. At a meeting with Carter and others on June 22, Brzezinski forcefully
presented the case for military intervention, spelling out “the major domestic and
international implications of a Castroite take-over in Nicaragua. [The United States]
would be considered as being incapable of dealing with problems in our own back¬
yard and impotent in the face of Cuban intervention. This will have devastating
domestic implications, including for SALT [Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty].”^
Vance spoke of the negative response in the OAS to the peacekeeping force
and Carter rejected the idea of unilateral U.S. intervention. At a meeting the next
day, Secretary of Defease Brown joined Vance in opposing unilateral intervention.
Instead, the Special Coordination Committee agreed that the United States would
continue to seek a negotiated transition in Nicaragua and that “after a new govern¬
ment was installed, the United States could help to support it while it opened negotia¬
tions with the iSandinista-backed] junta.
The OAS adopted a resolution on June 23 asserting “that the people of
Nicaragua are suffering.. .the horrors of a bloody struggle against the armed forces”
and calling for “immediate and definite replacement of the Somocista regime; in¬
stallation... of a democratic government that involves...the representatives of the
major groups opposed to the Somoza regime that reflect the free will of the people
of Nicaragua; full guarantee of Human Rights for all the Nicaraguan people without
exception; carrying out free elections as early as possible that lead to the estab¬
lishment of a true democratic government that will guarantee peace, freedom and
justice.” It urged the “member states to carry out all the steps within their power to
expedite a durable and peaceful solution to the Nicaraguan problem upon the said
bases, respecting scrupulously the no intervention principle.”
Seventeen countries, including the United States, supported the resolution.
Only Nicaragua and Paraguay voted against it; Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala and
Honduras abstained. The Carter administration transformed the language it had in¬
serted about member states taking steps to facilitate a peaceful solution into a license
to, in Pastor’s words, “negotiate a transition in Nicaragua legitimately.”^^
Carter recognized the Canal treaty as a symbol of a new era in relations, but
somehow he expected that Latin America would continue to sanction the U.S. in¬
tervention from which it suffered. Brzezinski too realized the symbolic importance
of the treaty, writing in his memoirs: “Ratifying the treaty was seen by us as a neces¬
sary precondition for a more mature and historically more just relîonship^^dtET
Central America, a region which we had never understood too well and which we
occasionally [sic] dominated the way that the Soviets have dominated Eastern
Europe. It was a new beginning.”
Brzezinski said he wanted “to develop an approach to the Central American
problem that would combine genuine commitment to social reform and more ef¬
fective impediments to Cuban penetration.”^^ Expressing this two-track approach on
a global scale in March 1980, Brzezinski argued that the United States was trying “to
do two things,” firstly, “to make the United States historically more relevant to a
world of genuinely profound change; and secondly, to improve the United States’
position in the geo-strategic balance with the Soviet Union.These “two things”
often conflict.
Brzezinski’s earlier works revealed an accommodationist policy thinker who
advocated that the United States “move to abandon the Monroe Doctrine”; have “a
less anxious preoccupation with the Soviet Union”; and recognize that change in
^ Latin America is likely to combine “a more socially responsible Catholicism with
nationalism,” producing “a highly differentiated pattern of change,” whose radical
nianifestations even, “are not likely to be modeled on communist countries.
Brzezinski turned out to be a dogmatic policy maker, letting his staunch anti-
Sovietism become a myopic guide to policy in the Third World.
In his memoirs, Brzezinski wrote: “when a choice between the two had to be
made, between projecting U.S. power or enhancing human rights (as, for example,
in Iran), I felt that power had to come first. Without credible American power, we
would simply not be able either to protect our interests or to advance more humane
goals.Brzezinski prevailed in mîng U.S. power the centerpiece of the OAS
proposal. The Latin Americans broke new ground by rejecting it, seeking another
way to protect regional interests and advance genuinely more humane goals.
“Let’s Do It With Grace”

From June 9 to June 27, insurrection raged in Managua. Somoza’s planes bom¬
barded rebellious neighborhoods and opposition-owned factories. On the evening
of June 27, the FSLN led a tactical retreat to Masaya, leaving snipers behind while
some 6,000 guerrillas and supporters marched for two days, mainly across open
country. They reached Masaya with few casualties. “If we can do that,” said one
participant, “we can do anything.
By June 25, the administration had decided on a two-pronged strategy of begin¬
ning talks to try and influence the composition of the provisional junta while “quiet¬
ly” trying to negotiate the establishment of a “third force,” a so-called Executive,
Committee that could become an alternative governing structure. Administration of-/
ficials judged the chances of success at about 50-50.^
Ambassador Pezzullo arrived in Managua on June 27 with the goals of obtainl-
ing Somoza’s resignation, preserving the National Guard and forming an Executive
Committee. By then, Somoza saw “the ball game was over. My chief concern was
the welfare of those dedicated and loyal members of the Guardia Nacional and thp
members of the Liberal Party.
Meanwhile, according to Shirley Christian, Pastora had sent a message to\
Washington: “if it wanted to prevent a victory by radicals, it should convince Somoza
to pull the National Guard back from the south and give him a chance to get tof
Managua with his troops.” Pastora thought “that because of his popularity and fame
the FSLN would be forced to concede him more power in the new regime if he got
there first.The United States was not yet ready to support Pastora.
Beginning on June 27, Pezzullo and Somoza held a series of meetings to ar¬
range Somoza’s departure. Somoza introduced himself as “a Latin from Manhattan.”/
Rep. Murphy was present at some meetings, acting as Somoza’s adviser. Pezzullo
reiterated the proposal he had made earlier to Pallais: Somoza would resign, turn¬
ing over power to the congress who would then appoint a constitutional successor
“which would immediately bring a ceasefire, a beginning of a political dialogue,
which would give an opportunity for the forces in this country to seek a total solu¬
tion and hopefully preserve as many institutions as are preservable.”
By then, however, Somoza had little power to turn over, having lost control
of much of the country outside Managua. Somoza suggested he could leave the next
day, taking Pezzullo aback. “I don’t want you to leave tomorrow,” said PezzuUo.
“I’ve just got to get organized a little bit.. .Please don’t move too precipitously.. .Let’s
do it with grace.”
The next day, Pezzullo told Somoza, “When you go, there is a chance to put
something viable in its place quickly, and get into a transition government that we
can get international support for, and put in the kind of resources that prevent going
to the Left. Your Liberal Party will survive, your Guardia will survive—ûnder a dif¬
ferent name probably...If we let the damn thing go further, I think we are all out
of business.”^”’
Pezzullo met with Archbishop Obando y Bravo and Ismael Reyes, the presi¬
dent of the Nicaraguan Red Cross, to pursue the idea of an Executive Committee.
Arturo Cruz, meanwhile, told the State Department “that a broadened junta was not
the answer since the question was who had the guns? Cruz supported the idea of
a neutral force [to] stand temporarily between the National Guard and the Sandinis-
tas.” He believed “that a compromise can possibly be found [with the FSLN] provid¬
ing a role for the less-tainted elements of the present Guard.
On June 29, Pezzullo stressed to Somoza his role in holding the Guard together
behind a transition arrangement. The “Guardia will survive, not in the same form,
but it will survive. If we all play our cards well.” Pezzullo appeared confident the
Sandinistas could be marginalized: “Once these extremists are put in a situation
where there are other forces of [sic] play they are going to be the minority. They
won’t represent more than five or six percent.
Pezzullo cabled Washington on June 30, observing that with “careful orchestra¬
tion we have a better than even chance of preserving enough of the GN [Guardia
Nacional] to maintain order and hold the FSLN in check after Somoza resigns.
Somoza wrote out his resignation letter and carried it around for seventeen
days awaiting Washington’s final plan. Miguel D’Escoto recalled how U.S. officials
“tried to say to us, in fact it wasn’t so much the Nicaraguan people that were going
to throw Somoza out. They were the ones who had his resignation in their pocket
and they would only pull it out if we went ahead and did a couple of things,” name¬
ly, preserve the National Guard and expand the junta.
Bowdler had met in Panama City on June 26 with D’Escoto and four junta
members. It was the first official U.S. contact with Sandinista leaders. Bowdler’s fun¬
damental objective,” D’Escoto told me, “was to get us to accept an augmentation of
the junta—^to increase it by five, that was the initial idea. Then it was by three, and
then by maybe even two only, but to augment it. And also to take steps to ensure
that the National Guard would only be ‘cleansed,’ but not totally destroyed, because
the National Guard, said Bowdler, was going to be the guarantee for order.. .He was
saying to me inevitably after the revolution, after the overthrow of Somoza, people
would want to take justice in their hands and there would be all kinds of summary
executions and [firing squads] and this kind of thing. And that it was indispensable
to keep the National Guard as the only ones capable of maintaining order.
“And when we argued against that, and showed the lack of logic and coherence
in his arguments and...in the American demand that the number of people in the
junta be augmented, the only thing, the only argument that he could have.. .was
‘Well, this is what the United States wants and it is important to please the United
States,’ and that’s it. It’s important to please the United States.
“But, another argument later on that made a little bit more sense was that Presi¬
dent Carter had refused to...recognize the junta that had been named, and that he
would lose credibility if all of a sudden, without any change, he went ahead and
accepted it.. .It would make him look as if he was defeated somehow and this would .
enhance the possibility of Reagan coming to power. And, certainly, that wouldn’t j
be in our best interests. So, we should get involved in the American electoral situa- j
tion—that’s practically what he was saying—ând prevent the worst imaginable thing, j
We should go ahead and engage in this face-saving move.
“And I remember I would say, ‘I could understand the difficulties in the United
States, but that Nicaragua, you know, was an independent nation. We had our own
problems and we have to act on the basis of our interest.
Washington’s plan for reconstituting the provisional government was not only
rejected by the junta, it was rejected by those who were seen as the alternatives.
On June 29, the FAO and COSEP reiterated their support for the Sandinista-backed
junta and said they would not participate in a competing administration.
The next day, Vaky cabled Pezzullo, telling him “what follows after Somoza’s
departure is too uncertain as yet...Hence Somoza should stay in place until this is
determined.
The administration moved away from the two-track strategy on July 2 to focus
on reshaping the provisional junta and securing the survival of a modified Nation- j
al Guard that would be legitimized by countries such as Panama, Venezuela and 1
Costa Rica. CIA Director Turner suggested that the United States could support the |
Guard indirectly through Israel. But Carter was prepared to provide direct and overt j
support for the Guard if it had some national and international legitimacy. The ad- i
ministration attempted to recruit an acceptable new Guard commander and secure •
a slot for him on the junta.^^
On July 6, Somoza publicly acknowledged that he was ready to resign, but
the timing was in U.S. hands.^°^ Hopeful that Somoza could transfer power to a fel- /
low Liberal Party member who would then carry out a cease-fire and new elections,
Pezzullo cabled Washington: “Even though this successor government would smack
somewhat of Somocismo sin Somoza, it would be a bold strike and a break with
the past. Somoza would be gone. We would be viewed as the instrument which
brought about his departure and ended the bloodletting.””®
“The United States has always intervened when we Nicaraguans have tried to
define our own future,” said a wealthy young businessman. “Now it is willing to
see Nicaragua bombed back to the Stone Age in order to maintain its system of
domination.””^
The businessman could not know how right he was. In a cable to Secretary
of State Vance, Pezzullo recommended against pressuring Somoza to stop the bom¬
bardments: “I believe it is ill-advised to go to Somoza and ask for a bombing halt.”
He explained, “Air power is the only effective force the GN has to combat the FSLN
Force which is capturing more towns daily and clearly has the momenturti.””^
At this point, recalled Ramirez, “when the insurrection was already working
and we were able to establish our own parallel government in Costa Rica,” Bowdler
“was not trying to save all the pieces of the machine of the Somoza system...The
only thing Mr. Bowdler was trying to save was the National Guard. Of course, the
National Guard was the central piece of this machine.
] As Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung described it, “U.S. policy calls
'for breaking up the Sandinista army after the war and integrating some ‘moderate’
iguerrillas into a future armed force dominated by the National Guard.
On July 10, knowing that it was being held responsible for the continued
bloodbath, given Somoza’s readiness to resign, and fearing a complete collapse of
the Guard, the administration “decided to bring the crisis to a head.” Meeting in
Costa Rica, Bowdler presented the junta with an ultimatum to expand its member¬
ship, accept a new Guard commander and agree to a cease-fire and elections or, as
Pastor described it, “the United States would consider alternative approaches to
facilitate a transition. The administration had no idea what alternatives were avail¬
able, but threats made in desperation are not generally inhibited by the absence of
rational alternatives.
The junta called Washington’s bluff. It released a “Plan to Achieve Peace” on
July 11: Somoza was to resign to congress which in turn would cede power to the
junta. The junta would dissolve the Somocista congress and carry out a cease-fire;
guardsmen who immediately ceased fighting would be eligible to join a new
Nicaraguan army (with a Sandinista core). Guardsmen and others guilty of serious
crimes would be tried. In a letter presenting the plan to OAS Secretary General
Alejandro Orfila, the junta stated that “those collaborators with the regime that may
wish to leave the country and that are not responsible for the genocide we have
suffered or for other serious crimes that demand trial by the civil courts, may do so
with all the necessary guarantees, which the government of national reconstruction
authorizes as of now.” And it announced “the plan to call the first free elections our
country has known in this century, so that Nicaraguans can elect their representatives
to the city councils and to a constituent assembly, and later elect the country’s highest
authorities.””^
Somoza informed Francisco Urcuyo, president of the Chamber of Deputies of
the Nicaraguan congress, that he should be ready to serve as interim president fol¬
lowing Somoza’s imminent resignation.
Sandinista Triumph
On July 12, the FSLN’s Radio Sandino announced that Leon, Esteli, Chinan-
dega, Matagalpa and Masaya were all liberated territory.
The next day, Washington added a new element to its continued attempt to
shape post-Somoza Nicaragua. Because “Pastora was considered more independent
than the Directorate a meeting with him was authorized to explore future possibilities
for cooperation.” Torrijos and President Carazo of Costa Rica had been trying to ar¬
range a meeting between Pastora and U.S. officials for about eight months, but the
administration had refused. According to Pastor, the administration discovered “that
Pastora was much more suspicious of the United States than the United States was
of him. The initial discussions were difficult and not satisfactory.”"^
On July 14, the junta announced the names of twelve members of the new
Nicaraguan cabinet, including Miguel D’Escoto as foreign minister, Arturo Cruz as
president of the Central Bank, Carlos Tunnermann as minister of education, Tomas
Borge as interior minister and Bernardino Larios, a National Guard colonel who had
defected the year before, as minister of defense.
Pezzullo, meeting with Somoza, and Bowdler, meeting with the junta,
negotiated a plan for Somoza’s resignation and transfer of power. The gist of it was
that Somoza, his family and most of the Guard’s top officers would fly to the United
States. An interim president (Urcuyo) appointed by the Nicaraguan congress would
meet at the airport with a delegation of representatives from the junta, the FSLN
directorate, Bowdler and Archbishop Obando. The interim president would an¬
nounce an immediate cease-fire and, with the new commander of the National
Guard, would arrange a rapid transfer of power to the junta.
On July 15, Archbishop Obando, Red Cross President Ismail Reyes, Jose Es¬
teban Gonzales of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights and other anti-San-
dinistas traveled to Venezuela to meet with President Luis Herrera Campins in a
last-ditch effort to expand the junta. That same day, Pezzullo submitted the names
of six candidates to Somoza for the position of chief of the National Guard, includ¬
ing Colonel Enrique Bermudez, who would later head the major contra force.
Somoza selected Colonel Federico Mejia for the double post of director of the Na¬
tional Guard and chief of staff. According to Luis Pallais, Mejia “was going to offer
one of the posts to Eden Pastora in the negotiations that were expected to follow
Somoza’s departure.”"® According to Pezzullo, Mejia would be Guardia chief of staff
and Humberto Ortega would be chief of staff of the FSLN."^
The FSLN delayed their Managua offensive on July l6, pending Somoza’s ex¬
pected resignation the next morning. Meeting at the Intercontinental Hotel at about
1:00 A.M. on July 17, the Nicaraguan congress promptly accepted Somoza’s resig¬
nation and Urcuyo became acting president. Somoza, his family and his closest as¬
sociates left for Florida close to the prearranged hour of 4 A.M. Somoza took the
caskets of his father and brother with him into exile.
That was the beginning and the end of the orderly transfer of power. In a
nationwide address, Urcuyo called on the guerrillas to lay down their arms and
asked all “national democratic organizations” to join him in a dialogue to create a
new government. As it appeared that Urcuyo was prepared to serve out Somoza’s
term, the negotiated transition process dissolved into chaos. One military analyst
commented, “Washington’s whole game plan is to avert a Sandinista triumph. It
can’t let things fall apart now.”"° But Pezzullo called Vaky to tell him “the whole
thing is coming apart.” Pezzullo couldn’t put it back together."’
As Sandinista forces closed in on Managua, the National Guard disintegrated.

Junta members flew to Leon on July 18 and declared it the provisional capital. Pez-
zullo and most of the embassy staff left Nicaragua to show they did not support Ur-
cuyo; Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher called Somoza in Miami Beach
and threatened to cut short his stay if Urcuyo did not get back on track. Somoza
secured Urcuyo’s agreement to resign, but by then events had passed them by. By
evening, Urcuyo and other Somocistas left Nicaragua on Guatemalan Air Force
planes. Colonel Mejia left early the next morning, joining a frantic migration of
guardsmen and mercenaries. The junta called for the Guard to surrender. About
2,000 guardsmen fled over the border to Honduras. Another 1,000 on the southern
front commandered boats at the port of Sah Juan del Sur and took off for El Sal¬
vador.
During the last days of fighting, the Carter administration arranged to airlift
food into Nicaragua where supplies were running low. U.S. military planes were
ruled out to avoid the appearance of intervention. So the Agency for International
Development awarded the delivery contract to a private firm. Southern Air Transport.
“Oh, my God,” said one official when informed that Southern Air Transport, a well-
known CIA proprietary (officially sold in 1973), had the contract. Another official
remarked, “Who else are you going to get to fly stuff to a country where there’s a
war going on?”'^^
July 19 was the day of victory. Wary of U.S. anger over the collapse of the
transition plan, Somoza spent the day moving his exile to the Bahamas; two weeks
later, he moved to Paraguay, where he lived until his murder on September 17,
1980. On July 20, the junta and Sandinista directorate left Leon and entered Managua
to the triumphant celebrating of hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans.
Meanwhile, an American named “Bill” landed in Managua on July 19 in a DC-
8 with phony Red Cross insignia. His mission, explained journalist Christopher Dick¬
ey, “was to rescue Colonel Justiniano Perez, the second in command of the EEBI.”
Bill found “Tino” Perez in the crowd at the Guatemalan Embassy and took him out
dressed in Red Cross guise. “Over the next few days. Bill went about the business
of pulling together remnants of the Guardia officer corps and their families from
Guatemala and El Salvador. By the time the DC-8 set down in Miami again there
were about 130 people on board. Survivors of the old Guardia, they had the poten¬
tial, they hoped, to build a new one with a little help from friends like Bill and Con¬
gressman Murphy.
2
Fleeting Coexistence
We don’t want to be a second Cuba. We want to establish a first Nicaragua.

We want a Nicaraguan revolution.
Father Ernesto Cardenal, New York Times, June 30, 1979.
As Dr. Hans Morgenthau once wrote: “The real issue facing American
foreign policy...is not how to preserve stability in the face of revolution,
but how to create stability out of revolution.”
Assistant Secretary of State Viron Vaky,
testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, September 1979.
The Sandinistas reciprocated the suspicions that U.S. policy makers had
of them, but their mistrust was related to the asymmetry in power: the
Sandinistas had to be much more suspicious because the capacity of the
United States to undermine their revolution was infinitely greater than their
capacity to affect U.S. interests.
Robert Pastor, former NSC director of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs.^
“Year of Liberation.” That’s how 1979 is recorded in the annals of the new
Nicaragua. “Since July 19, we are no longer a banana republic, we are no longer
anyone’s backyard,” said Sandinista leader Bayardo Arce. “We aren’t part of any
bloc,” but rather “part of humanity,” struggling “to transform relations of depend¬
ency and submission into relations of friendship and solidarity, of mutual respect
and cooperation.”^
The old Nicaragua was in ruins. Up to 50,000 Nicaraguans died in the last five
years of struggle leading to Somoza’s overthrow, most in the closing two years of
35
insurrection. That represented 2 percent of the Nicaraguan population, then num¬

bering about 2.5 million. The U.S equivalent would be over 4.5 million dead.
Human cost was compounded by economic devastation. Cities spared by the
earthquake were wrecked by Somoza’s bombs. There was over $480 million dol¬
lars in direct economic damage. More than $500 million disappeared in capital
flight—^to the Caymans, Miami and other money sanctuaries. To top it off, the
Somozas looted the national treasury and left behind a foreign debt of $1.6 billion.^
A classified U.S. intelligence report put the Somoza family wealth at $900 million,
more than half the national debt.'*
The ruins of war rested on a foundation of poverty. The UN Economic Com¬
mission for Latin America (ECLA) estimated that 62.5 percent of the prerevolution¬
ary Nicaraguan population lived in a state of critical poverty. Two out of three
Nicaraguans did not have enough income to cover their most basic needs. More
than one out of three Nicaraguans lived in “extreme poverty.” They “did not even
have sufficient income to cover the value of the minimum shopping basket of food
considered necessary in order to meet their biological nutritional needs.
Infant mortality was 121 per 1,000 live births. Less than 20 percent of preg¬
nant women and children under five received any health care. In rural areas, where
nearly half the population lived, 93 percent of the homes had no safe drinking water.
Less than one in ten rural children were able to finish primary school.^ More than
half the Nicaraguan population is under sixteen years old. The revolution promised
a better future.
The new government was called the Government of National Reconstruction.
Even with enduring peace, reconstruction would have been difficult. The World
Bank reported in 1981: “the negative consequences of the war are far from over.
Per capita income levels of 1977 will not be attained, in the best of circumstances,
until the late 1980s.”^ The goal of the new government was not to reconstruct the
poverty of the past, but to combine development with equity.
In the words of Agriculture Minister Jaime Wheelock, “On July 19th we won
our political independence; now we confront the even more difficult task of win¬
ning our economic independence.”®
Logic of the Majority

“People would dream ‘maybe Somoza will fall this year,’ ” recalled Dora Maria
Tellez. “We realized that the problem was Somocismo and...that this country had
never been truly independent. Here the companies would take the gold and the
Nicaraguan miners kept the tuberculosis. Wood was taken away and the misery
remained here. All the natural riches would leave.. .We produced sugar because the
United States decided we should grow sugar, and bananas because the United States
needed bananas...We [didn’t] grow corn or beans in an efficient amount because
no one outside the country decided we should grow them...
Fleeting Coexistence 37
“Somocismo had carried corruption to all levels. Such basic things as patriotism,
that was a word that lacked all meaning in this country. Sovereignty, that was a for¬
gotten phrase. Dignity, no one knew what it was. Somoza used to say that every
man had his price. Everyone could be bought. So we also had to make a moral
revolution.”^
The new Nicaragua was guided by the “logic of the majority”—the poor
majority who had known tyranny of the minority and never before had a chance to
exercise the democratic principle of majority rule. “It was the poor who dug trenches,
built roadblocks and held off the guards with homemade bombs, pistols and hunt¬
ing rifles, and, in the main, it was the poor who died,” wrote AJan Riding. “In reality,
the insurrection and the victory belonged to them.”’° The rights of the wealthy
minority would be protected, but not their privileges.
In the view of Nicaraguan elites and the U.S. government, it was not the poor
who made the revolution, but the middle and upper classes who turned on Somoza
after the assassination of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro. As Shirley Christian put it, “it
was not the masses, but the economic and political elites who made it possible for
the Sandinistas to march triumphantly into Managua.”"
For the elites the revolution culminated on July 19 with the fall of the dictator¬
ship. A transitional government would bring forth procedural democracy in the
political system, but the socio-economic system would be little changed. Years later,
such a “revolution” occurred in the Philippines with the 1986 ouster of Ferdinand
Marcos. There, the euphoria of Corazon Aquino’s “people power” gave way to in¬
dignation among peasants, workers and students as promises of social and economic
reform appeared more and more shallow.
In Nicaragua the opposite occurred. For the Sandinistas, July 19 is the date of
the “triumph” in the war of national liberation. The revolution, the war against pover¬
ty and exploitation, was just jêginning. As the promises of radical social and
economic change were translated into practice, Nicaraguan elites protested that the
Sandinistas were “betraying the revolution.”
As Bayardo Arce put it, “The bourgeoisie thought we were a bunch of brave,
dedicated boys who would fight to the death to overthrow Somoza and then say,
‘here you are. Now give me a scholarship to finish my degree.’ Now they’re surprised
we have a political project.
The Sandinista project promised political pluralism, participatory democracy,
nonalignment and a mixed economy composed of a private sector, with both in¬
dividual and cooperative ownership, and a state sector. In Sandinismo, political
pluralism is tied to the economic pluralism of a mixed economy. In Arce’s words,
“We don’t see the possibility of creating true political pluralism without true
economic pluralism, in the sense that both processes correspond with a better dis¬
tribution of national resources.”’^
Sergio Ramirez would later dismiss claims that the Sandinistas “stole” or
“betrayed” the revolution: “The fundamental promises were made to the poorest of
our country...And the original program continues, growing and multiplying for
them, in cooperatives, in schools, in health-care centers, in land, in dignity, in na¬
tional sovereignty.” Those who speak of betrayal of the revolution are speaking of
a “program in which the winds of revolution did not so much as rustle their privileges
of so many decades...It would have been impossible to make a revolution with
such sacrifice, at the expense of so much blood, and cut it to such a pattern—a pat¬
tern that is egoistic, hardly Christian, and certainly not altruistic. This idea of a revolu¬
tion without consequences, we have genuinely betrayed.
Seven years into the revolution and six years into the contra war, I asked a
U.S. ambassador in Central America whether, in his view, the Nicaraguan govern¬
ment had done anything positive for the people. He remarked that the Sandinistas
have “tried to extend social services and economic opportunities geographically,
into the capillaries...to the smallest villages.” He mentioned increased educational
opportunities. That wasn’t all. He said, “They’ve also greatly enhanced a sense of
national identity, of pride.. .This doesn’t work particularly for American concerns in
Central America, but you have to admire it. It’s inspiring.
A rural woman active in AMNLAE, the Nicaraguan Women’s Association, said
simply, “I personally feel as if I was bom again.
Fall-Back Strategy
The Carter administration believed that confrontation would be counter¬
productive and increase the prospect of “another Cuba” in Nicaragua. In Carter’s
words, “We were trying to maintain our ties with Nicaragua, to keep it from turn¬
ing to Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Nicaraguan officials were well aware of debate in the United States over policy
toward their country. In August 1979, Rep. Murphy had presented Colonel Enrique
Bermudez, Tino Perez and other ex-Guard officers in a Washington press con¬
ference. Miguel D’Escoto recalled the debate as turning “around the issue of whether
Nicaragua had been definitively lost or whether it was still redeemable...! think it
was Cyrus Vance and President Carter [who] were of the opinion that maybe it’s
lost, but maybe it wasn’t. If it wasn’t, and one acted as if it was, then for sure it
would be. So let’s give it a chance and try to work along with it in a plan to bring... [it]
back.”'®
Of course, the Nicaraguans didn’t see themselves as lost. They were estab¬
lishing their own identity and they resented being seen as something to be “lost”
by the United States and found by the Soviet Union—as if independence was not
a possibility, much less a right, for small Third World countries. The Soviet Union
did not even establish diplomatic relations with the new Nicaraguan government
until October 18, three months after Somoza’s overthrow.
Having failed to prevent the Sandinista revolution, the Carter administration
now tried to mold it. “Our use of aid is pure behavior modification,” explained a
U.S. diplomat in Central America. “U.S. dollars are rewarded like lumps of sugar to
good little countries and withheld for shock value from stubborn, naughty
countries.”'^
Washington wanted to limit the pace and scope of economic reform.

Washington’s agents were the business and agricultural elites represented in COSEP,
who profited from an economic system dependent upon the United States. By the
logic of that minority, the needs of the poor majority would remain subordinate.
In international affairs, the administration expected Nicaragua to politically
reciprocate the solidarity that Salvadoran revolutionaries had shown the FSLN. But
it also expected Nicaragua to restrain its material assistance in the interest of good
relations with the United States. Given Cuba’s history of support for the FSLN, the
administration expected Nicaragua and Cuba to have friendly relations. But it ex¬
pected those relations to be counterbalanced by ties to other Latin American
countries such as Mexico, Venezuela, Panama and Costa Rica. And, of course,
Washington wanted Nicaragua to limit relations, especially military relations, with
the Soviet Union.
In testimony before Congress in September 1979, Ambassador P'ezzullo in¬
sisted that the revolution “is very much a Nicaraguan phenomenon.. .Sandinismo.. .is
a Nicaraguan home-grown movement. Sandino predates Castro... The nature of this
thing is such that you have to see it take its own form and then identify that form,
rather than make prejudgements about it...
“They are attracted to Castro for some things. They are attracted to Castro be¬
cause Castro was the first real leader that emerged in the last couple of decades
who defied U.S. dominance of the area, even Latins who are not pro-Castro sym¬
pathized with Castro on that count.
“Second, a lot of these fellows went there to train. The reality of the world is
if you want to overthrow a tyrant you don’t go to Boston for training. You can go
to Havana. So, there is that solidarity. They feel this. But that does not mean they
are going to follow a Cuban model or even try to impose that kind of system.
Policymakers were concerned about creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in
Nicaragua. They “consciously set out to avoid repeating the errors of 1959 and I960,
when U.S. hostility drove the Cuban revolution into the arms of the Soviet Union.
This time, the administration would be more “patient and openminded,” judging the
Sandinistas “not by what they’ve said in the past but by what they do in the future.
Six weeks after Somoza’s ouster, one former Carter official wrote: “Administra¬
tion experts are surprised and pleased. Perhaps never has so much civil war been
followed by so much peace. It is clear so far that the junta is trying to prevent ex¬
ecutions and arbitrary retribution...And despite Washington’s long support for the
repulsive Somoza regime...the junta is working with the United States.
Public sentiment for punishing those responsible for crimes under Somoza
was widespread and the junta moved quickly to channel the mass outcry for retribu¬
tion into an orderly legal process. Special Tribunals and Special Appellate Courts
functioned from December 1979 until February 1981 to try military personnel, civilian
employees and public officials of the Somoza regime who were accused of crimes.
Capital punishment was outlawed; the maximum sentence was 30 years. Out of a
total of 4,250 defendants, 267 were acquitted and 30 had their charges dropped. Of
those convicted, approximately 38 percent received sentences of from 1 to 5 years,
6 percent from 6 to 10 years, 27 percent from 11 to 20 years and 29 percent from
20 to 30 years. Clemency procedures established in October 1981 resulted in par¬

dons or commuted sentences for hundreds of prisoners.^'^
Assistant Secretary Vaky told Congress in September 1979 that the Nicaraguan
government “has shown generally moderate pluralistic tendencies in its initial
policies. It is not distinguishably Marxist in orientation, although Marxist figures are
present in key positions. It has restrained reprisals, promulgated a decree guaran¬
teeing individual rights, and has permitted an independent press and radio. It has
promised free elections.” In foreign affairs, Nicaragua “has indicated a desire for
friendly relations with all countries, including their northern neighbors. Nicaraguan
leaders have denied any intention of exporting revolution...
“Nicaragua’s future internal policies and relationships with the outside world
will, in fact, be determined by those Nicaraguans who best define and meet the
country’s needs during the reconstruction period...
“The course of the Nicaraguan revolution can thus be affected in no small way
by how the U.S. perceives it and relates to it. We might write it off as already radi¬
calized and beyond redemption, but that would not only be untrue at this moment,
it would also surely drive the revolution into radicalization.”^^ (Vaky resigned in
December 1979 and was replaced as assistant secretary by William Bowdler.)
Military Scrap
Just as the United States was testing Nicaragua, Nicaragua was testing the
United States. The Nicaraguan government wanted good relations with Washington,
based upon pragmatic and flexible policies on both sides. But would the United
States give up control over Nicaraguan destiny? How far would the Carter administra¬
tion go in its attempt at “behavior modification”?
Nicaragua’s mistrust of the United States was far less paranoid than U.S. fears
of the Sandinistas. The United States had sent marines against Sandino. The San-
dinistas could not assume that the United States would not fight his heirs. Washington
tried to impose “peacekeeping forces” in Nicaragua to preempt a Sandinista victory
and had destroyed most reformist and revolutionary governments in Latin America—
such as Arbenz in Guatemala (1954) and Allende in Chile (1973).
Before July 1979 was over, Minister of the Interior Tomas Borge raised unof¬
ficially the issue of U.S. military aid for Nicaragua in a meeting with Ambassador
Pezzullo. At a press conference announcing formation of the new Sandinista Army,
Luis Carrion, a member of the general command, made clear tliat Nicaragua ex¬
pected to have to defend itself against counterrevolutionary attacks; he cited efforts
in Miami and Honduras to organize Somocista forces.
Deputy Interior Minister Eden Pastora claimed on August 11 that Nicaragua
would seek arms “from the socialist bloc or elsewhere” if U.S. arms were not
forthcoming. At the same time, he angrily rejected a call by Nicaraguan bishops to
grant amnesty to imprisoned ex-guardsmen: “How can we let out those who are
murderers? If you had seen the unscrupulous people who—^without batting an eye—
led us to common graves with 50 bodies and said they had killed them.. .before
they died they mutilated them—cut off their genitals, their arms or legs and bled
them to death. Don’t come to us and ask amnesty for those criminals.
The following day, Borge said that Pastora’s remarks on armaments did not
represent official government policy. Borge did not rule out the purchase of arms
from socialist countries, but he characterized it as a step of last resort. Nicaragua,
he said, did not want to give “pretext to feelings that we are aligning ourselves with
them politically.”^ In late August, Defense Minister Larios extended Nicaragua’s
search for arms, with visits to Belgium, West Germany, Spain, Mexico, Brazil and
Cuba.^^
Washington was well aware of Nicaragua’s military vulnerability. The Pentagon
and State Department reported: “To an even greater degree than other elements of
government, the Nicaraguan defense establishment was swept away. Nothing
remains except for some small arms and the scattered remnants of other equipment,
all of it battlescarred and most of it fit for little more than salvage. The armed for¬
ces of Nicaragua must be entirely rebuilt, both its personnel and equipment.”^
A visitor to Managua could walk through a graveyard of armored vehicles.
They had gone to battle against the Nicaraguan people, but could not be put to their
defense.
Within the Carter administration, proponents of selling arms to Nicaragua ar¬
gued it would be a positive sign of friendship and “if we don’t, the Cubans will.”^^
But the prevailing view was that, whatever the pros and cons of providing arms to
Nicaragua, the political reality in the United States virtually precluded it. Carter would
have enough trouble winning congressional approval of economic aid.
When the administration proposed to train some Nicaraguan military person¬
nel at the U.S. Army School of the Americas, the Nicaraguan government rejected
it. Nicaraguans had enough experience with U.S. training of the National Guard.
The $2.5 million in military aid still in the pipeline from Somoza’s final year was
cancelled. Nicaragua received $3,000 for binoculars and compasses and $20,000 for
six Sandinista Army officers to tour Forts Stewart, Benning and Jackson in Novem-
ber.^^ By then, cross-border attacks were increasing; Nicaragua lost twenty militia in
an October ambush.
$75 Million
U.S. government economists estimated that Nicaragua would need at least $800
million in outside assistance through 1980 and $200 to $250 million yearly for several
years after that to restore the economy Since July 17, the United States had provided
$8 million in disaster aid and had approved another $39 million for various projects.^
In November, Carter submitted an urgent request for $75 million in economic aid
for Nicaragua. It was designed primarily to provide direct support of the private sec¬
tor and finance the purchase of U.S. goods and services. Of the $75 million, $70
million was a loan. Only $5 million was a grant—for scholarships, technical assis-
tance and support for private voluntary agencies. Pezzullo urged congressional ap¬
proval, arguing “the moderates need our support too badly for us to be sitting on
the side of the road waiting for things to happen,
Nicaragua became the most controversial country on the administration’s
proposed list of foreign aid recipients for 1980. The Senate passed the aid request
on January 29, 1980 by a comfortable margin. On February 25, the House held
another rare secret session to examine classified data on Soviet involvement in
Nicaragua. On February 27, after heated debate, the aid legislation passed narrow¬
ly in the House by five votes, but was saddled with numerous conditions. The ad¬
ministration hoped these restrictive provisions would be removed in a House-Senate
conference committee, but congressional critics of aid, then led by Rep. Robert
Bauman (R-MD), blocked the bill from going to conference. The stalemate was
broken only when the Senate voted on May 19 to accept the House version.
As signed into law, the bill required that at least 60 percent of the aid be used
to assist the private sector. It required the president to certify that the “Government
of Nicaragua has not cooperated with or harbors any international terrorist organiza¬
tion, or is aiding, abetting, or supporting acts of violence or terrorism in other
countries.” It required termination of aid if the government engaged in a “consis¬
tent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights”; engaged
in a “consistent pattern of violations of the right to organize and operate labor unions
free from political oppression”; or engaged in “systematic violations of free speech
and press.” And it required termination of aid if the president determined that Soviet,
Cuban or other foreign combat forces were stationed in Nicaragua and that their
presence there “constitutes a threat to the national security of the United States or
to any other Latin American ally of the United States.”^
Congress finally appropriated the $75 million on July 2 in the supplemental
assistance bill for fiscal 1980 (October 1, 1979-September 30, 1980). That month.
Ambassador Pezzullo declared Nicaragua to be “an acceptable model” of revolu¬
tion,^^ However, the required presidential certification that Nicaragua did not sup¬
port terrorism was mired in controversy. Carter finally signed the aid certification
on September 12—relying on the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and
Research—over the continued objections of congressional critics.^ Disbursement of
the funds could finally begin on October 1, 1980.
Year of literacy
As the U.S. Congress debated whether Nicaragua was a “second Cuba,” the
new Nicaragua took shape. The FSLN’s political program promised “a massive cam¬
paign to immediately wipe out illiteracy.” A national literacy crusade was launched
under the direction of former Group of Twelve member. Father Fernando Cardenal.
Mass organizations such as the Sandinista Youth Organization, National Association
of Nicaraguan Educators, Rural Workers’ Association, AMNLAE (the women’s as¬
sociation) and Sandinista Defense Committees were instrumental in carrying out the
campaign. For five months beginning in March 1980, some 60,000 young brigadis-
tas, a majority of them female, went into the countryside to teach—and to learn.
One peasant farmer wrote to the mother of his literacy teacher: “Do you know
Fm not ignorant anymore? I know how to read now. Not perfectly, you understand,
but I know how. And do you know, your son isn’t ignorant anymore either? Now
he knows how we live.. .He knows the life of the mountains. Your son, ma’am, has
learned to read from our book.”^^
Nicaragua’s literacy crusade earned UNESCO’s 1980 first prize for literacy. The
illiteracy rate was reduced from over 50 percent to 13 percent. A special campaign
was organized for the Atlantic Coast to teach literacy in Miskito, English and Sumu
as well as Spanish. In the last phase of the crusade, local coordinators were trained
to lead continuing adult education in popular education collectives (CEPs). By 1983,
there were 17,377 CEPs throughout the country.In the formal education sector
there was a massive expansion from preschool to graduate studies. The total school
population more than doubled between 1979 and 1984.
The literacy crusade was the first mass project based on the logic of the
majority. Consciously political as well as pedagogical, it was seen as a “second war
of liberation.” In the words of Sergio Ramirez, it was part of the process of prepar¬
ing the poor, peasants and workers “both politically and technically to become the
genuine authors of development.”'*^ Carlos Fernando Chamorro, the son of Violeta
Chamorro and longtime editor of the Sandinista newspaper, Barricada, described
the literacy crusade as “the first revolutionary measure taken in favor of press
freedom,” in that it developed “peoples’ rights of access to culture, to be able to
read and write.
To its detractors, the literacy campaign was communist brainwashing. Junta
member Alfonso Robelo complained that the literacy crusade “was being organized
in such a way as to manipulate the poor and the ignorant for ideological or partisan
political ends. This, he said, was immoral.
The second war of liberation had its casualties. Newscasts announced the first
one on May 19, 1980: “Eight ex-National Guardsmen crossed the border from Hon¬
duras yesterday and murdered the literacy teacher Georgino Andrade.”'*'* Pedro Rafael
Pavon, one of Andrade’s killers, received the maximum sentence of 30 years. He
told the court that Andrade was killed “because he was a communist. Six other
literacy workers were murdered in the course of the campaign.
Conflicting Logic
In April, the junta announced the expansion of the Council of State, a legisla¬
tive body to be inaugurated in May. Under the Plan of Government drawn up in
June 1979, the Council was to have had 33 members representing the ESLN, diverse
political parties, labor, private enterprise, and religious, professional and mass or¬
ganizations. The expanded Council would have 47 seats (later increased to 51),
meaning less strength for COSEP-affiliated forces in relation to the Sandinistas, but
a Still higher proportion than determined by the actual size of their constituency.
The total number of large property owners—agricultural, commercial and in¬
dustrial—^was approximately 2,000 persons in 1980; the total for medium-sized
property owners was about 40,000."*^ Of these, many were allied with COSEP; but
others were allied with the FSLN or the less conservative opposition. COSEP’s mem¬
bership was later put at 35,000.'^^
The Sandinistas argued that new grassroots organizations had formed since
the triumph and others had expanded (notably, the trade unions and the Sandinis-
ta Defense Committees, which reached 520,000 to 600,000 men^bers by 1984). By
the logic of participatory democracy, they should be adequately represented on the
Council. In discussing the experience of his union with me later, Sandinista Workers’
Federation (CST) Secretary General Lucio Jimenez stressed political power as a “fun¬
damental gain...[With] the triumph of the revolution, as the working class^ we felt
there was no barrier between us and our aspirations. Before the barriers were the
Somocista Guard, the Somocista dictatorship. We could now say that we were
masters of our aspirations.”'*®
In July 1979, there were 133 trade unions with 27,020 members. By Decem¬
ber 1983, there were 1,103 unions with 233,032 members, the overwhelming majority
of them Sandinista-affiliated. The CST had 504 unions with 111,498 members and
the Rural Workers’ Association (ATC) had 480 unions with 40,000 members. In con¬
trast, the labor federations associated with the conservative opposition, the
Nicaraguan Workers’ Federation (CTN) and Council of Trade Union Unification
(CUS), had then a combined total of 38 unions, representing 4,404 members. Over
four-and-a-half times as many workers were represented by labor federations af¬
filiated with three non-Sandinista leftwing parties: the General Confederation of
Labor-Independent (CGTI), Federation of Trade Union Action and Unity (CAUS)
and Workers’ Front (FO) had a combined total of over 34 unions representing 19,961
members.
The Sandinista-affiliated National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG) was
formed in 1981 by small- and medium-scale producers originally associated with
the ATC. UNAG producers supplied 78 percent of basic agricultural products and
41 percent of all export crops, according to a 1982 report. By 1984, UNAG included
75,000 individual producers and cooperative members.'*^
Alfonso Robelo and Violeta Chamorro opposed expanding the Council of State.
Chamorro resigned from the junta on April 19, 1980, citing only health reasons. On
April 23, Robelo resigned, expressing great dissatisfaction with the direction of the
government.
Washington expressed alarm at the resignations and Pezzullo played a mediat¬
ing role between COSEP and the FSLN. Some COSEP leaders such as Jose Francis¬
co Cardenal, president of the Chamber of Construction, insisted that the Council of
State be limited to 33 members. But after the junta agreed to lift the state of emer¬
gency (in effect since the insurrection), establish safeguards against illegal proper¬
ty confiscations and announce a timetable for elections, COSEP agreed to take its
seats on the Council. On May 4, Cardenal was elected as a vice president of the
Council. It was a post he didn’t want. Days later, angry at COSEP ks well as the
FSLN, Cardenal went into exile and joined the counterrevolution.^®
The Robelo and Chamorro resignations did not result in a junta shift to the
left. They were replaced by two non-Sandinista conservatives: Arturo Cruz, then
head of the Central Bank, and Rafael Cordova Rivas, leader of the Conservative
Party. “Political pluralism has been maintained,” said Cordova Rivas. “It has never
ceased to exist. A clear example of it is the Council of State, in which political par¬
ties of different ideologies are represented.”^^
The government pursued its program of a mixed economy. With widespread
support, the junta had expropriated the extensive properties of Somoza and Somocis-
tas who had gone into exile. This gave the state control of 20 percent of agricultural
production and 41 percent of overall production of goods and services by 1980, up
from 15 percent under Somoza.^^ Under the mixed economy, private property rights
are guaranteed. But following the government’s commitment to meet society’s basic
needs, private property also carries a responsibility; to use productive assets and
not let them sit idle. Moreover, unlike the Somoza era, laws regulating wages, health
and safety and working conditions were enforced. The open question was whether
large producers would invest under a system that sanctioned private profit, but
which they did not control politically.
The new government offered private agricultural producers a package of in¬
centives “unprecedented” even under Somoza, according to analyst Joseph Collins.
Ajnong the incentives were enough credit, at below-inflation interest rates, to cover
all working costs; guaranteed prices, ensuring a profit, for export crops to be
renegotiated yearly with the producers’ associations; and a government promise to
absorb any drop in international commodity prices and to share with producers any
unexpected price gains.
While some producers reinvested their profits back into new production,
others did not. Instead, they decapitalized, transferring profits to bank accounts out¬
side the country. As decapitalization increased, the government-business partner¬
ship became more precarious. Still, in the first two years, “the government did not
take over additional land,” observed Collins, “even if it were lying idle or being run
down; the ministry [of agriculture] had all the land it could handle. The only excep¬
tions were farms where campesinos or farmworkers put tremendous pressure on
the ministry.”
“A vicious circle of self-fulfilling prophecies was at work,” said Collins. “The
more landowners decapitalized, the more they were denounced by workers and by
the government, and the more insecure all landowners felt (and were). Thus the
circle starts again.””
One young executive admitted he had sent $80,000 out of the country since
the revolution. “Why shouldn’t I?...The government gives us economic incentives,
but what we want is a climate of political confidence.””
In May, as the Council of State was being inaugurated, the Catholic hierarchy
called for the resignation of priests holding government positions, arguing that “the
exceptional circumstances” that necessitated their participation had passed. The four
priests affected were Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto, Culture Minister Ernesto Car-
denal, Literacy Campaign Director Fernando Cardenal and Minister of Social Wel¬
fare Edgar Parrales. The priests refused to resign, insisting that the government
needed them and that the people, active in Christian base communities, supported
them. This initial dispute was not resolved until July 1981, when the bishops agreed
to let the priests remain in the government on the condition that they not administer
the sacraments in public or private.”
The prominent role of Christian clergy and laity in the Sandinista revolution
set an example that both Washington and the Vatican wanted erased. As Sister Luz
Beatriz Arellano of the Ecumenical Valdivieso Center put it, “The integration of Chris¬
tianity and revolution scares the Church hierarchy, the elite and Washington be¬
cause they always [before] had the excuse that revolution was communism was
atheism.””
Growing disputes at the national level were mirrored in the powerful Chamor¬
ro family. The day after Violeta Chamorro resigned from the junta, Pedro Joaquin
Chamorro’s brother Xavier was removed as editor of La Prensa. Xavier had sup¬
ported the workers’ union demands for formal representation on the paper’s editorial
council and was deemed too pro-government by the family. In support of Xavier,
the staff went on strike. A subsequent settlement provided Xavier with resources to
start an independent paper, El Nuevo Diario.
Most of La Prensa’s employees went with Xavier Chamorro to Nuevo Diario,
but the reconstituted La Prensa retained the respect of its name. Violeta’s son Pedro
Joaquin Jr. became the new editor of La Prensa. Younger son Carlos Fernando was
editor of the official Sandinista paper, Barricada. Their sister Cristiana later became
assistant director of La Prensa. Sister Claudia is a Sandinista who became ambas¬
sador to Costa Rica, the country where Pedro Joaquin Jr. would later choose exile.
La Prensa became an international symbol. For opponents of the Sandinistas,
it is a symbol of dissent. For Sandinista supporters, it is a symbol of U.S.-backed
counterrevolution.
Foiled Plot
The Sandinista-COSEP truce didn’t last long. The November 1980 election of
Ronald Reagan as president of the United States signaled a turn from mediation to
heightened polarization. There were parties to celebrate Reagan’s victory among
Nicaraguan elites. “They still think politics are determined in the USA,” said junta
member Moises Hassan. “They believe Reagan will get rid of the ‘Sandinista com¬
munists.’””
COSEP walked out of the Council of State on November 12 along with the
most rightwing parties and unions (the major opposition parties, including the In¬
dependent Liberal Party and the Democratic Conservative Party, remained in the
Council). A week later they had a martyr: Jorge Salazar, vice president of COSEP
and president of its affiliated National Union of Agricultural Producers (UPANIC).
By the summer of 1980, Salazar was engaged in an armed plot to overthrow

the government. At the time, Nicaragua faced sporadic cross-border raids by Hon¬
duran-based ex-National Guardsmen and attacks by the Somocista Anti-Communist
Armed Forces (FARAC), financed largely by members of the Livestock Federation
of Nicaragua. FARAC’s largest armed action was the five-hour seizure of San Jose
de los Remates in the central province of Boaco in May 1980. The government also
had to deal with an ultraleft workers’ paramilitary organization, the Milpas, who
thought the Sandinistas were too pro-capitalist.^
Salazar began plotting secretly with Jose Francisco “Chicano” Cardenal even
before the Council of State dispute in April. According to Cardenal, Salazar was look¬
ing to Washington as early as February for funds to start a clandestine radio sta-
tion.^^ Salazar traveled outside Nicaragua to meet with Cardenal, then the exile leader
of the Nicaraguan Democratic Union (UDN), as well as Col. Enrique Bermudez, who
had organized Guardia forces into the Fifteenth of September Legion. Cardenal
joined Bermudez in forming the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance
(ADREN). Leonardo Somarriba, vice president of the Chamber of Commerce, joined
Salazar’s conspiracy in early September. According to former contra spokesman
Edgar Chamorro, Somarriba was working for the CIA as well as Salvadoran Foreign
Minister Fidel Chavez Mena while still in Nicaragua.^
Cardenal went to El Salvador to assist Salazar in acquiring arms. Cardenal and
Raul Arana, a former Managua builder active in ADREN, arranged a meeting with
the commander of the Salvadoran Army, Colonel Jaime Gutierrez, with the aid of
Foreign Minister Chavez Mena. Cardenal wanted Gutierrez to provide arms for
Salazar and training facilities for ex-guardsmen. Before Cardenal had secured any
commitment from Gutierrez, Somarriba and Salazar made their own trip to El Sal¬
vador, again through the offices of Chavez Mena, to meet with Gutierrez. Accord¬
ing to Somarriba, Gutierrez made no commitments to aid Salazar; according to
Cardenal and Arana he did.^^ “The Salvadorans,” said Cardenal, “were going to give
us territory for training and arms, and they were going to give us money, too.”^^
According to former National Security Council aide Robert Pastor, the U.S. Em¬
bassy in Managua first learned of the Salazar conspiracy in October: “The Ambas¬
sador was informed; he was not asked for help.” That statement rings rather hollow
in light of Cardenal’s report of an earlier approach to the United States and debate
in the administration over whether to help. As Pastor described it, the conspiracy
“was a high-risk temptation” for the administration. “Some in the Administration
were prepared to pay the price of again being labeled ‘interventionistic’ if the coup
succeeded, but if it failed, not only would the Carter Administration be blamed for
ineptness [as the presidential elections were fast approaching], but its strategy of
trying to moderate the Sandinistas would be finished. On the other hand, if this con¬
spiracy was actually just a sophisticated way to entrap moderates, then the United
States should discourage them, or alternatively, keep its distance.. .Those who were
most pessimistic and suspicious of the Sandinistas tended to be in favor of support¬
ing a coup, and those who were less pessimistic both about what had happened in
Nicaragua and what could be expected in the future were more inclined to resist
the temptation.”
Ambassador Pezzullo was one of those “less pessimistic” about Nicaragua. He

was also increasingly convinced that the Sandinistas not only knew of the conspiracy
but were entrapping Salazar. Both Pezzullo and Eden Pastora warned Salazar.^^
The charges of entrapment are not supported by the evidence regarding the
development of the plot, but Sandinista intelligence did infiltrate the conspiracy—
no thanks to the U.S. Embassy. On November 18, Salazar was killed while on his
way to evaluate a farm’s suitability for storing arms. According to the Nicaraguan
government, the unarmed Salazar was killed in a shoot-out between his accomplice
and security police who were trying to capture them. Eight Nicaraguans, most of
them active in COSEP, including Somarriba, were found guilty of plotting to over¬
throw the government. They were released by order of the Nicaraguan Supreme
Court after having served less than one year.
After spending several weeks in jail, Somarriba left Nicaragua for Miami. Ac¬
cording to Edgar Chamorro, Somarriba helped Chavez Mena channel CIA funds to
the campaign of Jose Napoleon Duarte during the 1984 Salvadoran elections. Somar¬
riba continued working with the CIA and the contras.^
“Exporting Revolution”
When the U.S. Congress linked Nicaragua and El Salvador, it wasn’t referring
to Salvadoran support for the export of counterrevolution to Nicaragua, but to an
alleged Nicaraguan role in the “export of revolution” to El Salvador.
In a speech to the University of Amsterdam in October 1983, Tomas Borge
remarked, “We can export coffee and cotton, poetry, and even our example, but
we could never export revolutions, because they originate in the inferno of each
country.
El Salvador’s inferno was described by Jose Napoleon Duarte in a 1980 inter¬
view with then New York Times reporter Raymond Bonner. Bonner asked Duarte
“why the guerrillas were in the hills.”
“Fifty years of lies, fifty years of injustice, fifty years of frustration,” responded
Duarte. “This is a history of people starving to death, living in misery. For fifty years
the same people had all the power, all the money, all the jobs, all the education,
all the opportunities.”
The response surprised Bonner who had not expected Duarte to suggest any
justification for the revolution. What surprised Bonner more, however, “was what
he had not said. He had said nothing about Castro or Cuba. He had not mentioned
the Sandinistas or Nicaragua. There was no talk of the cold war and the Soviet Union.
(Duarte was to raise those themes later, when they reflected the views of the Reagan
administration in Washington.) What Duarte was saying was that the revolution had
been caused and fueled by the conditions in El Salvador.”^
Those conditions were described by one Salvadoran this way: “I used to work
on the hacienda...My job was to take care of the towner’s] dogs. I gave them meat
and bowls of milk, food that I couldn’t give to my own family. When the dogs were
sick, I took them to the veterinarian.. .When my children were sick, the [owner] gave
me his sympathy, but no medicine as they died. To watch your children die of sick¬
ness and hunger while you can do nothing is a violence to the spirit. We have suf¬
fered that silently for too many years.
El Salvador’s last fifty years of lies, injustice and frustration began with a 1932
massacre. La Matanza. Having recently grabbed power in a coup. General Maxi-
miliano Hernandez Martinez crushed a peasant rebellion and slaughtered 30,000
Salvadorans. “It is a greater crime to kill an ant than a man,” Hernandez Martinez
once said, “for when a man dies he becomes reincarnated, while an ant dies
forever.”^
El Salvador’s contemporary death squads are heirs to the Hernandez Martinez
legacy. Indeed, Jeane Kirkpatrick praised Hernandez Martinez as a “hero” in a 1981
paper for the American Enterprise Institute: “It is said that 30,000 persons lost their
lives...To many Salvadoreans the violence of this repression seems less important
than the fact of restored order and the thirteen years of civil peace that ensued.”
Kirkpatrick continued, “The traditionalist death squads that pursue revolutionary ac¬
tivists and leaders in contemporary El Salvador call themselves Hernandez Martinez
Brigades, seeking thereby to place themselves in El Salvador’s political tradition and
communicate their purposes.
Salvadoran rebels take their name from a different hero, the revolutionary
Agustin Farabundo Marti, executed in 1932. For a time, he fought with Sandino
against the U.S. marines. By Washington’s logic, one could argue that El Salvador
has exported revolution to Nicaragua.
In the words of Sergio Ramirez, “Revolutions throughout history have always
been ‘exportable,’ if we wish to use this somewhat mercantile term when discus¬
sing the dynamic by which ideas circulate beyond borders...The revolution that
gave birth to the United States as a nation was the most exported revolution of
modem history.. .The constitution of the new United States and the explosive ideas
that inspired it were carried by muleback throughout all Central America, like a
smuggled item. That emerging republic, led by wild-eyed radicals...represented a
threat to the internal security and strategic interests of Spain in the New World; the
great imperial power began to crack. In 1775, Patrick Henry declared “Give me
liberty or give me death.” In Nicaragua the revolutionaries cried “patria libre o morir,”
free homeland or death.
Revolutionary ideas circulate beyond borders, and so does material aid. But
revolution is not a product of outside aid or outside ideas. The American revolution
received aid from the French, but the French did not “export revolution” to the then
British colonies. The Sandinista revolution received aid from Costa Rica, Venezuela,
Panama and Cuba, but those countries did not “export revolution” to Nicaragua.
And as the Duarte passage above makes clear, the Salvadoran revolution is a product
of Salvadoran experience, not an export of Nicaragua, whatever level of material
aid can in fact be traced to Nicaragua.
The “exporting revolution” charge has served to pin the blame for deteriorat¬
ing relations between Nicaragua and the United States on the Sandinistas. It has
49
been used to delegitimize revolutions both in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and to

legitimize an increasingly militaristic U.S. policy of counterrevolution.
Salvador Refrain
The Carter administration tried to learn from its too little, too late approach in
Nicaragua and defuse growing popular revolution in El Salvador by backing the
reformist military coup of October 15,1979. That same month, in an effort to deflect
criticism from the right (rightwingers blamed Carter for “losing” not only Nicaragua,
but also Grenada and Iran, and were trying to block ratification of the SALT II nuclear
weapons treaty with the Soviet Union) as well as to establish the traditional ration¬
ale for an increased military commitment, the Carter administration upped the East-
West ante in Central America.
On the pretext of the August “discovery” of a brigade of Soviet troops in Cuba,
which had been there for seventeen years with Washington’s knowledge. Carter an¬
nounced the formation of a permanent Caribbean military task force and expanded
military maneuvers. In a televised address. Carter also pledged increased economic
assistance “to insure the ability of troubled peoples to resist social turmoil and pos¬
sible communist domination.
The administration announced it was sending $5.7 million in military assis¬
tance to El Salvador, a large amount when compared to past military aid to that
country. In January 1980, the new Salvadoran government junta collapsed when
civilians Guillermo Ungo, Ramon Mayorga and Mario Antonio Andino resigned,
along with most ministers and deputy ministers. The Christian Democrats climbed
aboard the military-driven train as it headed to the right.
The junta reformers had tried to sway the reactionaries, arguing “if the mas¬
sacres didn’t stop and if the reforms weren’t implemented, there was going to be a
terrible bloodbath.” National Guard Commander Colonel Vides Casanova rebuffed
them. The country had survived the killing of 30,000 peasants in 1932, he said.
“Today, the armed forces are prepared to kill 200,000-300,000, if that’s what it takes
to stop a Communist takeover. At least 40,000 civilians were killed between Oc¬
tober 1979 and January 1984.
Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Amulfo Romero wrote to Carter in February 1980
to plead that U.S. aid be withheld. He advised Carter that “neither the [civilian-
military] junta nor the Christian Democrats govern the country. Political power is in
the hands of the armed forces...They know only how to repress the people and
defend the interests of the Salvadoran oligarchy.” And he told Carter, “It would be
totally wrong and deplorable if the Salvadoran people were to be frustrated,
repressed, or in any way impeded from deciding for itself the economic and politi¬
cal future of our country by intervention on the part of a foreign power.
As Bonner explained. Archbishop Romero’s “unceasing condemnations of the
government repression and, directly or indirectly, the U.S. policy of backing the
junta caused serious problems for the Carter administration.” Romero was respected
internationally; in 1978, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by members
of the British Parliament.
Robert Wagner, a former mayor of New York, was twice sent by Carter to the
Vatican “in an effort to mute Romero’s criticisms of the junta and to gain his back¬
ing of the U.S. policy.” In Wagner’s words, “there was a fear [in the administration]
that he [Archbishop Romero] was a little too far over to the left.”
Pope John Paul II was sympathetic. He passed on U.S. concerns in a private
audience with Romero. The pope cautioned Romero “to be careful of ideologies
that can seep into the defense of human rights and in the long run produce dic¬
tatorships and violations of human rights.”
“But Holy Father,” Romero replied, “in my country it is very dangerous to
speak of anti-Communism, because anti-Communism is what the right preaches, not
out of love for Christian sentiments but out of a selfish concern to preserve its own
• ,,74
interests.
Romero called on Christian Democrats to resign from the junta on February
17: “Your presence is covering the repressive character of this government, espe¬
cially abroad. You are an important political force. It is urgent that you question
how best you can use that force in favor of the poor: as isolated and impotent mem¬
bers of a government controlled by the repressive military, or as one more force
that incorporates itself into a broad project of popular government. Christian
Democrat Hector Dada resigned from the junta on March 3. Jose Napoleon Duarte
took his place in a third reorganization of the junta. Romero concluded his sermon
on March 23 with an impassioned appeal to members pf the army, the National
Guard and the police: “Brothers, you are part of our people. You kill your own
peasant brothers and sisters...In the name of God, and in the name of this suffer¬
ing people whose laments rise to heaven each day more tumultuous, I beg you, I
ask you, I order you in the name of God: Stop the repression!”
Romero was gunned down while saying mass the following day. Shortly after.
Carter’s request for military aid to El Salvador was approved. By most accounts, Sal¬
vadoran rightist Roberto D’Aubuisson directed Romero’s assassination; President
Duarte publicly accused D’Aubuisson in late 1987.^^ Ricardo “Chino” Lau, chief of
intelligence operations for Somoza and a founding contra officer, was reportedly
contracted to arrange the hit.^ Wealthy Salvadorans contributed $120,000 to pay for
the murder.^®
As repression in El Salvador intensified and frustrated reformers joined the op¬
position, Washington continued with the same propaganda refrain: moderate centrist
government battling the extremes of left and right. In April 1980, opposition groups
united in the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR). On November 27, the top five
leaders of the FDR were dragged by security forces from a Jesuit high school where
they were preparing a press conference. They were tortured, murdered and muti¬
lated. Among the five was FDR President Enrique Alvarez, who had served as min¬
ister of agriculture until January 1980. Former junta member Guillermo Ungo—
Duarte’s mnning mate in El Salvador’s aborted 1972 elections—succeeded Alvarez
as FDR president.
In a December 7, 1980 New York roundtable on Central America, Jeane

Kirkpatrick asserted, “I think that the degree of commitment to moderation and
democratic institutions within the Salvadoran military is very frequently underes¬
timated in this country. And I think it’s a terrible injustice to the Government and
the military when you suggest that they were somehow responsible for terrorism
and assassination.”
She added: “May I say a final word about the tragic, because murder is always
tragic, assassinations of the leaders of the far left [the five FDR leadersl. That it was
the Government who accepted the Catholic church’s offers for negotiation and it
was precisely those leaders of the far left who rejected that offer [s/cl. I must say
that I found myself thinking that it’s a reminder that people who choose to live by
the sword can expect to die by it.”
The Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez Anti-Communist Brigade took credit for
the FDR killings. In a communique, the Brigade warned “the priests who have an
affinity for the terrorist Marxist bands that they will have the same fate if they insist
in their sermons on poisoning the minds of Salvadoran youth.”
The Brigade’s claim was a cover. As even a CIA report noted, the executions
“were the work of the security forces.Often, the “death squads” served this cover
purpose. They were not simply rightwing vigilantes; they were the auxiliary arm of
the counterinsurgency forces built up over two decades by the United States.
As journalist Allan Nairn explained, beginning with the Kennedy administra¬
tion, officials of the State Department, CIA and U.S. military “conceived and or¬
ganized ORDEN, the mral paramilitary and intelligence network described by
Amnesty International as a movement designed ‘to use clandestine terror against
government opponents.’ Out of ORDEN grew the notorious ManoBlanco, the White
Hand, which a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, Raul H. Castro, has called
‘nothing less than the birth of the Death Squads’; conceived and organized ANSESAL,
the elite presidential intelligence service that gathered files on Salvadoran dissidents
and, in the words of one U.S. official, relied on Death Squads as ‘the operative arms
of intelligence gathering’; enlisted General Jose Alberto ‘Chele’ Medrano, the founder
of ORDEN and ANSESAL, as a CIA agent...[and] provided American technical and
intelligence advisors who often worked directly with ANSESAL, the security forces,
and the general staff with electronic, photographic, and personal surveillance of in¬
dividuals who were later assassinated by Death Squads.”
Chele Medrano, a graduate of the U.S. Office of Public Safety program for
training foreign police officers (abolished in 1974 but reincarnated by Reagan under
a lower profile), received a medal from President Johnson in 1968 “in recognition
of exceptionally meritorious service.” Years later, when the Reagan administration
publicly condemned the death squads, the CIA continued “to provide training, sup¬
port, and intelligence to security forces direcdy involved in Death Squad activity.”^
For example, Colonel Nicolas Carranza, the head of the Treasury Police, was paid
$90,000 a year as a CIA informant while Treasury agents carried out torture and mur¬
der.®’ As one U.S. official in El Salvador put it, referring to D’Aubuisson’s death squad
activities, “The C.I.A. didn’t mind what was going on so long as they were killing
communists.”®^
Four more bodies were found in El Salvador on December 4,1980—the bodies

of four American churchwomen. Sisters Ita Ford, Maura Clarke and Dorothy Kazel
and lay missionary Jean Donovan were driving home from El Salvador’s internation¬
al airport when National Guardsmen abducted them. They were raped before being
murdered. Jeane Kirkpatrick opined, they “were not just nuns.. .They were political
activists on behalf of the Frente [FMLN].”
The Carter administration quickly announced the suspension of all economic
and military aid to El Salvador. But according to Bonner, what most bothered policy
makers (outside the Bureau of Human Rights headed by Patricia Derian) “was not
the loss of the women’s lives but that their assassinations would make it more dif¬
ficult for the United States to continue backing the Duarte government.”®^ Duarte
had become president of the junta on December 13.
From a diary entry reproduced in his memoirs, it is clear that Carter knew of
the slaughter in El Salvador: “they are going through a blood bath down there... They
don’t have anybody in the jails. They’re all dead. It’s their accepted way of enforcing
the so-called law.—DIARY, DECEMBER 11, 1980.” (Carter’s italics.)
He wrote: “I was determined that the murderers of the nuns be brought to jus¬
tice, that elections be scheduled, that some equitable system of justice be estab¬
lished and that promised land reforms be carried out. We had to convince the
Salvadorans that brutal persecution of their own people was the major obstacle to
their economic and political stability. Their top priority was to obtain more military
weapons, but we held firm to our policy.”®^
This, the last reference in Carter’s memoirs to his administration’s actions in
Central America, left out critical policy shifts during the last month in office. In mid
December, the administration resumed economic aid, citing the Salvadoran
government’s supposed “commitment to a thorough, professional and expeditious
investigation of the killings” of the churchwomen. The administration knew this was
untrue.®^
On January 2, 1981, the State Department sent a secret cable instructing the
U.S. Embassy “to advise the Salvadoran government that the United States was
prepared to send military equipment ‘on [an] expedited basis,’ and would immediate¬
ly ‘deploy to San Salvador’ two groups of advisors—one for helicopter maintenance;
the other ‘to deal with guerrilla warfare.’” Assistant Secretary of State for Human
Rights Patricia Derian expressed her “profound disappointment.”®^
Two more Americans were killed on January 4. Land reform advisers Michael
Hammer and Mark Pearlman were blasted with submachineguns while eating din¬
ner with Land Reform Agency head Jose Rodolfo Viera, also killed, in San Salvador’s
Sheraton Hotel. Economic aid went forward.
The FMLN began a “final offensive” on January 10 in an attempt to present
President-elect Reagan with 2. fait accompli. By the next day, the Salvadoran govern¬
ment was pronouncing the offensive a failure; that was more clear on January 12.
Aware that the Salvadoran government did not need new U.S. aid to repulse the of¬
fensive, the administration used it as an excuse to publicly announce on January 14
that it was resuming military assistance.
53
Carter announced on January 17 that $5 million in emergency combat aid

would be sent to El Salvador along with U.S. advisers. “Unable to say that the military
aid was necessary to defeat the guerrillas,” wrote Bonner, “the administration needed
another pretext. It found one—perhaps concocted it.” The pretext was Nicaraguan
arms.
Fonseca Gulf Incident
“I believe reports that a group of approximately 100 men landed from

Nicaragua about 4:00 P.M. yesterday,” Ambassador Robert White told reporters on
January 14. He said Soviet- and Chinese-made weapons had been captured in recent
days. “This changes the nature of the insurgency movement here, and makes it clear
that it is dependent on outside sources...We cannot stand idly by and watch the
guerrillas receive outside assistance.”
In their own press conference, Duarte and other Salvadoran government offi¬
cials said that five boats landed at El Cuco, a small village in the eastern part of the
country on the Gulf of Fonseca; 53 guerrillas were supposedly killed. When reporters
asked for proof that the boats came from Nicaragua, the defense minister said “they
were made of wood not native to El Salvador.” A prominent businessman who saw
the televised press conference said, “I had to laugh. It was better than watching a
comedy.”®^
Unfortunately, the U.S. media didn’t treat the story as comedy. The Gulf of
Fonseca incident was as contrived as the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1964. Both
propaganda events had their intended impact.
An American diplomat in El Salvador concluded the boat landing was “staged.”
Referring to Soviet-made grenades found near the landing site, he said, “It looks as
if they were planted. I can’t quite picture how people would—if they were attack¬
ed—drop grenades along the way—like Hansel and Gretel. It just seemed all too
pat.”®®
State Department claims went beyond the boat landing to “intelligence reports”
supposedly showing significant military support from a number of countries. A
senior Carter administration official with access to all intelligence traffic rebutted
this: “Our impression was that the guerrillas got most of their arms on the interna¬
tional black market, primarily in Miami. ”®^
xMost observers agree that some arms were shipped via Nicaragua to the FMLN,
mainly between November 1980 and January 1981. Until that point, as Robert Pas¬
tor acknowledged, the Sandinistas had avoided supplying arms to the FMLN in the
interest of maintaining non-hostile relations with the United States.^ The Sandinis¬
tas expected the incoming Reagan administration to be hostile, whatever Nicaragua’s
behavior.
The World Court concluded, in its 1986 judgement finding the United States
in violation of international law in attacking Nicaragua: “the Court is satisfied that,
between July 1979.. .and the early months of 1981, an intermittent flow of arms was
routed via the territory of Nicaragua to the armed opposition in El Salvador. On the
other hand, the evidence is insufficient to satisfy the Court that, since the early
months of 1981, assistance has continued to reach the Salvadorian armed opposi¬
tion from the territory of Nicaragua on any significant scale, or that the Government
of Nicaragua was responsible for any flow of arms at either period.
Suspension
In mid January, just before leaving office. Carter suspended aid to Nicaragua,
pending an investigation into Nicaragua’s alleged role in supplying arms to the
FMLN. Carter officials argued that was the only option, short of terminating aid,
under the conditions of the aid legislation.^^ Carter also cancelled authorization of
negotiations for the renewal of Public Law 480 long-term, low-interest loans for the
sale of wheat and cooking oil.^^
Candidate Ronald Reagan had opposed aid to Nicaragua: “I disagree with.. .the
aid that we have provided...! think we are seeing the application of the domino
theory.. .and I think it’s time the people of the United States realize.. .that we’re the
last domino.President Reagan would transform the “export of revolution” charge
into a mantra.
Reagan inherited more than an aid suspension from Carter. He inherited a
presidential “finding” that had authorized covert action in Nicaragua since 1978.
Secret CIA assistance first went to Nicaraguan “moderates”—in political parties, busi¬
ness organizations, the press and labor unions—in the hope they could replace
Somoza. It continued after Somoza was deposed to bolster opposition to the San-
dinistas.^^ (See “The CIA’s Blueprint for Nicaragua,” appendix A.)
Even as Carter was taking action against Nicaragua for its alleged support of
“terrorism,” the U.S. government was providing safe haven for contra leaders and
tolerating the existence of contra training camps on U.S. soil. Under Reagan, offi¬
cial U.S. policy would evolve from apparent non-interference with exile efforts aimed
at overtlirowing the Nicaraguan government to organizing tliose efforts.
Looking back on the Carter administration, Miguel D’Escoto told me: “At first
they tried to buy us out...Every time we went somewhere, [the U.S. ambassador
and other officialsl would come, as they used to do before in Nicaragua, to give all
the points that the United States wanted to make in any international forum, in a
meeting of the United Nations or the Nonaligned countries, or the Organization of
American States, or what have you. They always had a position and they wanted to
impress on us the need to be carriers of American concerns.
“Always, of course, they would say, ‘Nicaragua is a sovereign country, but if
you don’t do this, it would be very difficult to obtain these things.’ It was a very
clear, crude invitation for political prostitution.
“And when that failed, they began to use threats.. .threats of economic and
political isolation. They wanted to get Nicaragua to cry uncle in the least expensive
way. And they were not obviously initially interested in military means to achieve
that goal. It’s impossible for us to say whether President Carter would have been
willing. I don’t know. But certainly.. .the military option only becomes a reality with
the advent of the Reagan administration.”^
After leaving office, Viron Vaky observed; “The premise of U.S. policy to date
has been that the die has not been cast in Nicaragua, and that if non-Marxist ele¬
ments in that society remain viable, there is a good chance that the internal process
can evolve toward a Mexican rather than a Cuban model...It is essential to supply
aid to keep the monetary/economic system viable and enmeshed in the internation¬
al economy, and to support the private sector.” A few Reagan policy thinkers “have
argued that the United States should not only stop providing aid to Nicaragua but
should destabilize the Sandinista government as well. No course could be better cal¬
culated to inflame the whole isthmus, raise tensions in the Hemisphere and create
the potential for a Spanish civil-war situation.
3
Reagan Strikes Back
Nicaragua has committed a grave sin, that of national dignity in the face
of the empire. And the empire does not permit that, as Rome did not per¬
mit it of Carthage and Israel. How could the United States allow this flea
to tickle? It must be punished.
Rafael Cordova Rivas, Democratic Conservative Party leader,
April 30, 1986 interview with author.
The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust government state¬
ments... They fit the facts to fit the policy. We made a great mistake in
Vietnam and are making another one in Central America.
J. William Fulbright, former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman,
New York Times, April 30, 1985.
Ronald Reagan twisted the facts on Nicaragua long before moving into the
White House. Somoza’s Nicaragua “has been getting a bad press,” candidate Reagan
told his radio audience on January 2, 1978. “It has never been known as a major
violator of human rights.”’
In a March 1979 radio broadcast, Reagan seconded Idaho Rep. Steve Symms’
concern that “the Caribbean is rapidly becoming a Communist lake in what should
be an Aunerican pond.” Reagan added: “The troubles in Nicaragua bear a Cuban
label also. While there are people in that troubled land who probably have justified
grievances against the Somoza regime, there is no question but that most of the
rebels are Cuban-trained, Cuban-armed, and dedicated to creating another Com¬
munist country in this hemisphere.”^
Behind the Cubans are the Soviets. As Reagan told the Wall Street Journal in
1980: “The Soviet Union underlies all the unrest that is going on. If they weren’t
57
engaged in this game of dominos, there wouldn’t be any hotspots in the world.”
Reagan wanted to recommit the United States to a policy of “rollback” of the “Soviet
empire.”
Santa Fe Tales
“Open the southern front!” Lewis Tambs was happy to carry out those Nation¬
al Security Council instructions when he became ambassador to Costa Rica in the
summer of 1985. They fit a policy blueprint he had helped create as editor of the
1980 Committee of Santa Fe report, A New Inter-American Policy for the Eighties.
Other committee members included Roger Fontaine, who served Reagan as NSC
adviser for Latin America affairs before becoming a columnist with the Moonie-
owned Washington Times; retired Lt. General Gordon Sumner, special adviser to
Reagan’s first assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs; David C. Jordan
of the U.S. Strategic Institute; and L. Francis “Lynn” Bouchey, president of the Coun¬
cil for Inter-American Security, a major vehicle for far right propaganda about the
“Soviet threat” in the Western hemisphere.
The Santa Fe report blasted the Carter administration for a policy of “anxious
accommodation.” It declared: “War, not peace, is the norm in international af¬
fairs... Survival demands a new U.S. foreign policy. America must seize the initiative
or perish. For World War III is almost over. The Soviet Union, operating under the
cover of increasing nuclear superiority, is strangling the Western industrialized na¬
tions by interdicting their oil and ore supplies and is encircling the People’s Republic
of China.” (Note that China, a communist country once supposedly poised to seize
Southeast Asian dominos beginning with Vietnam, has been transformed from “Red
threat” to Red target.) After the first two phases of “World War III,” containment and
detente, the Soviets lead on the Santa Fe scoreboard. Latin America and Southern
Asia are the “scenes of strife” in the third phase.
America is everywhere in retreat. The impending loss of the petroleum of the Mid¬
dle East and potential interdiction of the sea routes spanning the Indian Ocean, along
with the Soviet satellization of the mineral zone of Southern Africa, foreshadow the
Findlandization of Western Europe and the alienation of Japan.
Even the Caribbean, America’s maritime crossroad and petroleum refining center,
is becoming a Marxist-Leninist lake. Never before has the Republic been in such jeopar¬
dy from its exposed southern flank. Never before has American foreign policy abused,
abandoned and betrayed its allies to the south in Latin America.
...It is time to sound a clarion call for freedom, dignity and national self-interest
which will echo the spirit of the American people. Either a Pax Sovietica or a worldwide
counter-projection of American power is in the offing. The hour of decision can no longer
be postponed.^
In war, declared the Committee of Santa Fe, “there is no substitute for victory.”
The United States must “reaffirm the core principle of the Monroe Doctrine: name¬
ly, no hostile foreign power will be allowed bases or military and political allies in
Reagan Strikes Back 59
the region.” (Italics added.) Under the Monroe-Reagan Doctrine, the internal politics
of foreign countries are indeed subject to U.S. control. Cuba must be brought back
into the U.S. sphere. If punitive measures and propaganda fail (the report advocated
a Radio Free Cuba, later inaugurated as Radio Marti), “a war of national liberation
against Castro must be launched.”
Religion is a battleground in Santa Fe’s World War III: “U.S. foreign policy
must begin to counter (not react against) liberation theology.” Marxist-Leninist for¬
ces have infiltrated the religious community “with ideas that are less Christian than
Communist.” (Perhaps the best known idea of liberation theology is the “preferen¬
tial option for the poor.”)
The Santa Fe Committee called for the United States to abandon “human rights,
which is a culturally and politically relative concept that the [Carter! Administration
has used for intervention for political change in countries of this hemisphere, ad¬
versely affecting the peace, stability and security of the region.” It must be replaced
with “a non-interventionist policy of political and ethical realism.
Reality Check
Santa Fe “political and ethical realism” should not be confused with reality. In
reality, “Soviet world influence was at its height in the 1950s and there has been no
significant positive Soviet geopolitical momentum for many years.” That’s the sober
assessment of the Center for Defense Information, led by retired U.S. military of¬
ficers.^
Noting that with decolonization the number of independent nations rose from
about 70 in 1945 to l65 in 1987, the Center reports that “the percentage of Soviet-
influenced countries in the world was 10% in 1945 in the aftermath of World War
II, rose to nearly 15% in the late 1950s, declined to 9% in the mid-1960s, and final¬
ly rose back to over 12% in the mid-1970s. It has remained at 11%” since 1980. “Con¬
sidering that nearly all the new countries in the past 40 years have been former
colonies of Western powers, the degree of Soviet success in exercising significant
influence in these numerous anti-colonial countries is less than one might have ex¬
pected.”
A U.S. Army War College conference on the Soviet Union and the Third World
concluded “that Soviet influence in the Third World remains limited, in part by the
strong impulses toward autonomy and national self-determination of the Third
World countries themselves. Many of Moscow’s biggest ‘victories’ have resulted from
events over which it had little or no control.”^
A study by CIA analysts agreed: “Reduced Western influence in Third World
countries has not necessarily led to a corresponding rise in Soviet influence. New
governments often have translated anticolonialist positions into strong nationalist
policies jealous of any foreign influence. Despite the commitment of some [Third
World countries] to a ‘Socialist’ system, they usually have wanted their own brand
of socialism, and have not been attracted to Soviet Communist ideology, either by
economic or military aid.”^
According to the Center for Defense Information, the eighteen countries with
significant Soviet influence (i.e. “high levels of involvement and presence accom¬
panied by a close and cooperative relationship,” not necessarily approaching con¬
trol) are: Afghanistan, Angola, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia,
East Germany, Hungary, Laos, Libya, Mongolia, Mozambique, Poland, Romania,
Syria, Vietnam and South Yemen. Nicaragua is not on the list.
As one CIA analyst in the Office of Soviet Analysis put it, “In reviewing Soviet
policy toward Nicaragua since 1979, one is struck by the general caution with which
Moscow has proceeded.”®
“I don’t think the Soviets give a shit about what happens here,” a U.S. am¬
bassador in Central America told me in 1986. “Nicaragua is a little present that ar¬
rived on their doorstep, and they are slowly unwrapping it to see what’s inside.
They like the fact that it makes Ronald Reagan so mad.”^
Reality is not a zero-sum game. A U.S. “loss” need not mean a Soviet “gain”
and vice-versa. Similarly, a U.S. gain may not be a Soviet “loss,” because it wasn’t a
Soviet proxy to begin with. Chile and Grenada are good examples; they were “res¬
cued” from nothing but their own nationalism.
Stand By Your Dictator

Preceding the Santa Fe report was an article by Jeane Kirkpatrick, then a profes¬
sor of political science at Georgetown University and a member of the Cold Warriors’
council known as the Committee on the Present Danger. In “Dictatorships and
Double Standards,” Kirkpatrick elaborated her now-famous ideologically-biased
distinction between moderate autocracies (authoritarian) and revolutionary
autocracies (totalitarian). (In 1949, the chairman of the New York Council on Foreign
Relations differentiated “autocratic” from “totalitarian” rule in an attempt to justify
support for Somoza I.)^° Kirkpatrick’s formulation is rightwing doublespeak designed
to mask brutality in the name of “anti-communism.”
Kirkpatrick derided a Carter policy “whose crowning achievement has been
to lay the groundwork for a transfer of the Panama Canal from the United States to
a swaggering Latin dictator of Castroite bent.” She spun the myth that the Carterites
“not only failed to prevent” the fall of Somoza (and the Shah of Iran), but “actively
collaborated in the replacement of moderate autocrats friendly to American inter¬
ests with less friendly autocrats of extremist persuasion.””
Tom Farer, former president of the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights, was one of the few establishment commentators to critique Kirkpatrick
without paying homage to her budding intellectual mystique. Her thesis, he said,
“rests on an almost demented parody of Latin American political realities...On the
most elementary facts Kirkpatrick is misinformed.”^^
According to Kirkpatrick, “Generally speaking, traditional autocrats tolerate

social inequities, brutality, and poverty while revolutionary autocracies create them.
“Traditional autocrats leave in place existing allocations of wealth, power,
status, and other resources which in most traditional societies favor an affluent few
and maintain masses in poverty. But they worship traditional gods and observe tradi¬
tional taboos. They do not disturb the habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual
places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations. Because the
miseries of traditional life are familiar, they are bearable to ordinary people who,
growing up in the society, learn to cope, as children bom to untouchables in India
acquire the skills and attitudes necessary for survival in the miserable roles they are
destined to fill. Such societies create no refugees.
Kirkpatrick regularly twists facts to fit her racist and anti-democratic views.
The hundreds of thousands of political exiles from Somoza’s Nicaragua, the Shah’s
Iran, Marcos’ Philippines and other “moderate autocrats” are erased. Or they are cast
as “economic migrants,” like Salvadorans treated by the Reagan administration as
surplus seekers of fortune, not sanctuary.
In a rejoinder to Kirkpatrick, Mexican novelist and former diplomat Carlos
Puentes asked, “Can’t she hear the thousands of innocent dead in El Salvador answer¬
ing her that they are not ‘moderately dead’?” In the Reaganaut universe, communists
kill innocents; those killed by anti-communists are generally not the tmly innocent.
Remember Kirkpatrick’s characterization of the four murdered churchwomen: they
“were not just nuns...They were political activists on behalf of the Frente.”
In an August 1979 radio broadcast titled “Common Sense from a Neighbor,”
Reagan told his listeners this about Argentina, then under military dictatorship:
“Today, Argentina is at peace, the terrorist threat nearly eliminated.. .In the process
of bringing stability to a terrorized nation of 25 million, a small number were caught
in the crossfire, among them a few innocents.. .If you ask the average Argentine-in-
the-street what he thinks about the state of his country’s economy, chances are you’ll
find him pleased, not seething, about the way things are going.
At least 9,000 and as many as 30,000 Argentinians were “disappeared” in the
military dictatorship’s “dirty war.” A U.S. equivalent would be 79,000 to 264,000;
taking the lower figure, that’s more than one and a half times the number of American
deaths in the Vietnam War.
Reagan’s reflections on Argentina were no aberration. He gave this account
of events in Chile: “Allende was a Marxist and took Chile down the road to
socialism.. .Journalists who have made an honest effort to talk with the Chilean man-
in-the-street report that there would have been a people’s revolt if the military over¬
throw of the Allende regime had not taken place.” General Pinochet “promised to
restore democratic rule also and to allow elections. True, they haven’t taken place
as yet, but there is reason to believe that if and when they do the general might just
be the favorite candidate if he chooses to run.” Reagan doesn’t tell us why the
Chilean people gave Allende’s party even more support in the 1973 mid-term con¬
gressional elections, the last elections before Chilean democracy was crushed by
the military in a U.S.-backed coup.
By the time of Reagan’s comments in 1979, tens of thousands of Chileans had

been disappeared or driven into exile (where Kirkpatrick disappeared them with
the stroke of a pen). During the first five months of 1980, according to Amnesty In¬
ternational, 2,000 people were arrested on political charges and most of them were
tortured.^^
Self-Fulfilling Prophets
The Reagan-Bush team’s intent to demonize and destabilize the Nicaraguan

government was clear from the beginning. The July 1980 Republican platform stated:
“We deplore the Marxist Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua and the attempts to des¬
tabilize El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras...We oppose the Carter Administra¬
tion aid program for the government of Nicaragua. However, we will support the
efforts of the Nicaraguan people to establish a free and independent govern¬
ment. . .We will return to the fundamental principle of treating a friend as a friend
and self-proclaimed enemies as enemies, without apology.”
In the name of freedom, “friends” are granted absolution for breaking
democratic promises the “enemies” are accused of betraying.
Shortly after the Republican convention. Business International Corporation’s
Latin American Forecasting Study reported on Nicaragua as seen without red-colored
lenses: the Nicaraguan government “seems to be gravitating toward a relatively
moderate course.. .The private sector still has an audible voice, although clearly not
a dominant one. There are several functioning political parties in the country, but
none are expected to have the force or popularity of a Sandinist party with a good
grassroots organization. It is thought by most observers that the Sandinist Party
would likely win any election held.”
The report gave the Nicaraguan government “equal odds for moving right or
left”; that would depend on many factors, including the government’s ability “to
solve the country’s economic and social problems, some of which are potentially
explosive.” Among the potential pitfalls were: “labor unrest prodded by high un¬
employment,” inflation and “foreign exchange constraint, relief from which will
depend largely on the largesse of outside governments and institutions.”
The report predicted that reconstruction from the revolutionary war would
“necessarily run through 1983 at least, if not beyond.” The 1980 economic reactiva¬
tion plan was “having positive effects, but it is falling short of its goals...Assuming
that the political formula remains workable and the government can instill the private
sector with enough confidence to keep tilling the land and production lines active,
GDP [Gross Domestic Product] could make another major gain next year, followed
by more moderate rises in subsequent years.” Regarding agriculture, the report noted
that “the government is trying to stimulate this priority sector through production
bonuses given to private growers. If commodity prices hold up in the next few years
and the private growers reinvest, the outlook for this sector is for good to moderate
growth throughout the forecast period.” The outlook for industry was “only fair.
principally because the levels of destruction were greater and the investment neces¬
sary to reactivate industry is far more than required for agriculture.” The report also
noted that “future repayment of the burdensome $1.6 billion foreign debt [acquired
under Somoza] will cloud the foreign exchange outlook for years to come.”^^
Nicaragua wasn’t playing its Reagan-supporting role as a totalitarian threat.
Most observers thought the Sandinistas would win elections. The private sector was
being offered incentives to invest and Sandinista “mismanagement” wasn’t the cause
of the country’s economic problems.
The economy was Nicaragua’s Achilles heel and a number of pressure points
were evident from the Business International report; the economy would hurt for
many years due to wartime losses, high reconstruction costs, foreign debt and wor¬
sening terms of trade (declining prices for exports such as coffee and rising prices
for imports such as tractors). Economic crisis could be blamed on Sandinista mis¬
management and compounded by capital flight and a new war. The United States
could “make the economy scream”—as Nixon did with Chile—^by cutting off aid
and pressuring other countries and international agencies to do so.^^
In an October 1980 Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, Cleto DiGiovanni, a
high-level CIA clandestine operative until late 1978, advocated economic warfare as
part of a comprehensive strategy for destabilizing Nicaragua (following the CIA
blueprint predicted earlier by ex-agent Philip Agee and excerpted in appendix A):
“In a well orchestrated program targeted against the Marxist Sandinista government,
we should use our limited resources to support the free labor unions, the Church,
the private sector, the independent political parties, the free press, and those who
truly defend human rights [5/d...We should not abandon the Nicaraguan people,
but we must abandon the Sandinista government...Despite its show of arms, [the
Nicaraguanl government is still weak and could be dislodged through a determined,
coordinated, and targeted effort.”
DiGiovanni sketched one route of attack: “Nicaraguan workers continue to
have an emotional attachment to the revolutionary movement. This attachment can
be expected to weaken as the economy deteriorates...There are some indications
of growing broadly based support to take to arms to overthrow the Sandinista
government, and this support could increase as further economic problems
develop.”^®
Economic warfare would contribute to the Reagan administration’s self-fulfil¬
ling prophecy of Sandinista gloom and doom. As seen in the chart below, Nicaragua
actually did better economically than its neighbors until 1983, when the economy
began reeling under the strain of war, decapitalization and regional economic crisis.
No Business as Usual
The Nicaraguan government had responded to news of Reagan’s election by

reiterating, “we want friendly relations with the United States and any other country
that respects our sovereignty and independence.” Said Sandinista leader Bayardo
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S;
Arce, “We know the new Government’s announced platform would involve chan¬
ges in the policies of President Carter, but we must see what parts of its program it
carries out in practice.
The new secretary of state was General Alexander Haig. He rose rapidly
through military and political ranks to become Nixon’s chief of staff and supreme
commander of NATO before passing through the revolving door to the presidency
of United Technologies Corporation, a top military contractor. As secretary of state,
Haig wasted no time in putting changes in Nicaragua policy into practice.
As Haig told the story in his memoirs, “I encountered Rita Delia Casco, the
fiery young ambassador of the Sandinista regime, at a Washington soiree.. .The am¬
bassador expressed confidence that there would be no change in U.S.-Nicaraguan
relations as a result of the election. I stated bluntly that this confidence was
misplaced. While the Sandinistas betrayed their neighbors, there would be no busi¬
ness as usual. America was prepared not only to cut off all aid, but to do other things
as well.”^°
As Rita Delia Casco recalled it, she met Haig at an inaugural reception and it
was he who was fiery. “He told me right there in front of everybody, ‘You tell your
government to stop sending aid to the Salvadoran rebels or we’ll go to the source.’
I don’t remember the exact words now, but it was very threatening.”
During the Carter administration, she explained, Nicaraguan diplomats had
close contact and open channels of communication with officials in the State Depart¬
ment and the National Security Council. This “completely changed from the mo¬
ment the Reagan administration took over.. .There was a complete blackout.. .There
was no way of communicating.” Reagan officials expressed their “hostile at¬
titude... even in very simple details...as trying to embarrass me in a social oc¬
casion. . .We really got into their guts.. .It was a very irrational feeling.
“By small gestures and large we maintained our position,” said Haig. “On my
recommendation, President Reagan froze economic aid to Nicaragua two days after
taking office, and indefinitely suspended all aid to the Nicaraguan government.. .on
April 1.” The administration also suspended a $9.6 million sale of wheat in February
and cancelled it completely in March.
Some U.S. officials thought American citizens should be evacuated from
Nicaragua before the aid cutoff was announced. “Instead,” said Haig, “we had taken
certain precautions, including the formation of a military rescue force, to be sure
that there would be no repetition of the disgrace of Teheran.As planning for a
so-called rescue force went forward it quickly evolved into a full-scale invasion
force. In the words of a former Joint Chiefs of Staff operations officer, “the White
House was looking for a way to justify an invasion force that could topple the
regime.
The Nicaraguans, of course, took no hostages, and to this day the only
American citizens in Nicaragua to be harmed have been those kidnapped or killed
by the contras, or those flying and fighting on the contra side.
Government junta member Arturo Cruz had argued against the cutoff: “A sup¬
pression of U.S. aid would be very negative and counterproductive.. .The economic
crisis would be translated into a real radicalization and Nicaragua would have to
look to other blocs for funds.”
In its request for foreign assistance for fiscal year 1982, the Reagan administra¬
tion had included $35 million for Nicaragua, pending the outcome of events. John
Bushnell, acting assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs, told Congress
that stringent conditions on aid would be maintained, but “failure to budget for the
outcome we desire in Nicaragua would-be defeatism of the first order.
The April aid cutoff exempted a fiscal year 1981 grant of $7.5 million (succes¬
sor to the fiscal 1980 $5 million grant) for an Agency for International Development
(AID) program of support for private sector organizations. Distributed through the
U.S. Embassy in Managua, grant recipients included COSEP and its member or¬
ganizations; the Social Action Committee of the Moravian Church on the Atlantic
Coast; the Archdiocese of Managua and the American Institute for Free Labor
Development (AIFLD), an organization with longstanding ties to the CIA. A grant
of $5.1 million was appropriated for 1982.
In August 1982, the Nicaraguan government rejected the continuing private
sector aid, arguing in a letter to AID “that the agreements have political motivations
designed to promote resistance and destabilize the revolutionary government.”
Nicaragua indicated its willingness to discuss other types of economic assistance.
Most of the grants actually ended up being expended, a portion after Nicaragua
moved to block the funding.^^
Some COSEP leaders were indeed involved in armed plots against the govern¬
ment, as discussed in the previous chapter. A clergyman arrested in late 1980 for
aiding Miskito and Somocista insurgents testified to receiving money for arms and
supplies from the Moravian Social Action Committee. In late 1981, an AIFLD repre¬
sentative in Nicaragua was identified as a “conscious CIA agent” by Richard Mar¬
tinez, who had himself organized workers in preparation for the 1964 coup in Brazil.
He found the activities of AIFLD and the unions it sponsored in Nicaragua to be
similar to those in Brazil.^ On February^ 25, 1982, Diario Las Americas, a conserva¬
tive daily in Miami, reported that the AIFLD-supported Council of Trade Union
Unification (CUS) had formed an exile branch. The exile leader, CUS Assistant
Secretary General Frank Jimenez, pledged the loyalty of CUS to the contra organiza¬
tion UDN and its military arm, the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARN).^^
Ambassador Pezzullo was surprised by the administration decision to cut off
aid to Nicaragua. He had told Daniel Ortega and Sergio Ramirez in mid February
1981 that Nicaragua had a month to halt any arms traffic to El Salvador or face ter¬
mination of aid. He was assured that Nicaraguan territory would not be used for
transshipping arms to El Salvador. U.S. intelligence found that arms traffic had
stopped.^ When the administration announced the aid cutoff in April, State Depart¬
ment spokesperson William Dyess acknowledged that the United States had “no
hard evidence of arms movements through Nicaragua during the past few weeks”
and said that Nicaragua’s response to U.S. demands for a halt in assistance to the
FMLN had been “positive.
When Nicaragua moved vigorously to halt arms shipments across its territory,
the Reagan administration parried by escalating its demands—insisting, for example.
that Nicaragua cut political ties with the FMLN—and taking more aggressive action.
It was a pattern that would be repeated in coming years as the administration trans¬
lated “no business as usual” into undeclared war.
white Paper
“International terrorism will take the place of human rights in our concern,”
declared Haig on January 28, 1981. The administration moved quickly to define “in¬
ternational terrorism” as Soviet-sponsored subversion. Fed by administration leaks,
the New York Times ran a front-page February 6 story reporting a Soviet-El Salvador
arms pipeline supposedly exposed in secret documents captured from Salvadoran
rebels. On February 20, the New York Times informed us again on the front page
that the State Department provided U.S. allies with a memorandum asserting that
“the insurgency in El Salvador has been progressively transformed into a textbook
case of indirect armed aggression by Communist powers.”^ Nicaragua was central
to the plot.
UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick turned up the rhetorical volume, declaring:
“Our position in the Western Hemisphere has deteriorated to the point where we
must now defend ourselves against a ring of Soviet bases being established on and
around our borders.” White House Counselor Ed Meese declared that the United
States “will take the necessary steps to keep the peace any place in the world, and
that includes El Salvador.” He wouldn’t specify what those steps might be: “The
President has said many times he would like potential or real adversaries to go to
bed every night wondering what we will do the next day. I don’t think we would
rule out anything.
The State Department released the White Paper, Communist Interference in El
Salvador, on February 23. “The White Paper was swallowed whole and regurgitated
in a fashion not equalled since the Johnson Administration’s White Paper on Viet¬
nam 15 years ago,” said Hodding Carter, press secretary to Jimmy Carter.^^ In the
case of Vietnam, the Big Lie of the United States defending South Vietnam against
North Vietnamese (Chinese) aggression endured even as the Pentagon Papers
exposed and the country turned against the war. So would the Big Lie of the United
States defending Central Ajnerican countries against Nicaraguan aggression.
The day the Reagan White Paper was released. Assistant Secretary Bushnell
told reporters, “There is some evidence that the [arms] flow [through Nicaragua] may
have stopped in the last couple of weeks.A week later, the administration sent
twenty more military “advisers” to El Salvador and announced plans to supply $25
million more in military aid.
The White Paper was gradually exposed in the media as a textbook case of
U.S. government disinformation. Nevertheless, the administration achieved its
central objective: it set the agenda, placing El Salvador and Nicaragua in a Cold War
context, ensuring that mainstream debate would be restricted to the means to be
used in achieving the shared goal of stopping “communist aggression.”
Reagan media strategists, explained Jack Nelson of the Los Angeles Times, “real¬
ize that the first impressions are lasting impressions, that’s part of their public rela¬
tions genius.” He cited Grenada as the perfect example: “There are still people who
think that place was crawling with armed Cubans. It doesn’t matter how often you
go back and say that the fact is there were only 500 or 600 Cubans, that you got the
truth out of Havana and lies out of Washington, people just say, ‘Aw, that’s just the
press.
The official spin-controllers know they have the advantage. As George Bush’s
press secretary, Peter Teeley, told reporters following the 1984 vice-presidential
debate: “You can say anything you want in a debate, and 80 million people hear it.
If reporters then document that a candidate spoke untruthfully, so what? Maybe 200
people read it, or 2,000 or 20,000.”^^
The mainstream media compounds the problem by repeating official lines,
long after they are proven false, and by rehabilitating, even glorifying, official liars.*
It’s bad enough that standard operating procedure is to act as a megaphone for the
official line—thereby protecting continued access to official leaks—under the guise
of objective news reporting, generally following up, if at all, with delayed and buried
rebuttals. Big Media further condones deceit by granting lifelong tenure as respected
commentators to such notorious liars as Henry Kissinger. His accountability-resis¬
tant Teflon coating is even stronger than Ronald Reagan’s, withstanding everything
from wiretapping the phones of prominent journalists to destroying Chilean
democracy to the secret bombing of Cambodia.^
As a United Fruit Company public relations specialist said of their success in
using the press to create a favorable climate of opinion for the CIA-orchestrated
Guatemalan coup of 1954: “It is difficult to make a convincing case for manipula¬
tion of the press when the victims proved so eager for the experience.
The White Paper was exposed as a “political frameup” about a month after
publication: James Petras wrote in The Nation, “its evidence is flimsy, circumstan¬
tial or nonexistent; the reasoning and logic is slipshod and internally inconsistent;
it assumes what needs to be proven; and, finally, what facts are presented refute
the very case the State Department is attempting to demonstrate.”^
The Wall Street Journal weighed in on June 8—after dissection elsewhere of
the actual documents behind the White Paper by reporter John Dinges—^with this
double-edged front-page headline: “Apparent Errors Cloud U.S. ‘White Paper’ on
Reds in El Salvador.” Jonathan Kwitny reported that Jon D. Glassman, a principal
engineer of the White Paper, acknowledged there were “mistakes” and “guessing”
and parts were possibly “misleading” and “over-embellished.”^^
Two days later, the New York Times backtracked with a page six story titled
“U.S. Officials Concede Flaws in Salvador White Paper but Defend Its Conclusion.”
The article replayed an earlier piece of disinformation which was resurrected in the
* Bob Woodward’s Veil, for example, is laced with recycled disinformation regarding
Nicaragua, El Salvador and Grenada, credentialed by Woodward’s reputation as an investiga¬
tive journalist. Woodward’s portrayal of the late CIA Director William Casey is more like a
covertly authorized biography than an expose.
White Paper: “The result was an ambitious report in which the strongest case for an
international Communist conspiracy to ‘take over’ a Central American country was
presented on the basis of limited evidence.. .Even Robert F. White, the former United
States Ambassador to El Salvador, who was removed by Mr. Haig and who has
criticized increased military assistance to the Salvadorans has not questioned the
basic conclusion. While still Ambassador, Mr. White said during the January guer¬
rilla offensive that at least 100 insurgents had entered El Salvador by sea from
Nicaragua to join the uprising. ‘We can’t stand idly by and watch the guerrilla move¬
ment receive outside aid,’ said Mr. White, who recommended that limited military
aid be restored to the Salvadoran armed forces.
The Times used White’s past comments to revalidate an already disproven
charge (the Fonseca Gulf incident) while implicitly discrediting his current opposi¬
tion to military aid for El Salvador. The article concluded by taking at face value
other “evidence” of arms deliveries “following procedures and routes described in
the documents.”
Kwitny summed up the case in his book, Endless Enemies: the White Paper
“says that a unified, Soviet-run international communist network took over the El
Salvador rebellion to such an extent that the uprising constitutes a foreign, armed
aggression rather than a legitimate civil war. In fact, so far as we can rely on the
documents at all, they show the opposite: a disorganized, ragtag rebellion. Some of
its participants have gone around begging for help from the most likely sources,
and have been consistently stalled off and sent home empty-handed, or with much
less than they asked for. Not only do the documents not prove the thesis, the thesis
simply isn’t true.”"*^
Regarding the authenticity of the documents themselves, former CIA officer
Philip Agee concluded that the “most sensational of [the White Paper] documents
show indications of having been falsified...The CIA could have fabricated all 19 of
these documents, perhaps working with Salvadoran security officials, and then ar¬
ranged for them to be inserted among documents that actually had been captured.
Such an operation would not be the first time.”'*^
As Raymond Bonner noted, “Administration officials, including Glassman, have
offered conflicting versions of how they came into possession of the documents:
whether they were supplied by the Salvadorans or whether Glassman himself found
them.” Some of the documents were reportedly provided by Roberto D’Aubuisson,
who had them in his possession in Guatemala.'*^
In late 1980, a Reagan adviser, retired General Daniel O. Graham, former head
of the Defense Intelligence Agency, met with D’Aubuisson in Miami. “During the
conversation, a number of Salvadorans present remembered Graham asking
D’Aubuisson if he could find proof that the Salvadoran guerrillas were being manipu¬
lated by outside forces, because the incoming Reagan Administration believed proof
of such manipulation was what was needed to ‘influence American public
opinion...to increase military and economic support for El Salvador.’”^^
Writing about the White Paper in his memoirs, Haig called it “a sober, even a
pedestrian treatment of the available information.” He insisted it ran up against “the
will to disbelieve—to reject, as a matter of automatic faith, anything that what is
now called the establishment said and to suspect everything that it did as a trick to
delude or defraud the common people.
Haig’s analysis of U.S. society was no more accurate than his analysis of Central
America. The mainstream media is possessed of a strong will to believe the “truth”
as defined by the establishment of which it is a part. Accusing the press of being
leftish, or even leftist, is one more form of pressure to ensure that press “objectivity”
means reporting the news to fit the government’s agenda; the relatively few excep¬
tions to the rule are used to deny the rule. To the Reaganites, anything less than air¬
tight privilege is reverse discrimination.
Haig discussed the media quite differently earlier in his book: “the White House
wizards understood the great intangible power that the government holds over the
press...Information is power; manifestly the press cannot live without information.
It has no information of its own; it follows, then, that it must rely on others to
manufacture the stuff.
“The government is the great smithy of information. Appreciating this, Reagan’s
men exercised their intangible power. They opened the doors to the workshop and
escorted reporters inside in a way hitherto unknown in Washington. They literally
told them everything. For the first time in living memory, you could actually believe
almost everything you read...[The press] had never had sources like this. And, of
course, it could not risk losing these sources by offending them, so it wrote what it
was given. And the public, of course, is expected to believe the “truth” it gets from
the media as manufactured by the government.
Nicaragua responded to arms trafficking accusations by calling for joint bor¬
der patrols with Honduras—the only land bridge between Nicaragua and El Sal¬
vador, which do not share a common border. The media ignored this and the Reagan
administration made sure it never happened. Border patrols would undermine
Washington’s propaganda as well as Honduras’ role aS the contras’ staging area.
The “export of revolution” charge would be rejuvenated again and again in
the campaign to paint Nicaragua as the aggressor, the United States as the righteous
defender.
“Revolution Beyond Our Borders” Revisited

On July 19, 1981, the second anniversary of the Nicaraguan revolution, Tomas
Borge declared: “We are proud to be Nicaraguans. This revolution transcends na¬
tional boundaries.” To stop there in quoting Borge, as the administration does, is to
consciously distort Borge’s meaning, for here is what immediately followed:
Our revolution has always been internationalist, ever since Sandino fought in the
Segovias. There were internationalists from all over the world who fought alongside San¬
dino, men from Venezuela, Mexico, Pern. Another who fought alongside Sandino was
the great hero of the Salvadoran people named Farabundo Marti.
It is not strange that we are internationalists, because this is something we got from
Sandino. All the revolutionaries and all the peoples of Latin America especially know that
our people’s heart is with them, beats alongside theirs. Our heart goes out to Latin America,
and we also know that Latin America’s heart goes out to the Nicaraguan revolution. This
does not mean that we export our revolution. It is enough—and we couldn’t do otherwise—
for us to export our example, the example of the courage, sensitivity, and determination of
our people.
How could we not be upset about the injustices that are committed in different
parts of the world? But we know that it is the people themselves of these countries who
must make their revolutions, and we know that by advancing our revolution we are also
helping our brothers and sisters in the rest of Latin America. We know what is resting on
our revolution—not only the aspirations of our people, but also the hopes of all the dis¬
possessed of Latin America. This carries with it enormous responsibility, because as we
have said before and repeat today, our internationalism is primarily expressed in con¬
solidating our own revolution, working selflessly day in and day out and training oursel¬
ves militarily to defend our homeland.^^ (Italics added.)
This was not a call to arms for El Salvador, but a call to Nicaraguans to defend
revolution with internationalist spirit and nationalist deeds.
In Washington’s Ministry of Truth, Borge’s words would be turned on their
head. Borge, it was claimed, said Nicaragua’s revolution “goes beyond our borders.”
The phrase would be repeated in various forms by U.S. officials and enshrined in
a September 1985 State Department report on Nicaragua, Revolution Beyond Our
Borders, months after a State Department official acknowledged, regarding this and
other phrases attributed to Sandinista leaders, “that people have been quoting some
of these things from 1981 on, and some of them have become distorted.”'*®
No slander is too much. Secretary of State George Shultz, Haig’s successor,
told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that in calling for a “revolution without
frontiers,” the Sandinistas had revealed their true intentions just as Hitler had spelled
out his goals in Mein Kampp'^
Finding I
Three weeks before the administration publicly cut off economic aid to
Nicaragua, it secretly authorized the covert war. A March 9, 1981 presidential find¬
ing determined that secret operations in Central America were important to U.S. na¬
tional security. It authorized a $19-5 million program of expanded CIA activity in
the region, including assistance to Sandinista opponents inside Nicaragua and ef¬
forts to interdict arms headed to Salvadoran guerrillas.
Arms interdiction was the first pretext for supporting the contras. When CIA
Director William Casey presented the finding to the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees he emphasized protection of the Salvadoran govermnent from “com¬
munist-supported insurgency.”^
Haig accused the Soviet Union of having “a hit list” for the domination of
Central America. On March 18, he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that
the insurgency in El Salvador was part of a four-phased operation, beginning with
“the seizure of Nicaragua.” Next comes El Salvador, to be followed by Honduras
and Guatemala. Asked whether this was “a Caribbean domino theory,” Haig replied,
“I wouldn’t call it necessarily a domino theory. I would call it a priority target list—
a hit list, if you will—for the ultimate takeover of Central America.”
Central America was only one of many supposed target areas: “Soviet adven¬
turism in the Horn of Africa, in South Asia, in the Persian Gulf, and in South-West
Africa appears to conform to a basic and ominous objective: to strike at countries
on or near the vital resource lines of the Western world. Since virtually all countries
are “on or near” vital resource lines (by Washington’s elastic definition), this provided
a blanket warrant for global U.S. police actions.
Haig—^who served as secretary of state until resigning on June 25,1982—didn’t
mention the March 1981 finding in his memoirs, or any aspect of the covert war
against Nicaragua, aside from a vague reference to “certain covert measures” in dis¬
cussing options for El Salvador.^^ Haig described the early policy debate, not its out¬
come. He wanted more than the covert war he got. Haig saw Central America as a
strategic choke point (one of many) and favored “a high level of intensity at the
beginning, with all the risk that this entails.”
In Haig’s view, there actually wasn’t much risk since “Castro had fallen be¬
tween two superpowers.” In a remarkable passage contradicting his whole hit list
thesis (Haig didn’t seem to notice), Haig revealed that conversations with Soviet
Ambassador Dobrynin “convinced me that Cuban activities in the Western Hemi¬
sphere were a matter between the United States and Cuba.”
Haig said he never contemplated direct military action against Cuba, “but it
was obvious that Cuba, an island nation of 11 million people lying 100 miles off the
coast of a United States with a population of 230 million, simply could not stand up
to the geostrategic assets available to the larger country.” As Haig told it, “a carrier
group, or two, maneuvering between Cuba and the Central American mainland
would have been a useful reminder of the.. .ability to blockade Cuba if that became
necessary.”
In fact, Haig repeatedly advocated a naval blockade of Cuba and Nicaragua,
and suggested more direct military action, including invasion. Never mind that, in
Haig’s view, “The flow of arms into Nicaragua and thence into El Salvador slack¬
ened, a signal from Havana and Moscow that they had received and understood the
American message.”^" That assessment didn’t get in the way of the hit list rhetoric
or arms-interdiction charade.
Reagan’s advisers were divided into two camps: Haig’s high-intensity/go-to-
the-source minority vs. the incrementalist majority. Reagan’s White House troika of
Ed Meese, Michael Deaver and James Baker did not want to squander political capi¬
tal needed for Reagan’s domestic program (especially the Reaganomics tax cut) by
rapidly escalating the war in Central America. Secretary of Defense Caspar Wein¬
berger sided with those in the Pentagon who didn’t want to spread their ostensib¬
ly inadequate forces even thinner, nor undermine public support for Reagan’s
military buildup by fueling fears of a new Vietnam War. “You want an effective
presence there,” said a senior officer, “not just a silhouette on the horizon.”^^ The
Pentagon brass wanted to be prepared to win the next war—politically and militari¬
ly. In Haig’s account, the March 9 finding doesn’t exist and the debate continued
through March: “On March 23,1 told Ed Meese that whatever we were going to do
in Central America, we must get it started in ten days.”^"*
While Reagan was sympathetic, there was little support in the administration
for Haig’s proposal to “go to the source” against Cuba. There was broad agreement,
however, on destabilizing Nicaragua and increasing militaiy support for El Salvador,
Honduras and Guatemala. Assistant Secretaiy of State for Inter-American Affairs
Thomas Enders pressed for development of the contras as a central tool of U.S.
policy. Haig was opposed initially, thinking “the contras were a sideshow that could
detract attention from the main event, which was Cuba, and that they could never
win.”^^
Enders didn’t think the contras could win either, but they could help destabil¬
ize Nicaragua and serve as a bargaining chip for concessions in any negotiations.
Enders, a “soft-liner” by Reaganite standards, spoke of the need to “get rid of the
Sandinistas” in administration meetings.’^
The debate was between two types of rollback; slower and faster. Soon,
everyone had a stake in the contras.
A U.S. diplomat in Honduras described the contras as a no-lose instrument of
pressure: “Some people around here and in Washington really thought—and still
do, I guess—^that they could incite an insurrection and overthrow the Sandinistas. I
always tliought that was a lot of crap. But in any event, the theory was tliat we
couldn’t lose. If they took Managua, wonderful. If not, the idea was that the San¬
dinistas would react one of two ways. Either they’d liberalize and stop exporting
revolution, which is fine and dandy, or they’d tighten up, alienate their own people,
their international support and their backers in the United States, in the long run
making themselves much more vulnerable. In a way, that one was even better—or
so the idea went.”^^
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4
The Avengers
You know there’s no revolution without counterrevolution...The

American revolution also had its counterrevolution—[its] Torries...They
try to tell people that because there are some who are against the revolu¬
tion that the revolution is no good [but] the previous order had to depend
on some base...There must be some remnants of this support.
Miguel D’Escoto, May 9, 1986 interview with author.
Come the counterrevolution, there will be a massacre in Nicaragua. We

have a lot of scores to settle. There will be bodies from the border to
Managua.
Contra officer, Newsweek, November 8, 1982.
We got contras because the CIA put together Somocistas, Argentinians and
the CIA...You cannot expect too much democracy from that.
Edgar Chamorro, former contra spokesman,
November 24, 1986 interview with author.
Nicaragua formed a popular militia to defend the revolution against attacks by

ex-National Guardsmen and threats from the United States. “The cost of defense is
high,” said government junta member Moises Hassan. “But we won’t be caught off
guard.” Speaking of the importance of the popular militias, he said, “We have no
fear of an armed people.”^
In March 1981, the U.S. media published their first accounts of contra training
in the United States. Parade photographer Eddie Adams visited one camp, located
about twenty minutes by car from Miami’s international airport. Clad in bathe
fatigues, the recruits trained with automatic weapons and said they were “armed to
75
the teeth with an arsenal of weapons that even includes amphibious assault boats.”
Florida hosted at least ten paramilitary organizations composed of Cuban and
Nicaraguan exiles, including the Cuban terrorist group, Alpha 66. Some advertised
for recruits over Spanish-language Miami radio stations and spoke freely about their
goal of “liberating” Nicaragua and Cuba.
Parade interviewed a contra known as Max Vargas: “They confiscated my
family’s trucking company...! was successful. I made money, a million dollars a
month...I want Nicaragua to be the way I remember it. We’re training people not
only here in Florida, but in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica. We
have training camps in California too.” (“Max Vargas” is reportedly an alias for Cuban
exile Felipe Vidal, a key operative for the contra southern front discussed later.)^
Asked about U.S. assistance, a State Department spokesperson commented,
“The new Administration is not going to turn back the clock 21 years in Cuba or 17
months in Nicaragua and support any exile groups. It’s illegal. It’s a breach of in¬
ternational law. It’s also stupid.”^ The spokesperson was right about it being illegal
and stupid.
The New York Times followed Parade, visiting the “Cuba” camp, located “in
the brush and swamplands of Miami, just beyond new housing developments and
a trash dump.” Camp commander Jorge Gonzales, known as “Bombillo” (Light Bulb),
said most members of the paramilitary group, including their top officer, a Vietnam
veteran, were in Central America on a mission. All the Nicaraguans at “Cuba” were
ex-National Guard.
“The hour of our return is approaching,” declared a Nicaraguan with Guardia
insignia on his beret, “but we can’t say when.” He said some 600 Nicaraguans were
training in the United States. Bombillo remarked, “The principal aid we’ve received
has been the declarations of the President. It’s not weapons we need, but freedom
of action.”'* They got both.
“Max Vargas,” later identified by the Justice Department as a CIA operative,
bought two rifles at the Costa Gun Shop in Miami on August 6 and sent them to
UDN-FARN leader Fernando “El Negro” Chamorro in Honduras. Chamorro’s agent
in Miami, Raul Arana, later revealed that in 1981 he sent several large shipments of
arms from Miami to Honduras.^
Former CIA officer Thomas Clines followed up his support of Somoza by as¬
sisting the guardsmen in exile. He reportedly worked with two Cuban exile CIA
veterans who would later play critical roles in the contra supply operation managed
by Richard Secord: Rafael Quintero and Felix Rodriguez.^
Contra camp trainees traveled to Central America to fight with such groups as
the UDN-FARN and the National Liberation Army (ELN), composed of ex-guardsmen
and led by former Somoza business partner Pedro Ortega (“Juan Carlos”). In mid
August, the FBI insisted that “no laws are being violated as long as the commandos
train on private property with registered weapons and refrain from using the United
States as a jumping off point for an invasion.”^
Nicaragua lodged official protests, seeking to have the U.S. government en¬
force the Neutrality Act. First enacted by Congress in 1794, the Neutrality Act makes
it a crime to organize, finance, participate in or launch a paramilitary expedition
The Avengers 77
against a country with which the United States is not (formally) at war. The U.S.
government chose instead to condone violations of the law. Later in 1981, U.S. of¬
ficials would reinterpret the law to better justify the training camps.
September 15th Legion

In the fall of 1980, a group of former guardsmen trained at a Guatemalan farm
called Detachment 101. These “soldiers” of the September 15th Legion “were be¬
coming just another bunch of hired guns in Guatemala’s bloody underworld of
politics and crime.”® They were called on for “special operations”: robbery, extor¬
tion, kidnapping and assassination. The orders came through Ricardo Lau, the killer
Roberto D’Aubuisson reportedly contracted to arrange the assassination of Sal¬
vadoran Archbishop Romero.
Major Ricardo “El Chino” Lau served with the Security Police and later as
Somoza’s chief of intelligence operations. A top CIA officer called him a Somoza
“hatchet man.” He was “a torturer,” said a guardsman who had worked with him.
“He operated where they put on the hood and the 220 current.” Lau plied his tor¬
ture trade during the insurrection as head of the infamous Model Jail in Managua.
He reportedly ran “a checkpoint near the airport where young men were stopped
and their knees checked for scrapes and bruises. Those who had them were as¬
sumed to have been behind the barricades and were shot.”^
Lau was right-hand man to contra commander Enrique Bermudez, who ar¬
rived in Guatemala in mid 1980. Colonel Bermudez, Somoza’s last military attache
in Washington, organized the Legion with funds from Somoza’s cousin Luis Pallais.’°
Under Somoza, Bermudez served as Nicaragua’s representative to the Inter-American
Defense Board and commanded the National Guard contingent sent to help the
United States occupy the Dominican Republic in 1965. Among his contacts in the
United States was retired Lt. General Gordon Sumner, coauthor of the Santa Fe
report, chairman of the Council for Inter-American Security and former chairman of
the Inter-American Defense Board.
The Legion’s chief patron in Guatemala was Mario Sandoval, godfather of the
Latin American death squads. His National Liberation Movement was created in 1954
by the CIA in preparation for the overthrow of the democratically elected govern¬
ment of Jacobo Arbenz.^' Since 1972, Sandoval has headed the Guatemalan chap¬
ter of the World Anti-Communist League. Andres Nazario Sargen, secretary general
of Alpha 66, is a longstanding League member. So was Anastasio Somoza.
World Anti-Communist League

While researching their book on the World Anti-Communist League (WACL),
journalists Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson received a letter from a former
League member: “In considering the World Anti-Communist League you have
entered a world of ideological fanaticism, racialism, ignorance and fear which is al¬
most beyond the comprehension of the average American...Your subject matter is
a collection of oriental fascists, militarists, rightwing terrorists who put bombs in
civilian aircraft, death squads, assassins, criminals and many people who are as
much opposed to democracy as they are communism.
With chapters now in over 90 countries on six continents, WACL was founded
in 1966 by two dictatorships. South Korea and Taiwan, and the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc
of Nations (ABN), which united East European fascists who were valued for their
anti-communism and resettled in the West with the aid of the Vatican and U.S. and
British intelligence. Formed with U.S. government funds, the ABN is described as
“the largest and most important umbrella for Nazi collaborators in the world.
The late Yaroslav Stetsko, chairman of the ABN and a longtime WACL leader,
met with President Reagan in the White House in 1983. The Ukranian Stetsko as¬
sisted in the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and led the occupation of Lvov.
“During the period in which Stetsko was in Lvov and, by his own claim, in charge
of the city, an estimated seven thousand residents, mostly Jews, were murdered.
Latter-day fascist Roberto D’Aubuisson, a League member, once told German
reporters that he admired Hitler because, “you Europeans had the right idea. You
saw the Jews were behind communism and you started to kill them.”’^
The World Anti-Communist League is an outgrowth of the Asian Peoples Anti-
Communist League, formed in 1954, also with U.S. government support, by the
South Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) and Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomin-
tang (KMT). In 1947, before losing to Mao on the Chinese mainland, Chiang’s for¬
ces crushed an independence movement on occupied Formosa (Taiwan) with a
massacre of some 20,000 people.
Taiwan became a laboratory for “total and unconventional warfare.” It estab¬
lished a Political Warfare Cadres Academy—D’Aubuisson is a graduate—^with the
assistance of WACL associate Ray Cline, who was CIA station chief in Taiwan from
1958 to 1962, then CIA deputy director for intelligence. State Department director
of intelligence and founder of the U.S. Global Strategy Council. U.S. military per¬
sonnel taught at the academy, drawn largely from the U.S. Military Group stationed
in Taiwan.'^
In Latin America, WACL’s affiliates formed the Latin American Anti-Communist
Confederation (CAL). In 1974, CAL introduced a resolution at WACL’s annual con¬
ference seeking the overthrow of the U.S. government, which was considered soft
on communism, and installation of a military junta. CAL was organized by the
Mexican Tecos, whose leaders were the principal authors of the 1962 Comp/o/Co/?-
(Conspiracy Against the Church). A response to the liberalism of Vatican
Council II, the Complot h2.s been called “one of the most scathingly anti-semitic and
unabashedly pro-Nazi tracts ever written.”’^
Liberation theology has been a prime CAL target. In 1975, Bolivia formulated
the Banzer Plan (named after then dictator Hugo Banzer) which, as journalist Penny
Lernoux explains, aimed “to smear, arrest, expel, or murder any dissident priest or
bishop in the Bolivian Church.” The CIA assisted Bolivia by providing personal data,
names of friends, addresses, writings, contacts abroad and other intelligence on cer-
The Avengers 79
tain priests. Between 1975 and 1978, twelve foreign missionaries were arrested in
Bolivia and half of them deported. Iowan missionary Father Raymond Herman was
murdered in his parish rectory in October 1976. In El Salvador death squads killed
Fathers Rutilio Grande and Alfonso Navarro in 1977. The “White Warriors’ Union”
took responsibility for Navarro’s murder and issued the slogan: “Be a patriot! Kill a
priest!”^®
The attack on liberation theology was regionalized when ten countries back¬
ed the Banzer Plan at the 1977 CAL conference in Paraguay. WACL adopted a “priest
tracking” resolution in 1978. Between 1964 (the year of the military coup in Brazil)
and 1978, at least 79 priests, bishops, religious (members of religious orders) and
well known Christian lay leaders were killed in Latin America, many of them be¬
tween 1975 and 1977. Argentina, El Salvador and Honduras led the murders in that
period. The killing has continued.'"^
The chairman of WACL and head of the U.S. chapter during the late 1970s was
Roger Pearson, a well-connected white supremacist, eugenicist and neo-Nazi, who
reportedly “once bragged to an associate about his alleged role in hiding Nazi doc¬
tor Josef Mengele.”^*^ As editor of the Liberty Lobby magazine. Western Destiny, Pear¬
son wrote in 1965: “Our Race can only survive if we can prevent them [Jews and
blacks] from capturing the minds, morals and souls of our children.” By the mid
1970s, he was serving on the editorial boards of the Heritage Foundation and the
American Security Council.
Under Pearson’s guidance WACL added Western European chapters composed
of Nazi collaborators, neo-Nazis and rightwing terrorists—^from the racist British
League of Rights to Giorgio Almirante’s Italian Social Movement, whose members
included Pino Rauti, founder of the outlawed Ordine Nuovo. Rauti’s former deputy,
Elio Massagrande, attended WACL’s 1979 conference in Paraguay while “high on
Interpol’s list of wanted fugitives. As tensions rose with the non-fascist European
chapters, Pearson was asked to resign in 1980. The American chapter was then
headed briefly by Elmore D. Greaves, organizer of Mississippi’s segregationist
Citizens Council during the 1960s.
In April 1982, Pearson received a letter from President Reagan, wliich he used
to solicit donations and subscriptions to his magazines. “Your substantial contribu¬
tions to promoting and upholding those ideals and principles that we value at home
and abroad are greatiy appreciated,” Reagan wrote. The letter was not repudiated
even after White House officials were informed of Pearson’s background.
Moonstruck
WACL provided a strong base for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unifica¬
tion Church, which is closely tied to the KCIA. Known for its totalitarian indoctrina¬
tion of young people (in 1982, Moon arranged 2,000 couples at random for marriage
in a mass ceremony at Madison Square Garden), in the 1940s Moon’s first church
practiced the ritual of “blood separation”: female church members “were required
to have sexual relations with Moon, to clear themselves of ‘the taint of Satan.’
The Unification Church supposedly left WACL in 1975 when Moon denounced
it as fascist after a fmstrated takeover attempt. But Moon continued to be repre¬
sented by the powerful Japanese Unification Church through its front group, Shokyo
(Victory Over Communism), founded by such men as the late Yoshio Kodama,
leader of the Japanese organized crime syndicate, the Yakuza, and Ryoichi
Sasakawa, who has described himself as the “world’s wealthiest fascist.”^'*
WACL members work with the Unification Church in support of the contras
tlirough Moonie affiliates like CAUSA and the Moon-owned Washington Times, es¬
tablished in 1982. CAUSA (Confederation of Associations for the Unity [originally
Unification] of the Societies of America) was founded in 1980 by Colonel Bo Hi Pak,
the former KCIA operative who is Moon’s top deputy, and Kim Sang In, former KCIA
station chief in Mexico City. CAUSA’s first executive director was Warren Richardson,
formerly general counsel to the Liberty Lobby.
Moonie connections with the U.S. right and the Reagan administration are ex¬
tensive. For example, retired Major General Daniel Graham, a member of CAUSA
USA’s advisory board, heads the Star Wars lobby group. High Frontier. F. Lynn
Bouchey, president of the Council for Inter-American Security and member of the
Committee of Santa Fe, helped organize two CAUSA conferences. Washington Times
editor Arnaud de Borchgrave serves on Ray Cline’s U.S. Global Strategy Council, a
Reagan advisory group. The Strategy Council’s executive director is retired General
E. David Woellner, president of CAUSA World Services. Washington Times colum¬
nists include Ray Cline’s son-in-law Roger Fontaine, a Committee of Santa Fe mem¬
ber and former Reagan Latin America adviser, and Jeremiah O’Leary, formerly special
assistant to National Security Adviser William Clark.^^
Moon money has become a major source of nourishment for New Right leaders
and organizations. The Unification Church contributed $775,000 in 1984 to the Con¬
servative Alliance (CALL), a non-profit lobbying group headed by the late John
“Terry” Dolan who also led the National Conservative Political Action Committee
(NCPAC) and served on CAUSA USA’s advisory board.^^ Direct mail fundraiser
Richard Viguerie was bailed out of debt in 1987 when Bo Hi Pak’s U.S. Property
Development Corporation purchased Viguerie’s Virginia headquarters. Viguerie has
served on the board of the Moon-dominated American Freedom Coalition (AFC)
which was his biggest new direct-mail client as of December 1987.^^
Moon’s quest for global theocracy is no secret. In 1978, a House subcommit¬
tee tracing the Unification Church’s connections with South Korean security and in¬
telligence forces quoted Moon: “If we manipulate seven nations at least...the U.S.,
England, France, Germany, Soviet Russia and maybe Korea and Japan...then we
can get a hold of the whole world.”
By the time Moon was released from a U.S. prison in the summer of 1985 after
serving a year-long sentence for perjury and falsification of documents, his image
had been dramatically rehabilitated. His supporters claimed he was unjustly im¬
prisoned for “tax evasion” and people of diverse political backgrounds saw him as
The Avengers 81
a persecuted religious leader. Rightwing Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) lauded Moon
for providing American youth with “a religious alternative to Communism.”^®
In a January 1987 “God’s Day” speech, Moon showed his image may have
mellowed, but not his views: “Without knowing it, even President Reagan is guided
by Father iMoon]. History will make the position of [Reverend] Moon clear and his
enemies, the American population and government will bow down to him. That is
Father’s tactic, the natural subjugation of the American government and popula¬
tion.”^^
Reagan administration-Moonie ties are extensive enough that an analyst for
the Pentagon-funded Instihite of Defense Analysis warned of the effects their ex¬
posure could have on the 1984 elections: “Current Moonie involvement with govern¬
ment officials, contractors and grantees...could create a major scandal...If efforts
are not taken to stop their growing influence and weed out current Moonie invol¬
vement in government, the President stands a good chance of being portrayed in
the media as a poor, naive incompetent. As it turned out, Mooniegate was just
one more scandal Reagan avoided in the years preceding the Iran-contra revela¬
tions.
Singlaub’s WACL Warriors

Retired Major General John Singlaub organized the current American WACL
chapter, the United States Council for World Freedom (USCWF), in 1981 with a loan
of nearly $20,000 from Taiwan. Based in Phoenix, Arizona, it received tax-exempt
status in 1982. Daniel Graham became USCWF vice chairman and advisory board
members have included General Lewis Walt, former commander of Marine Corps
forces in Vietnam; John Fisher, former president of the American Security Council;
Howard Phillips, chairman of the Conservative Caucus; Andy Messing, head of the
National Defense Council; and lawyer Fred Schlafly, husband of longtime rightwing
activist Phyllis Schlafly.^^
Singlaub served from 1983 to 1986 as chairman of the World Anti-Communist
League. (He was succeeded by former Belgian Defense Minister Jose Desmarets,
who has warned against the “subtle forms” of communism: “ecology, pacifism and
neutralism.Singlaub remains chairman of the USCWF. Under Singlaub’s leader¬
ship WACL became more action oriented. Committees were formed to support
counterrevolution in eight countries: Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Af¬
ghanistan, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. In 1987, Singlaub became increasingly in¬
volved in counterinsurgency in the Philippines, where CAUSA is also active.^^
“Jack” Singlaub has a long history of involvement in covert operations, begin¬
ning with the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He served as CIA desk
officer for China in 1949 and deputy station chief in South Korea during the Korean
War. During the Vietnam War he commanded the Special Operations Group—
Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Studies and Observation Group
(MACVSOG)—^which carried out the Phoenix operation responsible for the assas-
sination of 20,000 to 41,000 Vietnamese/'* In 1976, Singlaub became head of the U.S.
command in South Korea. He was removed by President Carter in 1978, when he
publicly opposed Carter’s plans to withdraw most U.S. troops, and retired from the
military in 1980. In 1984, Singlaub chaired a special Pentagon panel on the war in
El Salvador and also became a key player in the contra supply network.
Anderson and Anderson describe WACL as “the international fraternity of the
practitioners of unconventional war, old and new”—^from the Nazis to South Africa
to Latin America. As defined by Singlaub, “The term ‘unconventional war’ includes,
in addition to terrorism, subversion and guerrilla warfare, such covert and non¬
military activities as sabotage, economic warfare, support to resistance groups, black
and gray psychological operations, disinformation activities, and political warfare.”
Singlaub would help make sure the United States did not “lack the capability and
will to exercise [this] third option for our own defense, to take pressure off any ally,
or to exploit to our advantage the many vulnerabilities that now exist in the Soviet
Empire.
The unconventional warriors practice their trade inside the United States as
well, carrying on the political spying and militaristic propaganda that General Smed-
ley Butler confronted decades ago (discussed further in chapter 15). Singlaub served
until 1984 on the advisory board of Western Goals, founded in 1979 by the late Rep.
Larry McDonald (D-GA), board member and then chairman of the John Birch Society.
As investigative journalist Chip Berlet explains, Western Goals “was essentially a
cover for the continued domestic political spying of the John Birch Society. Its chief
spymaster was John Rees.”^ The late Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy’s right-hand lawyer,
served on the Western Goals advisory board, along with retired military officers such
as General Lewis Walt and Admiral Thomas Moorer. The Western Goals data bank
included files accessed by McDonald as head of the now-defunct House Un-
American Activities Committee (HUAC) as well as from police “red squads.” After
McDonald’s death in September 1983 (on Korean Airlines flight 007), Linda GueU
took over and Rees left with his file collection. As Berlet explains. Western Goals
was “pretty much a shell” when Carl “Spitz” Channell became its president and used
it as a fundraising vehicle for the contras
Singlaub served as cochairman, with Graham, of the American Security
Council’s Coalition for Peace Through Strength (it includes such Nazi-led WACL af¬
filiates as the Bulgarian National Front). The American Security Council (ASC) was
established during the 1950s by corporations wanting background checks done on
employees. Its file archives include the files collected by Harry Jung’s American
Vigilante Intelligence Federation founded in 1927 as an anti-union spy group and
fueled by anti-Semitism. The ASC Task Force on Central America, formed after
Somoza’s overthrow, included Singlaub, Graham, Haig and Reps. Larry McDonald,
John Murphy and Charles Wilson, among others.^ Singlaub also serves as an ad¬
viser to the Council for Inter-American Security led by Lynn Bouchey, which also
combined global militarism with surveillance of the U.S. left.
In December 1979, Singlaub and Graham, who served on Reagan’s defense
advisory committee, led a supportive American Security Council delegation to
Guatemala. In a later interview with Allan Nairn, Singlaub—^who served as honorary
The Avengers 83
chairman of the 1980 Reagan Campaign in Colorado—said that he was “terribly im¬
pressed” at how the regime of General Romeo Lucas Garcia was “desperately trying
to promote human rights.” He urged sympathetic understanding of the death squads,
arguing that the Carter administration’s unwillingness to back the Guatemalan regime
in eliminating its enemies was “prompting those who are dedicated to retaining the
free enterprise system and to continuing progress toward political and economic
development to take matters in their own hands.”
The message from Singlaub and Graham was clear, according to one high
Guatemalan official: “Mr. Reagan recognizes that a good deal of dirty work has to
be done.” Gordon Sumner of the Council for Inter-American Security and the ASC
Task Force on Central America also defended the death squads to Naim, arguing
that while regrettable, “there is really no other choice.
In Febmary 1981, Amnesty International released a report entitled, Guatemala,
a Government Program of Political Murder The report described how death squad
victims were targeted for murder in an annex of the National Palace under the direc¬
tion of President Lucas Garcia. It concluded that “nearly 5,000 Guatemalans have
been seized without warrant and killed since General Lucas Garcia became Presi¬
dent of Guatemala in 1978. The bodies of the victims have been found piled up in
ravines, dumped at roadsides or buried in mass graves. Thousands bore the scars
of torture, and death had come to most by strangling with a garrotte, by being suf¬
focated in rubber hoods or by being shot in the head.”'^®
Deaver and Hannaford, the public relations firm then headed by Reagan aides
Peter Hannaford and Michael Deaver, represented the rightwing Guatemalan group.
Amigos del Pais (Friends of the Country). leader Roberto Alejos provided
the ranch used as a training camp by the CIA for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion force.
In late 1979, Reagan had private talks with Alejos and with Manuel Ayau, “chief
ideologue and theorist of the Guatemalan right” and member of Mario Sandoval’s
National Liberation Movement.
The Reagan presidential campaign reportedly received millions of dollars from
Guatemalans and U.S. businessmen living in Guatemala. The campaign did not dis¬
close these contributions to the Federal Election Commission, with one exception:
the wife of John Trotter, manager of Guatemala’s Coca-Cola bottling plant where
five union leaders were murdered, was listed for $750. According to one
businessman solicited by the Reagan campaign, there were explicit instructions: “Do
not give to Mr. Reagan’s campaign directly.” Contributions were directed to an un¬
disclosed committee in California. As for the Guatemalan contributors, “one govern¬
ment official tells of a meeting in the National Palace...where Guatemalan
businessmen and government members boasted of funneling money to Reagan but
cautioned all listening that the connection was to be kept confidential.”^’
Death squad godfather Mario Sandoval attended Reagan’s 1981 inaugural ball.
So did Adolfo CueUar, chairman of El Salvador’s WACL chapter until his murder later
that year. Cuellar is remembered by former Salvadoran army officers “as a man who
used to appear at interrogation centers and beg for permission to tdrture the
prisoners.
Singlaub claimed that in 1983 there was a purge of violent elements in the
Latin chapters: ‘The people in WACL from Latin American [sic] now are good, re¬
spectable anti-communists.”^^ Although CAL was replaced in 1984 by the Federation
of Latin American Democratic Entities (FEDAL), not much changed besides the
name. According to Anderson and Anderson, only the Mexican Tecos were purged.
When President Reagan sent “warm greetings” to the 1984 WACL conference
in San Diego, Mario Sandoval was there. So was contra leader Adolfo Calero, along
with assorted racists and fascists from around the world. Said Reagan, “The World
Anti-Communist League has long played a leadership role in drawing attention to
the gallant struggle now being waged by the true freedom fighters of our day. Nancy
and I send you our best wishes for every future success.
“If I have to get rid of half of Guatemala, so the other half can live in peace,
ril do it,” declared Mario Sandoval during his failed 1985 bid for the Guatemalan
presidencyHe attended the September 1985 WACL conference in Dallas, along
with contra leaders Adolfo Calero and Enrique Bermudez and contra donor Ellen
Garwood of Texas. Tom Posey’s Civilian Military Assistance mercenaries provided
. 46
security.
WACL members called for support of the South African government in its
“defense against Moscow-Peking ts/cl insurgency.” On September 11, the third day
of the conference. Chairman Singlaub proclaimed: “We commemorate today...the
date that the first country was liberated from communism: the military overthrow of
the Allende regime in Chile.. .We send a salute to General Augusto Pinochet in Chile,
and to Juan Ramon Chaves, president of [Paraguay’s] Colorado Party [also founded
on September 11], offering our congratulations.” The Colorado Party of dictator
General Alfredo Stroessner has ruled Paraguay for over 30 years. The contra leaders
promised that the 1986 WACL convention would be held in Managua.'*^
The Argentine Axis

The Reagan administration “looked to the Argentinians as the people who
could clean up Central America of communists,” former contra spokesman Edgar
Chamorro told me."^ Clean up meant dirty war.
The Argentine military fancied itself on the frontlines of World War HI. It took
over the government in a 1976 coup and was proud of victory in the “dirty war”
against “subversion,” targeting the Montonero movement and anyone deemed a
sympathizer. The term “subversive,” stated a 1977 Argentine government report, “is
used as a synonym for ‘terrorist.’” The labels were hard to avoid. According to the
report, lobbying by university students for student cafeterias was a clear sign of
potential terrorism.'*^ Between 9,000 and 30,000 “subversives” in universities, labor
unions, churches, journalism, etc. were rounded up, tortured and disappeared.^
There were many Argentinians among the 64,000 Latin American soldiers and
officers—including 170 heads of state, ministers, commanding officers and directors
of intelligence—trained between 1950 and 1973 at the U.S. Army School of the
The Avengers 85
Americas in the Panama Canal Zone. Course 0-47 on urban counterinsurgency opera¬
tions taught how to detect the presence of communist guerrillas: “The refusal of
peasants to pay rents, taxes, or agricultural loans or any difficulty in collecting these
will indicate the existence of an active insurrection that has succeeded in convin¬
cing the peasants of the injustices of the present system, and is directing or instigat¬
ing them to disobey its precepts...Hostility on the part of the local population to
the government forces, in contrast to their amiable or neutral attitude in the past.
This can indicate a change of loyalty or of behavior inspired by fear, often manifested
by children refusing to fraternize with members of the internal-security for¬
ces. . .Short, unjustified, and unusual absences from work on the part of government
employees.”
As taught by the U.S. military, subversion was a product of foreign, communist
influences. It could take the form of nonviolent action, including consciousness-rais¬
ing work (promoted by Christian base communities), demonstrations, strikes, “com¬
promised” social sciences and other activities that “attract the discontented among
the populace, although those who protest are not the people themselves but an
atomized group of malcontents and adventurers.”
At the U.S. Army Institute for Military Assistance at Fort Bragg, North Carolina,
Latin Americans were taught “Population Protection and Resources Management,”
utilizing such techniques as a national identity card system, search operations, check¬
points, curfews and block controls to monitor the movement of people and goods.
“The semester concluded with a discussion of the role of the mass media and
propaganda in building support for the government, ‘since by their nature most [of
these] measures are rather harsh.. .[and] they should be coordinated with an intense
PSYOPS [psychological operations] campaign to convince the population that these
harsh methods are for their own good.’”^^
Under the Latin American Doctrine of National Security all dissidents are
enemies of the state and all opposition is communist subversion. But the National
Security States were not always doctrinaire. For most of their rule from 1976 to 1983,
the Argentine generals did not direct their World War III on subversion against the
Soviet Union. They maintained a foreign policy of “ideological pluralism,” driven
by economic pragmatism, which led to increasingly profitable relations with the
Soviet Union. When President Carter declared a grain embargo against the Soviet
Union in 1980, Argentina’s wheat sales to the Soviet Union skyrocketed. By the end
of 1980, the Soviet Union was the largest importer of Argentine exports, including
grain, meat and wool, and Argentina was the Soviet Union’s second largest trading
partner after India.^^
In an effort to institutionalize the National Security Doctrine of stamping out
the “subversive” threat in whatever country it arose, the Chilean secret police, then
known as DINA, initiated Operation Condor in 1976. “It now seems likely,” wrote
Anderson and Anderson, “that the car-bomb killing of Chilean dissident Orlando
Letelier [along with his U.S. associate Ronni Karpen Moffitt] in Washington in 1976
(orchestrated by an American contract agent of the Chilean secret police and con¬
ducted by anti-Castro Cuban exiles) and the attempted murder of [Chilean Christian
Democrat] Bernardo Leighton (shot by an Italian fascist on orders from Chile, with
the ‘credit’ taken by Cuban exiles) are examples of the work of Condor.”
While officially dismantled after exposure in the late 1970s, Condor “has simp¬
ly changed form,” with Latin American governments often contracting out assign¬
ments to groups such as CAL.^^ From his exile in Paraguay, Somoza reportedly helped
finance CAL-connected anti-Communist terrorist groups, including Croatian terrorists
wanted in Yugoslavia.^^
In September 1980, WACL members gathered in Buenos Aires for CAL’s an¬
nual meeting. They were hosted by the military junta and the Argentine Anti-Com¬
munist Alliance (AAA) death squad. Among those attending were Senator Jesse
Helms’ (R-NC) aide-at-large John Carbaugh, Mario Sandoval, Roberto D’Aubuisson
and Italian terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie, who was wanted for a string of murders
and bombings in Europe, including the August 1980 Bologna, Italy railway station
bombing killing 85 people. Delle Chiaie journeyed to the CAL conference from
Bolivia, where he was in a cocaine and terror partnership with Nazi Klaus Barbie
(alias Klaus Atmann).”
The July 1980 coup that put General Luis Garcia Meza in the Bolivian presiden¬
cy was a product of multinational intrigue and repression involving Bolivian military
and cocaine lords, the Argentine military, WACL’s Bolivia chapter, Barbie’s Nazi net¬
work and CAUSA. After visiting the newly installed dictator in La Paz, Colonel Bo
Hi Pak proclaimed, “I have erected a throne for Father Moon in the world’s highest
city.”^ The cocaine kings could not long sustain their rule. Barbie, the Nazi “Butcher
of Lyons,” who first escaped justice by working for U.S. intelligence, was deported
to France in 1982 to stand trial for war crimes after Bolivia returned to elected govern¬
ment. (Delle Chiaie was captured in Venezuela in 1987 and extradited to Italy.)
At the 1980 CAL meeting, Argentina agreed to help wage dirty war in El Sal¬
vador, and within two months sent at least 50 Argentine unconventional warfare
advisers. Argentine advisers also operated in Honduras (discussed further in chap¬
ter 6).^^ In defense of “ideological frontiers,” the Argentine military also assisted the
former guardsmen of Somoza’s regime, providing training in Argentina, Honduras
and Costa Rica.
Details of the Argentine program were disclosed in December 1982 by Hec¬
tor Frances, a defecting officer from Argentine Army Intelligence Battalion 601.^ Ac¬
cording to both Hector Frances and Enrique Bermudez, ex-guardsmen began
training in Argentina in late 1980.^^
Frances was a military adviser to the contras in Costa Rica, earning $2,500 to
$3,000 a month. According to Frances, the contras ran a Basic Infantry Training
School in Costa Rica where they received arms provided by Somoza’s son, El
Chiguin. “The arms arrived in t.v. boxes by Costa Rican airlines. That equipment
was to arm 100 men who had plans to infiltrate Nicaragua and attempt the assas¬
sination of the Nicaraguan revolutionary leadership.”^
The contras collaborated with the ultraright Costa Rica Libre (Free Costa Rica
Movement) in plotting the overthrow of the Nicaraguan government and creating
hospitable conditions under President Monge. Costa Rica Libre chief Bernal Urbana
Pinto heads Costa Rica’s WACL chapter and has served as vice president of FEDAL.
The Avengers 87
A founding member of Costa Rica Libre, Benjamin Piza Carranza, became minister
of public security in 1984; he disavowed continuing links with the group.^^
La Tripartita
The early contra war relied on a three-sided arrangement, “La Tripartita”: the
United States supplied direction and money; Argentina provided training and cover;
and Honduras was the main base of operations.
Following the March 1981 presidential finding on Central America, State
Department Ambassador-At-Large Vernon “Dick” Walters (later UN Ambassador)
was dispatched to negotiate arrangements with the contras and the Argentinians.
Walters, a retired lieutenant general who speaks eight languages including Spanish,
has a long career in covert operations involving him in such affairs as the 1953 over¬
throw of the Mossadegh government in Iran, the 1964 overthrow of the Goulart
government in Brazil and the 1973 overthrow of the Allende government in Chile.
From 1972 until 1976, Walters served as deputy director of Central Intelligence.
In March 1981, the Reagan administration asked Congress to repeal the 1978
ban on military sales and assistance to Argentina, stating that “the prohibitions have
acted to frustrate serious dialogue with the Argentinians regarding mutual strategic
concerns.” The Reaganites had broader concerns than Central America. They had
ill-fated dreams of a political-military pact, the South Atlantic Treaty Organization
(SATO), linking South America’s Southern Cone countries (Argentina, Chile, Bolivia,
Uruguay, Paraguay) with Brazil, the United States and South Africa. SATO was
promoted as “protection” for the sea lanes of the Cape Route from the Persian Gulf
around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and past the tip of South America on the
way to the United States and Europe
On April 2, 1981, the day after Washington cut off aid to Nicaragua, the New
York Timei Alan Riding reported on contra activities in Honduras under the head¬
line, “Rightist Exiles Plan Invasion of Nicaragua.” Nicaraguan “exile leaders asserted
that a 600-man ‘freedom force’ stationed in Honduras near the Nicaraguan border
would soon be joined by thousands of sympathizers from Guatemala and Miami.”
Said UDN leader Jose Francisco Cardenal, “Nicaragua cannot be liberated only by
Nicaraguans, just as Somoza was not overthrown only by Nicaraguans...The green
light has to come soon from the United States.” Asked about Pentagon and CIA in¬
volvement, Cardenal replied, “No comment.”
Edgar Chamorro, who worked with Cardenal in the UDN during 1980 and
1981, described the U.S. role in organizing the contras in testimony to the World
Court. During the first half of 1981, Cardenal was contacted by representatives of
the CIA “and began to have frequent meetings with them in Washington and in
Miami. He also began to receive monetary payments...He was told that the United
States Government was prepared to help us remove the F.S.L.N. from power in
Nicaragua, but that, as a condition for receiving this help, we had to join forces with
the ex-National Guardsmen who had fled to Honduras when the Somoza Govern-
ment fell and had been conducting sporadic raids on Nicaraguan border positions
ever since. Cardenal was taken to Honduras by his C.I.A. contacts on several oc¬
casions to meet with these Guardsmen.”
According to Chamorro, Cardenal and the UDN “initially opposed any linkage
with the Guardsmen. The C.I.A. and high-ranking United States Government offi¬
cials insisted that we merge with the Guardsmen. Lt. General Vernon Walters...met
with Cardenal to encourage him to accept the C.I.A.’s proposal. We were well aware
of the crimes the Guardsmen had committed against the Nicaraguan people while
in the service of President Somoza, and we wanted nothing to do with them.
However, we recognized that without help from the United States Government we
had no chance of removing the Sandinistas from power, so we eventually acceded
to the C.I.A.’s and General Walters’ insistence that we join forces with the
Guardsmen...Cardenal and I and others believed the C.I.A.’s assurances that we,
the civilians, would control the Guardsmen in the new organization that was to be
created.
“At that time, the ex-National Guardsmen were divided into several small
bands operating along the Nicaragua-Honduras border. The largest of the
bands...[was] the 15th of September Legion. The bands were poorly armed and
equipped, and thoroughly disorganized. They were not an effective military force
and represented no more than a minor irritant to the Nicaraguan Government. Prior
to the U.D.N.’s merger with these people. General Walters liimself arranged for all
of the bands to be incorporated within the 15th of September Legion, and for the
military government of Argentina to send several army officers to serve as advisers
and trainers.”
Chamorro described the merger of the September 15th Legion and the UDN
on August 10, 1981. It “was accomplished...at a meeting in Guatemala City,
Guatemala, where formal documents were signed. The meeting was arranged and
the documents were prepared by the C.I.A. The new organization was called the
Fiierza Democratica Nicara'guense (‘Nicaraguan Democratic Force’) or, by its
Spanish acronym, F.D.N. It was to be headed by a political junta, consisting of Car¬
denal, Aristides Sanchez (a politician loyal to General Somoza and closely associated
with Bermudez) and Mariano Mendoza, formerly a labor leader in Nicaragua; the
political junta soon established itself in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, taking up residence
in a house rented for it by the C.I.A. Bermudez was assigned to head the military
general staff, and it, too, was based in Honduras. The name of the organization, the
members of the political junta, and the members of the general staff were all chosen
or approved by the C.I.A.
“Soon after the merger, the F.D.N. began to receive a substantial and steady
flow of financial, military and other assistance from the C.I.A. Former National
Guardsmen who had sought exile in El Salvador, Guatemala and the United
States.. .were recruited to enlarge the military component of the organization. They
were offered regular salaries, the funds for which were supplied by the C.I.A. Train¬
ing was provided by Argentinian military officers, two of whom—Col. Oswaldo
Ribeiro and Col. Santiago Villejas [s/d—I got to know quite well; the Argentinians
were also paid by the C.I.A. A special unit was created for sabotage, especially
The Avengers 89
demolitions; it was trained directly by C.I.A. personnel at Lepaterique, near

Tegucigalpa. Arms, ammunition, equipment and food were supplied by the C.I.A.
Our first combat units were sent into Nicaraguan territory in December 1981.”^^
Colonel Osvaldo “Balita” (Littie Bullet) Riveiro headed Argentine contra opera¬
tions in Honduras. Santiago Villegas served as chief of logistics and military opera¬
tions. When Villegas met Cardenal in Miami in August he “claimed the Americans
had promised equipment for ten thousand men” by the end of 1981.^^ The Argen¬
tinians worked closely with Colonel Gustavo Alvarez, then head of Honduran Public
Security forces and a graduate of the Argentine military academy, class of 1961.
The contras were commanded by Enrique Bermudez and former Guardia Major
Emilio “Fiero” (Fierce) Echaverry, the son-in-law of an Argentine officer and graduate
of the Argentine military academy along with Alvarez. Ricardo Lau was in charge of
counterintelligence and special operations. In September 1981, six mid-level officers
asked for the removal of Bermudez and Lau on the grounds of misuse of funds,
negligence of duty, lying and lack of patriotic spirit. Bermudez was accused of em¬
bezzling $50,000 in funds provided to the contras by the Argentinians at CIA be¬
hest. The Argentinians stood behind Bermudez and forced out the founding
September 15th Legion officers who had brought the charges
The RIG and the Proconsvil

In August 1981, CIA Director William Casey picked Duane “Dewey” Clarridge
(alias Dewey Maroni) to head the CIA’s Latin America division. He replaced Nestor
Sanchez, who moved over to the Defense Department as deputy assistant secretary
for international security affairs. Clarridge, formerly the Rome station chief, had im¬
pressed Casey as “a real doer, a real take-charge guy.”^^ Clarridge had also served
the CIA in Nepal, India and Turkey. Like many on Reagan’s Latin America team, he
came to his post with no prior experience in the region.
The man picked to run the war on the ground from Honduras, the northern
front, was John Negroponte. More proconsul than ambassador, Negroponte was a
diplomatic veteran of the Vietnam War, having served in the U.S. embassy in Saigon
and then on Kissinger’s NSC staff as a Vietnam expert. He told rightwingers wary
of his ties to the “liberal” Kissinger that he had opposed Kissinger’s “sellout” of Viet¬
nam at the Paris Peace talks. Before taking up his Honduras post in November 1981,
Negroponte served in Ecuador and Greece.^
Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas Enders chaired
the Special Interagency Group (or Core Group), which was later called the Restricted
Interdepartmental Group (RIG). Members included Dewey Clarridge from CIA, Nes¬
tor Sanchez from Defense, General Paul Gorman representing the Joint Chiefs of
Staff (until he became chief of the Southern Command and Vice Admiral Arthur Mor-
reau took his place) and, beginning in early 1983, Marine officer Oliver North of the
NSC (substituting for and then replacing Roger Fontaine). “Often, it was not what it
seemed,” said a RIG member. “When it got too big there would be a steering group.”
Nicaragua wasn’t Enders’ first secret war. In late 1971, he became deputy chief
of the U.S. Embassy in Cambodia. He was considered, wrote William Shawcross in
Sideshow, a “can-do sort of guy.” He understood the administration line, that Cam¬
bodia was “secondary to the main problem,” Vietnam. “When investigators from
Congressional committees or Congress’ General Accounting Office appeared, Enders
did what he could to block their inquiries. He was openly hostile to and con¬
temptuous of the press (the feeling was reciprocated), and he made a considerable
effort to have the Cambodians expel one of the most dogged of the American jour¬
nalists in Phnom Penh, Sylvana Foa of UPI and Newsweek?^'^
Enders “soon became Haig’s favorite diplomat in the embassy, and Kissinger
v/as equally impressed.” In 1973, Enders chaired a secret embassy panel oversee¬
ing the illegal U.S. bombing strikes in Cambodia. Supposedly targeting North Viet¬
namese lines of communication into South Vietnam, “maps from one secret history
of the B-52 campaign” in 1973 “show that many of the bombs were falling on the
most heavily populated areas of Cambodia.When Haig picked Enders to be his
top aide for Latin America, he, like Haig, had no Latin America experience. Enders’
director of Central American and Panamanian affairs, L. Craig Johnstone, was CIA
Director William Colby’s director of evaluations in Vietnam.
“I never knew very much about Cambodia,” said John Negroponte. “I don’t
think anyone did. I am a Vietnam expert, and I always thought of Cambodia as just
an adjunct to the whole damn thing. I knew what I had to know, but I didn’t get
involved in the gory details.”^ Six years after wreaking havoc in Southeast Asia, the
“can-do guys” had a new war to run in Central America.
“There was,” said one RIG member, “a kind of tendency to want to prove
your manhood.
Enders’ Dead End

August 1981 was a busy month. While Vernon Walters and the CIA organized
the FDN, Enders took a trip to Managua. The Nicaraguans had wanted a meeting
with Haig to improve U.S.-Nicaragua relations. Instead, Ambassador PezzuUo, who
was resigning his post, convinced Enders to hold talks, “to retain the relationship.
Enders met with junta Coordinator Daniel Ortega, Foreign Minister D’Escoto
and other officials on August 11 and 12. In Pezzullo’s view, Enders “made a good-
faith effort” to negotiate, but “the circumstances required a quick victory. There was
no way that it could happen.” Rather than a good faith effort, the negotiations seemed
designed to fail because Enders presented non-negotiable demands, more like an
ultimatum for surrender. “I was flabbergasted by the demands,” said Arturo Cruz,
then Nicaragua’s ambassador to Washington. “I told them this sounds like the con¬
ditions of a victorious power.”
“We all have to sound like Attila the diplomat,” said one U.S. official.^^ At 6
feet, 8 inches, Enders looked the part of Attila the diplomat. Michael Barnes, former
chairman of the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, summed up
The Avengers 91
the Nicaraguans’ impression: “They said this arrogant guy came down here, 11 feet
tall and said, ‘You’re going to do A, B and C or we’re going to blow you off the
face of the Earth.’
As D’Escoto recalled it, the essence of Enders’ “message was this: we are going
along a path that can only lead to greater and greater confrontation and the time
has come to stop and to see if we cannot take this other road.”^ The major issue
was Nicaragua’s alleged export of revolution. For the Nicaraguans, it appeared to
be a no-win issue. They had closed down a clandestine FMLN radio station and cur¬
tailed the transshipment of weapons across Nicaraguan territoiy. The U.S. govern¬
ment acknowledged this, but terminated aid anyway.
There had been no verified reports of arms sliipments from Nicaragua to El
Salvador since April, according to David MacMichael, a CIA intelligence analyst from
1981 to 1983.^® Yet, in a July l6 speech on El Salvador, Enders asserted, “After their
arms trafficking was exposed, Cuba and Nicaragua reduced the flow in March and
early April. Recently, however, an ominous upswing has occurred, not to the volume
reached this winter, but to levels that enable the guerrillas to sustain military opera¬
tions despite their inability to generate fresh support.” Washington would never
admit that the FMLN-FDR had broad internal support. Enders insisted that a halt to
the alleged arms flow was a precondition to any negotiated agreement, including a
renewal of aid, refusing to acknowledge that such a precondition had already been
met.
“I cannot assure you,” D’Escoto told Enders, “no one can assure you, that there
is not one weapon or a very insignificant amount of weapons any more than you
can assure me that they are not coming from the States. A little amount can filter
from any country without the authorities knowing. But I can assure you that no im¬
portant amount of arms trafficking is taking place from here.”
Enders remained insistent and D’Escoto tried to break the impasse by asking
him to explain how the alleged arms flow was taking place. “The greatest bulk,”
said Enders, “is going through your common land border with Honduras.”
“What is this greatest bulk?” D’Escoto asked. “What 90 percent?.. .‘Yeah, about
90 percent is going through your common land border with Honduras.’ And then,
I said, ‘and the rest?’ And he says.. .‘through new routes that have been opened.. .on
the Atlantic.’ So that apparently they would go by boat to another beach, to some
beach in Honduras and then cross the whole Honduran territory [El Salvador is on
the Pacific side].” Some arms, said Enders, would pass “through this new route and
then others through the Gulf of Fonseca.” D’Escoto said, “Well, I can assure
you...that none of this is happening in any significant amount because we would
know about it.
“And then he [Enders] says, ‘Well, what right do you have to claim, why do
you claim to have the right to govern a country when you don’t even know what
is happening in your own territory?’ And I said to him..you have just told me that
all of this, in fact, is going through Honduran territory.. .1 would like to know if you
believe that the Hondurans are accomplices with us, or, if they don’t know that this
is happening?...Obviously, I said, you don’t believe that they are accomplices, so
they must not know. So have you ever told them by what right did they have to
govern if they don’t know what is happening in their own territory? And he said
that he hadn’t,..
“And I said...why don’t you give us tips as to how this is happening so that
we can investigate. And he...quoted some saying that a government that doesn’t
guard its sources will bum them...He said that, besides, we did not have the de¬
gree of intimacy in the relations between both our countries for him to be able to
tell me such delicate information. I responded.. .that he wouldn’t bum any sources.
I wasn’t asking for any sources. I was asking for information. And besides that.. .he
already said that it was U-2 photographs and satellite photographs and that we had
no bows and arrows that we can hide. I said, so what are you burning?...
“I lamented that we don’t have the type of relationship that permits you to
give us information, but certainly you have that relationship with Honduras. I said
I’m not in the habit of suggesting to other governments what to do, but since you’re
always suggesting to us, I think I can afford to tell you something. I said, you can
kill two birds with one stone by preventing these arms from getting to El Salvador
and, at the same time, having the proof that you have to present to the world to
demonstrate your charges.. .Why don’t you help the Hondurans.. .and give them the
information that you have so that they can catch us there?...
“ ‘Father,’ he says, ‘you have been in politics long enough to, by this time, to
come to realize that not everything that sounds in theory possible is actually feasible.’
And then I said that there was another way, that we had already had a meeting be¬
tween the head of state of Honduras and Comandante Ortega...that in that meet¬
ing we had in principle agreed to a joint patrol operation along our common border,
and that the Hondurans were dragging their feet in arranging for the meetings that
they were committed to have in order to concretize this. And could they [the U.S.
government] not exert some influence on Honduras to carry out what they have al¬
ready committed to. And there was no response to that.
“About a week after that, or two weeks after that, in a press conference in
Washington.. .somebody asked [Enders] about this [border patrol proposal] because
I had made it public, and he said that this was not a practical thing. Of course, it
was important for the United States not to have this border operation because they
were planning this whole use of Honduras as a base for aggression against
Nicaragua.”
After the argument seesawed back and forth a while, Enders stood up. “He’s
very tall,” said D’Escoto. He stood up shaking his finger, “and he says, ‘Father, you
must remember, the United States is exactly 100 times larger than you are.’ In other
words shape up...And, of course, I said not 100 times. That’s not true. I said
thousands and thousands of times more powerful economically and militarily, which
is what matters. But, yes, 100 times larger territorially, which is the least important.
But, nonetheless, we were not about to cry uncle as President Reagan would later
demand.
An exchange of correspondence followed the August meetings. In September,
Washington offered to enforce the neutrality laws as regards Nicaraguan exiles and
sign a joint nonaggression declaration, whereby the United States would not inter¬
vene against Nicaragua if Nicaragua did not intervene against its neighbors. From
The Avengers 93
the Nicaraguan point of view, enforcement of neutrality laws was something the
U.S. government was already responsible for. And nonintervention was a require¬
ment of all signatories to the Rio treaty and the United Nations charter. The United
States did not have the right to act as prosecutor, judge and jury on the matter of
nonintervention.
As reported by Roy Gutman, the United States never formally presented
Nicaragua with its security demands: “The substance of the U.S. position was shown
to Cruz, but a few hours later he was told to forget he had seen it.” A summary
provided to Gutman “makes it easy to understand why. Nicaragua was to freeze ac¬
quisition of heavy weapons—armed or unarmed helicopters and planes, armored
personnel carriers, horwitzers, and armed vehicles. Replacements would be allowed.
But Nicaragua would have to get rid of systems not possessed by other countries.
‘They were to be re-exported,’ a State Department official said. The weapons were
not to be resold to third countries, or dumped at sea, but recrated and shipped back
to countries of origin.” Craig Johnstone, who drafted all the U.S. papers, viewed the
document as a “very reasonable proposal.
The security draft also demanded that Nicaragua limit its army to 15,000 to
17,000 soldiers, and eventually reduce it to less than 10,000. Presumably, neither
the United States nor its Central American alHes were required to make any reduc¬
tions. Though Nicaragua would have to get rid of weapons systems its neighbors
didn’t have, it would be prohibited from acquiring systems its neighbors did have,
such as advanced fighter aircraft.
According to Gutman, the negotiations fell apart when Cruz reacted negative¬
ly to the security draft which Johnstone quickly told him to forget. That was in late
September or early October. On October 7, the United States began joint naval
maneuvers with Honduras—Halcon Vista 81—and Ortega denounced them as a re¬
hearsal for attacking Nicaragua in a speech to the United Nations. U.S. officials took
Ortega’s speech as a violation of a tacit agreement to lower the level of rhetoric.
Nicaragua, on the other hand, was supposed to accept as routine the maneuvers
with Honduras, as well as the earlier Ocean Venture exercises in the Caribbean.
Meanwhile, on August 28, Haig had accused the Salvadoran rebels of engaging in
“straight terrorism” fed by external assistance and said that the United States was
considering ways of confronting Cuba. It was “premature,” he said, to reveal them.®^
Nicaragua knew that Washington considered it an accomplice of Cuba.
Nicaraguan Deputy Foreign Minister Victor Hugo Tinoco sent a letter on Oc¬
tober 31 that reviewed Nicaragua’s complaints about the maneuvers and lack of
economic aid, and said “progress depended on concrete U.S. actions to close the
exile training camps.” He said Nicaragua was open to further talks, but Enders saw
the letter as ending the discussions.®^
“You can’t negotiate when you always take the most extreme position,” ob¬
served PezzuUo. “You leave the other guy no opportunity.” He told Gutman his ex¬
perience “leads me to the conclusion that this administration can’t negotiate.”®^ The
Reagan administration would take seven months just to fill the ambassador’s slot
after Pezzullo left on August 18.
In the Core Group’s view, Nicaragua gets all the blame. “Few people thought
that the Sandinistas would talk to us seriously. But we had to try,” said one official.
The reason was domestic politics. Wben asked to take new action against Nicaragua,
Congress would want to know whether diplomatic means had been tried. Now the
administration had their answer; “They haven’t worked.”®^
“When you throw yourself into a revolution, there are no quick answers,” said
Pezzullo before leaving Nicaragua. “The questions are easy—^Where is it going? Who
are the new leaders? and so—but answers are impossible.” One problem, said Pez¬
zullo, “is that if you get too specific in your answers, you lose the capacity to un¬
derstand the movement...because the moment you pigeonhole someone, you start
building your argument to fit your conclusions. My basic feeling about a revolution¬
ary movement is that you better move with it and live with it. And if you’re going
to exert influence, exert it in the process of living with it.”^^
Taking the War to Nicaragua
The Reagan administration had no intention of living with the Nicaraguan

revolution. In the summer of 1981, General Haig ordered Marine Colonel Robert
“Bud” McFarlane, a former officer in Vietnam then serving Haig as State Department
counselor, to prepare a report. Titled “Taking the War to Nicaragua,” it covered op¬
tions for military action against Cuba and Nicaragua. A U.S. invasion of Nicaragua
was reportedly imminent enough in 1981 that, as one military officer recalled, he
received $400,000 in Defense Department funds, which the CIA converted into local
currency, to cover costs in Nicaragua.®^
On November 1, CIA Director Casey met in Washington with Argentina’s army
chief of staff. General Leopoldo Galtieri, to polish their mutual projects. Days later,
the annual Conference of American Armies brought together U.S., Latin and Carib¬
bean military and intelligence officers at Washington’s Fort McNair to discuss
“countering terrorism, subversion and armed insurrection.” In his keynote address.
Secretary of Defense Weinberger stressed the need for solidarity against the threat
of Cuban and Nicaraguan influence and insurgency in Central America and the Carib¬
bean.®^
Days later, it was reported that Haig “has been pressing the Pentagon to ex¬
amine a series of options for possible military action in El Salvador and against Cuba
and Nicaragua.” The Pentagon was asked to show what U.S. forces could do if there
was a decision to blockade Nicaragua or launch specific operations against Cuba
including a show of airpower, large naval exercises, a quarantine on arms shipments
to the island, a general blockade as an act of war, or an invasion by U.S. and pos¬
sibly Latin American forces. Latin American governments were asked if they might
join in any kind of military operations. Meanwhile, CIA specialists said there was
no strong evidence to support the view “that Cuba is still directly involved in the
supply of men and arms” for El Salvador. The Defense Intelligence Agency said
there was.®®
The Avengers 95
Lt. General Wallace Nutting, head of the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom)
embracing Central and South America, put some of his views on the record on
November 14. “Someone,” he said, “is going to have to rethink” regulations prevent¬
ing U.S. advisers from going into the field if the “fragile” situation in El Salvador
worsened. Washington must make it clear to the guerrillas that “ ‘you’re not going
to get El Salvador’ and make them believe it.” White House Counselor Ed Meese
talked of a possible future naval blockade of Nicaragua.®^
Haig, said one RIG member, “had this real hard-on for Castro.” He wanted to
knock him off.^ So did Reagan. Reagan “understood that the Soviet Union—the em¬
pire of evil, in his eyes—lay beyond his reach. But as the men in his innermost circle
knew, he had to be dissuaded from the private fantasy that Cuba might by liberated
by force of arms; the appraisal of the CIA was that the Fidelistas would simply take
to the hills again and turn the island into a front-porch Vietnam.”^’
The consensus aim of administration policy would be to “draw the line” in El
Salvador, and re-draw it in Nicaragua. In testimony before the House Foreign Af¬
fairs Committee on November 12, Haig described the situation in Nicaragua as “very,
very disturbing...! think we cannot delude ourselves as Americans about that and
then wonder—^perhaps six months or a year from now—^what happened when we
have another Cuba in this hemisphere and perhaps the expansion of this disease
throughout Central America.”
Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA) asked Haig, “Can you provide this committee and
this Congress with an assurance that the United States is not and will not participate
in or encourage in any way direct or indirect efforts to overthrow or destabilize the
current government in Nicaragua?”
“No,” Haig replied, “I would not give you such an assurance.” He said Studds
“should be concerned instead about mounting evidence of the totalitarian charac¬
ter of the Sandinista regime.”
“Are you prepared to say that we are not planning a military blockade?” asked
Rep. Barnes.
“I’m not prepared to give reassurances of any kind,” said Haig. “If you are
trying to reassure regimes that are moving toward totalitarian government, I ques¬
tion if that is a sound course.” Haig would only repeat President Reagan’s statement
that the United States had “no plans for putting Americans in combat anyplace in
the world.”
“Based on your responses,” Barnes told Haig, “if I were a Nicaraguan, I’d be
building a bomb shelter this afternoon.
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Semi-Secret War
It was hubris. We were going to knock off these little brown people on
the cheap.
Anonymous U.S. official.^
For us, invasion is not a theoretical possibility but a historical fact. People
forget that under U.S. Marine occupation 50 years ago, we were the first
country in the world to be dive-bombed.
2
Miguel D’Escoto.
November 1981 was a time of heated administration rhetoric. Mexican Presi¬

dent Jose Lopez Portillo accused Washington of conducting “verbal terrorism” and
warned that a U.S. attack on Nicaragua would be “a gigantic historical error.
It was also a time of secret escalation. The Boston Globe caught wind of the
covert war on December 4.^ Two months later, fueled by administration leaks, the
Washington Post made the operation front-page news. By then contra forces had
launched and lost an offensive on the Atlantic Coast, but the Post (and the New York
Times') showcased supposed blueprints for new operations while largely missing
the war that was already underway.
“President Reagan has authorized a broad program of U.S. planning and ac¬
tion in war-torn Central America, including the encouragement of political and
paramilitary operations by other governments against the Cuban presence in
Nicaragua, informed sources said yesterday.”’ That Washington Post lead and the
story that followed parrotted the administration line that Nicaragua was a platform
for Cuban subversion in Central America.
Three weeks later, the Post reported: “President Reagan has authorized covert
operations against the Central American nation of Nicaragua, which, administration
97
officials have charged, is serving as the military command center and supply line to
guerrillas in El Salvador.”
“According to informed administration officials,” the article continued, “the
president has ruled out the use of U.S. military forces in direct anti-Nicaraguan opera¬
tions. But the authorized covert plan directs the CIA to begin to build and fund a
paramilitary force of up to 500 Latin Americans, who are to operate out of comman¬
do camps spread along the Nicaraguan-Honduran border...The officials stressed
that it will take months for the paramilitary force to be recruited, trained and posi¬
tioned to begin operations... As part of this plan, the commandos eventually would
attempt to destroy vital Nicaraguan targets, such as power plants and bridges [two
bridges were blown four days later], in an effort to disrupt the economy and divert
the attention and the resources of the government. CIA strategists believe these
covert operations inside Nicaragua will slow the flow of arms to El Salvador and
disrupt what they claim is a Soviet- and Cuban-controlled government in
Nicaragua...CIA forces would be supplemented by another Latin American com¬
mando force of up to 1,000 men—some of whom currently are undergoing train¬
ing by Argentine military officials.”
The Post went on to report administration alarm at “convincing intelligence
reports that one Soviet-Cuban goal in the region is the development of an active in¬
surgency to destabilize Mexico during this decade.”^
The New York TYmcs supplemented accounts of the covert operation in a March
14 piece containing more disinformation than the others about a supposed agree¬
ment with Argentina that “no support would be given to followers of General
Somoza.”^ Washington, we were told, was supporting only political “moderates.” By
this time, the Guardia-dominated FDN, formed after months of U.S. support for the
contras, was seven months old. None of these prominent accounts in the newspapers
of record managed to note that Argentina was not a bastion of democracy, but a
military dictatorship.
A week earlier. The Nation had put the lie to the “no Somocistas” line, report¬
ing that members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees were briefed
“that the aim of the C.I.A.’s covert action is to incite unrest in Nicaragua using former
Somoza guardsmen, dissident elements and ethnic minorities in Nicaragua and exile
groups in the United States.” Differing from mainstream accounts that treated
Nicaragua and the covert war as an abstraction. The Nation described ongoing at¬
tacks. As Nicaraguan officials saw it, “the former guardsmen’s attacks are intended
to provoke retaliatory measures by the Nicaraguan Army, thus creating a pretext for
foreign military intervention.”®
Finding n
The secret course for the war on Nicaragua was affirmed at an NSC meeting
on November l6, 1981. The CLA-run contras were to spearhead the Sandinista over¬
throw.
Semi-Secret War 99
Then CIA analyst David MacMichael attended a meeting of the CIA’s Latin
American Affairs office in which the Nicaragua plan was discussed: “a covert force
of approximately 1,500 men was to be organized to carry out military and
paramilitary actions.. .In general the appreciation at that time was that the Nicaraguan
Government leadership was immature, impulsive, possessed, in the phrase used, of
a ‘guerrilla’ mentality and it was presumed that in response to the actions of this
covert force that in all likelihood the Nicaraguan Government would engage in hot
pursuit of this covert paramilitary force, across international boundaries within
Central America, it was assumed that in response to the state of emergency generated
by these attacks that the Nicaraguan Government would clamp down and eliminate
civil liberties, to exile or confine its political opponents, and finally that diplomatic
relations between the United States and Nicaragua would probably be exacerbated
and that United States diplomatic personnel within Nicaragua could expect to be
harassed or otherwise restricted or affected...
“It would serve to demonstrate what was believed, which was that the
Nicaraguan Government was inherently aggressive and a danger to its neighbours
in the region and that such crossing of territorial boundaries would demonstrate this
and possibly allow for the use of sanctions or other actions under the Organization
of American States’ charter...
“It was assumed that the Nicaraguan Government...had rather successfully
portrayed itself as an open and democratic society and thus gained a good deal of
support in world public opinion and that by causing its true nature as a repressive
and totalitarian government to be displayed it would lose this support.”
Regarding the expected harassment of U.S. diplomats, MacMichael thought
that “the purpose here was to be able to demonstrate the essential hostility of the
Nicaraguan Government toward the United States and thus help to justify in United
States public opinion actions which the United States might take against Nicaragua.”^
CIA Director William Casey, Reagan’s good friend and 1980 campaign
manager, and the first CIA director to hold presidential Cabinet rank, was enthusias¬
tic about the Nicaragua project. “Casey wanted a rollback of communism,” a U.S.
official observed. “But you know, he could never even pronounce the word
‘Nicaragua’—he always said something like ‘Nicarga’ or ‘Nigara.’ The place itself
didn’t seem to matter to him.”’*^
Casey earned his reputation as a spymaster during World War II service as
chief of intelligence for the OSS European Theater. He kept up his ties to the “in¬
telligence community,” serving, for example, on the advisory board of the Nation¬
al Intelligence Study Center and on President Ford’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board.” Like most members of the Reagan Cabinet, Casey was a millionaire. He
made his fortune in venture capital and tax law, and authored such books as Tax
Sheltered Investments. In 1961, Casey was sued for plagiarizing material in one of
his books; a jury found against Casey and awarded the other party damages. When
President Nixon appointed him in 1971 to head the Securities and Exchange Com¬
mission (SEC), Casey tried to mislead Senators about the plagiarism case during con¬
firmation hearings.In his first two years as CIA director, Casey—the ultimate
insider—made millions playing the stock and bond markets before public outrage
prompted him to put his investments in a blind trust. Reagan’s trust in Casey never
wavered.
US. News & World Report prof lied Casey in 1984 as the “Intelligence Chief With
Nine Lives”: “Nearly every committee that has checked his qualifications for public
office—^first as chief of the SEC, then as under secretary of state, head of the Export-
Import bank and director of the CIA—has complained of misstatements, lapses of
memory and reluctant disclosures of assets and clients.These talents would be
standard operating procedure in the Nicaragua project.
Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 17 on November
23, 1981 authorizing the CIA to “work with foreign governments as appropriate” to
conduct political and “paramilitary” operations “against [the] Cuban presence and
Cuban-Sandinista support infrastructure in Nicaragua and elsewhere in Central
America. Specifically, the CIA was allocated $19.95 million to build a 500-man
force. It was understood that “more funds and manpower will be needed.” The CIA
force would complement a 1,000-man force being trained by Argentina. Washington
reportedly paid Argentina $50 million to provide the training.^^
A document accompanying NSDD 17 pretended that covert activities would
“build popular support in Central America and Nicaragua for an opposition front
that would be nationalistic, anti-Cuban and anti-Somoza.” It acknowledged that “in
some instances CIA might (possibly using U.S. personnel) take unilateral paramilitary
action against special Cuban targets b/c].”
Reagan signed the congressionally-mandated presidential intelligence finding
on December 1. Presenting the finding to the Intelligence Committees, administra¬
tion officials emphasized arms interdiction. Casey said the United States was “buying
in” to an existing Argentine operation to train Nicaraguan exiles. By one account,
“the impression left with some members of the Intelligence committees was of crack
teams of commandos hitting arms caches, ammunition dumps, Cuban military patrols
and a couple of key bridges along the arms supply route in the dead of night and
withdrawing unseen from Nicaragua to their Honduran bases.
The arms flow from Miami to the contras, meanwhile, went unimpeded. “Two
Nicaraguan exiles said one CIA official in Miami gave them general advice in late
1981 on how to smuggle weapons out of Miami, where the contras buy virtually all
their weapons...[The official] counseled them to ship the guns in parts to avoid
detection by U.S. Customs officials.
The arms interdiction rationale gave the congressional committees an excuse
to exercise oversight as overlook. It was irrational to think that Somoza guardsmen
were risking their lives, not to avenge their defeat and attempt to retake power, but
simply to serve as arms traffic cops for the United States and El Salvador. As one
contra source said, “If that’s what the CIA told Congress, they forgot to tell us.”^®
When the CIA told the House Intelligence Committee in February 1982 that it
was not trying to overthrow any government, one committee member asserted, “We
didn’t believe them.”’^ Congressional oversight was marked by the willing suspen¬
sion of disbelief. Unfortunately, most Americans weren’t in on the act.
The overseers overlooked it when the first major contra action took place in
November 1981 on the eastern side of Nicaragua—far from El Salvador.
Semi-Secret War 101
Miskito Front
The Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua presented Washington with familiar targets
of opportunity: ethnic minorities. Two decades earlier, Washington exploited
Hmong tribespeople (called “Meo,” a historical derogatory term, by foreigners) in
its effort to control Laos, another “sideshow” to the war in Vietnam. Prohibited from
using U.S. military personnel by a 1962 agreement recognizing Laotian neutrality,
Washington intervened covertly via the CIA.^°
The United States built a clandestine Hmong army led by Vang Pao, an opium
dealer and former French mercenary. The secret war’s secret air arm was the CIA
proprietary. Air America.^^ By the time the 1973 Paris Peace accords brought a U.S.
withdrawal from Indochina, a third of the Hmong population had died. Thousands
ended up in Thai refugee camps. Thousands more have resettled in the United
States, including Vang Pao.
Many alumni from the Laos campaign reunited in the war on Nicaragua.
Operating out of Udorn Air Force Base in Thailand, Richard Secord directed the Air
Wing of the joint Pentagon-CIA Special Operations Group. Before taking charge of
the air operation himself, Secord served as deputy to Harry “Heinie” Aderholt, who
now heads the Air Commando Association, a private group aiding the contras. Ted
Shackley was the CIA station chief in Vientiane, Laos and then Saigon. Shackley’s
deputy Tom Clines was the CIA chief at Vang Pao’s Long Tieng base which served
as the CIA headquarters for northern Laos as well as an opium and heroin traffick¬
ing center.^^ Donald Gregg, national security adviser to Vice President George Bush
and before that head of the NSC Intelligence Directorate, served under Shackley in
Vietnam. Felix Rodriguez, a manager of the contra supply operation in El Salvador,
worked for Shackley and Gregg in Vietnam. Eugene Hasenfus was a cargo kicker
for Air America years before his fateful hitch with Southern Air Transport. John
Singlaub oversaw secret missions in Laos as commander of the joint Special Opera¬
tions Group. Then Lieutenant Oliver North reportedly served under Singlaub’s com¬
mand, running paramilitary operations with the Hmong.^^
Air America transported the CIA and Hmong officers who “offered the [Hmong]
villagers guns, rice and money in exchange for recruits” and kept the secret army
and loyal villagers supplied. “The millions of AID dollars that Congress thought it
was appropriating for civilian help were mostly being used for support of the secret
army, although tens of thousands of refugees were also fed. Deceiving the U.S. Con¬
gress was considered a legitimate tactic of the secret war; of course, the enemy knew
exactly what was going on, but the CIA was determined that the American public
should not share this knowledge. Air America spoke openly of its humanitarian
drops of rice, blankets, and medicine, but did not mention what the men called
‘hard’ rice drops—ammunition, grenades, bombs, and weapons to the secret army.”^'*
In the contra war, AID’S “soft rice”—food, clothing, boots, etc.—is also known as
“humanitarian” aid.
Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast does not share the history or culture of the rest of
the country. The once British-dominated Atlantic Coast, home to about 10 percent
of the Nicaraguan population, maintains strong Indian and Afro-Caribbean tradi¬

tions, conservatism fostered by the influential Protestant Moravian Church and deep-
rooted hostility to the “Spaniard” majority. The largely rural Miskito Indians (about
67,000 people) dominate Northern Zelaya (renamed Atlantico Norte in 1987)—part
of the Mosquitia extending into Honduras. The English-speaking Creole Blacks
(about 26,000 people) reside mainly in and around the port towns of Southern
Zelaya (renamed Atlantico Sur). There are smaller Sumu, Garifuna and Rama Indian
communities. The majority of people on the Atlantic Coast are Mestizos of mixed
Indian and Hispanic origin (over 182,000 people).
In 1980, a new indigenous mass organization, MISURASATA (Unity of the Mis¬
kito, Sumu, Rama and Sandinistas), took a seat in the Council of State. With the
political opening provided by the revolution, MISURASATA launched an increasing¬
ly ambitious campaign for Atlantic Coast autonomy. Brooklyn Rivera, an anti-San-
dinista Miskito leader, later observed, “The fervor of the revolutionary triumph
injected into the soul, heart and atmosphere that everybody could express them¬
selves and participate. Before there was no incentive.There had been almost no
revolutionary action on the Atlantic Coast and few residents belonged to the FSLN.
While the Nicaraguan government was responsive to demands for bilingual educa¬
tion and open to the granting of communal land titles following Indian tradition, it
was alarmed by MISURASATA’s claim to 38 percent of the national territory based
on a study of native land titles.
In late February 1981, 33 MISURASATA leaders were detained and accused
of fomenting a separatist uprising. All except Steadman Fagoth were released within
two weeks. Nicaraguan officials said that Fagoth was conducting subversive activities
to destabilize the government under a counterrevolutionary plot known as Plan 81
and made public evidence that Fagoth had infiltrated the student movement as an
informer for Somoza.
Tensions exploded when four Miskitos and four Sandinista soldiers were killed
as soldiers attempted to arrest MISURASATA leaders in the community of Prin-
zapolka. As news of the arrests spread and rumors transformed the four Miskito
deaths into mass assassinations, Miskitos began crossing the Rio Coco into Hon¬
duras. “Blood had been spilled,” wrote one analyst, “and the Miskitu movement as¬
sumed a millenarian mystique; rumors abounded that the young Miskitu men were
arming to return, and that the United States was going to recognize ‘secret’
nineteenth-century treaties between the Miskitu king and the British Crown guaran¬
teeing nationhood for the Moskitia.”^^
In an effort to promote dialogue and conciliation, the Nicaraguan government
granted the popular Steadman Fagoth a conditional release in May to accept a
scholarship for study abroad. Instead Fagoth went into exile, linking up with the
September 15th Legion in Honduras. Some 1,000 Miskitos joined him. Fagoth
dropped the Sandinista part of MISURASATA, forming the MISURA guerrilla force.
He allied MISURA with the FDN and broadcast over the September 15th radio, call¬
ing on Miskitos to participate in a holy war against the “Sandino-communists.”
The “Red Christmas” offensive began in November 1981 with contra attacks
in the Rio Coco area. According to the Nicaraguan government, the plan was to cap-
Semi-Secret War 103
ture territory on the Atlantic Coast and establish a provisional government that would
be supported militarily by the United States. On December 20, seven government
soldiers in San Carlos were tortured, killed and mutilated. Some 60 or more people,
including civilians, died during the two-month offensive.^^
Mima Cunningham, Nicaragua’s only Miskito doctor, and Regina Lewis, a Mis-
kito nurse, were kidnapped on December 28 outside the hospital in Bilwaskarma
by about twenty contras; the hospital was ransacked and had to be closed. Mima
Cunningham recounted multiple gang rapes beginning after they were taken to a
house on the Rio Coco: “they had us there for seven hours. During those hours we
were raped for the first time. While they were raping us, they were chanting slogans
like, ‘Christ yesterday, Christ today, Christ tomorrow.’”
Cunningham and Lewis were taken across the river to a training camp in Hon¬
duras where their captors, Miskitos and former members of Somoza’s elite EEBI unit,
boasted of their support from the United States. They “said that they had Americans
who came in and trained them for these camps that were deeper in Honduras. They
said that they received help from the Honduran army. That they would come and
help them transport their things. They were very proud of the help that they were
receiving from the U.S. Government. They offered us Camel cigarettes, for example,
as a proof that they were smoking good cigarettes. And they said they were getting
canned food, good clothes and things like that, as a way to tell us why they were
fighting.”
After two or three hours in the camp, recalled Cunningham, “They told us that
they were going to kill us, but they wanted to kill us in Nicaragua to leave our
bodies as an example to the other people who work with the Nicaraguan govern¬
ment. . .On our way back we were raped again, by all the ones who were taking us
to the village.”
Inside Nicaragua, Cunningham and Lewis were released, but the contras told
them to leave the Atlantic Coast because they did not want doctors there.^ In 1984,
Mima Cunningham became government minister for Northern Zelaya.
In January 1982, the Nicaraguan government responded to the military threat
in a controversial move designed both to protect the civilian population and deny
FDN-MISURA fighters a civilian base of support. It relocated 8,500 Miskitos and
Sumus from the Rio Coco region 50 miles south to a resettlement camp called Tasba
Pri (Free Land). The ill-chosen name was a sign that the government had a long
way to go in distinguishing between just Indian grievances and pro-contra seces-
sionism. Sandinista soldiers burned structures and crops in the evacuated area to
deny them to the contras. Another 10,000 people crossed the river into Honduras.
The U.S. government seized on the relocation to accuse Nicaragua of genocide.
Haig dramatically produced a photo he said showed Miskito bodies being burned
by Sandinista troops. The French magazine LeFigaro, source of the photo, corrected
him, explaining it showed the Red Cross burning corpses of people killed by
Somoza’s National Guard on the Pacific Coast in 1978.
Appearing on Public Television’s MacNeil-Lehrer show with Miguel D’Escoto,
Jeane Kirkpatrick asserted that “some 250,000 Mestizo Indians [sic]—are being so
badly repressed that concentration camps have been built on the coast of Nicaragua
in the effort to try to imprison them, to eliminate their opposition.”
“I don’t know what country she is talking about,” responded D’Escoto, deny¬
ing her allegations.^^
The human rights organization Americas Watch found Steadman Fagoth’s
charges of nearly 300 Miskito deaths and thousands of disappearances during the
relocation to be baseless.^ The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(lACHR) found only one incident of noncombatant killing by Sandinista forces. On
December 23, between fourteen and seventeen Miskito prisoners were shot in
Leimus in retaliation for the San Carlos killings. Americas Watch substantiated one
subsequent case: in Walpa Siksa in 1982, seven Miskito youths were killed by San¬
dinista soldiers “who were later severely punished by their officers.”^’ Over the next
two years the government significantly altered the training and composition of the
Atlantic Coast security forces; by 1984, 70 percent were from the Coast.
The relocation of citizens during wartime has an infamous precedent in the
United States. In February 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive
order giving the army the power to arrest all Japanese-American men, women and
children on the West Coast. Without warrants or court hearings, 120,000 people
were forcibly taken from their homes to detention camps where they were im¬
prisoned for three to four years. Many permanently lost their homes and property.
Over four decades later during debate leading to passage of a bill to apologize and
partially compensate detention camp survivors. Senator Spark Matsunaga of Hawaii
emotionally recalled how an elderly Japanese man playing with his grandson was
machinegunned to death by a guard when he went to retrieve a ball between the
camp fences.^^ Racism was apparent in that Japanese-Americans were suspected en
masse as spies and saboteurs, while German-Americans were not rounded up. In
fact, there was not a single case of Japanese-American espionage or sabotage.
While Pearl Harbor was an exceptional attack on U.S. territory (Hawaii, lo¬
cated about 2,400 miles southwest of San Francisco, did not become a state until
1959), Red Christmas was just the first of many assaults aimed at taking territory on
Nicaragua’s mainland and overthrowing the Nicaraguan government. Though it
criticized the conduct of the Atlantic Coast relocation, Americas Watch found that it
was not unreasonable for the Nicaraguan government to relocate civilians away
from a border area to facilitate the defense of the country’s territorial integrity. The
lACHR concurred. Over the next two years, conditions improved and the Tasba Pri
settlements were transformed into villages with substantial housing, education,
health care and employment opportunities. Three churches were built in the main
village of Sumubila: Moravian, Catholic and another Protestant denomination. Some
Miskitos left Tasba Pri for Managua, Puerto Cabezas or other villages on the Atlan¬
tic Coast. Remaining residents were granted title to their houses and small plots of
land, and other land was farmed collectively.^'*
Whatever the actual conditions of the relocation, it was a traumatic event that
exacerbated Atlantic Coast hostilities. On December 1, 1983, the government sig¬
naled a concerted effort to recognize past wrongdoing and improve relations by
declaring a general amnesty for Miskito prisoners and fighters. Washington has con-
Semi-Secret War 105
sistently attempted to sabotage the process of negotiating peace and autonomy for
the Atlantic Coast.
Rigging Hvunan Rights

Americas Watch charged the Reagan administration with degrading the human
rights cause by using “human rights criticism of Nicaragua as an instrument of war¬
fare.” This is especially apparent in regard to the Miskitos. In a May 9, 1984 speech,
Reagan repeated charges that had been thoroughly discredited: “There has been an
attempt to wipe out an entire culture, the Miskito Indians, thousands of whom have
been slaughtered or herded into detention camps where they have been starved
and abused.”
America’s Watch reported: “Unlike several other Latin American governments
that have come under harsh criticism (though not from this administration), the
[Nicaraguan government] has responded to human rights organizations with efforts
to improve the situation. Equally as significant as the administration’s strident com¬
plaints against Nicaragua is its silence regarding these improvements. In early 1984,
for example, the [Nicaraguan government] conducted several investigations of
abuses in remote areas, which resulted in the prosecution and appropriate punish¬
ment of members of the security forces. In the most important of these cases, forty-
four security agents and civilians were prosecuted for several cases of murder, rape,
theft, and other abuses that had taken place in a border region of Matagalpa and
Jinotega. Thirteen of them received heavy sentences...In April 1984, an Army sub¬
lieutenant was sentenced to eighteen years in prison for raping a Miskito woman
in the village of Lapan. In regard to the Miskito minority, there has been a clear ef¬
fort to improve relations and resolve past conflicts.
Reagan’s use of human rights as an instrument of warfare has meant portray¬
ing Nicaragua as the worst violator of human rights in Central America, when, even
at its low point on the Atlantic Coast in 1982, the Nicaraguan human rights situation
has been far better than in El Salvador (discussed earlier) and Guatemala.
Guatemalan state terrorism under General Romeo Lucas Garcia was discussed in
the previous chapter. During the dictatorial reign of General Efrain Rios Montt, from
March 1982 to August 1983, thousands more Indians were massacred (Indians make
up a majority of the Guatemalan population). Even the conservative Guatemalan
newspaper, El Grafico, denounced the “genocidal annihilation that is taking place
in the Indian zones of the country.”
Rios Montt spoke openly of his murderous policies, announcing on
Guatemalan television that he had “declared a state of siege so that we could kill
legally.” On December 5, 1982, following a meeting with Reagan, Rios Montt told
reporters, “We have no scorched-earth policy. We have a policy of scorched Com¬
munists.”
Reagan officials stooped to new lows of disinformation in their appeals for
military and economic aid for Guatemala. Contrary to all evidence. Ambassador
Frederick Chapin told members of Congress that “most of the killings in the rural
areas have been done by insurgents.” When asked about reports of massacres of
peasants, he insisted “those incidents simply haven’t taken place.” He compared the
civil patrol system—^where Indian men and boys are forcibly conscripted into un¬
paid service in the army’s pacification campaign—to “the American frontier, with
armed citizens defending themselves.”
After meeting Rios Montt on December 4, 1982, Reagan called him “a man of
great personal integrity and commitment” who “wants to improve the quality of life
for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice” and is “totally dedicated to
democracy.” As for human rights criticism, Reagan said Rios Montt was getting a
“bum rap.”
When Rios Montt was deposed by General Humberto Mejia Victores in August
1983, the Reagan administration belatedly acknowledged some past abuses—^but
only to make the case that under Mejia human rights conditions were improving.^
Orwell would be impressed with the Reagan administration’s ongoing rewrites of
history.
Tightening the Screws

In a speech to the OAS on December 4, 1981, Haig accused Nicaragua of
militarization and interventionism, and said the United States would take action to
prevent any nation in Central America from becoming a “platform for terror and
war.” But, he claimed, “We do not close the doors to the search for proper rela¬
tions.” In Managua, Daniel Ortega responded that the door Haig left open was “so
small that in order to pass through it we would have to do so on our knees.
Hector Fabian, a Cuban exile leader training contras in the Florida Everglades,
predicted later in December that “within three months the situation in Nicaragua
will blow up.” He said that at least 100 trainees had infiltrated into Nicaragua. “Under
the Carter and Nixon Administrations, what we were doing was a crime,” explained
Fabian, the former New York director of operations for Cuban exile terrorist leader
Orlando Bosch. “With the Reagan Administration, no one has bothered us for 10
months.”
“As long as they don’t hurt anybody and as long as they don’t actually con¬
spire to invade in a specific way,” the exiles are not breaking the law, said Assis¬
tant Secretary of State Enders. “If you attack a country or assist in an attack on a
country, or conspire to do this, all these things are illegal. However, it is not illegal
to have military exercises, guys running around tlie fields with guns, or to say ‘Uncle
Sam, we’re ready when you’re ready—^wink, wink—and here we go.’
Nicaragua protested U.S. aggression to Washington and international forums.
It also sought defensive armaments from abroad. On January 8, 1982, France an¬
nounced that it would sell $15.8 million in nonoffensive military equipment to
Nicaragua and train ten Nicaraguan naval officers and pilots. The small arms pack-
Semi-Secret War 107
age included two coastal patrol boats, two helicopters, rocket launchers and rock¬
et rounds, and a fleet of transport trucks.
The nominally socialist Mitterand government was vehemently anti-Soviet.
French officials said they wanted to offer Nicaragua an alternative to Cuban and
Soviet military aid. “When a country such as Nicaragua applies to France for aid,”
explained a French foreign ministry official, “it is often because it is seeking to es¬
cape dependency on one of the superpowers.” U.S. policy was “the worst possible—
designed to push the junta right into the arms of Moscow.
The U.S. response was harsh. “The French are pulling the rug out from under
us,” said one Pentagon official.'^ Haig told French Foreign Minister Claude Cheys-
son that the deal was “a stab in the back.”^^
Relentless U.S. pressure brought results. The first deliveries of French military
equipment were stalled until July.'*^ There would be no new arms sales. Wrote one
analyst; “France, with the world’s third largest arms export industry, a popular new
left-wing government and a history of relative independence from Washington,
proved unable to fulfill Nicaragua’s hopes of Western arms supplies. For the San-
dinistas, the lesson was clear. Henceforth, Nicaraguan diplomacy, trade and aid in¬
itiatives would have to factor in the Soviet bloc’s exclusive role as supplier of
Nicaragua’s defense needs—^which escalated rapidly as Washington’s preference for
a military solution became ever more apparent.The only other defense agree¬
ment with a Western European country was a $5.5 million 1983 contract with Hol¬
land to improve port defenses at Corinto.'*'*
In January 1982, Nicaraguan security captured UDN member William Bal-
todano and thwarted a conspiracy to blow up the national oil refinery and cement
factory and attack Sandinista leaders. In his confession, Baltodano implicated the
CIA, the Argentine military, Honduran special security forces, the Venezuelan Em¬
bassy in Nicaragua, the Salvadoran Embassy in Costa Rica and Jose Esteban Gon¬
zales, who was head of the Nicaraguan Permanent Commission on Human Rights
until he went into exile the previous September. Arms were purchased in Miami.
The United States finally applied the Neutrality Act on January 18, but not
against the contras. A small group of Haitian refugees, conspiring against the
Duvalier dictatorship, were charged with violating the act in a Miami Court. The
next day, the New York Times editorialized: “What is illegal for Haitian refugees is
no less illegal for Nicaraguan exiles...The letter and spirit of the Neutrality Act are
offended by adventurers who boast that hundreds of recruits have already been
airdropped into Nicaragua to fight against the left-wing Sandinista government. By
comparison, the prosecuted Haitians are hapless romantics. Their leaking boat was
seized just before it sank; their revolutionary arsenal consisted of 6 guns and 20 pipe
bombs.”
That same month a State Department spokeswoman confirmed that the Reagan
administration would oppose any Nicaraguan credit or aid request before any in¬
ternational lending institution.'*^ Already the United States had blocked a World Bank
loan to replace fishing boats taken from Nicaragua by fleeing Somocistas. On January
14, the World Bank approved a $l6 million loan to Nicaragua for municipal
reconstruction—assisting improvements in storm drainage, street paving and light-
ing in low-income neighborhoods—over U.S. objection. Over the next year, World
Bank loans were shut off completely."^^
While administration ideology dictated an economic blockade of Nicaragua,
ideology dictated economic largesse for El Salvador, Criteria changed accordingly.
Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs on February
2, Enders defended the administration’s decision to certify El Salvador as eligible for
aid despite “a troubled” human rights situation. Nicaragua again became the excuse
for state terror in El Salvador—ând the decoy for denying that the Salvadoran guer¬
rillas had widespread popular support.
“There is no mistaking that the decisive battle for Central America is under¬
way in El Salvador,” claimed Enders. “If after Nicaragua, El Salvador is captured by
a violent minority, who in Central America would not live in fear? How long would
it be before major strategic United States interests—^the Panama Canal, sea lanes, oil
supplies—^were at risk?”'*®
Two days later, Enders told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “the
clandestine infiltration of arms and munitions into El Salvador is again approaching
the high levels recorded before last year’s final offensive.” The made-in-Washington
charge was contradicted by the absence of evidence on the ground. The Honduran
Army had no evidence of arms shipments through Honduras,'*^ Faced with doubts
about the overland route, the administration said arms were coming by sea or air.
As Raymond Bonner observed, “even the intelligence agencies couldn’t agree. While
the CIA would be reporting that there was an increase in the flow by air, another
agency would be saying no, there is a decrease in the air traffic, but an increase in
arms coming by sea. Tt was just ludicrous,’ said a source” with access to the intel¬
ligence reports of the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and National Security
Agency (NSA).
As Bonner explained, the United States “has the most sophisticated surveil¬
lance equipment and methods in the world, including earth-orbiting satellites that
can read the license plate of a moving car. From its communications center at Fort
Meade, Maryland, NSA spies eavesdrop on conversations between tank commanders
in the Iranian desert. In El Salvador the Reagan administration has unleashed a mas¬
sive intelligence-gathering operation, spending at least $50 million during just the
first two years. More than 150 CIA operatives roamed through the tiny country, in¬
filtrating peasant organizations and guerrilla groups. Even the Defense Department’s
highly secret Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) has agents there.” In addition, the
contras were deployed along the Nicaraguan-Honduran border, the CIA “financed
Honduran gunboats to operate in the Gulf of Fonseca in order to halt the arms flow”
and “a sophisticated eavesdropping post was established on a small island in the
gulf.”
With all that what was the evidence? “Two or three small planes crashed in El
Salvador in late 1980 and early 1981, and a semitrailer with a false roof, in which
100 automatic rifles were secreted, was seized on the Honduran-Salvadoran bor¬
der.” The truck was cited often as evidence of arms shipments from Nicaragua; the
White Paper contained a photograph of it. But according to the Honduran govern¬
ment, the truck had originated in Costa Rica, not Nicaragua. There wasn’t much else.
Semi-Secret War 109
said Bonner. “The reason, quite simply, was that ‘you’re just hearing bullshit; the in¬
telligence just doesn’t support the charges,’ as one intelligence source put it.”^
Shortly after Enders’ testimony to Congress, Haig—in finest Haigspeak—
refused to rule out the use of military force in Central America: “There are no cur¬
rent plans for the use of American forces. On the other hand and as a matter of
principle, the sterility of drawing lines around America’s potential options constitutes
the promulgation of roadways for those who are seeking to move against Ajnerica’s
vital interests.”^’
A bomb exploded at Managua’s international airport on February 21, killing
four baggage handlers and seriously wounding three others. That same day on a
visit to Managua, Mexican President Lopez Portillo launched an effort to stimulate
negotiations over the three “knots” of tension: El Salvador, Nicaragua and U.S. rela¬
tions with Cuba. The Nicaraguan and Cuban governments and the Salvadoran rebels
all responded positively. Daniel Ortega announced a five-point peace plan includ¬
ing negotiations with Washington, nonaggression pacts with Central American
countries and joint border patrols with Honduras and Costa Rica.^^
Three weeks later, Lopez Portillo lamented that the Caribbean Basin had been
converted into a “frontier” between the United States and the Soviet Union. “The
security of the United States will not be resolved in Central America,” he said, “but
rather by reaching a negotiated understanding with the Soviet Union.” He said that
Nicaragua was building up its armed forces “because it is afraid” of its neighbors
and of the United States. “The people of the United States have a right to security,
but the peoples of small poor countries also have their rights. Why not recognize
them?””
The Reagan administration did not even pay lip service to the Mexican initia¬
tive until Congress forced its hand; 106 House members sent Reagan a letter urging
him to accept the Mexican offer for negotiations. As one U.S. official explained, “We
were cool to the initiative from the beginning, but we were effectively ambushed
by Congress and public opinion. We had to agree to negotiate or appear un¬
reasonable.””
In April, the administration showed its disdain for serious negotiations by con¬
ditioning talks on Nicaragua making internal political changes. “At that point,” said
Deputy Assistant Secretary Craig Johnstone, “we elevated democratic pluralism [s/c]
in Nicaragua to be the sine qua non of restoring relations.”” U.S.-Nicaragua contacts
sputtered along, explained analyst William LeoGrande, “with Nicaragua constantly
urging that negotiations be started and the United States refusing. Finally, in August
the administration abandoned even this pretext; Nicaragua’s diplomatic note of
August never received a reply.””
slide Show
The March 10, 1982 Washington Post and New York Times front-page head¬
lines were similar: “U.S. Shows Photos To Back Charge of Nicaragua Buildup” iPosf)‘,
“U.S. Offers Photos of Bases to Prove Nicaragua Threat” (Times). The accompany¬
ing photo was the same: it showed Defense Intelligence Agency Deputy Director
John Hughes pointing to a slide of a reconnaissance photo of a Nicarag:uan military
base. Hughes’ presence added to the drama; he had conducted the briefings during
the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The slide was highlighted with such labels as “Soviet-
Style Physical Training Area” and “Soviet-Style Obstacle Course.” The New York Times
ran two full pages of transcript from the briefing.
The front pages were different in one respect. The Washington Post ran a re¬
lated story with a much smaller headline: “U.S. Approves Covert Plan in Nicaragua.”
The next day’s New York Times headline gave the official story: “U.S. Reportedly
Sending Millions to Foster Moderates in Nicaragua.”
At the slide briefing, CIA Deputy Director Bobby Inman declared, “It’s time to
get some concern in this country about their [Nicaragua’s] military buildup. It’s vast¬
ly beyond any defensive need.”^^ Not surprisingly, the Nicaraguans didn’t see it that
way. As Sergio Ramirez put it, “When Mr. Haig is saying every day that they are
going to bomb us and attack us and blockade us, how can they turn around and
ask us not to defend ourselves?”^ The slide show was evidence of detailed U.S.
aerial surveillance; the destroyers off Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast showed the block¬
ade threat was not shallow.
The briefing made a number of specific charges, down to the most comical
details. Pointing to one slide, Hughes remarked, “There’s the Soviet physical.. .train¬
ing area, situated here, with chin-bars and other types of equipment to exercise the
forces, and a running track.” Pointing to slides of tanks, he said, “Here is the T-54/55
tank here, with a hundred-milUmeter gun, in the open.. .If you look closely you can
see the gun turret, tubes in the turret.”
The briefing also included slides showing Rio Coco villages before and after
the relocation, alleging that “many Indian villages along the northeast border have
been demolished by the Sandinistas’ security forces. And 23,000 are now homeless.”
One slide was marked “Destroyed Church.”
In response to reporters’ questions about the destruction of Miskito villages,
Inman concocted a Nicaraguan-Cuban military plot: “You saw the pictures of the
expansion of the airfields, over in that coast, the area near the Indian area. If they’ve
got any plans for movement of Cuban troops, Cuban support, supplies, or even
simply additional support forces for any involvement outside Nicaragua over into
that area, that’s clearly the staging area that they would want to use.” He insisted
there was “no confirming evidence” that cross-border raids from Honduras had been
conducted in that area. “I wouldn’t discount that there had been one or more small
raids, but certainly we would have found evidence of the large-scale engagements
that were put out in the press.”
Asked about reported covert action against Nicaragua, Inman replied “I would
suggest to you that $19 million or $29 million isn’t going to buy you much of any
kind these days, and certainly not against that kind of a military force.” Left un¬
spoken was the White House wish that the military buildup provoked by its covert
war would prompt Congress to support increased military aid for Central American
allies and the contras.
. Semi-Secret War 111
Like the February 1981 White Paper, the slide briefing was a disinformation
exercise designed to drum up public support for administration policy. Slides were
shown of airfields near Managua, Puerto Cabezas and Bluefields allegedly being im¬
proved to accommodate Soviet aircraft. Nicaraguan Agriculture Minister Jaime
Wheelock, who was in the United States at the time, refuted the portrayal of airstrip
improvements as proof of Soviet-Cuban designs on Central America. He explained
that the feasibility study for lengthening the airstrips was prepared under Somoza
in 1976 by a U.S. company.^^
Retired Marine Lt. Colonel John Buchanan made extended tours of Central
America between April and August 1982. He testified to Congress “that a
smokescreen is being laid and a military debacle is in the offing.” Referring to the
March briefing, he said “that the capabilities of the Sandinistas have been deliberate¬
ly exaggerated by the Reagan administration...As it is with the T-55 [tank], so it is
with many other elements of the Sandinista arsenal. Many of the weapons are either
ill-suited to the region, outmoded, or in a state of disrepair. This is particularly true
of the logistical infrastructure needed to sustain a protracted war. There is only one
oil refinery—highly vulnerable to attack.”
Buchanan refuted the idea of a Nicaraguan tank invasion of Honduras, ex¬
plaining the features of the tank and of the terrain which make such a scenario
ludicrous. The tank is a mechanical disaster ill-suited for tropical combat. Given the
rugged terrain, with steep mountains and narrow valleys, the only realistic route is
the Pan American Highway (Choluteca corridor) where the tanks would be sitting
ducks for Honduran (and U.S.) airpower.^
Senior U.S. intelligence officials for Central America also discredited possible
scenarios for a Nicaraguan invasion of Honduras when they briefed reporter Allan
Naim. “There’s no real good way to do it,” said one official.^' Nicaraguan statements
and actions made clear that they didn’t want “to do it,” period. Managua tried
repeatedly to set up joint patrols with Honduras to monitor the border.
Lt. Colonel Buchanan visited many of the “military installations” that were the
subject of the slide briefing and pointed out numerous gaps between photo images
and on-the-ground reality. For the record, he “saw little significant difference be¬
tween a ‘Soviet-style obstacle course’ and the obstacle courses I ran as a young
Marine.” He sketched the few significant military targets in Nicaragua: “port facilities
at Corinto, Puerto Cabezas and Bluefields; a couple of oil tanks at Corinto; one oil
refinery near Managua; four airfields, only one of which is really significant, a tank
park and 49 military garrisons,” most of them tiny. “For example, the ‘military
garrison’ near Somoto, where I stopped for lunch, was comprised of two small build¬
ings and a one-vehicle lean-to maintenance shed.” As for Managua, it “doesn’t offer
much of a target either; after the 1972 earthquake most of Managua already resembles
a bombed-out city.”
Buchanan explained that Nicaraguan and Honduran armed forces had dif¬
ferent strengths and weaknesses; Nicaragua had a larger army, for example, and
Honduras far superior air power, A “projected U.S.-financed arms buildup in Hon¬
duras could tip this balance, and would likely elicit a countervailing reaction from
Nicaragua. In both cases, poor nations are being forced to divert scarce resources
from social and economic development into costly and increasingly lethal military
hardware.” A war between Nicaragua and Honduras, Buchanan concluded, would
be a “war without winners.
Soviet military aid to Nicaragua increased gradually between 1979 and 1982
as the contra war intensified. The U.S. government’s own intelligence figures sub¬
stantiate this point, which the Reagan administration tries so hard to distort. In 1979,
Nicaragua imported $5 million worth of Soviet-bloc military supplies, according to
U.S. intelligence sources. During 1980 there was a small increase to 850 metric tons
of material worth $6 to $7 million. In 1981, Soviet-bloc arms shipments rose to 900
tons, with a U.S.-estimated pricetag of $39 to $45 million. Most of the tonnage was
accounted for by 25 or more secondhand Soviet T-54 and T-55 tanks from Algeria,
weighing 32 metric tons each. In November 1981, the Nicaraguan Army stood at an
estimated 25,000 soldiers—larger than the Honduran Army, but smaller than El
Salvador’s.
The first real jump in Soviet-bloc military imports came in 1982, amid inten¬
sifying contra attacks and U.S. threats, and after France and other Western countries
closed their doors to Nicaraguan requests for military aid. In 1982, Soviet-bloc
military imports totaled an estimated 6,700 metric tons worth $80 million, accord¬
ing to administration sources
The House Intelligence Committee discussed the March briefing and a clas¬
sified followup in a September 1982 report. It concluded that the public briefing
format, structured around evidence of increased offensive capability, “obscured
DIA’s analytic judgement on the difficult, but essential, questions about the sig¬
nificance of the build-up: what do Nicaragua’s leaders intend to do with it, and what
is the likelihood of Nicaragua’s initiating various sorts of offensive operations against
its neighbors? These issues were addressed directly in a separate, classified briefing,
whose analytic judgements about Nicaragua’s intentions were quite distinct from
those that appeared implicit in the briefing on the build-up.”^ In other words, DIA
admitted a defensive purpose to the buildup.
Even Southern Command chief General Wallace Nutting did not lend much
credence to administration rhetoric about a Sandinista threat to Nicaragua’s neigh¬
bors: “They are interested first, I think, in consolidating internal control and second¬
ly upon (sic) defending their revolution and perhaps only thirdly in using it (their
armed forces) in an aggressive way.”^^
The administration followed up the slide show on March 12 with what it
thought would be first-hand confirmation of Cuban-Nicaraguan export of revolu¬
tion. The State Department presented Orlando Jose Tardencillas, a Nicaraguan cap¬
tured the previous year while fighting with the guerrillas in El Salvador. U.S. officials
expected him to say he had been trained in Cuba and Ethiopia and sent to El Sal¬
vador by the Nicaraguan government.
At the press conference, Tardencillas shocked his handlers by saying, “An of¬
ficial of the U.S. Embassy told me that they needed to demonstrate the presence of
Cubans in El Salvador.” Physically and psychologically tortured in El Salvador before
being brought to the United States, Tardencillas explained: “They gave me an op¬
tion. They said I could come here or face certain death. All my previous statements
Semi-Secret War 113
about training in Ethiopia and Cuba were false.” The Nicaraguan government neither
sent him to El Salvador nor contacted him there. Instead, the nineteen-year-old self-
described revolutionary joined the Salvadoran guerrillas on his own initiative in April
1980. He said he never saw another Nicaraguan—or Cuban—^while in El Salvador.
The next day, Tardencillas was released to the Nicaraguan Embassy and
returned home. “It was a disaster,” said a senior U.S. official. “I don’t know whether
to laugh or cry.”^
It wasn’t the only public relations disaster. Days earlier, Haig had told Con¬
gress that a “Nicaraguan military man” had been captured in El Salvador. Mexico
quickly discredited Haig’s account, saying the man was a student in Mexico travel¬
ing home to Nicaragua overland through El Salvador. Another administration plan,
to reveal the “sordid backgrounds” of Sandinista leaders, was shelved. “It turned out
to be not such a hot idea,” said one Reagan aide. “There wasn’t any dirt.”^^
The week before the slide briefing, the Washington Post ran an unusually
candid story titled, “U.S. Diplomats in Central America See Gap Between Policy,
Facts.” The “diplomats say they are particularly worried about what they perceive
as a tendency of the senior decision-makers to force what is often inconclusive and
possibly misleading information to match the policy rather than tailoring the policy
to the facts.” In the words of one diplomat, the United States is “making policy on
the basis of our own propaganda.”
Unfortunately, the slide briefing’s propaganda success outweighed the PR
failures. And inside Nicaragua a new stage of the war was beginning.
Blowup
On March 14, CIA trained saboteurs from Honduras blew up two key bridges
in northern Nicaragua: the Rio Negro bridge, near the town of Somotillo in Chinan-
dega Province and the Rico Coco bridge near Ocotal in Nueva Segovia.
“Who lives?” shouted one of the commandos seconds before the Rio Negro
bridge exploded. “Somoza!” the others responded,^®
The White House refused to confirm or deny Nicaragua’s charges of CIA in¬
volvement. Appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Meese asserted, “The
United States is not in the habit of engaging in sinister plots. Beyond that, however,
it is our policy not to either confirm or deny such statements as that.”^^
In May, CIA officials confirmed U.S. involvement in the sinister plot. They told
the House Intelligence Committee that the bridges were destroyed by a CIA trained
and equipped demolition team. As recounted in the Washington Post, “This confir¬
mation brought no objection from the committee because the bridges were seen as
supporting illicit arms traffic from Nicaragua to guerrillas in El Salvador, according
to House Committee members. We had to do that,’ one member said.”
Committee members reportedly “questioned the CIA officials at length about
the arms they had interdicted by this time and about whether they had discovered
any Cuban military patrols, which they expected to find in the Nicaraguan
countryside. The CIA officials said they had not actually captured or blown up any
caches of arms or ammunition but that the presence of the paramilitary teams in the
arms-trafficking corridors was dramatically reducing the flow of arms to El Salvador.’^
The CIA officials reported that the contra “force stood at about 1,100 men and that
training was going well. No Cuban units, however, had been sighted.”^® The over¬
sight charade continued.
Nicaragua didn’t need CIA confirmation to recognize the bridge demolitions
as salvos in an intensifying war. The government placed its armed forces on full
alert and declared a state of emergency which mandated prior censorship of military
information, restricted the right to strike and limited freedom of movement in the
war zones. U.S. officials enthusiastically denounced the state of emergency they had
consciously provoked as a sign of Nicaraguan totalitarianism. There were no such
denunciations of the much harsher state of siege renewed regularly in El Salvador
since 1980. There were no reminders that every government, no matter how
democratic, has employed extraordinary measures in wartime, including the United
States.
Whatever one thinks of the emergency measures Nicaragua has imposed, U.S.
hypocrisy in denouncing them should be evident. Washington’s goal is to have
people judge Nicaragua not only with a double standard, but with a formula in
which the war does not appear as a factor. Washington points to emergency
measures in Nicaragua to justify support for the contras; then it wants you to forget
the contra war in judging Nicaraguan behavior.
Projecting Paranoia
As word of mercenary recruitment for missions in Central America circulated
at gun shows and other meeting grounds for soldiers of fortune, CBS Evening News
reported on March 22 that a former Green Beret was approached by his ex-com¬
manding officer “with an offer that he finally refused”: a $50,000 contract for six
months’ employment, including six weeks of training in Central America followed
by infiltration or air drops inside Nicaragua “to do the same kind of thing he did as
a Green Beret during the Vietnam war.” His family would receive lifetime benefits
if he did not survive. The veteran’s wife said that “some of the men involved are in
the [military] service already.” CBS “learned that they are being offered financial
bonuses and may be pulled out of their current units to take part in the enterprise.”
The “mission, which is said to have White House approval, is scheduled to go for¬
ward beginning in April.” Neither the CIA nor the Defense Department would com¬
ment on the report.
Daniel Ortega brought Nicaragua’s case to the UN Security Council on March
25. “We are willing to improve the climate of relations with the United States on the
basis of mutual respect and unconditional recognition of our right to self-determina¬
tion,” said Ortega. He reiterated Nicaragua’s support for bilateral and regional peace
negotiations and called on the United States to put a stop to using Honduras “as a
Semi-Secret War 115
base for armed aggressions and terrorist operations”; to counterrevolutionary train¬

ing camps in U.S. territory; to “the traffic in arms and counterrevolutionaries be¬
tween the territory of the United States and Honduras”; to U.S. participation in
financing, training and organizing contra forces; to the presence of U.S. warships
off Nicaragua’s coasts; and to the “flights of spy planes that violate Nicaragua’s
airspace.
UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick assumed the role of psychiatrist: “The
government of Nicaragua has accused the United States of the kinds of political be¬
havior of which it is guilty.. .These charges—as extravagant as they are baseless—
are an interesting example of projection, a psychological operation in which one’s
own feelings and intentions are simultaneously denied and attributed—^that is,
projected—to someone else.”
“Hostility,” Kirkpatrick continued, “is the dominant emotion and projection the
key mechanism of the paranoid style of politics which, much to our regret, has
characterized the political behavior of the Sandinista leadership. The principal ob¬
ject of Sandinista hostility, I further regret to say, is the government and people of
the United States.” The U.S. government, she lied, “did not oppose the Sandinista
rise to power. It has not attempted to prevent its consolidation. The U.S. govern¬
ment gave the Sandinistas moral and political support in the crucial phases of the
civil war.”^^
Real world U.S. policy was elaborated in a secret April 1982 NSC document,
“U.S. Policy in Central America and Cuba” through fiscal year 1984. Exposed in the
press a year later, the document spelled out the goal of preventing the “prolifera¬
tion of Cuba-model states” in Central America. “In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas are
under increased pressure as a result of our covert efforts and because of the poor
state of their economy.” But, the NSC warned, “We continue to have serious dif¬
ficulties with U.S. public and Congressional opinion, which jeopardizes our ability
to stay the course. International opinion, particularly in Europe and Mexico, con¬
tinues to work against our policies.” The administration must “step up efforts to co¬
opt [the] negotiations issue to avoid Congressionally-mandated negotiations, which
would work against our interests.Opposition from Congress, the public and U.S.
allies was just another obstacle to overcome. The goal of negotiations was better
public relations, not improved relations with Nicaragua.
The news wasn’t all bad for the administration on the public opinion front. At
the annual Corporate Briefing Session sponsored by the Association of American
Chambers of Commerce in Latin America (AACCLA) and the Council of the Americas,
an association of U.S. corporations with investments in Latin America, R. Bruce Cuth-
bertson, AACCLA’s regional vice president for Central America declared, “There is
no future” in Nicaragua “unless the Sandinistas are thrown out.” The entire future
of Central America depended on it, he said.
The warm remarks for repressive governments throughout the region made
clear that those assembled were concerned with corporate freedom, not political
freedom. “I honestly believe,” said Stanley Urban, president of the Haitian-American
Chamber of Commerce and Industry, “that a dictatorship is the best form of govern¬
ment for these people [Haitians]. There are six million illiterates on that island. Think
what the Ruskies could do there.” He said, “there’s more democracy for business in
Haiti than for business in the United States.” In Haiti labor was cheap and disciplined
at a daily minimum wage of $2.64. “In other words,” he exclaimed, “the whole
country is virtually a free trade zone!”^‘‘
Transition
A secret July 1982 Defense Intelligence Agency report (leaked in 1983) ex¬
amined events in Nicaragua. “Since 14 March 1982, insurgency has become increas¬
ingly more widespread,” stated the DIA report without mentioning the U.S. role in
supporting the contras. “Although the present level of activity does not pose a
military threat to the Sandinista regime, it is likely to escalate in the months ahead
as opposition to the present leadership grows.” After noting that insurgent activity
increased significantly at the end of December in the northern Atlantic Coast—con¬
trary to Bobby Inman’s assertions at the slide briefing—the report stated that a new
wave of guerrilla activity was initiated with the sabotaging of the two bridges in
March. “In response to these incidents and allegations that ‘U.S.-backed forces’ were
planning to invade Nicaragua, the government decreed a ‘state of national
emergency’.. .In the 100-day period from 14 March to 21 June, at least 106 insurgent
incidents occurred within Nicaragua.”
Among the types of operations the DIA described were “attacks by small guer¬
rilla bands on individual Sandinista soldiers, and the assassination of minor govern¬
ment officials and a Cuban adviser.” Without skipping a beat, the report listed the
next type of operation: “burning of a customs warehouse, buildings belonging to
the Ministry of Construction, and crops.” Assassination was not treated as anything
out of the ordinary. The report did engage in a partial coverup, though, by apparent¬
ly counting teachers (including a Cuban teacher), health workers and other victims
as “minor government officials and a Cuban adviser.”
Since the 1970s, presidential executive orders have prohibited assassination.
President Reagan’s order of December 4, 1981 states: “No person employed by or
acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to
engage in assassination.” The U.S.-backed contras were clearly engaging in assas¬
sination with the knowledge of U.S. intelligence.
The DIA characterized the FDN as “the largest, best organized, and most ef¬
fective of the anti-government insurgent groups” and noted it was led by ex-Somoza
National Guard officers. The report also described a non-FDN September 15th Legion
faction led by Tino Perez and other ex-guardsmen as a “terrorist group.” The Legion
claimed credit for the December 1981 bombing of a Nicaraguan civilian airlines
(AERONICA) Boeing 727 in Mexico City, the October 1981 hijacking of a Costa Rican
airliner and the February 1982 explosion of a bomb unloaded from a Honduran
aircraft at Managua’s international airport.
The DIA report concluded: “There are no indications that any of these groups
pose a serious military threat to the present Sandinista leadership or that there are
Semi-Secret War 117
any serious unification efforts underway. However the 15 April defection by such a
popular and charismatic revolutionary hero as Eden Pastora could influence some
members of these groups, particularly dissident Sandinistas, to join him in forming
an umbrella group. Regardless, antigovemment insurgency is likely to continue to
escalate in the months ahead. Whether it will succeed eventually in overthrowing
the government will depend largely on successful unification efforts, the extent of
popular support received both from within and outside Nicaragua, and the effec¬
tiveness of Sandinista counterinsurgency operations.The DIA report never men¬
tioned arms interdiction.
As former contra spokesman Edgar Chamorro explained to the World Court,
“1982 was a year of transition for the FDN.. .From a collection of small, disorganized
and ineffectual bands of ex-National guardsmen, the F.D.N. grew into a well-or¬
ganized, well-armed, well-equipped and well-trained fighting force of approximate¬
ly 4,000 men capable of inflicting great harm on Nicaragua. This was due entirely
to the C.I.A. which organized, armed, equipped, trained and supplied us.”
Chamorro said that “after the initial recruitment of ex-Guardsmen from
throughout the region (to serve as officers or commanders of military units), efforts
were made to recruit ‘foot soldiers’ for the force from inside Nicaragua. Some
Nicaraguans joined the force voluntarily, either because of dissatisfaction with the
Nicaraguan Government, family ties with leaders of the force, promises of food,
clothing, boots and weapons, or a combination of these reasons. Many other mem¬
bers of the force were recruited forcibly. F.D.N. units would arrive at an undefended
village, assemble all the residents in the town square and then proceed to kill—in
full view of the others—all persons suspected of working for the Nicaraguan Govern¬
ment or the F.S.L.N., including police, local militia members, party members, health
workers, teachers, and farmers from government-sponsored cooperatives. In this at¬
mosphere, it was not difficult to persuade those able-bodied men left alive to return
with the F.D.N. units to their base camps in Honduras and enlist in the force. This
was, unfortunately, a widespread practice that accounted for many recruits.
Chamorro told me he often heard stories about forced recruiting. In Jinotega,
for example, there was a contra commander known as “El Tigrillo” (Little Tiger):
“He had a reputation of being a rapist, recruiting people by force...a very abusive
person. There were other commanders who had the reputation of intimidating
people—‘if you don’t join, we kill you.’ ”
The intimidation and torment did not end once a Nicaraguan was “recruited.”
Chamorro explained how “the FDN used a lot of physical punishment on young
recruits, to scare them.. .They used to tie people to trees, like you read about in car¬
toons. It’s true... When I got there in January 1983, I heard a lot of stories like that.
There was this crazy commander who used to tie people and intimidate people, or
bury people alive up to their head. I mean all kinds of strange things, even mental¬
ly, psychologically abnormal characters, pathological things. And strange tortures I
heard about. Slowly you hear. They tend to deny [this] to look like good people,
but many are psychopaths or misfits of all kinds.
“How do I know that? Because I talked to people. Some of the leaders, they
don’t want to know what’s going on. They just want to be in Washington or Miami,
make short visits. They close their eyes, they don’t want to find out. But I’m a fella
who used to mix with people a lot...I used to spend more time at the bases...
“Some of these State Department propagandists have all the answers. They
tend to say: ‘Why don’t they just run away?’ Because it’s hard to run away...You
have to wait for a good night or a place where you feel safe, you’re not afraid. So
many people are killed...[They worry that the Sandinistasl might think he’s a
traitor...It’s very complex and each person responds according to his fears or his
beliefs. Most people, once they are caught, they tend to stay. It’s hard to get out.
There are many like that.
“How many? I can’t be specific, or give a percentage, but in some areas they
were saying that was the norm. There were people who also see an opportunity to
get goods like boots, clothing, weapons that make them feel strong or powerful.
So, they grab that, they feel good about it.”
Besides the people recruited forcibly, or those who joined out of personal hos¬
tility towards the Sandinistas, or fear of the future, or because their relatives were
with the contras, Chamorro described another group of recruits. They “are just ad¬
venturers, that join anything that goes by and promises a new, better life, or they
believe the U.S. is going to give them more things later, or some are just bored with
their life there. And they see an opportunity to leave their wife with children like
they’ve done before.”^ The contras reportedly also recruited unemployed Hon¬
durans.^®
The Wrong War

On March 25, 1982, the U.S.-Argentine-Honduran “Tripartita” was shaken by
a different kind of Argentine military operation, the effort to assert Argentine
sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands known as the Falklands under British rule. As
Southcom’s General Nutting put it, the Argentine-British war was “the wrong war
in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong participants.”^
The U.S.-Argentine alliance in Central America was a casualty of the war. Ar¬
gentine President Galtieri thought Washington would acquiesce to the Mal-
vinas/Falklands takeover in the interest of their budding security relationship.
Secretary Haig tried shuttle diplomacy to avert war between Buenos Aires and Lon¬
don, and when that failed, the United States sided with the British.
Kirkpatrick had argued against the administration siding openly with the
British. Haig reportedly accused Kirkpatrick of being “mentally and emotionally in¬
capable of thinking clearly on this issue because of her close links with the Latins.”
Kirkpatrick called Haig and his aides “Brits in American clothes” and derided Haig’s
“belief that ‘eventually the Latins will come whoring after us because they are, for
the most part, right-wing juntas, and right-wing juntas don’t rest well in bed with
communists.’
On May 29, the OAS voted to condemn the British attack, and urged that the
United States halt aid to Britain and respect the principle of “inter-American con-
Semi-Secret War 119
tinental solidarity” under the Rio treaty. Nicaragua was a staunch supporter of Ar¬
gentine sovereignty and Cuban-A^rgentine relations warmed considerably as Argen¬
tina looked to other Third World nations for solidarity.
The war ended on June 14 with a British military victory. In the wake of that
national disgrace, the Argentine military dictatorship gave way to an elected govern¬
ment. Top military leaders were tried and punished for crimes in the domestic dirty
war. As the Mothers of the Disappeared declared during their regular vigil at the
Plaza del Mayo in Buenos Aires, “The Malvinas are ours—and so are the disap¬
peared.”
“We’ve lost our proxy in Central America,” a U.S. official lamented. “We’ve
lost our spear carrier.”®^ Before ceding power, the Argentine military began to
withdraw their contra advisers. But Argentine support was not disbanded complete¬
ly until civilian President Raul Alfonsin took office in December 1983- Meanwhile,
Washington gained another spear carrier: Eden Pastora.
Pastora’s Southern Front

In July 1981, Eden Pastora resigned his posts as national chief of the People’s
Militia and deputy minister of defense and went underground, explaining, “I am
going to the trenches where the duty of being an internationalist fighter leads me.”
The Sandinista leadership did not condone Pastora’s actions, but they did not ex¬
pect him to resurface later with his guns pointed at the Nicaraguan government.
Pastora tried collaborating with the Guatemalan revolutionary movement, but
the Guatemalans ended up rejecting him because of his “political and ideological
inconsistency, and his lack of revolutionary commitment.” By December, Pastora
was in contact with U.S. officials. In the spring of 1982, a U.S. diplomat in Central
America could say: “We’re really pulling for Comandante Cero [Pastora’s nom de
guerre]. There’s no doubt about it. I don’t know if we’re giving him money, but I
wouldn’t be surprised if we were. He’s our boy.”®^
Pastora resurfaced in Costa Rica on April 15, 1982, denouncing the Sandinis¬
ta leadership and vowing to overthrow them. Christopher Dickey, an admirer of
Pastora, wrote then: “Pastora, 45, condemned the ‘bourgeois’ style of the nine power¬
ful members of the ruling Sandinista Front’s National Directorate, even though he
was known for his own extravagant style in the first year after the revolution and
today he wore a diamond ring and a gold watch. ”®^ Pastora accused the Sandinistas
of dragging Nicaragua into the East-West conflict and portrayed himself not as an
ally of the Somocista contras, but as the authentic voice of a betrayed Nicaraguan
revolution.
For Nicaraguans, Pastora was the moral equivalent of Benedict Arnold, the
American revolutionary war general who became a traitor serving the British. The
FSLN directorate called Pastora a deserter, comparing him to past figures who
“preferred to ally with the enemy invader with no concern for the national
sovereignty of Nicaragua.”®^ Two days after Pastora’s San Jose press conference.
several thousand demonstrators gathered in Managua to condemn “the traitor Pas-

tora.”
By July, Pastora’s alliance with Alfonso Robelo and Arturo Cruz was widely
known. Pastora dreamed of serving as president of Nicaragua. After the ouster of
the Nicaraguan government, he expected to serve as head of state and commander
in chief. After six months, Nicaraguans would elect a constituent assembly. General
elections would take place one year later.®^ Pastora would presumably run.
The Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ARDE) was formed in September by
Pastora’s Revolutionary Sandino Front, Robelo’s MDN, Fernando “El Negro”
Chamorro’s UDN-FARN and Brooklyn Rivera’s faction of MISURA, known by the
old name MISURASATA. Rivera had been second-in-command to Steadman Fagoth
until he split in 1982.
Describing himself as once “closer than a brother” to Fagoth, Rivera claimed
that by 1982 Fagoth had become “psychopathic” and “totally blinded and sick with
power and personal ambition.” In 1984, Rivera accused Fagoth of allying with “the
dirtiest, most assassinating right wing elements of the Honduran army...[choosing!
the dirtiest Somozists expelled from the FDN for thievery and murder, as his protec¬
tive godfathers.”®^
The chief of MISURA’s military operations was quoted in September 1984
saying, “I love killing; I have been killing for the past seven years. There’s nothing
I like better. If I could. I’d kill several people a day.”®^
While its public image and documented record is better than MISURA’s,
Rivera’s forces also committed atrocities. In the summer of 1983, they kidnapped
Thomas Hunter, a Creole who headed a fishing cooperative in Southern Zelaya.
“Rivera’s troops took Hunter to their camp in nearby Punta Fusil and after protracted
torture finally killed him, but not before cutting off his ears and forcing him to eat
them.”®®
Pastora proclaimed independence from the United States even as he and ARDE
grew more dependent upon CIA support. For CIA Latin America Division chief
Dewey Clarridge, Pastora had been “a walking, breathing target of opportunity.”
Early in 1982, Clarridge put a proposition to Pastora. He would “help make Pastora
the star of the second revolution as he had been the star of the first. ”®^
Pastora’s stage would be his old stomping grounds, the southern front and
its Costa Rican sanctuary. He also had a diplomatic front: the social democratic
governments of Europe and Latin America who Washington hoped would support
Pastora over the Sandinistas.
In July 1982, Donald Gregg, then head of the NSC Intelligence Directorate
responsible for all covert action projects, prepared a new draft presidential finding
to cover the provision of financial and material support, training and arms for
Pastora’s forces which were clearly targeting the Nicaraguan government and not
supposed Salvadoran arms supply routes. It was decided that the existing finding
was broad enough.^ To protect his anti-Somocista and nationalist image, Pastora’s
arrangement with Washington was as deniable as possible, for as long as possible.
Pastora’s secret marriage of convenience with the FDN was always shaky. The
Somocistas didn’t like Pastora and his allies, Cruz and Robelo. Pastora didn’t like
Semi-Secret War 121
the Somocistas. He wanted the former Guardia removed. They wanted him to be a
puppet—or they wanted him dead. Bermudez and Lau used to talk “none too dis¬
creetly, about how they wanted to kill Pastora and Alfonso Robelo.”^^ Washington
counseled togetherness until Pastora came to be seen as a disappointing prima
donna. Then more people wanted him dead.
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6
Fire, Smoke and Mirrors
Compared to the statements and actions that are coming out of

Washington, it seems they must be using our reports as toilet
paper...We’ve pointed out the distortions time and time again and been
totally ignored or told to shut up.
U.S. Embassy official in Nicaragua, April 1982.^
Everything you do to destroy a Marxist regime is moral.

2
General Gustavo Alvarez, chief of the Honduran Army until March 1984.
The FDN amassed a long record of atrocities against Nicaraguan citizens and
little public support inside or outside the country. Father James Feltz, a Milwaukee
native, is a witness to contra atrocities. He was pastor of Bocana de Paiwas in the
Matagalpa region when an FDN band invaded on March 3, 1982.
“We were meeting with the Catholic Action Committee when seven armed
men walked in, pointed their guns at us, and intimidated the whole group of Chris¬
tians there. They told us that if we had anything to do with the revolutionary process
it’d go hard on us indeed. And after harassing, threatening, and intimidating
everybody, they bragged that they had just killed the town judge. One of them had
a great deal of blood on his shirt. The murdered judge’s name was Emiliano Perez
Obando, and was a Delegate of the Word of God [Church lay preacher] in the parish
of Paiwas. They said they’d left him to die not far away, but that anyone who went
to help him was under ‘sentence of death’...
“[Feltz and another priest] found Emiliano wounded and dying. His body was
still warm, but he was near death. We had hope that if we could get him to a doc¬
tor or a hospital we might be able to save his life. We borrowed a car and raced
away...
123
“On the way to Rio Blanco, Emiliano died in my arms. He had ten kids and
another on the way. It was terribly hard for me to have to go and tell his widow
that this courageous person was dead.. .His murder was a very heavy blow for the
whole population of the parish, the town, and all the villages of the region...He
was admired by many people. This was my first close contact with the contras in
all their savage brutality. I could see the contras didn’t have any trace of humanity
left. I saw how they boasted of having murdered this person, and how they enjoyed
intimidating people. I saw how they’d enjoyed murdering Emiliano.”^
In another case, on October 28 in the northern region of El Jicaro-Murra, “five
armed men dressed in blue FDN uniforms broke down the door of the house where
Maria Bustillo, 57, was living with her husband, Ricardo, a Delegate of the Word,
and five of their children. The intruders ordered everyone to the floor, face down,
and warned that whoever moved would be killed. After striking Ricardo and kick¬
ing the children, they tied them up two by two and led them away, telling Maria,
‘Careful you old bitch, you’re going to find out tomorrow.’
“When Maria went out the next morning to look for hdr family, she found her
five children dead, about 50 yards from the house. ‘They were all cut up. Their ears
were pulled off, their noses and other parts were cut off.’ Her husband Ricardo was
found dead in a nearby town along with another man, Raul Moreno. ‘They were
also left broken up. He had false teeth and they took them, his arms were broken
and his hands were cut up.’
“After the massacre, Maria took refuge in El Jicaro.” El Jicaro would be attack¬
ed twice in 1983.^
A Nicaraguan businessman opposed to the Sandinistas observed, “You can
give the guardsmen expensive American equipment and new uniforms, but they
still behave like guardsmen. You ask people to choose between Sandinists and
Somocists and they can’t choose the guard.
Target Jalapa
Edgar Chamorro testified to the World Court that by the end of 1982, the FDN
was “ready to launch our first major military offensive designed to take and hold
Nicaraguan territory, which the C.I.A. was urging us to do. Our principal objective
was the town of Jalapa, in northern Nicaragua. More than 1,000 of our fighters were
involved, and we used light artillery (mortars, supplied by the C.I.A.) in combat for
the first time. Although we inflicted casualties on the Sandinistas and caused sub¬
stantial destruction in Jalapa and other neighboring towns, our offensive was
repulsed and we were forced to retreat to Honduras and regroup without having
accomplished our objective.”
The “beak of Jalapa” is an area of northwest Nicaragua surrounded on three
sides by Honduras. It appeared an easy target for contra Plan C, described by cap¬
tured FDN commander Pedro Javier “El Muerto” (The Dead Man) Nunez Cabezas;
take Jalapa, “declare it a liberated zone and install a provisional government and
Fire, Smoke and Mirrors 125
ask for military aid from friendly governments such as the United States, Honduras
and Argentina.”
Small FDN bands had made prior assaults in the region. Before July 1982, there
were 120 villages in the mountains and valleys outside the town of Jalapa. As con¬
tra attacks increased, peasants abandoned most of the surrounding villages and
swelled Jalapa’s population to more than double its normal 9,000 inhabitants. Crops
of corn, beans, rice and coffee were lost, straining food supplies and cutting export
revenues. Lisa Fitzgerald, a nun and former assistant attorney general in Mas¬
sachusetts, lived in Jalapa during 1982 and 1983- She went to help teach Nicaraguans
and ended up having to educate Americans about the war their government was
waging.
By July 1982, said Fitzgerald, “incursions by ‘contra’ bands from Honduras
began to make trips into the mountain areas very dangerous. We could no longer
travel without an armed escort. After August of that year, travel was made impos¬
sible. Several months later, all of us, each nun and priest working in Jalapa, were
named on the ‘contra’ radio station and threatened if we continued to participate in
the national literacy program.”
Contra attacks multiplied. On September 22, for example, a veterinarian and
an accountant working for the Ministry of Agrarian Reform were ambushed on the
road from Jalapa to Ocotal. Contras cut their throats. On October 15, contras dragged
Cruz Urrutia from his home in Since where he was a farmer. Delegate of the Word,
health worker and adult education promoter. His mutilated body was found a day
later. On November 15, contras forcibly assembled the community of La Ceiba to
watch as four farmers were tortured, shot and had their heads blown off by a
grenade. During November and December an estimated 400 men, women and
children were abducted to Honduras. In January, contras kidnapped an entire cof¬
fee-picking crew of 60 people.^
Defended mainly by border guard troops and local militia, Jalapa withstood
the late 1982 offensive. Four other attempts to take the town between March and
June 1983 also failed. But many more civilians were murdered or kidnapped. Lisa
Fitzgerald recorded 337 abductions from January through June 1, 1983. “Of these,
37 persons escaped. I interviewed five of them; all were forced to carry equipment
for the contras. They reported some of their friends were shot immediately after
they were abducted and others were taken to Honduras.”^
Base Country Honduras
There were more than 100 U.S. advisers in Honduras by March 1982. In April,
the chief of the Honduran Army, General Gustavo Alvarez, said that his country
would agree to U.S. intervention in Central America if it were the only way to
“preserve peace.”® At month’s end, Honduras rejected Nicaragua’s offer of a bilateral
nonaggression treaty and denied that Honduran territory was harboring counter¬
revolutionary groups.^
As t±ie contras escalated cross-border attacks during July and August, the
United States and Honduras held military exercises and built a permanent military
base at Durzuna, about 25 miles from the Nicaraguan border. U.S. troops left be¬
hind most of their equipment for the contras when the exercises ended. By the end
of 1982, Honduras hosted more than 150 CIA agents.^® A Honduran officer summed
up his country’s proxy role this way: “The U.S. will supply all the arms, equipment
and body bags that we need and all we have to do is supply the bodies.”*^
Honduras was also a U.S. proxy in El Salvador’s war. In March 1981, for ex¬
ample, Honduran soldiers blocked Salvadoran refugees from crossing the Lempa
River into Honduras as they were being bombed by the Salvadoran Air Force. About
200 people, mostly women and children, were killed. In November and December,
the Honduran Army allowed Salvadoran soldiers to raid refugee camps in La Vir-
tud. In June 1982, Honduras and El Salvador launched a series of “hammer and
anvil” operations along their border to trap Salvadoran guerrillas and would-be
refugees.'^
The Honduran Army played a crucial logistical role as contra operations ex¬
panded. It moved supplies to the border by truck where sometimes the contras
“would pay individuals $10 a kilometer to carry them, sometimes loaded on mules,
into Nicaragua. At times the Honduran Army pounded Nicaragua with mortar fire
to cover contra forces. Nicaragua accused the United States of trying to provoke war
with Honduras as a pretext for overthrowing the Nicaraguan government.
In September 1982, Venezuela (in a policy shift) joined Mexico in urging that
Nicaragua, Honduras and the United States take swift diplomatic action to prevent
the outbreak of regional war. The U.S. Congress expressed interest and President
Reagan paid the initiative the usual lip service. In October, United Nations mem¬
bers angered Washington by electing Nicaragua to one of the rotating seats on the
Security Council.
On November 4, Nicaragua declared a military emergency zone in five north¬
ern border provinces experiencing daily attacks. Around the same time, Newsweek
published a dramatic cover story: “America’s Secret War—^Target: Nicaragua.” Some
twenty Argentine advisers were still on the scene, but it was clearly Washington’s
war. CIA Director Casey personally inspected the operation. Ambassador
Negroponte ran it. Contras called him “The Boss.”
“Negroponte is the spearhead,” declared a Washington insider. “He was sent
down there by Haig and Enders to carry out the operation without any qualms of
conscience.” Honduras’ first civilian president in many years, Roberto Suazo, elected
in November 1981, was only the nominal head of state. Alvarez was the official com¬
mander in chief and de facto Honduran leader. He shared power with Negroponte,
not Suazo. An aide to Alvarez said of Alvarez and Negroponte, “they both run the
Army, although only one of them has the title for that job.” As a member of the
Honduran military command put it, Negroponte and Alvarez “discuss what should
be done, and then Alvarez does what Negroponte tells him to.”
The economy was also a joint venture. During President Suazo’s January 1982
inauguration a messenger delivered a four-page letter from the U.S. Embassy. “En¬
couraging a prompt ‘revitalization’ of the ailing economy, the letter—ûsing the im-
perative form of Spanish—directed the government of Honduras to take 11 specific

actions, such as reducing taxes on mining companies and lifting some price con¬
trols. The government dutifully complied with many of the demands.”^'*
In return for shares of its sovereignty, Honduras received increased U.S.
military and economic assistance through 1985: $47.5 million in 1981, $112 million
in 1982, $145.2 million in 1983, $171.5 million in 1984 and $282.6 million in 1985.^^
Second only to Haiti in hemispheric poverty, the Honduran people did not benefit
as the country was transformed into a Bases and Banana Republic.
“We live in a formal democracy. We have the forms of a democratic system
but we don’t have a real, working democracy,” said Christian Democratic leader
Efrain Diaz. The “military has not diminished its influence. It has become
stronger.. .Congress has become a rubber stamp.. .The country has lost all autonomy
in foreign affairs. This country has become an occupied country.. .a base of military
operations for. the U.S.” It is “increasingly difficult,” he said, “to have a dissident
view here.” It means “being called Communist.
Dissidents risked death. Alvarez “professionalized” the nascent Honduran
death squad network—linked to the World Anti-Communist League affiliate CAL—
with the help of Argentine advisers during 1980 and 1981. In the Honduran version
of dirty war, students, professors, union leaders and other alleged subversives were
tortured and murdered. A death squad member called “Ephron” explained one
method of body disposal: “We got people, killed them, put their bodies aboard
helicopters, and threw them in the Rio Sumpul [the river dividing part of Honduras
and El Salvador and an area of intense fighting between the Salvadoran Army and
the Salvadoran guerrillas] to make it look like the Salvadorans did it. Before dump¬
ing them, we would remove all ID and put Salvadoran coins in their pockets.” Body
dumps, like those in El Salvador, appeared for the first time in 1981 and human
rights groups cited Honduras for gross abuses. “The so-called disappeared,” retorted
Alvarez, “are probably subversives who are in Cuba and Nicaragua training to come
back and subvert the Fatherland.
Dr. Ramon Custodio, president of the Committee for the Defense of Human
Rights in Honduras (CODEH) and former president of the medical college in
Tegucigalpa, scoffed at the idea the Reagan administration was defending democracy
in Honduras. Asked why he put himself at personal risk leading the human rights
organization, he said, “It’s my duty to defend human rights.. .I’d hate to be Hving in
this country and be silent and be in the position of the many German people when
Hitler came to power.”
Jorge Arturo Reina, a leader of the Honduran Liberal Peoples Alliance (ALIPO)
and a former chancellor of the National University, saw the United States crushing
the aspirations of Central Americans in its campaign to restore “the Pretorian Guard
of Somoza.” He observed, “From more war we will have more poverty, more destruc¬
tion, more backwardness.. .Reagan calls it ‘America’s backyard.’ It is a yard plagued
by misery, hunger and poverty. It’s not a garden. It’s a desert that can be turned
into a cemetery.”'®
Newsweek portrayed the contra operation as out of control, having “escalated
far beyond Washington’s original intentions” to interdict weapons and support
Nicaraguan moderates. It made Negroponte the fall guy for a potential Bay of Pigs.
Despite its flaws, the Newsweek piece brought millions more Americans in on the
increasingly open secret of Washington’s war on Nicaragua. The growing public
worry was not another Bay of Pigs but another Vietnam.
FDN Facelift
Edgar Chamorro was working as a commodities broker for Cargill Corpora¬
tion and part-time staffer for the FDN’s political junta when he was approached by
CIA officer “Steve Davis” in November 1982. Davis asked him to join a new FDN
political directorate. Over lunch near Chamorro’s home in Key Biscayne, Florida,
Davis told Chamorro that “he was speaking in the name of the President of the
United States, who wants ‘to get rid of the Sandinistas.’ ‘Davis’ explained to me that
the FDN had a bad image in the United States, and particularly among members of
the Congress, because it was perceived as an organization of ex-National
Guardsmen. He told me that in order to maintain the support of the Congress for
the C.I.A.’s activities it was necessary to replace the political junta with a group of
prominent Nicaraguan civilians who had no ties with the National Guard or the
Somoza Government. ‘Davis’ left without asking me to make a commitment. He told
me I would be contacted again in the near future.
“Later that month, ‘Davis’ telephoned me and asked me to have dinner with
him in his hotel suite at the Holiday Inn in Miami. When I arrived, ‘Davis’ intro¬
duced me to another C.I.A. man, who used the name ‘Tony Feldman.’ ‘Feldman’
was introduced as ‘Davis’ ’ superior from Washington...‘Feldman’ told me that the
C.I.A. had decided on a seven-member political directorate for the F.D.N. because
any larger group would be unmanageable. He said that I had been selected as one
of the seven, and he asked me to accept. He told me that the United States Govern¬
ment was prepared to give its full backing to the F.D.N. so that, by the end of Decem¬
ber 1983, we would be marching into Managua to take over the Nicaraguan
Government.”’^
Chamorro agreed to join. On December 7, 1982, he met with U.S. officials and
other directorate members at the Four Ambassadors Hotel in Miami to rehearse a
press conference for the following day. Chamorro met FDN military chief Enrique
Bermudez for the first time. Tony Feldman (also known as Philip Mason) was ac¬
companied by CIA officer Joe Fernandez (alias Tomas Castillo).
As Chamorro described it, “Feldman introduced two lawyers from Washington
who briefed us on the Neutrality Act.. .Feldman was worried we were going to tell
the press that we were trying to overthrow the Sandinistas, which, of course, is ex¬
actly what we wanted to do. He emphasized that we should say instead that we
were trying to ‘create conditions for democracy.’ ”
Various questions were rehearsed. If asked about funding, Feldman advised,
“Say your sources want to remain confidential.” The CIA men agreed there was no
Fire, Smoke and MiiTors 129
way to finesse the question “Have you had any contact with U.S. government offi¬
cials?” The contra leaders were told “to lie and say, ‘No.’
The press conference was held at the Hilton Conference Center in Ft. Lauder¬
dale to avoid the risk of antiwar demonstrations in Miami. Leonardo Somarriba, one
of Jorge Salazar’s coconspirators, worked with CIA officials in arranging the press
conference and organizing the directorate.^^
Chamorro read the FDN statement of principles and goals: “We the Directorate
of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force commit ourselves to guide and support this ef¬
fort of the Nicaraguan people to salvage our sacred patriotic honor, offering for this
purpose all-out industry, dedication, and if necessary, our very lives.”
The Nicaraguans hadn’t written the final statement, including the part about
offering up their lives. Chamorro explained that the draft he coauthored with other
Nicaraguans “was mosdy about the right to private property, and it was very an¬
ticommunist.” Fernandez (Castillo) didn’t like it. “Shit, who wrote this?” said Fernan¬
dez, “It sounds like all you want is to get back what you lost. You have to write
something more progressive, luore political. We’ll get someone from Washington
to help you.”
That’s when “George” was called in. George was John Mallett who served as
deputy and then chief of the CIA station in Honduras. “The Americans, I began to
realize,” said Chamorro, “liked to make all the crucial decisions.
The CIA’s carefully-packaged new contra front still embraced Somocistas. Be¬
sides Chamorro the directorate included: ex-National Guard officer Enrique Ber¬
mudez; Alfonso Callejas, a vice president under Somoza and uncle of Alfonso
Robelo, active in church affairs; Marcos Zeledon, a former leader of COSEP and
manager of Quaker Oats of Nicaragua; Indalecio Rodriguez, a conservative intellec¬
tual and former rector of the Central America University; and Lucia Cardenal de
Salazar, the widow of Jorge Salazar and sister-in-law of Alfonso Robelo. The CIA
men, said Chamorro, “wanted at all costs to have a woman on the directorate.” They
thought that would improve the contras’ human rights image.
Jose Francisco Cardenal was not selected. “It was clear,” said Chamorro, “they
didn’t want Cardenal because he didn’t get along with Bermudez.” When he wasn’t
named, Cardenal quit contra politics and later took up selling life insurance in
Miami.^^
Chamorro told the World Court that in January 1983, at the direction of Joe
Fernandez (whom he knew as Castillo), “we put out a 12-point ‘peace initiative’
drafted by the C.I.A., which essentially demanded the surrender of the Sandinista
Government. I thought this was premature, but ‘Castillo’ insisted that it be done to
get the F.D.N. favorable publicity.”
Meanwhile, Adolfo Calero was added to the directorate. According to Chamor¬
ro, Calero “had been working for the C.I.A. in Nicaragua for a long time. He served
as, among other things, a conduit of funds from the United States Embassy to various
student and labor organizations. ‘Feldman’ had told me that the C.I.A. was bringing
him out of Nicaragua...to serve on the F.D.N.’s political directorate.”^'*
“Each of us in the directorate,” Chamorro explained, “was tasked to act as a
link between the CIA and the sector we were assigned to represent inside Nicaragua.
We were used as conduits of financial support from the CIA to groups in Nicaragua,
such as private sector organizations and political parties, and as conduits of infor¬
mation from those sectors back to the CIA. The CIA wanted the FDN to be the of¬
ficial opposition group.
Boland I: Flashing Yellow Light

The arms interdiction fiction had worn thin by the spring of 1982. Growing
contra forces “were being outfitted with U.S.-financed equipment through Honduran
military depots and were paid a subsistence fee of $23 per month, according to CIA
officials.More members of Congress questioned the program. A former lobbyist
for administration policy acknowledged, “It was hard to spell out what we wanted
to Copgress. They wouldn’t have gone for it then.”^^
Casey misled the Intelligence Committees, claiming that contra forces had
swelled because Nicaraguans were “recruiting themselves” to fight the Sandinistas.
Administration cover stories didn’t jibe. Congress was also told the operation was
forced to employ more ex-guardsmen than had been planned “because they were
the only ones who wanted to fight.
The administration rewrote the contra plot in July. It leaked a State Depart¬
ment policy paper advocating a major expansion of the contras and increased
military aid to Honduras and Costa Rica on the grounds that Nicaragua was receiv¬
ing massive arms shipments from the Soviet Union.
“We responded positively,” recalled Michael Barnes, former chairman of the
House Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs. “There was some exaggeration, but
there was a real threat. The Sandinistas said they were doing it because the United
States wanted to overthrow them, and I told them, ‘We aren’t going to do that, you’re
just paranoid.’
In August, the Intelligence Committees attempted to leash the covert opera¬
tion to its alleged goal of arms interdiction. The classified annex of the 1983 Intel¬
ligence Authorization Act prohibited U.S. aid “for the purpose of overthrowing the
Government of Nicaragua or provoking a military exchange between Nicaragua and
Honduras.” It was not designed to cut off the covert war, but to control it.
In the fall, the administration fashioned a new cover for the war: harassing
and punishing Nicaragua in order to convince the Sandinistas to stop “exporting
revolution.” This would later be changed to pressuring the Sandinistas to negotiate.
On December 8, FDN chief Enrique Bermudez repudiated the still-lingering
arms interdiction rationale while paying lip service to the stated U.S. concern for
democracy: “It is not acceptable to us to carry out missions to interdict Cuban and
Russian supply lines to El Salvador. We are Nicaraguans and our objective is to over¬
throw the Communists and install a democratic government in our country.
That same day. Congress debated an amendment offered by then Rep. Tom
Harkin (D-IA) to prohibit U.S. assistance to any group involved in paramilitary ac¬
tions against Nicaragua. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Edward Boland
(D-MA) offered the previously classified committee measure as a less-restrictive sub¬

stitute. With the support of the Republican leadership, the Boland amendment
passed unanimously. It was signed into law on December 21, remaining in effect
until December 8, 1983:
None of the funds provided in this Act may be used by the Central Intelligence
Agency or the Department of Defense to furnish military equipment, military training or
advice, or other support for military activities, to any group or individual, not part of a
country’s armed forces, for the purpose of overthrowing the Government of Nicaragua
or provoking a military exchange between Nicaragua and Honduras.
Boland provided a vehicle for continuing covert operations against Nicaragua,

and the administration gladly took him for a ride. “There were always two tracks,”
a CIA official explained, “the publicly stated CIA objective of interdicting weapons
to Salvadorean guerrillas, and the overthrow of the Sandinista government.”^’
In answer to an inquiry by the General Accounting Office, the Department of
Defense (DOD) General Counsel William H. Taft IV contended that Boland referred
“to the purpose of U.S. Government agencies, not the purpose of the individuals
and groups receiving assistance from these agencies...Therefore it is not legally
relevant under the Boland Amendment whether the Government of Nicaragua is in
fact eventually overthrown, or whether an exchange between Nicaragua and Hon¬
duras takes place. What is relevant is the immediate motive or purpose for which
the assistance is provided, not the long-term intent of those who are assisted. As¬
sistance provided to pressure Nicaragua to cease its intervention in El Salvador—
even if it resulted in the fall of the present regime—^would not contravene the Boland
Amendment, while assistance given to overthrow that regime, even if totally inef¬
fective or actually counterproductive, would violate this statute.”
DOD argued that the letter and spirit of the law was being observed because
if the House meant to cover the purposes of the groups receiving aid then it would
not have rejected the Harkin amendment. “To suggest that the Harkin Amendment
was somehow incorporated into the ‘spirit’ of the Boland Amendment is untenable.
The administration continued to officially deny its purpose was to overthrow the
Nicaraguan government, and Congress didn’t hold it accountable to off-the-record
admissions of intent or for actions that clearly contradicted its denials.
Before the Boland amendment, said Edgar Chamorro, CIA agents “spoke open¬
ly and confidently about replacing the government in Managua. Thereafter.. .[ifl any
of us ever said anything publicly about oveithrowing the Nicaraguan Government,
we would be visited immediately by a C.I.A. official who would say, ‘That’s not the
language we want you to use.’ But our goal, and that of the C.I.A. as well (as we
were repeatedly assured in private), was to overthrow the Govermnent of
Nicaragua.. .It was never our objective to stop the supposed flow of arms, of which
we never saw any evidence in the first place. The public statements by United States
Government officials about the arms flow, we were told by the C.I.A. agents with
whom we worked, were necessary to maintain the support of the Congress and
should not be taken seriously by us.”^^
U.S. “punishment” of Nicaragua translated into terrorism. On December 23,

1982, Nicaraguan Interior Minister Tomas Borge presented evidence of an aborted
contra urban terror plan called “Bitter Christmas”: C-4 plastic explosive packed into
flashlights and children’s lunch boxes for detonation in supermarkets, movie theaters
and buses on Christmas Eve.^^
As FDN forces continued their offensive in the Jalapa region, five MISURA
columns of 125 men each crossed from Honduras into Nicaragua on December 30
on a mission to capture the strategic seaport of Puerto Cabezas. Another group
sabotaged port installations. The plan was to capture the port and hold it until the
U.S.-backed Honduran military airlifted in reinforcements and a provisional govern¬
ment was installed.^^ It failed when the Nicaraguan Army intercepted and scattered
the main attack forces.
Buying Guns and Journalists

Edgar Chamorro worked full time for the FDN from January 1983 until June
1984. He remained on the political directorate until November 1984, when he was
ousted for speaking too openly about contra human rights abuses.
Chamorro was put in charge of FDN public relations because of his back¬
ground in the field and his relatively moderate credentials. “We wanted to set up
highly visible headquarters in a shopping center or office building,” he told the
World Court, “but the C.I.A. did not like the idea. They said it would become a tar¬
get for demonstrations or violence. They insisted that we take an elegant suite at
the David Williams Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida which the C.I.A. paid for.” At the
end of January, the CIA instructed Chamorro to relocate to Tegucigalpa, Honduras
to run the FDN’s new communications office. The CIA station in Honduras “gave
me money, in cash, to hire several writers, reporters, and technicians to prepare a
monthly bulletin called ‘Commandos,’ to run a clandestine radio station, and to write
press releases.”
Bribing reporters was part of Chamorro’s job; “I also received money from the
C.I.A. to bribe Honduran journalists and broadcasters to write and speak favorably
about the F.D.N. and to attack the Government of Nicaragua and call for its over¬
throw. Approximately 15 Honduran journalists and broadcasters were on the C.I.A.’s
payroll, and our influence was thereby extended to every major Honduran
newspaper and radio and television station.” Chamorro learned from CIA colleagues
“that the same tactic was employed in Costa Rica in an effort to turn the newspapers
and radio and television stations of that country against the Nicaraguan Govern¬
ment.”^
According to Carlos Morales, a professor of journalism and former president
of the Costa Rican journalists’ union, at least eight Costa Rican journalists, including
three top editors, were receiving monthly CIA payments either directly or through
contra groups as of 1987. “There may be more, but these I know for certain because
most are former students of mine, and some have talked with me about it,” he said.
The eight journalists cited by Morales received about 30,000 co/oncs (about $500) a
month—more than the monthly salary of about 20,000 colones earned by most Costa
Rican journalists. “Their job,” said Morales, “is to get into the press stories, commen¬
taries, or editorials attacking Nicaragua and sympathetic to the contras.
In Honduras, Chamorro worked closely with CIA Deputy Station Chief John
Mallett (George). “Together with ‘George,’ and subject to his approval, I planned
all the activities of my communications office and prepared a budget. The budget
was reviewed by the C.I.A. station in Tegucigalpa and, if approved, sent to
Washington to obtain the necessary funds, which were always provided to me in
cash.” Other CIA agents worked with FDN directorate member Indalecio Rodriguez
in developing the budget for “civilian affairs,” covering assistance for Nicaraguan
refugees in Honduras or family members of contra combatants, and with Adolfo
Calero and Enrique Bermudez on the military and logistics budget.
The FDN, explained Chamorro, “never received money to purchase arms, am¬
munition or military equipment. These were acquired for us and delivered directly
to us by the C.I.A. One of the senior agents at the C.I.A.’s Tegucigalpa station, known
to us as ‘the Colonel,’ was an expert in these matters.. .As long as I was in Honduras
(until June 1984), the F.D.N. never acquired its own arms, ammunition or other
military equipment. We were just the end receivers. The main items in the military
and logistics budget that Calero and Bermudez worked on were things that could
be acquired locally, such as food for our men, for which money had to be obtained
from the C.I.A. Calero and Bermudez were our main links with the C.I.A. They met
constantly with the C.I.A. station chief.
The contras received Soviet weapons captured by the Israelis in Lebanon and
by guerrillas in Afghanistan. According to FDN sources, “most of the best weapon¬
ry—RPG7 rocket launchers, 60 mm mortars, FAL and AK47 assault rifles—^went to
the FDN...The older weapons, including World War Il-era MI carbines, went to
the.. .Miskito Indians.
Chamorro explained what U.S. intelligence was intercepting in Central America
besides the famous arms flow to El Salvador: “The C.I.A. working with United States
military personnel, operated various electronic interception stations in Honduras for
the purpose of intercepting radio and telephonic communications among
Nicaraguan Government military units. By means of these interception activities,
and by breaking the Nicaraguan Government codes, the C.I.A. was able to deter¬
mine—and to advise us of—the precise locations of all Nicaraguan Government
military units. The information obtained by the C.I.A. in this manner was ordinari¬
ly corroborated by overflights of Nicaraguan territory by United States satellites and
sophisticated surveillance aircraft. With this information, our own forces knew the
areas in which they could safely operate free of government troops. If our units
were instructed to do battle with the government troops, they knew where to set
up ambushes, because the C.I.A. informed them of the precise routes the govern¬
ment troops would take. This type of intelligence was invaluable to us. Without it,
our forces would not have been able to operate with any degree of effectiveness
inside Nicaragua.”
The CIA, said Chamorro, repeatedly ordered the FDN “to move our troops in¬
side Nicaragua and to keep them there as long as possible. After our offensive at
the end of 1982 was turned back, almost all of our troops were in Honduras and
our own officers believed that they needed more training and more time before they
would be ready to return to Nicaragua. The F.D.N. officers were overruled by the
C.I.A., however. The agency told us that we had to move our men back into
Nicaragua and keep fighting. We had no choice, but to obey.”
“Death Swooping Down”

According to Chamorro, the CIA instructed the contras in 1983 “not to destroy
farms or crops because that would be politically counterproductive. In 1984,
however, we were instructed to destroy export crops (especially coffee and tobac¬
co), and to attack farms and cooperatives.
CIA instructions were apparently contradictory because the contras attacked
farms throughout 1983 as well. It was part of their general war on social programs
and the economy. With all their sophisticated intelligence on the Nicaraguan military,
the contras were far more effective in terrorizing civilians than in fighting troops.
Here are some examples:
On March 5, 1983, 80 contras seized the San Carlos farm near Muy-Muy,
Matagalpa. They burned the farmhouse and kidnapped the farm manager. On March
12, a group of 150 contras assassinated five members of a popular education col¬
lective meeting in a school in the El Jicaro district. Near Rio Blanco in the Matagal¬
pa region, contras kidnapped education administrator Maria Martinez Alvarez. “Her
body was later found with her throat slit and her breasts cut off.”
On March 26, 200 contras attacked the district of Rancho Grande with mortar
fire. Pierre Grosjean, a French doctor, was killed along with two Nicaraguan civilians
and two militia members; seventeen people were wounded, including seven
children. On April 30, 100 FDN troops ambushed and assassinated fourteen people
on the road near Wiwili in Jinotega province, including Albrecht Pflaum, a German
doctor. Three women—two nurses and an employee of the National Development
bank—^were raped and murdered. Some of the men were also tortured before being
killed.
In late April, an ARDE band assaulted people in three small villages near La
Azucena, Rio San Juan. They tortured and murdered eleven peasants who worked
in cooperatives, education and civil defense, and kidnapped ten others. More than
twenty families were told they would be killed if they did not join ARDE’s military
operations.'**
Father James Feltz experienced attacks in late August and early September by
a 500-member contra force led by the ex-Guard Renato. Recalling them crossing the
Rio Grande de Matagalpa and invading the area, Feltz said, “It’s like death swoop¬
ing down, it’s like Attila’s hordes.”
Feltz described how the contras “headed for the region around El Guayabo.
On the way they ran into a man named...‘Chico’ Sotelo. Chico had livestock and
was not much for the revolution. Certainly he was no Sandinista. He had his money
and his private property. But he made the mistake of pulling out his UNAG passbook.
Well, all they had to do was see he belonged to the [National Union of Farmers and
Ranchers] and they shot him on the spot, right there on the road...And they kept
burning houses. The death march got as far as El Guayabo. There there’s a little
hamlet called San Francisco, and they killed several people there; they killed people
if they were members of defense committees or shopkeepers or maybe members
of the militia. But nobody was armed. They raped a fourteer*-year-old girl. Then
they slit her throat and cut off her head. They hung the head on a pole along the
road...
“There was another special case of cruelty on that same contra operation. An
eleven-year-old girl, Cristina Borge Diaz, was visiting her uncle. The uncle was on
the contras’ list, and they came and killed him. When they saw the little girl, they
decided to have a little fun, so they used her for target practice. The first one took
a shot at her from a galloping horse. He missed. ‘Kill her,’ he told a companion.
And the other shot her in the back. The bullet came out her chest. Another bullet
grazed her scalp, another hit her in the right hand, and another in the left hip. Then
they left. The little girl lay there until a worker coming back from the fields found
her that way, more dead than alive.” Miraculously, said Feltz, she recovered after
treatment in Managua. She told her story to a meeting of Nicaraguan-based U.S. mis¬
sionaries and visiting U.S. bishops in February 1985.^^
New Phase
In early February 1983, the United States held the first Big Pine military exer¬
cises with Honduras. Some 4,000 Hondurans and 1,600 U.S. troops maneuvered
near Puerto Lempira in the Mosquitia region, operating less than ten miles from the
Nicaraguan border. According to the Department of Defense, Big Pine’s objectives
were: “assisting Honduras in developing procedures to defend its territory, testing
deployment techniques and exercising logistical support of a field force.
Congress, meanwhile, was informed that contra ranks had reached 5,500.
House and Senate fact-finding missions to the region concluded that the administra¬
tion was violating the spirit of the Boland amendment, if not the letter. In April,
even State Department officials raised questions about the legality of U.S. policy,
contending that contra support operations had inadvertently gone beyond interdic¬
tion and “could be seen as intended to overthrow” the Nicaraguan government.'*'*
As Casey continued playing charades with the Intelligence Committees, the CIA
spent an additional $11 million from a secret fund to support the war.'*^
Few in Congress took up the challenge of Representatives Berkely Bedell (D-
lA) and Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) upon their return from Honduras and Nicaragua.
Declared Bedell in a speech to the House, “If the American people could have talked
with the common people of Nicaragua, whose women and children are being in¬
discriminately kidnapped, tortured and killed by terrorists financed by the American
taxpayers, they would rise up in legitimate anger and demand that support for the
criminal activity be ended at once.”"*^
A new phase of the contra war opened with the development of large contra
task forces (about 250 combatants) grouped under regional commandos (500 to
2,000 combatants). Virtually all the task force commanders, regional commanders
and central staff of the FDN were ex-National Guard (see chapter 10). In some areas,
where there was a history of recruitment for the National Guard (e.g. the San Fran¬
cisco zone), where government programs were still scarce (e.g. the mountains of
Matagalpa and Boaco), or where peasants were discontented with the form and
pace of the agrarian reform, the contras were able to build a network of col¬
laborators.'*^
Religious manipulation also played a role in contra recruiting. Anti-Sandinista
clergy, politicians and the contras themselves demonized the Sandinistas, portray¬
ing them as atheist communists who would abolish private property and freedom
of worship. Flor de Maria Monterrey, head of the Institute for the Study of Sandinis-
mo, said peasants were told that the Sandinistas “will take away your chicken.. .and
the radio you bought” and “ They’re going to take away your novenas and your
Hail Marys.’ To say they’ll take that away from you is like taking away your life.”'*®
Contra task forces launched a new drive on Jalapa under the March 1983 Plan
Siembra (Harvest). Other contra units penetrated the interior provinces of Madriz,
Jinotega and Esteli to divert Sandinista forces. The offensive was defeated in May.
To meet the intensifying contra assaults and raise the costs of direct U.S. invasion,
Nicaragua stepped up popular mobilization and expanded the army.
Under the slogan “All Arms to the People,” thousands more Nicaraguans were
organized into volunteer militias, reserve infantry battalions and self-defense agricul¬
tural cooperatives (where some farmers stood guard to protect others in the field).
The army expanded to about 24,000 in 1983.^^
On July 19, 1983, the fourth anniversary of the revolution, the government an¬
nounced the Patriotic Military Service Law (SMP) under which a draft would begin
in September. Army forces would grow to about 40,000 in 1984. Not surprisingly,
the draft exacerbated tensions within the country. The Nicaraguan Bishops’ Con¬
ference denounced the draft as service to an army that represented the FSLN, not
the country, and advocated “conscientious objection” by those not allied ideologi¬
cally with the Sandinistas.
The Bishops’ August 29 statement opposing the draft was printed and debated
in all three national newspapers—notwithstanding the state of emergency. La
Prensa’s September 1 headline read (in translation): “Episcopal Conference sug¬
gests: ‘Conscientious Objection’—Nobody Can Be Obligated To Take Up Arms For
A Party.” El Nuevo k headline read “Widespread Christian Support for SMP”;
it featured remarks by a protestant minister.
Viewing the draft from another angle, the national women’s organization
AMNLAE argued in the Council of State that women should be included in the SMP.
As AMNLAE Council of State delegate Magda Enriques argued, “The mandate from
our grass roots was to struggle to the end to get equal status so we called two general
assemblies in Managua to discuss the whole issue. We demanded scientific, not
emotional, explanations for the exclusion of women. There was a national debate
in the media. In the end, they agreed to accept women volunteers into active ser¬
vice, which was something of a victory. Although women were not drafted along
with men (ages 18 to 25), they continued to serve in the army and made up an es¬
timated 45 percent of the popular militia (out of a total of about 50,000 members in
1984) as well as half the membership in the Sandinista Defense Committees.
Reagan Storms the Hill

With an eye to congressional concern over escalating U.S. involvement in
Central America, Assistant Secretary Enders talked of exploring negotiations with
the increasingly powerful Salvadoran guerrillas while continuing military aid to the
Salvadoran regime. His “two-track strategy” was adamantly opposed by Casey,
Kirkpatrick, Weinberger and National Security Adviser William Clark. Even the ap¬
pearance of negotiations with the revolutionaries would award them too much
legitimacy and detract from the campaign against Nicaragua.
“The feeling never was that we could negotiate an agreement on El Salvador
or Nicaragua,” said a high U.S. official. “Notwithstanding, we decided in February
that we needed to move on the diplomatic side to deflect the perception of our only
going for a military solution.”
U.S. officials acknowledged “that the guerrillas are now getting most of their
arms from within El Salvador—^by capturing or buying them—^but insist that the flow
from Nicaragua is essential to the guerrillas’ maintaining their current level of opera¬
tions.” Incredibly, U.S. officials said the “surveillance operation for Nicaragua is even
greater than the one for the Soviet Union. ‘We can hear a toilet flush in Managua,’
an intelligence analyst said.”^^ Asked about the lack of evidence to substantiate ad¬
ministration claims, officials gave the usual excuses about jeopardizing intelligence
sources. These mysterious sources were evidently reporting on magic arms ship¬
ments that could be seen but not captured.
Of course, administration officials had to insist that the alleged arms flow from
Nicaragua was essential lest they jeopardize support for U.S. intervention. They
could not admit that, unlike the contras, El Salvador’s FMLN-FDR was a militarily
and politically effective, popularly supported revolutionary force. By late 1983, the
revolutionaries controlled one-fourth of El Salvador’s territory, governing liberated
zones in Chalatenango, Morazan, San Vicente, Usulutan, Cuscatlan and San Miguel.
Reagan raised the political stakes on Central America in an April 27 speech to
a joint session of Congress: “El Salvador is nearer to Texas than Texas is to Miami.
Nicaragua is just as close to Miami, San Antonio, San Diego, and Tucson as those
cities are to Washington where we are gathered tonight.”
Nicaragua, claimed Reagan, “has rejected our repeated peace efforts. It has
broken its promises to us, to the Organization of American States, and, most impor-
tant of all, to the people of Nicaragua.. .The Sandinista revolution turned out to be
just an exchange of one set of autocratic rulers for another...Even worse than its
predecessor, it is helping Cuba and the Soviets to destabilize our hemi¬
sphere... Violence has been Nicaragua’s most important export to the world.”
Reagan continued with war-is-peace rhetoric: “We do not seek its over¬
throw. . .We have attempted to have a dialogue with the government of Nicaragua
but it persists in its efforts to spread violence. We should not—and we will not—
protect the Nicaraguan government from the anger of its own people. But we should,
through diplomacy, offer an alternative. And, as Nicaragua ponders its options, we
can and will—^with all the resources of diplomacy—protect each country of Central
America from the danger of war.. .Nicaragua’s dictatorial junta.. .likes to pretend they
are today being attacked by forces based in Honduras. The fact is, it is Nicaragua’s
government that threatens Honduras, not the reverse...
“Must we just accept the destabilization of an entire region from the Panama
Canal to Mexico on our southern border? Must we sit by while independent nations
of this hemisphere are integrated into the most aggressive empire the modem world
has seen?...I do not believe there is a majority in the Congress or the country that
counsels passivity, resignation, defeatism, in the face of this challenge to freedom
and security in our hemisphere.”
In early May, Reagan began referring to the contras as freedom fighters and
publicly acknowledged U.S. support. At a May 5 White House press conference,
Reagan said, “Now, if they [the Congress] want to tell us that we can give money
and do the same things we’ve been doing—money, giving, providing subsistence
and so forth to these people directly and making it overt instead of covert—that’s
all right with me.” Questioned about his use of the term freedom fighters, Reagan
said “I just used the word, I guess, ‘freedom fighters’ because the fact that we know
that the thing that brought those people together is the desire, as I said, for the same
revolutionary principles that they once fought [5/cl and have been betrayed in.”^^
Reagan’s scare tactics were damaging Nicaragua’s image in the United States,
but they weren’t generating majority support for the contras. Business Week, which
could hardly be accused of pro-communist sympathies, editorialized: “In Nicaragua,
the Administration has launched the U.S. on a high-risk adventure—as House and
Senate intelligence oversight committees belatedly realize—by financing, arming,
and training an army of Nicaraguan exiles to invade the country from Honduras.
The Administration’s suggestion that such an attack will persuade Managua’s San-
dinist government to create a more democratic and pluralist society seems im¬
plausible: Wars often radicalize regimes and nations rather than induce them to
moderate their policies. And if the objective is to topple the Sandinist government,
which so far has managed to contain the invasion mainly with militia, the Administra¬
tion may find itself facing the now-familiar dilemma of having to escalate the con¬
flict or face a serious political defeat in the eyes of the American public and of the
world...What the Administration must do, in fact, is to halt its support of such at¬
tacks before they trigger even wider conflicts and more serious destabilization in
Central America.””
A companion piece questioned Reagan’s portrayal of Nicaragua as having

failed to fulfill the pledges of the revolution: “Actually, the Sandinists’ performance
on their pledges is mixed. La Prensa, the leading newspaper, has been strictly cen¬
sored since March, 1982, when the government reacted to anti-Sandinist, or contra,
assaults by imposing a state of emergency...Broadcasts of Radio Catolica, the sta¬
tion of the Managua archdiocese, are now censored for what the government con¬
siders political content.. .But the church, as a religious institution, is stronger than it
was before the revolution, and there is no government interference with religious
teaching in Roman Catholic schools—the country’s best—in which 30% of
Nicaraguan pupils are enrolled. Two priests serve as government ministers, and
many priests, as well as large members of the faithful, continue to support the San¬
dinists. The conflicts between church and state are political, not religious,’ says En¬
rique Alvarado, a supporter of the Sandinists who is vice-rector of the University of
Central America, a Jesuit institution in Managua. The church hierarchy had its own
idea of the revolution, which was a replacement of Somoza, leaving the institutions
more or less intact.’ ”
On the economy. Business Week observed that “the Sandinists have also left
70% of the economy in private hands—including an Exxon refineiy, product dis¬
tribution networks of Texaco and Socal, and a General Mills joint venture that
produces more than half of the country’s flour...Private businessmen complain of
price and currency controls, a government export monopoly, competition for small
retailers from government-sponsored retail outlets, and other restrictions.”
Regarding human rights. Business Week noted, “The number of political
prisoners is estimated at around 200.. .And five people disappeared in March, believed
to have been detained by government security forces. Bad as this is, it is ‘equal to
the best day in El Salvador in the last 18 months,’ notes a Western diplomat.”^
And, fortunately, it wasn’t as bad as Business Week reported. According to
Americas Watch, a total of 31 persons were reported disappeared by the CPDH (the
anti-Sandinista Permanent Human Rights Commission) during 1983. But unlike El
Salvador—^with 535 disappearances and 5,143 known political killings of civilian
noncombatants by the Salvadoran armed forces and associated paramilitary forces
recorded by the Church human rights office, Tutela Legal, in 1983—“disappeared”
is not a synonym for murdered.
In most Nicaraguan cases, disappeared means an unreported arrest. Accord¬
ing to Americas Watch, “the establishment of a complaint office at the Ministry of
the Interior, as well as procedures established within the DSGE [Security Police] had
a positive effect, as arrests that take place in Managua and other large cities are ac¬
counted for almost immediately.. .Together with the high proportion of those who
disappear who later reappear, this leads us to believe, as we stated in our two ear¬
lier reports, that the [Nicaraguan government] does not have a centrally directed
policy of forced disappearances as the phenomenon has been defined in relation
to events that have happened on a large scale in El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile and
Argentina at different times since the early 1970s.”
Americas Watch observed that “most of the hundreds of arrests that have taken
place since the establishment of the state of emergency seem related to the violent
activity displayed against the government by forces operating from outside

Nicaragua and within the territory, with covert but undeniable support from the
United States.”
Americas Watch called on Nicaragua to improve its human rights record while
noting areas where it had already done so. It pointed out that Nicaragua is visited
frequently by human rights observers and that government human rights officials
try to facilitate such inquiries. “Americas Watch is pleased to acknowledge that some
of the recommendations contained in our earlier reports have been taken into ac¬
count, particularly in the creation of a central registry of arrests. The [Nicaraguan
government] is even more receptive to the work of intergovernmental organizations
with which it is connected by treaty organizations. For example, Nicaragua is the
only country that has made a full report to the UN Committee on Human Rights
when its case has been discussed; all of the few other states that have accepted the
jurisdiction of this office of the UN make cursory presentations to that body.”
Looking at contra human rights abuses, Americas Watch observed that “in the
Northwestern mountain areas, the FDN has engaged repeatedly in kidnappings, tor¬
ture and murder of unarmed civilians, mostly in villages and farm coopera¬
tives...There is also no case reported yet of the FDN taking prisoners among the
members of the Sandinista Army or militias that they claim to encounter frequent¬
ly.” MISURA and MISURASATA “have engaged in forceful recruitment of refugees
[in Honduras], through the use of relief assistance and by violent means, to the point
where international voluntary agencies operating in the area have taken measures
to avoid involvement in such practices.
In his speech to Congress, Reagan accused the Sandinistas of breaking
promises to the OAS. The charge would be repeated often in coming years. It refers
specifically to a July 12,1979 letter that the provisional junta sent to the OAS secretary
general with its plan to achieve peace and establish the Government of National
Reconstruction. The letter was not a formal commitment to the OAS and OAS of¬
ficers have never treated it as such. It is certainly not a treaty that U.S. officials could
legitimately point to as a test of Nicaragua’s compliance with treaty agreements.
Leaving aside the question of legal standing, contrary to Reagan’s charges, the
new Nicaraguan government did fulfill its stated intentions to prevent extralegal
punishment of National Guardsmen and Somocistas, to allow Nicaraguans not ac¬
cused of crimes to leave the country and to hold elections (local elections in 1980,
national elections in 1984).^ Moreover, Nicaragua has been open to international
human rights organizations as indicated above. The Reagan administration used the
bogus OAS charge as one more tool to delegitimize the Nicaraguan government and
divert attention from the real violation of OAS commitments: U.S. violation of the
nonintervention articles of the OAS charter to which it is legally bound under U.S.
and international law.
Sticks and Stones

An administration list of possible diplomatic and military moves was leaked
to the press in April 1983 along with the idea that the United States was “building
a case against the Sandinista government that eventually could enable the United
States to declare Nicaragua a second Cuba and a threat to inter-American security.”
Administration officials talked of a possible second Cuban missile crisis, suggesting
that Nicaragua was considering deploying Cuban troops and even basing Soviet
nuclear missiles on Nicaraguan soil.
Among the “diplomatic” options were: denial of a visa for Interior Minister
Tomas Borge; new economic sanctions, including a reduction or cutoff of
Nicaragua’s sugar quota; pressure on U.S. and other Western banks to deny new
credits; a break in diplomatic relations or an indefinite delay in the appointment of
Nicaragua’s new ambassador to Washington; pressure on key Latin American
countries such as Mexico and Brazil “to shift their positions on Nicaragua, along
with reminders of U.S. aid last year when their economies began to crumble under
the pressure of foreign debts”; an emergency session of the OAS to seek a vote to
condemn Nicaragua or invoke the Rio treaty to sanction military action in case Cuban
forces or Soviet jet fighters are discovered in Nicaragua; request for a UN Security
Council session to declare an international crisis if Soviet missiles are detected in
Nicaragua; and a new negotiations effort.
Military options included an open declaration of support for the contras; selec¬
tive U.S. air strikes against Soviet- or Cuban-built military installations in Nicaragua
if MIGs are acquired; a blockade of Nicaragua, and perhaps Cuba, and deployment
of U.S. combat forces and jet fighters in Honduras if Soviet nuclear missiles are
deployed.^^
Asked about the possibility of allowing the Soviet Union to install nuclear mis¬
siles, Tomas Borge was unequivocal: “We made a revolution to liberate our country
from foreign domination. Neither would we permit it, in the first place, nor has it
ever been proposed by the Soviet Union. We have said repeatedly that there will
be no foreign military bases in our country.”^®
Nicaragua made no moves to realize U.S. fantasies of a second Cuban missile
crisis, but Washington carried out some of the above options in short order.
Nicaragua’s sugar quota was cut by 90 percent on May 10. Borge was denied a visa
in mid May to take up speaking invitations at Harvard and Johns Hopkins Univer¬
sities. Mexico and other Latin American countries were pressured. In June, the United
States officially declared its opposition to all multilateral loans for Nicaragua when
it vetoed a $2.2 million road-building loan from the Inter-American Development
Bank (IDB) which the 42 other members had approved.^^ By then Washington had
successfully shut off World Bank funding.
On June 5, Nicaragua expelled three employees of the U.S. Embassy in
Managua, accusing them of being CIA agents working under diplomatic cover to
destabilize the government. Nicaragua presented evidence of a plot to assassinate
Foreign Minister D’Escoto with a poisoned bottle of Benedictine liquor. D’Escoto
was reportedly targeted because his vocation as a priest gave the revolution too
much respectability in international affairs. Nicaragua also accused the United States
of sponsoring terrorist commando squads and working with conservative political
parties, unions and media to destabilize the government.^
Using the expulsion of the three U.S. officials as an excuse, Washington closed
down all six of Nicaragua’s consulates in the United States and expelled 21 consular
officials. The Nicaraguan government identified the move as part of an economic
boycott because the consulates handled virtually all of Nicaragua’s $300 million an¬
nual trade with the United States
On the diplomatic front. Special Envoy Richard Stone (serving until February
1984) went to Central America in June on what was widely seen as one in a series
of diplomatic missions designed mainly for public relations. Stone, who was a
registered lobbyist for the Guatemalan dictatorship after losing his Florida Senate
seat in 1980, put “democracy” in Nicaragua at the top of the list of U.S. concerns,
saying without it military agreements would “require minute verification.” A State
Department official acknowledged, “For some, to insist on democracy means not to
accept a Maixist-Leninist government. Thus it is a code word for overthrow.
D’Escoto recalled one of his last meetings with Richard Stone in Managua. At
one point Stone asked, “ ‘Father, do you think that it really would be possible for
both of our nations to normalize relations?’ And I said, ‘I think it not only could be,
but should be. And all it takes is for both of us to want it. I assure you... that Nicaragua
wants to normalize relations...! think that the place to begin is by committing both
of our governments to respect in the most categorical way the principles established
in the charters of the United Nations and the Organization of American States, both
of which we have signed in our laws. That is to say, to regulate our relations with
the...principles of international law.’
“ ‘Father, that is your problem,’ he [Stonel says. ‘It must be your background.’
[They are] always emphasizing the fact that I’m not a professional politician...He
says, ‘But now you have been in politics long enough.. .to have come to realize that
politics is made of concrete things...You talk about international law. Father. Tliat
is philosophy.’ As if to say poetry, or something optional, I don’t know. He says in¬
ternational law ‘is philosophy.’
“He says, ‘The contras,’ and he looked me sti*aight in the eye, ‘the contras,
they give you a lot of difficulty, don’t they Father.’ Exactly those words, I remem¬
ber... And I said, ‘They surely do, but they wouldn’t for too long...if your govern¬
ment would stop financing them and arming them and directing them.’ And he said,
‘Well, I guess you are hopeless. There you go again, philosophy.. .The only reality
is that they have been, that they are and that they will continue to receive aid...’
“And then he says to me, ‘You seem to be an intelligent person.’ Intelligent or
rational...‘And intelligent people,’ he says, ‘don’t like to have difficulties. You have
already acknowledged that the contras do give you a headache. And therefore
presumably you.. .would prefer not to have this headache.’ And, ‘You should do as
we say.’ That crude, ‘You should do as we say.’ And then he says, ‘You will see
how almost by magic the problem will disappear.’ And I could have almost im¬
agined someone with a hat pulling out a rabbit...
“In other words, I could see the United States as this great big power telling
us fall down on your knees and worship us, and say thy will be done Uncle Sam
because you’re big and powerful. You have a huge nuclear arsenal and therefore
we accept to bow down on our knees and bum incense before the imperial idol.
And for having refused to burn this incense our country is condemned to death.”
The United States, D’Escoto told me, has “become accustomed to a modality
of relationship with Latin America, a modality of relationship which not only does
it regard as a God-given right to maintain, but what is more important, they find it
difficult to envision how they can survive without this modality of relationship. This
is the situation that we have had with.. .the former colonial powers.. .And the owners
of slaves, it must be the same way.. .Those who inherited that system found it dif¬
ficult to envision how they could live without it.. .When [the United States] acts the
way it acts against Nicaragua it’s not because of any particular hatred of Nicaragua,
it’s because of fear. People can do awful things in fear...
“And they feel that if Nicaragua is able to get away with it then other countries
will follow suit. And in behaving the way they are.. .against Nicaragua, they’re trying
to send a clear message to Latin America. And the message is, ‘Don’t try to get loose
from our control. It will be to no avail, because in the end, after much suffering,
you will have to end up crying uncle.’ This is the message. And Nicaragua’s response,
of course, and this is what angers them, is ‘Patria libre o morir.’ And this is no
slogan.. .although Patrick Henry was an American, they don’t really believe it. They
think that’s only from history books.
Managua by Christmas?
In May 1983, Casey and Enders secretly told the Intelligence Committees that
the contras had a good chance of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government by the
end of the year. According to a Republican member of the Senate committee, “We
were told that there are 7,000 rebels and their numbers are growing. The scenario
they presented has the rebels picking up more and more popular support, which
will produce desertions in the Nicaraguan military, all setting the stage for a drive
on Managua that forces the Government out of power. They think it can work.” A
House committee member said, “They were telling us that, in effect, if we cut off
assistance to the rebels now we would be responsible for aborting a great chance
to reverse Communist gains in Central America.” A senior national security official
filled in more details. A pincer-type assault on Managua would involve an EDN drive
from the north, an eastern front of Miskito forces and a southern front led by Pas-
tora.^'* A 1982 internal CIA planning memo had set a Managua-by-Christmas
timetable.
Casey immediately denied predicting that the contras could overthrow the
Nicaraguan government by year’s end.^ But Prank McNeil, then ambassador to Costa
Rica, participated in a strategy session called by Casey in the spring of 1983, where
the same assertion was made; McNeil rejected it as nonsense. When McNeil retired
in February 1987 as deputy director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence

and Research, he accused Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams of “McCarthyism”
in treating analytical differences, especially over contra effectiveness, as disloyalty.
McNeil wrote that although in many respects Central America is different from Viet¬
nam, in Washington “echoes of Vietnam abound. Then, as now, improper or illegal
actions were committed in the name of national security and liberties taken with in¬
telligence. Then, as now, those running the war, arguing that victory was around
the corner, deceived themselves and the president. Four years ago this spring, I
heard a senior CIA official in all seriousness assert that the contras would threaten
Managua by Christmas of that year.”^^
The House Intelligence Committee voted on May 3, 1983 to cut off money for
the covert operation. It recommended instead that Congress authorize $80 million
in overt aid to Central American allies for the apparently immortal objective of arms
interdiction. The Senate Intelligence Committee did not concur. It voted to continue
funding the covert war until September, at which time the president would have to
submit a new finding for approval.
The House Intelligence Committee published a report on May 13 stating, final¬
ly, that the contra program was aimed not at arms interdiction, but at overthrowing
the Nicaraguan government. It asserted: “If there ever was a formula for U.S. policy
failure in Central America, it would involve two elements: (1) acts that could be
characterized as U.S. intervention in Nicaragua; and (2) an alliance with the fol¬
lowers of Somoza. Both characterizations can now be made.”^
Still, the arms interdiction fiction persisted. U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua Tony
Quainton had told U.S. citizens in March that “massive [he amended that to substan¬
tial] amounts of arms are going by dugout canoes across the Gulf of Fonseca. These
cannot be detected from satellite.Despite declassified U.S. reconnaissance photos
showing all sorts of wooden structures, from small sheds to “Soviet-style obstacle
courses,” the administration expected people to believe that dugout canoes repre¬
sented the latest in stealth technology. As former CIA analyst David MacMichael put
it, the purported arms flow is a “talisman...you must continue to insist on it even
in the face of no evidence whatsoever.
Besides infrared and other surveillance techniques, canoe hunters could use
modem night-vision scopes and old-fashioned searchlights. The CIA sponsored a
flotilla of radar-equipped armed speedboats—known as Piranhas—ostensibly to in¬
terdict arms shipments through the twenty-mile wide Gulf of Fonseca. According to
their Honduran commander. Captain Gonzalez, the crews had not intercepted a
single weapons shipment in almost a year of patrolling. “To be honest, I don’t believe
that Nicaraguan boats are crossing the gulf to El Salvador,” he said. Gonzales added
(with a nod to the talisman), “I think it’s more probable that their boats are swing¬
ing out into the Pacific and moving toward land well past the gulf.”^^
At the end of May, Enders was ousted; he became ambassador to Spain. White
House officials said privately that he was not tough enough.^ Policy was being
driven by hardest-liners Casey, Kirkpatrick and National Security Adviser William
Clark, the former judge from California who had acted as the Reagan loyalists’
watchdog in his previous post as Haig’s deputy. With zero foreign policy experience.
Clark was motivated primarily, in Time’s words, “by a nearly fanatic devotion to
Reagan’s interests and a visceral anti-communism.” He saw Congress’ role as one
of ratifying presidential decisions Langhorne Motley, an Alaska developer serving
as ambassador to Brazil, became the new assistant secretary of state for Inter-
American Affairs. Also, General Paul Gorman replaced General Wallace Nutting as
chief of the Southern Command.
FDN forces failed again to capture Jalapa, or any other city, town or village,
and establish a provisional government to be recognized by the United States.
Nicaragua dubbed 1983 “The Year of Struggle for Peace and Sovereignty.” The con¬
tras would not be celebrating Christmas in Managua.
In late June 1983, intelligence analysts made a new prediction: in six months,
contra forces would control almost one-third of the population in rural areas and
more than half the national territory. But they would have difficulty holding large
population centers and would not be able to overthrow the Nicaraguan government
in “the foreseeable future.”^'* They were right about the latter points.
There was a political advantage to the more pessimistic prediction. In a bizarre
twist to the administration’s contorted logic, contra supporters argued that the
program complied with the Boland amendment because the contras were incapable
of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government.
Trampling Democracy
“Support for democratic resistance within Nicaragua does not exist.” That was
the view of the Defense Department as stated in a leaked July 1983 NSC strategy
paper.^^ An extensive analysis of the document in the New York Times did not even
mention this assessment, much less attempt to explain its implications.^^ The only
thing the contras were resisting was the will of the Nicaraguan people to carry the
revolution forward.
Assessing the military situation in Nicaragua and El Salvador, the NSC docu¬
ment stated, “The situation in Central America is nearing a critical point.” It “is still
possible to accomplish U.S. objectives without the direct use of U.S. troops (although
the credible threat of such use is needed to deter overt Soviet/Cuban intervention),
provided\h2X the U.S. takes timely and effective action.” (NSC italics.)
Regarding Nicaragua specifically, the NSC stated, “No threat should be made
[without] willingness to follow through [with] military force.” It recommended
“relaxation/nonrenewal of all legislative restrictions”; “a comprehensive diplomatic
strategy” in Central America “with specific attention to the isolation of Nicaragua”;
and pressing “Western European governments at the highest level to cease finan¬
cial support for the Sandinistas.”
The NSC document noted that “Honduras is pivotal to U.S. policy”; it “has
openly aligned itself with the U.S.” Actions to be taken included increased military
assistance to Honduras and military exercises, including the construction and im¬
provement of Honduran air and naval facilities and the possible prepositioning of
U.S. military stocks “to obviate diversion of critical U.S. airlift in an emergency.” Is¬
rael and Venezuela were given as examples of countries to be enlisted in provid¬
ing military assistance and aiding so-called civic action projects.
There was inter-agency agreement on the need for an “invigorated strategy”
to build congressional support, specifically through the appointment of a bipartisan
commission. Henry Kissinger was later chosen to lead it.
“Reagan Plans Rise In Military Moves in Latin America—^Link to War Games,
Plan Calls for Preparing a Possible Quarantine of the Nicaraguans” read the New
York Hmcs headline of July 23- A companion piece described Honduras’ role in U.S.
strategy. The lead article made clear that air, sea and land maneuvers beginning in
August would lay the groundwork for an expanded U.S. military presence and a
possible blockade. “The plan approved by Mr. Reagan does not envisage any im¬
mediate combat role for United States forces, but does call for making preparations
so that American forces can be swiftly called into action if necessary.”
The article ended on a seemingly innocuous note: “The officials said planning
for the Navy called for some carrier training operations near Grenada, an island na¬
tion in the Caribbean, and off the coast of Suriname, a small South American country
that was once a Dutch colony.”^ Two CIA plans to overthrow the government of
Suriname were squashed by Congress in 1981 and 1982.^® Grenada was another
story (discussed in the next chapter).
On July 24, the New York Times ran a front-page story: “Efforts to Oust The
Sandinistas Held Ineffective.” The article said that “after more than a year of intense
activity, the Honduran-based rebels.. .have failed to achieve significant military gains
or to cause a serious political threat to the Government.” While designed to proceed
rapidly, based on the assumption that it would gain wide popular support, the con¬
tra war “instead was becoming more like a long but very limited war of attrition.”
The open question was whether the United States would intensify direct actions in
an effort to achieve the objective of overthrowing the Nicaraguan govemment.^^
These high-profile administration leaks fueled congressional fears of open-
ended U.S. involvement. The House voted 228-195 on July 28 to cut off contra sup¬
port by September 30, adopting legislation cosponsored by Edward Boland and
Clement Zablocki (D-Wl). The full bill authorized $80 million in overt aid for
weapons interdiction, still endorsing the administration assumption that Nicaragua
was “exporting revolution.”
As Rep. Barnes put it, “People are trying to find a way to be on both sides of
the issue.” The more conservative Rep. Dan Mica (D-FL) said, “Many of us believe
the President is acting illegally under United States laws, but we also think the
Nicaragua thing will eventually become a major problem for this hemisphere.”®®
The administration still had the support of the Republican-controlled Senate
and knew the House was vulnerable to aggressive lobbying. Right after losing the
July vote, Reagan approved a CIA plan authorizing expansion of the contras to be¬
tween 12,000 and 15,000. The plan emphasized the importance of destroying
economic installations and would rely heavily on the direct involvement of U.S. per¬
sonnel.
While counting on congressional acquiescence, the administration also pur¬

sued contra support outside the budget appropriations process. Israeli aid has al¬
ready been mentioned, as has U.S. aid passing through Honduras under the cover
of military maneuvers. In June, Reagan authorized “Operation Elephant Herd,”
another secret CIA-Pentagon plan to bypass congressional funding restrictions.
Under the program, implemented in December, the Pentagon set aside $12 million
worth of military equipment—including three Cessna 0-2 observation planes that
were modified to carry rockets by Summit Aviation of Delaware—and declared it
to be “surplus to requirements” of the military. “Surplus” material is considered to
have no dollar value and thus could be transferred to the CIA for the contras without
being counted as part of the $24 million in total military aid allowed by Congress
for 1984.
Government officials said “Project Elephant Herd was not a unique operation.
They say congressional restrictions on military aid—not just to contras, but to many
countries and rebel groups—are frequently circumvented in this way.” “Congress
may occasionally get angry that Defense is imaginative,” one official said. “They’d
write a new law to try to tie us down, and within five minutes somebody would
find a way to drive an elephant through it. That’s been going on forever.”®’
Gunboast Diplomacy
Big Pine II maneuvers with Honduras—“probably the longest military exer¬
cise ever”—^began August 5 and ended February 8, 1984.®^ From late July until Sep¬
tember 1983, the United States conducted three major naval maneuvers off the
Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of Central America, involving nineteen ships including
the carrier USS Ranger with 70 aircraft aboard. Another “no notice” naval exercise
began in early November. Newsweek heralded the naval maneuvers in a cover story:
“Gunboat Diplomacy: Reagan Gets Tougher with Nicaragua.” Time’s cover story a
week later was “Central America: The Big Stick Approach.”®^
At the peak of Big Pine II, which involved artillery and field training maneuvers,
an amphibious assault landing and practice air strikes, there were 6,000 U.S. military
personnel in Honduras. About 5,000 Honduran soldiers were trained. Construction
was carried out without direct congressional appropriations, utilizing instead the
Joint Chiefs’ military exercise fund and operating and maintenance funds. At Agua-
cate, used as a contra supply base in central Honduras, U.S. Army Engineers
lengthened a dirt and stone runway to 8,000 feet and built huts and a water system.
At San Lorenzo, in southern Honduras, close to El Salvador and near the key land
route into Nicaragua, they built a 4,000-foot dirt runway, water wells and wooden
huts. At Trujillo on the northern Caribbean coast, near the major port of Puerto Cas¬
tilla, Navy Seabees extended a concrete runway to 4,000 feet. About a mile away
they built Camp Sea Eagle with enough huts to house 800 troops. In addition, the
United States signed an agreement with Honduras providing for construction of and
access to airfields at Golason Airfield at La Ceiba on the northern coast; La Mesa at
San Pedro Sula in northwest Honduras near the Guatemalan border; and Palmerola
Air Base, near Comayagua in central Honduras.
When the maneuvers began in August, officials in El Salvador and Washington
were saying that the flow of Salvadoran rebel military supplies from outside the
country was only a trickle. Salvadoran officers did not dispute the FMLN’s claim that
they were capturing sufficient weapons to outfit their forces. And middlemen were
reportedly selling the guerrillas arms from the major army and air force arnmunition
dump at Ilopango Air Base. Still, officials insisted that guerrilla success depended
on outside supplies of ammunition, radio batteries and medicine. The shipments
across the Gulf of Fonseca were history; now the supply was supposedly by light
aircraft. Yet, with all the U.S. surveillance, “there has not been a single report of an
aircraft originating in Nicaragua being shot down or even seen by Government for¬
ces here.”®^
It was reported in early August that “while reluctant to commit U.S. troops to
combat in Central America, most Pentagon brass think they’d win in a walk once
committed.” In explaining why a Nicaragua invasion would be winnable while Viet¬
nam was not, the Pentagon assumptions ranged from optimistic to racist: Nicaragua’s
neighbors “would side with the United States...‘We can shut them off without a
supply siphon like the Ho Chi Minh Trail’ ” Any Soviet or Cuban “temptation to in¬
tervene would be daunted by the American naval forces required to support a U.S.
invasion: two carrier battle groups each on the Caribbean and Pacific sides of
Nicaragua.” Nicaragua’s “regular force of 22,000 without air support beyond old
surplus U.S. trainers and with a navy limited to shore patrol craft, could not offer
meaningful resistance to a simultaneous U.S. heliborne assault and amphibious land¬
ing. If spread out on alert in response to American exercises on the Caribbean and
Pacific sides, plus ground exercises as planned in eastern and western Honduras,
resistance would be even more feeble.”
As for the threat of a regionalized war, “guerrilla forces in El Salvador, like
Sandinista troops once their command posts and major concentrations are over¬
whelmed, will yield easily. ‘Latin American troops don’t have heart in any kind of
war where there’s a lot of killing; that’s their history,’ said a Marine colonel. ‘They’re
not like the Asiatics.’
7
Shockwaves
During a visit by a group of U.S. citizens with a U.S. Ambassador in Central

America.. .the Ambassador was asked to explain how such U.S. actions as
the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors and bombing of airports differed from
the acts of terrorism that the U.S. condemned around the world. The reply,
off the record, was, “Well, you’re not going to like this answer, but if they
do it, it’s terrorism, if we do it, it’s fighting for freedom.”
Patricia Hynds, Central American Historical Institute, August 1985.
“Absolutely, totally and irrevocably false,” Gen. John A. Wickham, Jr.,

Aimy Chief of Staff, said when asked about Army pilots engaging in
clandestine missions in Central America.
Washington Post, December 18, 1984.
At dawn on September 8, 1983, two small planes crossed Nicaraguan airspace

and appeared over Maijagua. One dropped its bombs in a residential neighborhood,
near the home of Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto, who happened to be away at
a Contadora meeting. It escaped. The other plane attacked the international airport
and adjacent air base with two jerry-rigged 150-pound bombs. Brought down by
antiaircraft fire, it crashed into the control tower. Several people were wounded and
part of the civilian passenger terminal was demolished. As El Nuevo Diario reported
it, hundreds of waiting passengers, family and friends narrowly escaped a “frightful
death.I happened to be in Managua for an international education conference.
The air strikes were a lesson in terrorism.
Eden Pastora’s ARDE forces claimed responsibility for the attack. Although
both pilots died in the crash, documents identified one as a Miami resident and
former pilot for the Nicaraguan airline, AERONICA. The other was a deserter from
149
the Nicaraguan Air Force. Their twin-engine, propeller-driven Cessna was registered
to Investair Leasing Corporation of McLean, Virginia. Investair was managed by a
former top official of Intermountain Aviation, a company once owned by the CIA,
and its marketing director was formerly secretary-treasurer of the now-defunct CIA
proprietary Air America.^
On September 19, President Reagan signed a new Nicaragua finding, authoriz¬
ing the provision of “support, equipment and training assistance to Nicaraguan
paramilitary resistance groups.” To mollify Congress, the newly stated objectives
were “inducing the Sandinista Government...to enter into negotiations with its
neighbors” and “putting pressure on the Sandinistas and their allies to cease
provision of arms, training, command and control facilities and sanctuary to leftist
guerrillas in El Salvador.”^
CIA Director Casey and Secretary of State Shultz presented the finding to the
congressional Intelligence Committees on September 20, along with a request for
$45 million in funding for 1984. Instead of talking about interdicting weapons, ad¬
ministration officials spoke of “pressuring” the Sandinistas to negotiate and stop “ex¬
porting revolution.” With an eye to the Boland amendment. Congress was told there
was “no thought of the administration backing the insurgents in trying to overthrow
the Sandinista government.”^ Meanwhile, the CIA implemented plans to use U.S.
agents and military personnel for direct attacks inside Nicaragua.
On October 3, the Nicaraguan Army shot down a DC-3 on a contra supply
mission. Three men were captured. At a press conference, the pilot said he had
flown nine supply missions in two months. The missions were directed from
Tegucigalpa by CIA contra coordinator Raymond Doty (known as Colonel
Raymond)—a former Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel who was a paramilitary
trainer in the CIA war in Laos—in conjunction with “Major West” at the Aguacate
Air Base.^ It would be three more years before a downed contra supply plane drew
the attention it deserved in the United States.
Trained Piranhas
CIA Latin America chief Dewey Clarridge met with FDN leaders in Tegucigal¬
pa in July 1983. “As he sat among us,” recalled Edgar Chamorro, “he reminded me
of a proconsul come to tell his subjects what to do and how to do it. I have never
witnessed such arrogance while working with a foreigner.” The only time the CIA’s
subjects in the FDN directorate all met together in Honduras was when Clarridge
came to town.^
The CIA was frustrated by the contras’ poor showing on the battlefield and
ready to take more direct action. As Chamorro testified to the World Court, “Clar¬
ridge told us that the C.I.A. had decided that something must be done to cut off
Nicaragua’s oil supplies, because without oil the Nicaraguan military would be im¬
mobilized and its capacity to resist our forces would be drastically reduced. Clar¬
ridge spoke of various alternatives. He said the Agency was considering a plan ‘to
Shockwaves 151
sink ships’ bringing oil to Nicaragua, but that one problem with this plan was that
if a ship belonging to the Soviet Union were sunk it could trigger a serious interna¬
tional incident. Clarridge said that the C.I.A. was also considering an attack on
Nicaragua’s sole oil refinery, located near Managua. According to Clarridge,
however, the refinery w'as located in a densely populated area, and the civilian
casualties resulting from such an attack would be politically counterproductive.
Finally, Clarridge said that the Agency had decided on a plan to attack the oil
pipelines at Puerto Sandino, on Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast, where the oil tankers
delivering oil to Nicaragua discharge their cargo.
In September, the contras began the Plan Marathon offensive against Ocotal
and Somoto near the northwestern border with Honduras, supported by task force
operations in the Jinotega and Matagalpa regions. On October 18, 300 FDN troops
“devastated Pantasma, Jinotega, destroying the school, two peasant cooperatives,
the bank, the Agrarian Reform office, a sawmill, the coffee warehouse, three
foodstuffs dispensaries, and eight tractors. The contras murdered 40 citizens; seven
of the town’s 20 civilian defenders were killed tn/ing to fend off the attack. Material
losses came to 34 million cordobas.” Adolfo Calero was quoted in the Miami Herald
a few days later, promising, “There will be more Pantasmas.”®
Like previous contra offensives. Operation Marathon ended in failure. It “un¬
derlined both the contras’ incompetence and the Agency’s misguided expectations,”
observed Christopher Dickey.^ Before it was over, Washington began the direct ac¬
tions promised in July.
The day of the airport bombing, September 8, the United States launched a
series of assaults on oil installations by blowing up the pipeline at Puerto Sandino.
“Although the F.D.N. had nothing whatsoever to do with this operation,” said
Chamorro, “we were instructed by the C.I.A. to publicly claim responsibility in order
to cover the C.I.A.’s involvement. We did.”^°
The heavily-armed Piranha speedboats, which fared poorly against phantom
arms shipments, proved effective in carrying out rocket attacks and transporting
saboteurs from a secret U.S. “mother ship” anchored off the coast of Nicaragua.
American covert agents worked with specially-trained Latin operatives known as
“Unilaterally Controlled Latin Assets,” or UCLAs. Recruited from El Salvador, Hon¬
duras, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia, the UCLAs were trained in unconven¬
tional warfare (e.g. underwater demolitions) by U.S. Special Eorces in Panama,
Honduras and the United States. “Our mission was to sabotage ports, refineries,
boats, bridges,” said one Honduran UCLA, “and try to make it appear that the con¬
tras had done it.” He also said that one of their missions was to blow up a building
in Managua in April 1984 during a meeting of Sandinista leaders, but it was aborted
when explosives failed to reach the hit team.^’
A Piranha rocket attack on October 10, 1983 put thousands of Nicaraguan
civilians in mortal danger. The target was Corinto, Nicaragua’s largest commercial
port, on the northern Pacific coast. Five large oil and gasoline tanks were destroyed
(including an Esso/Exxon tank), igniting over three million gallons of fuel. Tons of
medical supplies and stores of export coffee and shrimp were also lost. Some 23,000
Corinto residents had to be evacuated. Over 100 people were injured. According to
one of the Mexican engineers sent to help put out the fires, had more flammable
products in the area been set ablaze, “not a soul would have survived.” Nicaragua
angrily protested to the U.S. government, saying “this type of terrorist act, which
could not be carried off without advice and funding of the U.S. administration, con¬
stitutes one of the most violent forms of contempt for human life.”^^ Exxon an¬
nounced that it would no longer rent oil tankers for the transport of Mexican oil to
Nicaragua.
Casey was “elated” with the Corinto attack and immediately showed recon¬
naissance photos to Reagan.^^ The FDN claimed responsibility as instructed, but
within days administration officials confirmed, at least partially, the U.S. role for
reporters. At an October 19 press conference, a reporter asked Reagan, “regarding
the recent rebel attacks on a Nicaraguan oil depot, is it proper for the C.I.A. to be
involved in planning such attacks and supplying equipment for air raids, and do
the American people have a right to be informed about any C.I.A. role?”
“I think covert actions have been a part of government and a part of
government’s responsibilities for as long as there’s been a government,” replied
Reagan. “I’m not going to comment on what, if any, connections such activities
might have had with what has been going on or with some of the specific opera¬
tions down there, but I do believe in the right of a country when it believes that its
interests are best served to practice covert activity and then—^while you people may
have a right to know, you can’t let your people know without letting the wrong
people know—those that are in opposition to what you’re doing.The Nicaraguans,
of course, already knew the United States was behind the attacks. It was the
American people whose information was censored.
Pentagon Specials; Yellow Fruit and Night Stalkers

The CIA was not the only agency behind the sabotage missions. As Defense
Secretary Weinberger stated in a secret 1983 memorandum to the president, the Pen¬
tagon would “provide a wide range of logistical support and manpower to assist
CIA covert operations in Central America, including support of Nicaraguan rebels.”’^
That support didn’t end with tlie Boland amendment, and it went far beyond sur¬
veillance and contra support via military maneuvers. The Pentagon’s Special Opera¬
tions Division and Army Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) played critical roles.
The Special Operations Division, first headed by Colonel James Longhofer,
operated “in the black,” under strict cover within the office of the Army’s deputy
chief of staff for operations (DCSOPS). It was appropriated more than $325 million
between 1981 and 1983. “By the fall of 1983,” wrote Seymour Hersh, “the Army,
working through Longhofer’s unit had become an invaluable asset” in the covert
war against Nicaragua. “The men in Special Operations were instrumental in ferry¬
ing Army Special Forces personnel under cover to Honduras, where they helped
C.I.A. operatives train specially recruited Honduran troops for bloody hit-and-run
operations into Nicaragua. They supplied Army rapid-firing cannons known as
Shockwaves 153
‘bushmasters’ to the small boats used by the C.I.A. to mine harbors and destroy oil
depots during a series of controversial raids on Nicaragua’s east coast in the fall of
1983. One of Longhofer’s helicopter mechanics was aboard the C.I.A. ship that
directed the 1983 mining of harbors inside Nicaragua...The C.I.A.’s attacks caused
a political uproar when they were disclosed to Congress the next spring. But the
Army’s role was known to only a few members of the Congressional intelligence
subcommittees, who said nothing.
The Army and the CIA established a special aviation company called Seaspray
(later renamed Quasar Talent) in March 1981, headquartered at Fort Eustis, Virginia;
another secret headquarters in Tampa, Florida supported Central America opera¬
tions. Seaspray undertook direct attacks on Nicaraguan targets such as airfields.
In April 1981, the Army established the l60th Special Operations Aviation Bat¬
talion, a secret helicopter training and support unit based at Fort Campbell, Ken¬
tucky, which became widely exposed after the invasion of Grenada. Longhofer said
the purpose of the new l60th unit was “deception.. .We set it up so the media would
think the l60th was the big secret unit and would dig up Fort Campbell looking for
it.” Seaspray, which was integrated into a CIA proprietary named Aviation Tech Ser¬
vices, remained secret until 1985.
According to Hersh, “Longhofer’s most enduring accomplishment was an aerial
intelligence operation in Central America.. .established in March 1982.” Code named
Queens Hunter, it set up a front civilian aerial photography operation in Honduras,
staffed partly by specially assigned National Security communications experts, to
monitor the Nicaraguan government and Salvadoran rebels.
In addition to the Special Operations Division, the Army established a separate
covert entity known as the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), headed by Colonel
Jerry King until May 1984. ISA was also under the Army deputy chief of staff for
operations, and relied on the Special Operations Division “for mission planning and
operational support, including all the laundered cash deemed necessary. The men
and officers assigned to the unit were issued no military weapons or clothing; they
trained at civilian locations, flew in unmarked aircraft and were prepared to be dis¬
avowed by their Government if necessary.
One of ISA’s assignments in Nicaragua was to create “pathfinders,” secretly
marked routes and support facilities such as business fronts to provide cover for
U.S. agents. Posing as third-country tourists or businesspeople, ISA agents set up
safe houses, secret landing zones and other facilities to support U.S. military opera¬
tions in Nicaragua including an invasion force. ISA agents reportedly entered
Nicaragua using false credentials showing they were part of the embassy staff until
1984; then they relied on false passports from neighboring countries.'^
By December 1983, in a relatively quiet precursor to the Iran-contra affair, the
Special Operations Division’s ultra secret unit code named Yellow Fruit—^with its
commercial cover company. Business Security International—^was embroiled in
financial and other scandals. Yellow Fruit was shut down and its director, Lt. Colonel
Dale Duncan, who had publicly “retired” as part of his cover, was court-martialed
and is seiVing a ten-year sentence (reduced to seven) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Longhofer was allowed to remain on duty in an administrative job in Washington
while appealing his court-martial and reduced one-year sentence. In Longhofer’s

view, he and the others who were convicted or reprimanded are scapegoats for
higher-ups in the Pentagon. As for the Intelligence Support Activity, its morale may
have suffered but its personnel grew to number 300.^° Planning begun under Yel¬
low Fruit for off-the-books contra support was picked up by the so-called private
Enterprise (see chapter 11).
While Seaspray remained hidden the media spotlight was trained on Task
Force l60 after the October 1983 Grenada invasion. Nicknamed Night Stalkers, the
motto of Task Force l60 pilots is “Death waits in the dark.” Relatives later told Knight-
Ridder reporters that Task Force l60 members have “engaged in covert missions in
hostile areas of Central America to aid pro-American forces. If downed or captured,
the soldiers, who wore civilian clothes and flew at night were told to expect no U.S.
government acknowledgement or intervention...Instead, they were instructed to
blow up their CH-47 Chinook and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters with preplaced
explosive charges.” Then they were expected to buy or fight their way out, “using
bribe money made available by their superiors and privately purchased weapons
of their own choosing.”
William Donald Alvey of Morgantown, Kentucky, discussed several Nicaragua
missions with his son, Don. “He was kind of vague about the missions,” said Alvey.
“He’d go somewhere and pick up a group of people in a clearing in the jungle—
armed troops, speaking Spanish—and take them to another clearing in the jungle
somewhere.” They would usually be ferried between Honduras and Nicaragua.
Alvey insisted they were not training exercises. “Don said one time you could tell
damn well they had been in a fight because a lot of them were wounded.” Alvey
also recalled his son speaking of ferrying troops into Nicaragua from an offshore
ship.
“Don told me,” Alvey said, “that if he ever failed to return from one of those
missions, the Army already had a story to make up for his and his crew’s disap¬
pearance and nobody would ever know the difference.” According to the Army,
“Warrant Officer Donald R. Alvey, 26, was killed on March 20,1983, when a Chinook
helicopter he was piloting crashed 23 miles offshore of Norfolk, Va.”
Whether Donald Alvey was actually killed as the Army reported, the U.S.
military has a history of covering up deaths occuring during secret missions. As a
former Army officer explained, the solution to the problem of military personnel
killed working with the CIA in secret missions in Laos and Cambodia was
“bodywashing...If a guy was killed on a mission, and if it was sensitive politically,
we’d ship the body back home and have a jeep roll over on him at Fort Huachuca,”
an Army intelligence and covert operations base southeast of Tucson, Arizona. Or
“we’d arrange a chopper crash, or wait until one happened and insert a body or
two into the wreckage later. It’s not that difficult.
A Task Force l60 helicopter pilot. Captain Keith Lucas, was shot down on the
morning of the Grenada invasion while supporting a covert Delta Force mission.
Following the pattern of “laundering” special operations casualties, “Lucas’s father
was told by the military that his son’s death would not be reported as having oc-
Shockwaves 155
curred in Grenada because he was on a secret operation.” The military had to drop
the cover when the father went public with his story.^^
The Senate Intelligence Committee briefly investigated Task Force l60 follow¬
ing the news accounts in December 1984. It reportedly accepted the Pentagon’s
denial that the unit had participated in military missions into El Salvador, Honduras
or Nicaragua.
Target Grenada
Among the objectives listed in the Pentagon’s classified 1982 Consolidated
Defense Guidance was: “reverse communist gains in El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Grenada and other areas of Latin America.Days after 241 marines were killed in
a suicide bombing attack in Beirut, U.S. military forces invaded the Caribbean is¬
land of Grenada. With a population of 110,000, Grenada, at 133 square miles, is
about the size of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
The catalyst for the Grenada invasion was the murder of Prime Minister Maurice
Bishop and other top government officials following their ouster by Deputy Prime
Minister Bernard Coard and General Hudson Austin. The immediate pretexts were
a call by other Caribbean nations for military intervention and the rescue of American
medical students on the island. The larger pretext was stopping Cuban/Soviet ex¬
pansionism in the Caribbean and defending U.S. national security. The overlooked
background was years of U.S. hostility toward Grenada since Bishop’s New Jewel
Movement (Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education and Liberation) overthrew the
dictatorial Eric Gairy and his Mongoose Gang enforcers in a March 1979 coup cost¬
ing only one life.
When the new government, fearing a Gairy countercoup, asked the United
States for security assistance, the Carter administration refused and warned the
socialist New Jewel Movement (NJM) not to develop close ties with Cuba. Gairy’s
legacy was an impoverished economy with an unemployment rate of nearly 50 per¬
cent and few health and education services. The NJM needed assistance. Unlike
Washington, Cuba was prepared to help, as was Canada, Venezuela and the
European Economic Community (EEC). In the NJM’s first year in office, private sec¬
tor investment increased by over 130 percent and the govermnent embarked upon
an ambitious program of public housing, public works, equal rights for women and
free education and health care.
The Reagan administration conducted covert activities against Grenada, such
as giving aid to opposition groups, after the Senate Intelligence Committee rejected
a more extensive plan to destabilize the government. It also launched full-scale
economic warfare.^^ “Not one penny for Grenada,” Secretaiy of State Haig ordered
U.S. officers in international financial institutions. In 1981, Washington tried to block
an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan for construction of Grenada’s interna¬
tional airport at Point Salines. Because IMF decisions are supposed to be made on
non-political grounds, the United States argued that the airport would worsen
Grenada’s balance of payments problems. “IMF staff economists replied that a ser¬
viceable international airport would, on the contrary, improve Grenada’s balance of
payments by encouraging tourism.” Nonetheless, the loan was cut by one-third
under U.S. pressure.^^
The airport became the focal point of U.S. polemics against Grenada. Reagan
portrayed Cuban construction assistance as a sinister plot to make Grenada a base
for subversion of the Caribbean and a threat to shipping. On March 10 and 23, 1983,
Reagan displayed reconnaissance photos of the construction site marked with such
headings as “10,000 Foot Runway” and “New Cuban Housing.” The display did not
show the many resident American students who jogged on the open construction
site, nor reveal the non-threatening information that the airport was funded by a
British government-backed loan and construction was managed by the Plessey Com¬
pany, a British international contracting firm, which “stated that the airport was being
built to civilian specifications and contained no standard military features such as
hardened fueling facilities or bomb shelters for fighter aircraft.. .The Point Salines
runway was actually shorter than other regional airports such as those in Trinidad,
Jamaica, and nearby Barbados.”^’
Recalling Reagan’s March 10 speech, former Ambassador Sally Shelton said, “I
was absolutely staggered, because he was talking about a Grenada that didn’t have
much resemblance to the Grenada to which I had been accredited as ambassador.”
Francis McNeil, former deputy director of intelligence for the State Department, ac¬
knowledged, “we pretty much lived by the descriptions in our own rhetoric, rather
than seeking the reality of the situation on the island...It was kind of T’ll huff and
I’ll puff and I’ll blow your Marxist house down’ kind of thing.
During the U.S.-led Ocean Venture naval maneuvers from August to October
1981, Grenada (and the Grenadines) was the thinly-veiled target of a mock invasion
of “Amber and the Amberdines.” In the exercise scenario. Amber was influenced by
“Country Red” (Cuba) to “export terrorism” by supporting a guerrilla movement in
“Country Azure.” Azure invited the United States to neutralize the guerrillas and the
United States invaded Amber to rescue American hostages. U.S. troops remained
until a pro-U.S. Anber government was installed.
The Bishop government protested this dress rehearsal for invasion and
responded by acquiring small arms and increasing the size of its minute army and
civilian militia. Those defensive actions were then portrayed by Washington as signs
of Grenada’s aggressive intent. Grenada had already experienced real assaults: in
June 1980, for example, a bomb exploded under the grandstand at Queen’s Park
just before a rally at which Bishop and other NJM leaders were to appear. Three
young girls were killed and other spectators were injured.^^ In spring 1983, Bishop
wrote Reagan in an effort to improve relations. The letter was answered coolly by
a lower-level U.S. diplomat in Barbados. When Bishop went to Washington, Reagan
refused to meet him. Instead of responding positively to Bishop’s attempts to im¬
prove relations, the administration chose to exploit his death later in the year.
Shocked and angered by the October 19 murder of Bishop and his colleagues,
most Grenadians had little will to resist the U.S. invasion. The widespread sentiment
was: “No Bishop, No Work, No Revo.” Indeed, after Bishop was arrested on Oc-
Shockwaves 157
tober 14, the so-called Revolutionary Military Council had disarmed the civilian
militia and deposited their largely antiquated weapons in half-full warehouses that
the U.S. military would later photograph—selectively—as evidence of Grenada’s
“military buildup.”
The Cuban government publicly denounced the coup and made clear amid
signs of an imminent U.S. invasion that Cubans would fight only in self-defense.
Castro sent the U.S. government an urgent message on October 22, suggesting that
the United States and Cuba communicate “to avoid violence.” Cuba received no
reply until 90 minutes after the invasion began on October 25.
The invasion torpedoed a diplomatic initiative by the Caribbean Common
Market (CARICOM) aiming to ensure safety on the island and restore civilian rule.
Instead, Washington arranged for the smaller Organization of Eastern Caribbean
States (OECS) to “invite” U.S. military intervention. The decision was not unanimous
as required under the OECS charter and, even if unanimous, it would not have been
legal under international law. It was later revealed that the OECS request was ac¬
tually drafted in Washington. After Prime Minister Eugenia Charles of Dominica ap¬
peared with Reagan to announce the invasion. Rep. Gus Savage (D-IL) described
her as “this puppet of our President [who] represents ‘Aunt Jemimaism’ in
geopolitics.At one point, the CIA passed $100,000 to her government for “a secret
support operation”; a Senator on the Intelligence Committee called it a “payoff.
Clues began to accumulate that the invasion was planned weeks in advance.
According to a congressional source, the Pentagon admitted in a secret briefing that
it knew of the coup against Bishop two weeks ahead of time. U.S. Ambassador to
France Evan Galbraith said on French television on October 26 that the invasion
was “an action which had begun two weeks ago.” Later he said he had “misspoken.”
Also revealing were Ranger exercises reported in early November: “from Septem¬
ber 23 to October 2, the 2nd Battalion of the 75th Rangers Division, stationed at Fort
Lewis, Washington—one of two Ranger units which participated in the actual in¬
vasion—spent six days practicing taking over an airport, complete with parachute
jumps onto runways, capturing airport buildings, taking captives, and liberating
hostages. Although an Army spokesman referred to the exercises as occurring
‘regularly’ at Ephrata Municipal Airport—^which happened to have a runway the
same length as the Point Salines runway—an airport official told reporters, ‘It would
be pretty farfetched to say it’s done on a regular basis. They’ve done it twice to my
knowledge—în 1981 and this time.’
About 600 Americans attended St. George’s medical school in Grenada. First¬
hand accounts indicated that coup leaders Bernard Coard and Hudson Austin were
taking special measures to reassure the school and the U.S. government that the stu¬
dents were not in any danger. Peter Bourne, former health official in the Carter ad¬
ministration and a visiting professor at the medical school where his father. Dr.
Geoffrey Bourne, was vice-chancellor, recounted these events in the Los Angeles
Times.
I contacted my father who assured me not only that there was no cause for alarm,
but that Coard had guaranteed the safety of the medical school and students. We remained
in contact over the next several days by telephone and through the medical school telex
link to its Bayshore office in New York...Despite a 24-hour curfew, Coard provided
government vehicles so that students could get from one campus to another in safety.
On Wednesday 19 October, I received a call from a member of the board of trus¬
tees, a distinguished and conservative man [reportedly Senator Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY)]
who said that the State Department was pressuring school officials in New York to say
publicly that the students in Grenada were in danger so that Washington would have a
pretext to invade the island. I urged that they not accede to such pressure...
Still concerned about the safety of the medical students in the event of a US in¬
vasion, my father convinced Austin to allow representatives of the US embassy in Bar¬
bados to come to the island the next morning, Saturday 22 October.. .US embassy officials
met with Austin and other members of the military council and the medical students...
On Monday morning the airport was reopened as General Austin had promised,
and any students who wanted to leave could do so. The only problem was that Barbados
was already preparing with Washington to invade the next day and refused to let the
commercial airline LIAT fly to the island. A few students left by charter plane as did British
and Canadian citizens alarmed by the continuing rumors of imminent invasion.
That same morning I received a telegram from my father.. .which said, ‘We are all
22
Still well and safe. News distorted and exaggerated’...
The real danger to the students came when the main U.S, invasion force landed
at Point Salines airport, located adjacent to one of the school’s three campuses. The
supposed U.S. rescue forces were surprised to learn from students of the other sites.
It took four days to reach all the students. None were ever taken hostage or other¬
wise harmed by Grenadians (or Cubans). On October 26, many of the students were
evacuated while fighting still raged at Grand Anse Bay. Not surprisingly, they were
scared and happy to get off the island. Their well-publicized joy upon arrival in the
United States was used to promote the “rescue” pretext.
The main U.S. invasion, code named “Urgent Fury,” began at dawn on Oc¬
tober 25, with a landing of 1,900 U.S. Army Rangers and Marines. Growing to 7,000,
the invasion force was billed as multinational, but the Caribbean contingent of 300
men, mainly from Jamaica, engaged in police duty only after combat ceased. During
the Point Salines assault the barracks housing Cuban construction workers were
fired upon and they fought back; 24 Cubans were killed and 59 wounded during
the invasion.
After the Cuban airport workers were captured, Washington played up the
Cuban threat angle by claiming that 800 to 1,000 Cubans were resisting in the hills.
When the smokescreen cleared, Cuba’s official count of its citizens on the island
proved accurate: 784 Cubans including airport workers as well as diplomats and
their families.
The Reagan administration showed its respect for freedom of the press by cen¬
soring coverage of the invasion. Reporters were kept off Grenada for three days
after which press restrictions remained in effect. Meanwhile, Washington’s disinfor¬
mation campaign left lasting impressions of an expansionist “terror island.”
In his televised address of October 27, Reagan claimed: “We had to assume
that several hundred Cubans working on the airport could be military reserves. As
it turned out the number was much larger and tliey were a military force. Six hundred
of them were taken prisoner and we have discovered a complete base with weapons
Shockwaves 159
and communications equipment which makes it clear a Cuban occupation of the is¬
land had been planned.
“Two hours ago we released the first photos from Grenada. They included
pictures of a warehouse of military equipment, one of three we’ve uncovered so
far. This warehouse contained weapons and ammunition stacked almost to the ceil¬
ing, enough to supply thousands of terrorists.
“Grenada, we were told, was a friendly island paradise for tourism. Well it
wasn’t. It was a Soviet-Cuban colony being readied as a major military bastion to
export terror and undermine democracy. We got there just in time.”^'*
When the UN Security Council approved a resolution “deeply deploring” the
invasion as a “flagrant violation of international law,” the United States cast the sole
negative vote to veto it. Though the New York Times and Washington Post editorial¬
ized against the invasion—ûnlike such prominent liberal commentators as Bill
Moyers, then with CBS News—^their overall coverage largely reinforced the official
Line about the Cuban threat. When Bernard Coard was captured on October 30, the
New York Time's headline read “Pro-Cuban Seized,” despite the fact that Cuba had
denounced the coup.
On Grenada, Gairy’s Mongoose Gang members were released from prison and
NJM supporters and many others, including foreigners working on the island, were
rounded up, arrested and interrogated without regard to due process. In one ac¬
count demonstrating the broad sweep of the arrests and interrogations, Regina
Fuchs, a West German nurse working at a clinic in Grenada, said “that she was kept
in Richmond Hill jail for two days and interrogated relentlessly about whether she
had ever demonstrated against the Vietnam War, whom she knew when she at¬
tended medical school, whether she had ever met [former CIA agent] Philip Agee
in Germany, and the like. She was falsely accused of harboring fugitives by two
Americans, one named Ed and the other named Frank Gonzales, who identified
himself to her as CIA.”^^
Grenadian casualties were ignored or underestimated. Later Pentagon figures
showed 67 Grenadians killed and 358 wounded—including 21 mental patients killed
when U.S. aircraft bombed their hospital. According to military analyst Richard
Gabriel, “even if the Pentagon’s figures are accepted as accurate, the number of
civilians killed and wounded is far too high for an operation of the size and inten¬
sity of Urgent Fury. Conversations with U.S. claims-settlement personnel on the is¬
land as well as with Grenadian civilians suggest that there was a good deal of
indiscriminate shooting, mostly from the air, at targets that were not clearly iden¬
tified. A favorite sport of helicopter gunship pilots in Grenada on ‘roam and kill’
missions seems to have been to machine-gun livestock from the air. In one instance,
an old woman was killed from AC-130 gunship fire, and in another, an infant was
machine-gunned in her crib by helicopter gunship fire.”
The U.S. government played politics with American casualties as well. Of the
nineteen deaths the Pentagon admitted to, more than two-thirds were killed by
“friendly fire” or in helicopter crashes and other accidents. The official casualty num¬
bers excluded special forces personnel. According to Gabriel, “If they are included,
the death toll jumps from nineteen to twenty-nine, including the six Delta Force sol-
diers and the four [Navy] Seals killed [by drowning] before the invasion officially
began,” The Pentagon also tried to conceal the true number of wounded. “When it
was later reported by the press that the number who received Purple Hearts was
higher than the number listed as wounded, the [Joint Chiefs of Staff] again adjusted
the number of wounded upward, to 152.”
The invasion was, as Gabriel explained, a political and bureaucratic success,
whatever its military shortcomings: “almost every unit and officer that took part (and
even many who did not) was able to enhance his career by being awarded a
medal.. .If the medals already awarded are added to those pending, the number ap¬
proaches 19,600!”^
Grenada was remodeled under U.S. direction. U.S. psychological warfare
(psyops) teams plastered the island with propaganda posters and pro-U.S. graffiti
and transformed Radio Free Grenada into Spice Island Radio. In July 1987, Newsweek
published a brief story on the station, “Grenada Fights the Calypso Menace,” making
light of censorship under the government of Prime Minister Herbert Blaize. The ar¬
ticle said “politically sensitive” calypso music “will be banned from the island’s only
radio station, which is government owned.” A government censor explained that
“whenever a composer seems to be saying wrong things or lying directly, we can
ban the song.” Newsweek commented that the “censorship is probably more futile
than repressive.So much for concerns over peacetime censorship in U.S.-backed
Grenada.
Secretary of State Shultz was an early visitor to “liberated” Grenada. “It’s real¬
ly a lovely place,” he said in 1984. “The terrain is more rugged than I imagined, but
it is certainly a lovely piece of real estate.”^
The Point Salines airport was recognized for what it always was, an economic
necessity. The United States “contracted with Morrison-[Knudsen], an Idaho con¬
struction company that was part of a consortium that built most of the roads, ports
and bridges in Vietnam, to complete the airport for $21,8 million.
As time passed, the rewriting of history to justify U.S. intervention was il¬
lustrated on the New York Hmcs editorial pages. On December 10, 1984, the Times
praised the election of Herbert Blaize as a “constructive sequel” to the invasion. His
victory was hardly a surprise given that his legal challenger was the deposed mler
Eric Gairy and the CIA had allocated $675,000 (amounting to more than $6 for eveiy^
Grenadian) from its political action funds to influence the election.'^® Although the
Times was still skeptical about administration claims about the students and the in¬
vitation to intervene, it twisted reality to claim, “Lost somewhere in the long list of
justifications was the most compelling reason for the action: the fear that Grenada
had been led into the Soviet and Cuban orbit by Mr. Bishop and was to be sealed
in by his murder.”
In January 1985, the liberal New York Times columnist Tom Wicker found a
silver lining to the invasion in the Blaize government: “Asked why his predecessors,
Mr. Bishop and Sir Eric, had invested so little in the island’s basic needs, Mr. Blaze
[s/d laughed, not mirthfully, and replied: ‘They had other priorities’—an outsize
military force in Mr. Bishop’s case, and what an American called ‘squandermania’
in Sir Eric’s.. .[the Blaize] Government is evidence, even for Americans who opposed
Shockwaves l6l
the intervention, that it worked: Grenada is peaceful again, and has a new chance
for prosperity.”'*^
Leaving aside Wicker’s distortion of Bishop’s record, Reaganomics brought no
prosperity to Grenada. The official unemployment rate shot up from 12 percent in
1982 to 27 percent in 1985. The NJM’s housing projects, free milk program and
education programs were abolished.'*^ One sign of the regression in women’s status
is the revival of prostitution.
Reagan visited Grenada in February 1986 and was hailed by Blaize as “our
own national hero” and “our rescuer after God.” Reagan likened events in Nicaragua
to those that prompted the Grenada invasion. He would not be satisfied, he said,
“until all the people of the Americas have joined us in the warm sunshine of liber¬
ty and justice.”'*^
Nicaragua Next?
For many Americans the Grenada invasion was balm for the fresh wounds of
Beirut and the scars of Teheran. Revenge went down easier in the guise of rescue.
For some the revenge went deeper to the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. As a top CIA of¬
ficial put it, “this Administration came to power with the intention of punching some¬
one in the nose.”'*'* Democratic Party leaders who had denounced the invasion as
“gunboat diplomacy” (House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s words) quickly tacked to the
winds of public opinion and pronounced it “justified.” The narrow majority in sup¬
port of the invasion loomed even larger on the political horizon.
Grenada was an opportunity for the Reagan administration to show that the
United States was no “paper tiger.” As one senior official put it, “What good are
maneuvers and shows of force, if you never use it?”'*^ The obvious question was
would Nicaragua be next? U.S. citizens living in Nicaragua began weekly protest
vigils in front of the American Embassy, displaying the banner: “We Don’t Want to
be Rescued.”
Fearing a Grenada-style invasion in Central Ajnerica, U.S. peace activists un¬
dertook new initiatives. One effort led to the formation of the National Pledge of
Resistance, a broad-based network of tens of thousands of U.S. citizens, each
pledged to join in legal protest or nonviolent civil disobedience “if the United States
invades, bombs, sends combat troops, or otherwise significantly escalates its inter¬
vention in Central America.” The religious-based Witness for Peace began sending
U.S. volunteers to maintain a nonviolent presence in Jalapa and other Nicaraguan
war zones. These efforts were part of a diverse and dynamic movement to educate
and organize people against the ongoing, many-sided U.S. invasion of Central
America and compel a change in policy.
In Grenada, observed military analyst Richard Gabriel, “the ability of U.S.
ground forces to move rapidly and boldly against the enemy and to demonstrate
effective small-unit fire and maneuver was absent. Should U.S. ground forces ever
engage in El Salvador or Nicaragua and use the same tactics, the war will be long—
and bloody.In Nicaragua, U.S. forces would be resisted not only by a larger, bat¬
tle-hardened army, but by an armed population.
Nicaragua’s defense preparations were prudent, not paranoid. Nicaraguans
were mobilized through the militias and Sandinista Defense Committees to improve
their readiness for armed defense, medical care and emergency evacuation. Back¬
yard bomb shelters were dug all over Managua. Nicaragua wanted to send a clear
message to Washington: the costs of an invasion here will be far higher than
Grenada.
Invasion talk circulated throughout Central America and in Washington. CON-
DECA, the Central American Defense Council once led by Somoza, was reactivated
on October 1, 1983—^just weeks before the Grenada invasion—by El Salvador, Hon¬
duras, Guatemala and Panama. General Paul Gorman, chief of the U.S. Southern
Command, was in attendance. CONDECA military leaders met secretly in Tegucigal¬
pa on October 22 and 23 and discussed the legality of joint military action “for the
pacification of Nicaragua.” They agreed that the contras “can establish a government
somewhere in [Nicaraguan] territory, and, once recognized internationally, can ask
for aid from CONDECA.” At a press conference earlier in the month, the FDN had
declared its strategy to establish a provisional government and call for multination¬
al assistance. CONDECA leaders also agreed they could act to defend the “peace”
in any country in Central America and call upon the United States for support. The
consensus was that “a war situation is predictable.”^^ General Alvarez of Honduras
told U.S. officials that he intended to celebrate his next birthday—December 12—
in Managua.^®
U.S. officials denied plans to support CONDECA action against Nicaragua. But
the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs warned of an invasion plan,
code named Operation Pegasus, involving air strikes, a naval blockade and a land
invasion by CONDECA troops. They cited an administration source who had leaked
details of the Grenada invasion six days before it took place.
For some U.S. officials, Grenada was a warning that consuming Nicaragua
would not be easy. For others it was an appetizer, whetting their desire for the main
course. A shared lesson was that U.S. forces and their Central America battlefield
should be better prepared.
“Stepped Up Intensity”
Fresh from victory in Grenada, “the CIA and the administration generally were
feeling a new potency in the fall of 1983,” wrote Christopher Dickey. “Dewey [Clar-
ridge] reportedly took to driving around with a bumper sticker that said ‘Nicaragua
Next.’ Old acquaintances of his, bumping into him at an airport, remember him
gushing about what was going on with ‘my war.’
In the last three months of 1983, the Nicaraguan government undertook a
series of measures to enhance political pluralism, demonstrate its commitment to
negotiations and reduce tensions following the Grenada invasion. On October 20,
Shockwaves 163
Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto presented Assistant Secretary of State Langhome

Motley with four draft treaty proposals—^to be implemented under the auspices of
the Contadora Group formed earlier in the year (discussed in chapter 13)—includ¬
ing bilateral treaties between Nicaragua and the United States and between
Nicaragua and Honduras, and multilateral treaties regarding the war in El Salvador
and regional peace and security. The State Department dismissed them all.
Also on October 20, the House of Representatives voted again to replace covert
aid to Nicaragua with an overt $80 million “interdiction assistance” program. During
the debate. Rep. Michael Barnes, back from a recent visit to Nicaragua, told fellow
House members: “Myth would have it that the covert operations are designed to
force the Nicaraguans to the negotiating table. But the trouble with that is that the
Nicaraguans were already there. Nicaragua has been trying to have talks with the
Reagan Administration all along. It is not Nicaragua that will not negotiate. It is us.
Nicaragua has long since demonstrated its willingness to address our security con¬
cerns on the sole condition that we be prepared to address their security concerns.
“The one thing that the Nicaraguans will not negotiate about is their revolu¬
tion. And here we get to the real purpose of the covert operations. They are designed
to overthrow the Nicaraguan revolution.
The Senate voted, as expected, to approve contra funding on November 3. In
a “compromise” on November 18, Congress approved $24 million in contra aid. It
was expected to last until June 1984.
In November, Nicaragua eased press censorship; the Salvadoran revolution¬
aries moved their Political and Diplomatic Commission out of Nicaragua; and about
2,000 Cuban teachers and technical advisers returned home. On November 30,
Nicaragua presented three more treaty proposals, containing provisions for the ex¬
clusion of foreign military advisers and restrictions on arms. Motley dismissed these
actions as “false signals.
On December 1, Nicaragua freed Miskito prisoners and declared a general am¬
nesty for insurgents in Northern Zelaya. The amnesty decree recognized a
governmental commitment to ethnic minority rights. Three days later, Nicaragua an¬
nounced an amnesty for counterrevolutionary exiles including those engaged in
armed and illegal activities, excluding ex-National Guard officers and others in the
contra leadership. It stipulated that returnees would have the option of participat¬
ing in the land distribution program under the Agrarian Reform and that “in the case
of agricultural proprietors who may have abandoned their lands, and which later
may have been occupied, their lands shall be restored to them or adequate com¬
pensation made.” Amnesty beneficiaries would have full rights to participate in com¬
ing elections. By December 15, more than 100 peasants had taken advantage of the
amnesty and resettled in the departments of Ocotal and Esteli.”
The Nicaraguan government announced steps leading to commencement of
the electoral process on January 31, 1984 for national elections then scheduled for
1985 (they were moved up to November 1984). In a full-page “Message to the People
of the United States from the People of Nicaragua” appearing in the New York Times
on December 11, 1983, Nicaragua published the amnesty and electoral decrees and
reiterated Nicaragua’s desire for a peaceful solution to the crisis in Central America
l64 WASHINGTON’S WAR ON NICARAGUA
with the “right to freely determine our own future in peace and security” without
“interference or direction from anyiomgn power.”
The prevailing mood in the Reagan administration was, in the words of one
official, “the Sandinistas are on the ropes—keep the pressure on.”^ On December
20, the Special Interagency Working Group concluded: “Given the distinct possibility
that we may be unable to obtain additional funding in FY [Fiscal Year]-84 or FY-85
our objective should be to bring the Nicaragua situation to a head in 1984.” At a Na¬
tional Security Planning Group meeting on January 6, 1984, Reagan concurred in
the recommendation to “proceed with stepped up intensity.
An internal CIA memorandum reported on nineteen attacks involving helicop¬
ters and Piranha speedboats (called Q boats by the CIA) launched from CIA “mother
ships” between January 1 and April 10, 1984. Army Intelligence Support Activity
(ISA) and Task Force l60 personnel participated.
On January 4, for example, U.S. helicopters and speedboats rocketed the port
of Potosi. “CIA crewed Merlin aircraft equipped with FLIR [Forward looking infrared
radar] provided real time intelligence support.” On March 7, speedboats attacked
the San Juan del Sur oil and storage facility. When Nicaraguan forces responded, a
U.S. “support helicopter laid down suppressing rocket fire which enabled ‘Q’ boats
to withdraw safely.”
By March 29, plans were made to support a Pastora attack on San Juan del
Norte with the goal of installing a provisional government.^ On April 9, U.S. helicop¬
ters provided fire support to the ARDE assault on San Juan del Norte. “ARDE was
satisfied with the fire display,” noted the CIA report.But a Nicaraguan counterof¬
fensive routed the ARDE forces and dashed U.S. plans to establish a provisional
government on the Atlantic Coast.
In another incident, not contained in the CIA summary, a Honduran-based
U.S. Army UH-IH helicopter was shot down over Nicaragua on January 11, while
apparently providing logistical support for a contra assault force. U.S. pilot Chief
Warrant Officer Jeffrey Schwab was killed.^ By one account, Schwab’s helicopter
was inadvertently directed over Nicaragua while on its way from San Lorenzo to
Aguacate, when a U.S. radio operator mistook it for a CIA reconnaissance and
resupply mission.^^
On March 24, 1984, as reported in the Costa Rican La Prensa Libre, a DC-3
crashed while supplying arms to the contras in Costa Rica. Eyewitnesses saw armed
men take seven bodies from the wreckage, douse two with gasoline and burn them,
remove other bodies and torch documents. Four of the seven dead men were said
to be North Americans
The DC-3 crashed on a mountainside near the ranch of American John Hull,
which served as a base for the contra supply operation. Eden Pastora and top aide
Karol Prado said later that CIA station chief “Tomas Castillo” and a South American
CIA agent, “Ivan Gomez,” ordered them to remove teeth and jawbones and muti¬
late the bodies to destroy physical evidence. Unidentified helicopters removed some
bodies from the scene before Costa Rican investigators arrived. Prado identified the
DC-3’s pilot as Renato Torrealba, who was married to an American and “recognized
as Castillo’s number one pilot.”
Shockwaves 165
Although it had Canadian serial markings, the DC-3 was owned by the U.S.
government. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) records listed the owner of the
plane as one Robert Branch of Indianapolis who lost custody to the U.S. govern¬
ment in July 1983 because of the plane’s alleged use in drug trafficking. According
to FAA agent Edwin McDaniel, the plane was “released without the normal paper¬
work because it was ‘slated for military use.’
Mining the Harbors

In January 1984, Washington began mining Nicaragua’s harbors, an action con¬
sidered the equivalent of a blockade and an act of war under international law.
President Reagan approved the mining on the recommendation of National Security
Adviser Robert McFarlane (Clarridge takes credit for the mining idea).^^ Indeed,
Reagan was briefed on and approved even “relatively minor operational details,”
such as Ambassador Negroponte’s November 1983 recommendation to increase by
3,000 the number of weapons supplied to the contras.^^
Edgar Chamorro told the World Court how he was first informed of the min¬
ing on January 5: “at 2:00 a.m., the C.I.A. deputy station chief of Tegucigalpa, the
agent I knew as ‘George,’ woke me up at my house in Tegucigalpa and handed me
a press release in excellent Spanish. I was surprised to read that we—^the F.D.N.—
were taking credit for having mined several Nicaraguan harbors. ‘George’ [John Mal-
lett] told me to rush to our clandestine radio station and read this announcement
before the Sandinistas broke the news. [Nicaraguan radio had actually reported on
the mining two days earlier.] The truth is that we played no role in the mining of
the harbors. But we did as instructed and broadcast the communique...Ironically,
approximately two months later, after a Soviet ship struck one of the mines, the
same agent instructed us to deny that one of ‘our’ mines had damaged the ship to
avoid an international incident.
Mines were deployed in the ports of Corinto, Puerto Sandino and El Bluff (near
Bluefields) from January through March 1984. A variety of mines were used, most
reportedly products of the CIA Weapons Group in Langley, Virginia, assisted by the
Mines Division of the U.S. Navy Surface Weapons Center in Silver Spring, Maryland.
CIA weapons specialists in Honduras did the final assembly. The most sophisticated
and damaging mines were ten-foot long cylinders filled with 300 pounds of C-4
plastic explosive. They had a magnetometer to detect disturbances when heavy steel
ships passed overhead; at a certain threshold, a battery-charged jolt of electricity set
off the mine. Floating mines, disguised with a rubberized cap to make them look
like rocks, would be set off by the wake of a passing ship. Others responded to
direct contact or had acoustic triggers.
Mines damaged or destroyed nine ships and fishing vessels by the end of
March, disrupting shipping during the key November to April harvest season for
Nicaragua’s principal export crops. Two Nicaraguan fishing boats were blown up
in El Bluff on February 25. On March 1, a large Dutch dredger was hit in Corinto.
On March 7, a Panamanian ship carrying medicine, food and industrial supplies suf¬
fered severe damage. A Soviet tanker carrying 250,000 barrels of crude oil was
damaged by a mine in Puerto Sandino on March 20. On March 27, Corinto mines
destroyed a Nicaraguan shrimp boat and damaged a Liberian ship carrying molas¬
ses. Two days later, a Nicaraguan fishing vessel was destroyed. On March 30, another
Nicaraguan shrimp boat was destroyed and a Japanese ship carrying bicycles, auto
spare parts, construction materials and cotton was damaged.^ With no mine¬
sweepers, Nicaragua tried to clear the mines by dragging a deep sea fishing net be¬
tween two fishing boats. A French offer to provide minesweepers in cooperation
with another European country never materialized.
The mines killed two Nicaraguans and injured fifteen sailors, including five on
the Soviet oil tankerNot to be outdone by the FDN, ARDE claimed credit on March
1 for the mines at Corinto and El Bluff, saying they were designed to cut off Soviet
military supplies. “The coasts of Nicaragua are a war zone,” declared ARDE, “and
therefore we are not responsible for loss of civilian lives in this zone.”^
As word of U.S. involvement leaked out, administration officials justified the
mining as a form of self-defense under international law. “If the country whose ports
are being mined is considered responsible for some kind of aggression, in this case
support for guerrillas in El Salvador, then mining is considered an act of self-defense
just Hke any other use of force,” claimed one U.S. official. The official acknowledged
that according to international standards, naval mines should not be used to close
international waters or to interfere with the free passage of vessels from third
countries. But, he claimed, “in the case of Nicaragua, any ships entering Nicaraguan
waters give up their right to safe passage.
France and Britain protested the mining along with countries whose ships were
hit. “If one accepts it in one part of the world,” said French Foreign Minister Claude
Cheysson, “there is no reason not to accept it in the Strait of Hormuz as well.”^°
Those words came back to haunt the United States in July 1987, when a Kuwaiti oil
tanker under U.S. flag protection struck a mine in the Persian Gulf. The United States
recognized no right to self-defense on the part of Iran or Iraq to mine waterways in
their ongoing war. There, where it suited U.S. interests, Washington loudly
proclaimed the right of free passage on the seas and made sure that the evening
newscasts were full of pictures of damaged tankers and floating mines.
The mines, said Interior Minister Tomas Borge in a March 1984 interview, “are
not just Nicaragua’s problem, but rather everyone’s problem. Generally there are
certain rules that one respects. It’s not difficult for anyone to mine a port, but no
one does it. The decision taken by the CIA to mine our ports opens up the oppor¬
tunity for any [group! to take the decision to mine any port...Who is to say that
[Central American revolutionaries] wouldn’t mine New York or Puerto Limon [Costa
Rica] or any other port they’d want. This means that they [the United States] have
started a risky game.”
Borge described the mines as an irresponsible and terrorist response to the
failure of the contras inside Nicaragua. “They have realized that they cannot militari¬
ly overthrow Nicaragua. Therefore they’ve decided to sow destabilization and to
Shockwaves 167
worsen the economic crisis, which is difficult enough already and has become worse
due to the aggression...
“The outlook is more war. The outlook is more death. The [U.S.] government
is making an effort to approve $20 million more designated for the so-called covert
war. I don’t know why they call it covert, because it hasn’t even a fig leaf. The most
serious thing about all of this is that it’s accepted as a natural thing that a govern¬
ment decides to designate millions of dollars to assault another country—that resour¬
ces coming from American [tax dollars] are designated to sow death in another
country. And that the North American people don’t realize that their money is being
designated to murder citizens in another country—^while they cut back social
programs in the U.S...
“What would happen if we designated 50 million cordobas to place bombs in
the White House? Everyone would say we were murderers and that we were crazy.
Fine, why not say that of those who are sending millions of dollars to murder
Nicaraguans...Would it be justified for us, who are partisans of totally eliminating
racial discrimination worldwide to decide to send resources to punish those who
discriminate against Blacks or Puerto Ricans or Latinos? We are enemies of dis¬
crimination, but we have no right to make decisions that involve an intervention in
the internal matters of other countries.”^’
Nicaragua did not retaliate. Instead, it took its case to the United Nations and
the World Court. It introduced a resolution in the UN Security Council on March 30,
denouncing “the escalation of acts of military aggression brought against” Nicaragua
by the United States. A majority supported the resolution; the United States vetoed
it.
The mines brought the “Nicaragua situation to a head,” but not in Nicaragua.
They caused a political explosion in the United States. Senator Barry Goldwater (R-
AZ), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a staunch administration
supporter, lit the first fuse. “Dear Bill,” Goldwater wrote Casey on April 9:
All this past weekend. I’ve been trying to figure out how I can most easily tell you
my feelings about the discovery of the President having approved mining some of the
harbors of Central America. It gets down to one, little, simple phrase: I am pissed off!
I understand you had briefed the House on this matter. I’ve heard that. Now, during
the important debate we had all last week and the week before, on whether we would
increase funds for the Nicaragua program, we were doing all right until a member of the
committee charged that the President had approved the mining. I strongly denied that
because I had never heard of it...
Bill, this is no way to mn a railroad.. .The President has asked us to back his foreign
policy. Bill, how can we back his foreign policy when we don’t know what the hell he
is doing?...Mine the harbors in Nicaragua? This is an act violating international law. It is
an act of war. For the life of me, I don’t see how we are going to explain it.^
As Goldwater noted, the House Intelligence Committee was informed of the

mining on January 31. Mining opponents, such as Boland, registered their concern
with the CIA. Casey insisted that he had also informed the Senate committee in
March. Some Senators defended Casey, but most did not. As one said, “Casey did
mention mining but in the midst of a list of other actions the contras were taking.
At no time did he say the CIA was directly involved in mining or that President
Reagan had authorized it.”
Yet, as Time put it, “Since the mines were already exploding at the time of the
briefings...it seems strange that the Senators did not question Casey persistentiy
about them.” In a cover story on the mining. Time ended up wanting it both ways,
like the politicians, urging negotiations while advocating continued aid to the con¬
tras: “the contrastive: fighting for an ideal, and the U.S., after arming, training and
encouraging them, cannot suddenly abandon them to their fates.
The Senate had voted on April 5 to support the administration request for $21
million in supplemental contra aid. Senators expressed bipartisan pique with an
April 10 vote protesting the mining. The non-binding resolution read: “It is the sense
of Congress that no funds heretofore or hereafter appropriated in any act of Con¬
gress shall be obligated or expended for the purpose of planning, executing or sup¬
porting the mining of the ports or territorial waters of Nicaragua.”^'* Among the twelve
senators voting against the resolution were Barry Goldwater, Bob Dole (R-KS) and
John Tower (R-TX).
The New York Times declared the mining, “Illegal, Deceptive and Dumb” and
compared it to German U-boats torpedoing neutral shipping in 1917. “When chal¬
lenged by a protest about damage to a Soviet freighter, the Administration condoned
the practice, contending that neutrals should have known the waters were
dangerous. That is actually the same argument invoked by the German Kaiser.
When asked to justify his decision authorizing the mining. President Reagan
insisted, “Those were homemade mines that couldn’t sink a ship.. .1 think that there
was much ado about nothing.” Assistant Secretary Motley called the minings a
“legitimate form of self-defense” and explained that the “mining comes within the
menu of pressures brought in order to modify Nicaraguan behavior.
Fleeing the World Court
“Sometimes people ask me,” Foreign Minister D’Escoto told me, “ ‘Father, what
is the future of Nicaragua in this uneven struggle?’ And I say, what would be the fu¬
ture of humanity if there were no countries like Nicaragua totally committed to stand
up and be counted in the struggle against the...United States’ [attempt] to replace
the international legal order with the principle that might makes right. [Against] a
government that is committed to the institutionalization of lynching, international
lynching, as a method for resolving situations—a country committed to total law¬
lessness.
“Is this the kind of precedent that we want to allow to become established as
the law? And, if it is, what’s going to happen if everyone continues to bow down
to President Reagan just because he is so strong? Just like David, we are so much
smaller and weaker when compared to Goliath, we believe in another kind of power.
We like to believe in justice. We like to believe in the possibility of those things that
perhaps to some people are only meant for poems. That’s why we took the United
Shockwaves 169
States to the International Court of Justice, not only to defend Nicaragua, but to
defend the international legal order.(In I960, the World Court had settled a bor¬
der dispute between Nicaragua and Honduras when it determined the Rio Coco as
the legal border between the two countries.)
The World Court “Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities In and
Against Nicaragua,” filed on April 9, 1984, covered such actions as the presidential
findings authorizing covert activities; U.S. military maneuvers in Honduras aimed at
intimidating Nicaragua and supplying the contras; and attacks on civilian and
economic targets, including mining the harbors. Nicaragua’s legal team of
Nicaraguan, American, French and British lawyers included Carlos Arguello, ambas¬
sador to the Netherlands and former minister of justice; Paul Reichler and Judy Ap-
pelbaum, whose Washington firm represents the Nicaraguan government on
international legal matters; and Abram Chayes, Harvard Law School professor and
former legal adviser to the Department of State under President Kennedy.
Nicaragua challenged U.S. claims of self-defense and charged that U.S. actions
violated the charters of the United Nations and the OAS as well as the U.S. Constitu¬
tion. Article 15 of the OAS charter, for example, reads: “No state or group of states
has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatsoever, in the
internal or external affairs of any other state. The foregoing principle prohibits not
only armed forces but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against
the personality of the State or against its political, economic, and cultural elements.”^®
Rushing to preempt Nicaragua’s suit, the Reagan administration announced on
April 6 that it would not recognize World Court jurisdiction in matters concerning
Central America for a two-year period. The move was widely denounced as
hypocritical, unwise and illegal. In the 1946 agreement (ratified by the U.S. Senate)
accepting the Court’s authority, the United States stipulated that six-months notice
will be given if jurisdictional recognition is to be withdrawn. This provision was in¬
cluded specifically as “a renunciation of any intention to withdraw our obligation
in the face of a threatened legal proceeding.”
The American Society of International Law adopted a resolution deploring the
administration’s attempt to sidestep Nicaragua’s legal challenge; this was reported¬
ly the first vote condemning an action of the U.S. government in the Law Society’s
78-year history. The vote followed a speech by UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick
in which she again turned Orwell on his head, saying, “to portray Nicaragua as vic¬
tim in the current situation is a complete, Orwellian inversion of what is actually
happening in Central America.
Meanwhile, thirteen Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee called on
Attorney General William French Smith to appoint a special prosecutor to determine
whether President Reagan and his top aides committed federal crimes, such as viola¬
tion of the Neutrality Act, in connection with the Nicaragua policy. Nothing hap¬
pened.
The United States went to the World Court in 1980 with a case against Iran for
holding U.S. hostages. Although Iran refused to accept the Court’s jurisdiction, the
United States received a favorable ruling. “When Iran refused to participate, tlie U.S.
took the position that the court should go right ahead,” observed D’Escoto. “Wlien
we take this step, it is regarded as improper and propaganda.” Clearly in the wrong
this time around, U.S. officials disparaged the Court’s impartiality. Said Kirkpatrick,
“It’s a semilegal, semijuridical, semipolitical body, which nations sometimes accept
and sometimes don’t.
Nicaragua had no reason to expect partiality from the Court. At the time it
brought suit, the Court was comprised of fifteen judges mainly from countries friend¬
ly to the United States. In addition to a U.S. judge, there were judges from Britain,
France, Italy, West Germany, Japan, India, Argentina, Brazil, Algeria, Senegal,
Nigeria, Syria, Poland and the Soviet Union.
The World Court issued a preliminary restraining order on May 10,1984, grant¬
ing provisional measures of protection to Nicaragua. The Court ruled 15 to 0 that
the United States should halt immediately any attempts to blockade or mine
Nicaraguan ports. On a vote of 14 to 1 (with the U.S. judge dissenting), the Court
ruled that Nicaragua’s political independence and sovereignty “should be fully
respected and should not be jeopardized by any military or paramilitary activities.”
State Department spokesman John Hughes claimed that “nothing contained in the
measures indicated by the Court is inconsistent with current United States policy or
activities with respect to Nicaragua.”®^ In fact, only the mining had been suspended.
Seven months later, on November 26, the Court rejected U.S. arguments that
it had no jurisdiction in the case and stated that the provisional measures issued in
May should remain in effect pending resolution of the case. On January 18, 1985,
the United States announced it would boycott the proceedings and attacked
Nicaragua’s “misuse of the Court for political purposes.”®^
D’Escoto blasted the U.S. withdrawal from the Court as a return to the “law of
the jungle, which confirms the United States’ warlike policies, based on the concept
that brute force governs relations between the weak and powerful nations.” He
called on the United States to decide “if it is for or against international law.”®^
House Judiciary Chairman Peter Rodino issued a prophetic denunciation of
the World Court boycott: “On the weekend that President Reagan vowed to uphold
the Constitution for his second term in office, his administration decided to flout in¬
ternational law by walking out of the World Court proceedings in Nicaragua’s
suit...In the 39-year history of the World Court, only three other nations have ever
walked out on a case...Iran, Iceland, and Albania...
“Only a [szc] eleven years ago, we prevented the unraveling of our system by
a President who tried to place himself above the law. Let us hope that history will
not record our withdrawal from the World Court as the first sign of a new arrogance
of power.
It wasn’t the first sign, but the administration’s actions certainly represented
an arrogance of power—an arrogance of power that Congress never tamed in the
few times it tried.
Shockwaves 171
Kissinger and Other Maneuvers

The Reagan administration had hoped that 1984 would bring a bipartisan
Central America policy. The Kissinger Commission was to have laid the foundation.
The January 1984 commission report took a hard line toward Nicaragua fol¬
lowing the lead of Chairman Kissinger, who had earlier stated, “It escapes me why
we have to apply the Brezhnev Doctrine in Central America and assert that any
Communist government that has established itself can never be changed.”®^
“The triumph of hostile forces in what the Soviets call the ‘strategic rear’ of the
United States would be read as a sign of U.S. impotence,” declared the Kissinger
Commission report. It urged a massive program of economic and military aid for
the region and portrayed the consolidation of the Sandinista government as “con¬
stituting a permanent security threat.” In keeping with the official Reagan line, the
majority of individual commission members saw the contras as “one of the incen¬
tives working in favor of a negotiated settlement.” The commission did not render
a “collective judgement” on the contra issue; two commission members. Mayor
Henry Cisneros of San Antonio and Professor Carlos F. Diaz-Alejandro of Yale
University, explicitly dissented from the majority and registered their opposition to
support for the contras.®^
On a lightning visit to Nicaragua on October 15, 1983, Kissinger remarked,
“we should not be asked to choose between peace and democracy.”®^ Democracy,
as stated earlier by a U.S. official, is a euphemism for the oyerthrow of the Sandinis-
ta-led government. Accompanying the Kissinger Commission, Oliver North delighted
in introducing himself as the “advance man for the U.S. invasion.”
The late Nora Astorga, Nicaragua’s former UN ambassador and deputy foreign
minister, said the Kissinger Commission “came with a preconceived idea and it
wanted to confirm that idea.” Commissioners spent less than a day in Nicaragua,
much of it in meetings with opposition leaders. During the meeting with Daniel Or¬
tega, recalled Astorga, someone whispered to Kissinger, “Let’s not listen to this son
of a bitch any longer.”®®
Kissinger’s preference for delusion over reality was apparent in his displeasure
with Ambassador Tony Quainton. Quainton, assigned to Nicaragua after heading
the State Department’s Office for Combatting Terrorism, reportedly “undercut” Kis¬
singer Commission findings by reporting that the Nicaraguan government had some
positive features.®^
In a meeting with U.S. citizens in March 1984, just before leaving his post in
Nicaragua, Quainton (later U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, where he had to deal with
a different round of minings) defended U.S. concern over Nicaragua’s military build¬
up, but he readily acknowledged positive Nicaraguan initiatives. The positives in¬
cluded education and literacy, which “brought people into contact with a whole
new world of ideas they hadn’t experienced before.” He cited urban housing and
public health, especially rural health, for reaching “those who had no health care
before”; he noted that some health posts were staffed by Cuban medical personnel.
Land reform, he said, has made the most profound impact after education. Ironical-
ly, he said the Nicaraguan land reform was not “as radical as in El Salvador” in terms
of the privately-held property that could be affected, at least theoretically. Nicaragua,
he explained, is not a land-poor country, and the yardstick for land reform is not
size of holdings, but productivity. He said notwithstanding the problem “that it only
takes a few cases of land confiscation perceived as politically-motivated to generate
producer anxiety,” Nicaragua’s was “one of the most sensible land reforms in Latin
America.” He added that there was a lot of debate in Nicaragua; “these are a very
open people.”^
Kissinger’s portrayal of Nicaragua was quite different. He characterized San-
dinista Nicaragua as not only worse than under Somoza, but “as bad or worse than
Nazi Germany.” People who disagreed with him were in the enemy camp. As Kis¬
singer reportedly said of Reverend Eugene Stockwell, a respected officer of the
World Council of Churches, before his testimony to the commission about condi¬
tions in Nicaragua, “If that man [Eugene] Stockwell is not a KGB agent, they’re get¬
ting his services for free.”^^
Mexican writer Carlos Euentes challenged the Kissinger-Reagan view of Central
America: “Clearly, the stage is being set for a confrontation meant to overthrow the
Sandinista Government and demonstrate Washington’s version of the Brezhnev
doctrine—that no Central American country can ever leave the United States’ sphere
of influence...
“Everyone knows that if the rightist counterrevolutionaries fighting in the north
of Nicaragua were to reach Managua, they would not create a democratic regime.
They would first stage a bloodbath and then restore the former dictatorship. By then,
no one in Washington would give a pound of sugar for the destiny of Nicaraguan
democracy. The counterrevolutionaries would reverse the social and juridical chan¬
ges wrought by the Sandinistas—such as the literacy campaign, health care programs
and various provisions necessary for holding elections.. .Nicaragua would fall once
again into the pit of world indifference and internal oppression of the Somoza years.
Nicaragua would again be a model servant of the United States.
To comply verbally with congressional guidelines, Reagan officials continued
to argue that the United States was not trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan govern¬
ment because the contras could not win. Asked, “What chance do the contras have
of overthrowing the Sandinista regime?” Casey replied: “I think there’s no chance
that they will be able to overthrow the government. In the resistance, you have, it
is said, perhaps 15,000 men with rifles scattered around the open, unpopulated parts
of the country, which is where the guerrillas can hide. They can’t go into the cities,
which the government is protecting with tanks and 75,000 men in the Army, the
militia and the security forces. So they’re not going to overthrow that government.
(Notice that even Casey admits the defensive role of the tanks and troops.)
On April I, the United States launched a three-month military exercise with
Honduras provocatively code named Grenadero I. U.S. Army engineers constructed
airstrips at Cucuyagua near the Salvadoran border and Jamastran near the Nicaraguan
border, capable of landing giant C-130s. U.S., Honduran and Salvadoran troops prac¬
ticed airborne and helicopter assault operations. On April 13, U.S. and Honduran
forces practiced a parachute drop near Aguacate during other exercises code named
Shockwaves 173
Lightning II; the purpose was “to secure an operations base from which to stage an
assault on an airfield.” Ocean Venture ’84 ran from April 20 to May 6. Involving
30,000 troops and hundreds of ships including the aircraft carrier America, the ex¬
ercise included the evacuation of 300 people from the U.S. naval base at Guan¬
tanamo Bay, Cuba. King’s Guard coastal surveillance exercises involving U.S.,
Honduran and Salvadoran forces ran from April 26 to May 7. In July and August,
the United States and Honduras conducted counterinsurgency exercises under
Operation Lempira, practicing rapid deployment tactics. During Crown Dragonfly
exercises in September, U.S. and Honduran fighters practiced bombing runs. These
are just some of the maneuvers that took place throughout 1984.^^
The New York Times reported in April that senior administration officials were
acknowledging privately that intervention by U.S. combat forces in Central America
was a possibility and contingency plans were being drawn up, utilizing the
provisions of the Rio treaty. According to U.S. officials, a presidential decision on
sending troops would not be taken until 1985,1986 or later, after the current program
had been given a chance to work.^^
Senior officials disparaged the possibility of a negotiated 3ettlement with
Nicaragua, claiming that the Sandinistas (and the Salvadoran FMLN-FDR) could not
be trusted to keep agreements, and force is the only tiling they understand. “There
must be a change in personalities in the Nicaraguan Government,” said one official,
“before there can be serious negotiations.”^ Once again the message was clear: the
only negotiations to move past the lip service stage would be a surrender by the
Nicaraguan government.
Aftershock: Boland Cutoff

The Kissinger Commission strengthened a growing bipartisan consensus on
supporting the Salvadoran regime. It could not keep contra aid afloat amid the
shockwaves from mining Nicaragua’s harbors.
President Reagan appealed on May 9 for public support of his Central America
policy in a nationally televised litany of lies and disinformation: “If we continue to
provide too little help, our choice will be a Communist Central America with addi¬
tional Communist military bases on the mainland of this hemisphere and Communist
subversion spreading southward and northward. This Communist subversion poses
the threat that 100 million people from Panama to the open border on our south
could come under the control of pro-Soviet regimes.. .There has been an attempt to
wipe out an entire culture, the Miskito Indians, thousands of whom have been
slaughtered or herded into detention camps where they have been starved and
abused...The Sandinista rule is a Communist reign of terror...But we Americans
must understand and come to grips with the fact that the Sandinistas are not con¬
tent to brutalize their own land. They seek to export their terror to every other
country in the region...The Sandinista military buildup began two and a half years
before the anti-Sandinista freedom fighters had taken up arms...They claim the
buildup is because t±iey are threatened by their neighbors. Well, that, too is a
lie...The Sandinistas claim the buildup is in response to American aggression, and
this is the most cynical lie of all. The truth is that they announced at their first an¬
niversary, in July of 1980, that their revolution was going to spread beyond their
own borders...When the Sandinistas were fighting the Somoza regime, the United
States’ policy was: Hands off. We did not attempt to prop up Somoza. The United
States did everything to show its openness toward the Sandinistas, its friendli¬
ness... As soon as I took office, we attempted to show friendship to the Sandinistas
and provided economic aid to Nicaragua. But it did no good. They kept on export¬
ing terrorism.”
Reagan made his rollback policy explicit: “Communist subversion is not an ir¬
reversible tide. We have seen it rolled back in Venezuela and, most recently, in
Grenada...The tide of the future can be a freedom tide. All it takes is the will and
resources to get the job done.”
He also baited contra critics with the Nazi-Munich analogy: “There are those
in this country who would yield to the temptation to do nothing. They are the new
isolationists, very much like the isolationists of the late 1930’s who knew what was
happening in Europe but chose not to face the terrible challenge history had given
them. They preferred a policy of wishful thinking that if they only gave up one more
country, allowed just one more international transgression, then surely, sooner or
later, the aggressor’s appetite would be satisfied.. .Well, they didn’t stop the aggres¬
sors—they emboldened them. They didn’t prevent war—they assured it...Let us
show the world that we want no hostile. Communist colonies here in the Americas:
South, Central or North.
Again Reagan’s mud-slinging smeared Nicaragua’s image in the United States.
Yet, on May 24, emboldened by domestic and international outrage over the min¬
ing and by the World Court ruling, the House rejected the supplemental contra aid
request which the Senate had approved. The administration then concentrated on
winning congressional approval of $28 million in funding for fiscal year 1985.
On June 1, after visiting El Salvador, Secretary of State Shultz made a surprise
stopover in Managua and agreed that the United States would hold exploratory talks.
Later in the month, U.S. Special Envoy Harry Schlaudeman and Nicaraguan Deputy
Foreign Minister Victor Hugo Tinoco began meeting in Manzanillo, Mexico. It was,
unfortunately, another episode of Washington’s diplomatic charades, this time with
an eye to the 1984 presidential elections as well as renewed contra funding. U.S.
troop levels in Honduras were reduced (temporarily), according to U.S. sources in
Tegucigalpa, as part of an overall effort to deemphasize the Central America issue
during the presidential campaign.^® Washington broke off the Manzanillo talks at the
beginning of 1985.
The morning of Shultz’s June 1, 1984 visit, a contra force of 500 to 600 troops
invaded Ocotal, northern Nicaragua’s largest city with a population of about 21,000,
in another failed effort to “liberate” territory leaving death and destruction in its
wake. According to an American Maryknoll nun living in Ocotal, “The fighting started
about 4:30, just as it was getting light. They went up to the door of Radio Segovia,
the local radio station. When the man came to the door they shot him. They then
Shockwaves 175
spread gasoline all over, and he burned to death. So did another man inside. They
burned down the radio station. Another group attacked the other end of town. They
destroyed the machinery in the lumber yard, and injured the ears of the children
who were nearby. There were more than 30 of them.
“They destroyed the grainery. They went in shooting, killed the men guard¬
ing the place, spread gasoline all over and burned up six silos. They deliberately
burned the grain, the corn, the beans, the sorghum.”^
The contras also burned the coffee plant and the electric company building.
A nurse on duty at the Ocotal hospital during the attack reported that contras fired
at the hospital and several bullets entered the nursery and women’s ward. Fortunate¬
ly, no one was injured. The contras retreated at about 11:00 A.M when the local
militia was reinforced by a Nicaraguan spotter plane and two helicopters. The at¬
tack left l6 Nicaraguans dead and 27 wounded.^^
On October 3, the Senate voted to approve the contra aid request of $28 mil¬
lion. Administration supporters belatedly acknowledged the arms interdiction
pretense. Said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Malcolm Wallop (R-WY), “I
would hope...that we do not give the erroneous impression that we have fostered
the Nicaraguan assistance solely to interdict arms for the war in El Salvador. That
would cheapen both our motives and those of the Nicaraguans freedom fighting.
We would thereby say that they are mere little mercenaries of the United States, off
doing business for El Salvador. That was never true.”^^'
The House rejected the aid and agreed only to consider $14 million in new
funding after February 28, 1985. This time there was no compromise splitting the
difference between the House cutoff and Senate funding. As of October 12, 1984,
the law banned all contra support:
During fiscal year 1985, no funds available to the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Department of Defense, or any other agency or entity of the United States involved in in¬
telligence activities may be obligated or expended for the purpose or which would have
the effect of supporting, directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations in
Nicaragua by any nation, group, organization, movement or individual.
The Reagan administration treated the new Boland arqendment as just another
obstacle to hurdle in its relentless pursuit of war.
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8
Terrorist Manuals
I believe it is irrefutable that a number of the Contras’ actions have to be

characterized as terrorism, as State-supported terrorism.
Stansfield Turner, former director of Central Intelligence, testimony before the
House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, April l6, 1985.
It was Edgar Chamorro’s job to improve the contras’ image. “This was chal¬
lenging,” he told the World Court, “because it was standard F.D.N. practice to kill
prisoners and suspected Sandinista collaborators. In talking with officers in the
F.D.N. camps along the Honduran border, I frequently heard offhand remarks like,
‘Oh, I cut his throat.’ ”
The CIA, said Chamorro, “did not discourage such tactics. To the contrary, the
Agency severely criticized me when I admitted to the press that the F.D.N. had
regularly kidnapped and executed agrarian reform workers and civilians. We were
told that the only way to defeat the Sandinistas was to use the tactics the Agency
attributed to ‘Communist’ insurgencies elsewhere: kill, kidnap, rob and torture.”
These tactics, said Chamorro, “were reflected in an operations manual prepared for
our forces by a C.I.A. agent who used the name ‘John Kirkpatrick.’
John Kirkpatrick was a U.S. Army counterinsurgency specialist, with experience
in the Vietnam-era Phoenix program, working under contract to the CIA’s Interna¬
tional Activities Division. In October 1983, at Dewey Clarridge’s direction, Kirkpatrick
wrote the detailed contra manual. Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare,
under the pseudonym Tayacan; CIA contra coordinator Ray Doty was also involved
in its planning and preparation.^ Kirkpatrick’s model was a 1968 manual used by the
Army Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Psychological Operations
in Guerrilla Warfare closely followed the Army manual’s Lesson Plan No. 643, titled
“Armed Psyop” and subtitled “Implicit and Explicit Terror.”^
177
Like the “winning hearts and minds” approach employed in Vietnam, the CIA
contra manual advocated a mix of political propaganda and terror to dominate the
population. Assassination is standard operating procedure for the contras, just as it
was in the Phoenix program, notwithstanding the fact that assassination violates U.S.
law. As stated in the 1967 U.S. Army field manual, “Handbook on Aggressor Insur¬
gent War,” which advocated the “selective use of terror as opposed to mass terror”:
“The assassination of a government official will lead some people to refrain from
seeking public office and this will weaken the enemy government. Likewise, the as¬
sassination of a village leader will make it difficult to obtain another leader enabling
the insurgent movement to have more freedom of action. Such actions display the
government’s inability to protect its officials, causing the populace to lose respect
for the government.”'* As in Vietnam, the contras’ targets have not been restricted to
“enemy” officials or community leaders.
The CIA contra manual counsels assassination in a section titled “Selective Use
of Violence for Propagandistic Effects,” stating; “It is possible to neutralize careful¬
ly selected and planned targets, such as court judges, [justices of the peace], police
and State Security officials, CDS chiefs, etc.”^ A hit list that starts with court judges
and ends with etcetera is a mighty broad license for murder.
Implicit and Explicit Terror

“Guerrilla warfare,” states the contra manual’s preface, “is essentially a politi¬
cal war...In effect, the human being should be considered the priority objective in
a political war. And conceived as the military target of guerrilla war, the human
being has his most critical point in his mind. Once his mind has been reached, the
‘political animal’ has been defeated, without necessarily receiving bullets.” Notice
how the phrase “defeated without necessarily receiving bullets” reinforces the con¬
tra view that civilians not tied to the contra cause are legitimate targets for elimina¬
tion.
According to the manual, armed propaganda “includes all acts carried out by
an armed force, whose results improve the attitude of the people toward this force,
and it does not include forced indoctrination.” The manual quickly contradicts the
latter point, but first it suggests that “during the patrols and other operations around
or in the midst of villages, each guerrilla should be respectful and courteous with
the people. In addition he should move with care and always be well prepared to
fight, if necessary. But he should not always see all the people as enemies, with
suspicions or hostility. Even in war, it is possible to smile, laugh or greet people.
Truly, the cause of our revolutionary base, the reason why we are struggling is our
people.”^
It is telling evidence of why the contras have no broad popular base that the
CIA finds it necessary to implore that they “should not always see all the people as
enemies.” (Italics added.)
Terrorist Manuals 179
The manual suggests slogans to help people appreciate contra weapons. For
example: “With weapons we can impose demands such as hospitals, schools, bet¬
ter roads, and social services for the people, for you.” It doesn’t say whether the
contras shout that before or after they destroy the local “Sandinista” hospitals,
schools, roads and social services. Here’s another slogan: “With weapons we can
change the Sandino-Communist regime and return to the people a true democracy
so that we will all have economic opportunities.” Given that the system before the
revolution was Somoza dictatorship and nearly all top contra military commanders
are ex-Guardia, it is hardly surprising that few Nicaraguans are inspired by the phrase
“return to the people a true democracy.”
The manual draws a fine line between “implicit and explicit terror,” contradict¬
ing the statement that armed propaganda does not involve fbrced indoctrination: “A
guerrilla force always involves implicit terror because the population, without saying
it aloud, feels terror that the weapons may be used against them. However, if the
terror does not become explicit, positive results can be expected.”
“Implicit terror” is illustrated this way: “An armed guerrilla force can occupy
an entire town or small city which is neutral or relatively passive in the conflict. In
order to conduct the armed propaganda in an effective manner, the following should
be carried out simultaneously: Destroy the military or police installations and remove
the survivors to a ‘public place.’ Cut all the outside lines of communication: cables,
radio, messengers. Set up ambushes, in order to delay the reinforcements in all the
possible entry routes. Kidnap all officials or agents of the Sandinista government
and replace them in ‘public places’ with military or civilian persons of trust to our
movement.” The contras are directed to gather the population for a public tribunal
and “shame, ridicule and humiliate the ‘personal symbols’ of the government...and
foster popular participation through guerrillas within the multitude, shouting slogans
and jeers. Reduce the influence of individuals in tune with the regime, pointing out
their weaknesses and taking them out of the town, without damaging them public¬
ly.”^
The manual reinforces explicitly the contra practice of kidnapping civilians,
under the broad sweep of “officials or agents of the Sandinista government” or “in¬
dividuals in tune with the regime,” cautioning only that they should not be “damag¬
ing” them publicly.
The manual not only condones the kidnapping and killing of noncombatants,
it explains how to rationalize the killings. In the case of shooting “a citizen who was
trying to leave the town or city in which the guerrillas are carrying out armed
propaganda or political proselytism,” the manual suggests that the contras “explain
that if that citizen had managed to escape, he would have alerted the enemy that
is near the town or city, and they would carry out acts of reprisal such as rapes, pil¬
lage, destruction, captures, etc., in this way terrorizing the inhabitants of the place
for having given attention and hospitalities to the guerrillas of the town.” Using Jeane
Kirkpatrick’s lingo, the contras projected their own behavior onto the Sandinistas.
In the case of public executions, the manual recommends that the contras
“gather together the population affected, so that they will be present, take part in
the act, and formulate accusations against the oppressor.”* In practice, the contras
favored executions without the convention of kangaroo courts.
Fifth Columns
The manual describes how “armed propaganda team” cadres should infiltrate
the population and serve as the “antennas” of the movement, finding and exploit¬
ing “the socio-political weaknesses in the target society.” The model is “the Fifth
Column which was used in the first part of the Second World War, and through in¬
filtration and subversion tactics allowed the Germans to penetrate the target
countries before the invasions.”^
The manual explains how to develop and control “front organizations” in urban
areas. The first recruitment section refers to involuntary TQcmiimQni through extor¬
tion and frame-ups: “The initial recruitment to the movement, if it is involuntary,
will be carried out through several ‘private’ consultations with a cadre, (without his
knowing that he is talking to a member of ours). Then, the recruit will be informed
that he or she is already inside the movement, and he will be exposed to the police
of the regime if he or she does not cooperate...The notification of the police,
denouncing a target who does not want to join the guerrillas, can be carried out
easily, when it becomes necessary, through a letter with false statements of citizens
who are not implicated in the movement.”
There is an unstated side benefit to these frame-up jobs: if the government ar¬
rests people because of these false allegations who are, in fact, innocent, it alienates
the accused, their families and associates, and exposes itself to charges of human
rights abuse and political harassment (because many of those targeted for recruit¬
ment are active in opposition parties or groups), even if those arrested are released
after investigation or trial.
Trusted voluntary recruits are to target potential new recruits, finding out their
“personal habits, preferences and aversions [and] weaknesses.” Recruits such as doc¬
tors, lawyers, businesspeople, landholders, minor state officials, politicians, priests,
missionaries, professors, teachers and workers would be “used for subjective inter¬
nal control of groups and associations to which they belong or may belong.”
Contra cadres in the target groups are to stress particular themes. For example,
in economic interest groups the contra cadres would manipulate peoples’ frustra¬
tion over “taxes, import-export tariffs, transportation costs, etc.” The assumption is
that “for all the target groups.. .the hostility towards the obstacles to their aspirations
will gradually become transferred to the current regime.” Cadres are advised to main¬
tain a low profile “so that the development of hostile feelings towards the false San-
dinista regime seems to come spontaneously from the members of the group and
not from suggestions of the cadre. This is internal subjective control.”
“Anti-govemmental hostility,” states the manual, “should be generalized and
not necessarily in our favor. If a group develops a feeling in our favor it can be util¬
ized. But the main objective is to precondition the target groups for the fusion in
mass organizations later in the operation, when other activities have been success-
fully undertaken.
The manual describes the development of clandestine cells of “internal cadres”
and the process of “fusion” leading to irisurrection through mass front organizations.
“The development and control of the ‘cover’ organizations.. .will give our movement
the ability to create the ‘whiplash’ effect within the population, when the order for
fusion is given.” The aim will be “to shake up the Sandinista structure and replace
it.”
Through “preconditioning campaigns” aimed “at the political parties, profes¬
sional organizations, students, laborers, the masses of the unemployed, the ethnic
minorities and any other sector of society that is vulnerable or recruitable” the con¬
tras “create a negative ‘image’ of the common enemy,” the Sandinistas. The mass
media and public demonstrations and meetings play a critical role: “Our psychologi¬
cal war cadres will create compulsive obsessions of a temporary nature in places of
public concentrations, constantly hammering away at the themes pointed out or
desired, the same as in group gatherings; in informal conversations expressing dis¬
content; in addition passing out brochures and flyers, and writing editorial articles
both on the radio and in newspapers, focused on the intention of preparing the
mind of the people for the decisive moment, which will erupt in general violence.””
There is also an unstated side benefit to this fifth column strategy. State of
emergency restrictions on the media and public meetings, designed to frustrate the
CIA-contra strategy, create resentment among legitimate opposition groups. Through
its fifth column strategy, the contras are working not only to establish an internal
base, but to blur the distinctions between non-contra opposition and pro-contra op¬
position so that security measures will be seen as political (religious, ethnic or
economic) repression rather than, as the government argues, justifiable, extraordi¬
nary measures to protect the sovereignty of the country and the lives of its citizens.
Criminals and Martyrs
According to the manual, agitators should be “mobilized toward the areas

where the hostile and criminal elements of the FSLN, CDS and others live, with an
effort for them to be armed with clubs, iron rods, placards and if possible, small
firearms, which they will carry hidden.”
“If possible,” states the manual, “professional criminals will be hired to carry
out specific selective ‘jobs.’ ” (In perhaps the most famous case of U.S. government
reliance on professional criminals, the CIA contracted Mafia gangsters to assassinate
Fidel Castro.) The manual also advises that the unemployed be hired for “unspecified
‘jobs.’ ”
The nature of these “jobs” becomes clearer when the manual advocates the
creation of martyrs: “Specific tasks will be assigned to others, in order to create a
‘martyr’ for the cause, taking the demonstrators to a confrontation with the
authorities, in order to bring about uprisings or shootings, which will cause the death
of one or more persons, who would become the martyrs, a situation that should be
made use of immediately against the regime, in order to create greater conflicts.”'^
In a section on how to lead an uprising at mass meetings, the manual calls for
guerrilla cadre to assume such roles as bodyguards for the demonstration leaders,
messengers, carriers of banners and placards, agitators of rallying cries and applause,
and shock troops. The shock troops “should be equipped with weapons (knives,
razors, chains, clubs, bludgeons) and should march slightly behind the innocent and
gullible participants. They should carry their weapons hidden. They will enter into
action only as ‘reinforcements,’ if the guerrilla agitators are attacked by the police.
They will enter the scene quickly, violently and by surprise, in order to distract the
authorities, in this way making possible the withdrawal or rapid escape of the in¬
side commando.
As we have seen above, the manual advocates provoking confrontations with
the police in order to create martyrs. In the CIA school of contra ethics, contra ter¬
rorists are protected and whisked from the scene while “innocent and gullible par¬
ticipants” are set up for unwitting martyrdom.
“A Bullet is Sharper Than Words”

Edgar Chamorro assisted in translating the manual into Spanish. He told the
World Court that before the manual was distributed, “I attempted to excise two pas¬
sages that I thought were immoral and dangerous...One recommended hiring
professional criminals. The other advocated killing some of our own colleagues to
create martyrs for the cause. I did not particularly want to be ‘martyred’ by the C.I.A.
So I locked up all the copies of the manual and hired two youths to cut out the of¬
fending pages and glue in expurgated pages. About 2,000 copies of the manual,
with only those two passages changed, were then distributed to F.D.N. troops.” At
least 5,000 copies of the original manual were reportedly printed and distributed by
the CIA, so thousands circulated without the changes made by Chamorro. A Soldier
of Fortune affiliate printed and distributed another 500 copies.
“Upon reflection,” said Chamorro, “I found many of the tactics advocated in
the manual to be offensive, and I complained to the C.I.A. station chief in Tegucigal¬
pa. The station chief defended ‘Kirkpatrick’ and the manual, and no action was ever
taken in response to my complaints. In fact, the practices advocated in the manual
were employed by F.D.N. troops. Many civilians were killed in cold blood. Many
others were tortured, mutilated, raped, robbed or otherwise abused.
“As time went on, I became more and more troubled by the frequent reports
I received of atrocities committed by our troops against civilians and against San-
dinista prisoners. Calero and Bermudez refused to discuss the subject with me, so I
went straight to our unit commanders as they returned from combat missions inside
Nicaragua and asked them about their activities. I was saddened by what I was told.
The atrocities I had heard about were not isolated incidents, but reflected a consis¬
tent pattern of behavior by our troops. There were unit commanders who openly
bragged about their murders, mutilations, etc. When I questioned them about the
propriety or wisdom of doing those things they told me it was the only way to win
this war, that the best way to win the loyalty of the civilian population was to in¬
timidate it and make it fearful of us.”
Chamorro complained to the CIA, as well as to Calero and Bermudez, to no
avail. He recalled a visit by Dewey Clarridge in June 1984; “Although he was well
aware of the terrorist tactics the F.D.N. troops were employing he spoke warmly to
Bermudez: ‘Well done, Colonel,’ I remember him saying. ‘Keep it up. Your boys are
doing fine.’ ”
Shortly after that, Chamorro acknowledged to a newspaper reporter that FDN
troops had killed civilians and executed prisoners. “Calero told me I could no longer
work in Honduras,” said Chamorro, “and I was reassigned to the local F.D.N. com¬
mittee in Miami. I was given nothing to do and I no longer had much interest in
working for the F.D.N., or to be more accurate, for the C.bA.”^"* Chamorro broke
with the FDN in November 1984.
While working in the FDN, Chamorro tried to have people trained in human
rights. The commanders were hostile, he told me, and the people trained were
“looked on in suspicion” and “labeled weak or wimps or human rightists.” Some
were killed in the field as “spies.”
CIA officer Ray Doty shared Bermudez’s approach. Doty said “a bullet is shar¬
per than any words,” Chamorro recalled. Doty was in the fire power school of
thought: “You want to change a country you just do it with fire power.. .He laughed
at the [political] training.”
“Educating in democracy,” observed Chamorro, “is not just making people
march singing democratic songs. That’s what Americans do—they come and they
repeat slogans. But that doesn’t transform a person into a democratic person.”'^
Freedom Fighters Manual

The CIA produced a second manual, the Freedom Fighters Manual. Written in
comic book style, it billed itself as a “practical guide to liberate Nicaragua from op¬
pression and misery by paralyzing the military-industrial complex of the traitorous
Marxist state without having to use special tools and with minimal risk for tlie com¬
batant.” An introductory passage notes, “The following pages present a series of
useful sabotage techniques, the majority of which can be done with simple
household tools such as scissors, empty bottles, screwdrivers, matches, etc.”
Ranging from petty acts to life-threatening violence, the “useful sabotage tech¬
niques” are as follows (in order of presentation): Don’t do maintenance work on
vehicles and machines. Hide and damage tools. Tlirow tools into sewers. Arrive late
to work. Delay in completing tasks. Call in sick to work. Leave lights on. Leave
water taps on. Plant flowers on state farms. Hoard and steal food from the govern¬
ment. Leave open the corral gates on state farms (a sign in the accompanying il¬
lustration says “FSLN Cooperative”). Spread rumors. Phone in false hotel
reservations, etc. Spill liquids (an illustration has a man apparently at work spilling
coffee on his papers). Drop typewriters. Steal, hide key documents. Threaten the
boss by telephone. Phone in false alarms of fires and crimes. Break light bulbs and
windows. Damage books. Cut telephone cables. Cut alarm system cables. Stop up
toilets and drains. Paint anti-Sandinista slogans (the illustration shows “Long Live
the Pope”). Break police station windows, street lights and traffic lights. Put nails
on roads and highways. Put nails next to the tires of parked vehicles. Pour dirt into
gas tanks. Pour water in gas tanks. Cut and perforate the upholstery of vehicles.
Break windshield wipers and headlights of vehicles. Cut and puncture tires. Put dirt
in the carburetor and distributor. Break the distributor coil. Cut the distributor coil
cables. Steal the rotor cap. Take an ice pick or similar tool to the gas tank, tires and
radiator. Perforate battery covers. Invert battery cable connections. Throw nails in
battery cells. Cut down trees over highways. Put rocks on highways. Dig ditches in
highways. The last set of illustrated directions shows how to bring down telephone
lines; puncture tires with a homemade arrowhead; make a delayed fire using matches
and a cigarette; make a molotov cocktail (the illustration shows a man throwing it
at a police station); and puncture fuel tanks with an icepick and light the fuel with
a molotov cocktail. The manual ends with an appeal to Nicaraguan soldiers and
militia to join the contras, “with your weapons if possible.”’^
The manual gives away its non-Nicaraguan origin with non-Nicaraguan lan¬
guage and illustrations. For example, in Nicaragua one finds match boxes, but not
match books. The tall hotel illustrated resembles none in Nicaragua (including the
famous pyramid-shaped Intercontinental). The brick police station with plate glass
windows is not Nicaraguan style. And while the easy chair is a familiar site to North
Americans, a Nicaraguan would likely be found in a wooden rocking chair.
When the Washington-based Central American Historical Institute publicized
the Freedom Fighters Manual—discovered following a June 1984 contra attack on
Ocotal—there was little interest outside of an Associated Press story by Robert
Parry.’^ The other CIA manual was a different story, when it finally appeared in the
major media just weeks before the U.S. presidential election.^®
Rogue Manual?
“A Central Intelligence Agency document that became public this week tells
Nicaraguan rebels how to win popular support and gives advice on political assas¬
sination, blackmail and mob violence,” reported the Neiv York Times’]oq\ Brinkley
on October 17, 1984. In the face of congressional inquiry and rising public condem¬
nation, the administration first tried to pass the manual off as a draft, insisting it was
later revised for distribution. Edgar Chamorro quickly refuted this, as did CIA offi¬
cials.
During an October 21 debate with Democratic presidential contender Walter
Mondale, Reagan answered a question about the manual with this tall tale: “We have
a gentleman down in Nicaragua who is on contract to the C.I.A. advising, supposed¬
ly, on military tactics, the contras. And he drew up this manual. It was turned over
to the agency head of the C.I.A. in Nicaragua to be printed, and a number of pages
were excised before it was printed. But some way or other, there were 12 of the
original copies that got down there and were not submitted for this printing process
by the C.I.A. Now those are the details as we have them, and as soon as we have
an investigation and find out where any blame lies for the few that did not get ex¬
cised or changed, we certainly are going to do something about that. We’ll take the
proper action at the proper time.”^°
The New York Times editorialized on October 25 about the “Bad Manual, Bad
War.” The editorial should have been titled “Bad Manual, Badly-run War, Bad San-
dinistas.” The manuals and minings, said the limes, revived “the spectacle of an
agency running out of control. Its having to be stopped from illegal minings and
murders can only destroy the painfully rebuilt consensus for prudent covert opera¬
tions under reliable executive and legislative control...The bitter consequence of
this wretched affair is that it drowns out a necessary debate over what can legitimate¬
ly be demanded of the hostile Sandinistas. Indeed, it gives them a chance to blame
Americans for the great damage they have done to their country. And it undercuts—
you might say ‘neutralizes’—^the cause of freedom.”
CIA Director Casey defended the manual, claiming its overall thrust was on
political awareness, civic action and respect for human rights. Reagan insisted there
was “nothing in that manual that talked of assassination at all.” He asserted that “the
real word was ‘remove’—meaning remove from office. If you came into a village or
town, remove from office representatives of the Sandinista government. When they
translated it into the Spanish, they translated it ‘neutralize’ instead of remove.” When
asked by reporters “how would you go about doing that without violence and force?”
Reagan responded, to laughter, that “You just say to the fellow that’s sitting there
in the office—^you’re not in the office anymore.”^' In the actual manual, the reference
to neutralizing judges, etc., is in a section with “violence” in the very title.
Reagan promised during the presidential debate to take “the proper action at
the proper time.” “Whoever was involved ought to be fired,” said National Security
Adviser Robert McFarlane. However, after completion of a report by the CIA’s in¬
spector general and with the presidential election behind him, Reagan concluded
that the manual was “much ado about nothing.
Proper action turned out to be a warmup for the Iran-contra fall-guy plan.
John Kirkpatrick resigned his contract with the CIA and some six mid-level
employees were reprimanded. One of those reprimanded was the former station
chief in Honduras, Donald Winters. He had left Honduras in June 1984 after being
embarrassed by the sudden ouster of General Alvarez on March 31. Alvarez was
close enough to the station chief to be named godfather when Winter and his wife
adopted a Honduran girl.^^ But in carrying out his role as local godfather for the U.S.
government, Alvarez had made too many enemies in the Honduran military.
The House Intelligence Committee concluded on December 5 that the manual
violated the Boland amendment because it advised the contras on overthrowing the
Nicaraguan government. In a preview of the Iran-contra hearings. Congress was a
watchdog with blinders.
According to the House Intelligence Committee, “the manual has caused em-
barrassment to the United States and should never have been released in any of its
various forms. Specific actions it describes are repugnant to American values.” The
committee accepted the administration line that “no one but its author paid much
attention to the manual,” and said that some CIA officers did not know of the ex¬
ecutive order’s ban on assassination. “The incident of the manual illustrates once
again to a majority of the Committee that the CIA did not have adequate command
and control of the entire Nicaraguan covert action...CIA officials up the chain of
command either never read the manual or were never made aware of it. Negligence,
not intent to violate the law, marked the manual’s history.
The real problem was not careless management but state terrorism with im¬
punity. In late 1983, Dewey Clarridge had secretly briefed the Intelligence Commit¬
tees on the kind of contra murders advocated in the manual. He told the committees
that the contras had killed “civilians and Sandinista officials in the provinces, as well
as heads of cooperatives, nurses, doctors and judges.” But he claimed that this didn’t
violate the presidential order prohibiting assassinations: “These events don’t con¬
stitute assassinations because as far as we are concerned assassinations are only
those of heads of state.
Dewey Clarridge was rewarded, not reprimanded. He reportedly received an
award for his service in Latin America and the highest bonus of the year. He was
promoted to European division chief and then head of the CIA Counterterrorism
Unit (he became embroiled in the Iran-contra affair). Ray Doty was not disciplined.
Oliver North helped arrange a job on the NSC staff for the head of the CIA’s Nicaragua
task force, Vincent Cannistraro. North also helped find a job (undisclosed) for the
manual’s author, John Kirkpatrick. Joe Fernandez (alias Tomas Castillo), the CIA’s
main liaison with the contras when the manual was produced, carried on as CIA
station chief in Costa Rica.^^
Outlaw State
The manual, like the larger war on Nicaragua, violated U.S. and international
law. The World Court found that in producing and disseminating Psychological
Operations in Guerrilla Warfare to contra forces, the United States “encouraged the
commission by them of acts contrary to general principles of humanitarian law.”
These principles include Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which covers
noncombatants including “members of armed forces who have laid down their arms
and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other
cause.” The World Court cited the prohibitions of “violence to life and person, in
particular murder of all kinds [mutilation, cruel treatment and torture]” and “the pass¬
ing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement
pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees
which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.Other provisions of
Article 3 include prohibitions against the “taking of hostages” and “outrages upon
personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”
Americas Watch found in a March 1985 study that “the contra forces have sys¬
tematically violated the applicable laws of war throughout the conflict. They have
attacked civilians indiscriminately; they have tortured and mutilated prisoners; tliey
have murdered those placed hors de combat by their wounds; they have taken
hostages; and they have committed outrages against personal dignity.” By “publish¬
ing and distributing” the CIA manual, “the United States has directly solicited the
contras to engage in violations of the laws of war.”
In regard to the Nicaraguan government, Americas Watch observed: “The
evidence that we have gathered shows a shaip decline in violations of the laws of
war by the Nicaraguan government following 1982.. .The most serious abuse [of the
laws of war] currently attributable to the Nicaraguan government that we have found
is its continuing failure to account publicly for what happened to victims of abuses
in 1981 and 1982 and to provide redress to victims and their families.”^
A follow-up Americas Watch report reaffirmed its findings of systematic viola¬
tions of the laws of war by the contras and found further that the contras, particular¬
ly the FDN, “practice terror as a deliberate policy.” The report added, “We have
detected no improvement in the practices of the contras subsequent to the publica¬
tion of our March report, though we do note that, shortly after that report was
published, the FDN announced that it had taken two prisoners and had offered to
turn them over to the International Committee of the Red Cross. This is the first and
only instance that we know of in which the FDN took prisoners.As noted earlier,
FDN forces have systematically killed prisoners.
Congressional investigation of the CIA contra manual obscured more than it
illuminated. Most importantly. Congress covered up the role of the U.S. government
in sponsoring “terror as a deliberate policy.”
Journalist William Greider perceptively described the “drama of collective
denial” played out over the manual—a drama often in revival: “One of the least at¬
tractive qualities about us Americans is our stubborn belief that we are the innocents
of the world. America plays fair. America is generous and aboveboard in its actions
toward others. Yet in spite of these good intentions, we are constantly bombarded
with hostile invectives and attacked by fanatics using devious tactics.
“From time to time, when we are confronted by incontrovertible evidence that
America plays dirty too, most citizens instinctively seem to deny its meaning. It must
be a mistake...We Americans are for democracy and fair play; we are opposed to
terrorism and deceit. Any deviation from our high moral standards must be a tem¬
porary aberration.”^ Or so U.S. leaders and history books would have us believe.
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Ballots, Bullets and MIGs
I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist

due to the irresponsibility of its own people.
Henry Kissinger, referring to Chile, June 27, 1970.^
The Marines, now in Nicaragua, are there to protect American lives and
property and to aid in carrying out an agreement whereby we have un¬
dertaken to do what we can to restore and maintain order and insure a
fair and free election.
Republican Platform, 1928.
Just as we assert the right of self-government, it follows that all people

throughout the world should enjoy that same human right...We support
continued assistance to the democratic freedom fighters in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua cannot be allowed to remain a Communist sanctuary.
Republican Platform, 1984.
The “drama of collective denial” over the CIA manuals was one act in the na¬
tional drama of Ronald Reagan’s reelection. As Newsweek explained in a special
issue on the 1984 election, “It was the conscious intent of [Reagan’s] managers to
run him as a kind of national icon.”
''PaintRR as thepersonification of all that is righ t with, orheroized by, A merica, ”
a Reagan campaign strategy memo advised. “Leave Mondale in a position where an
attack on Reagan is tantamount to an attack on America’s idealized image of itself—
where a vote against Reagan, is, in some subliminal sense, a vote against a mythic
‘AMERICA.’ (Italics in original.)
The Reagan-as-icon strategy culminated in the landslide hype that swept the
189
mass media. Newsweek’s spccidX issue led off with a piece titled “America: Reagan
Country”: “It was the night that Ronald Wilson Reagan became Mr. America. In a
star-spangled blowout, the American people reaffirmed their identification with his
can-do-confidence, his patriotic pride, and their vote transcended party and ideol¬
ogy: It was more than 52 million Americans roaring ‘Thank you!’ to a president who
had made the country feel good about itself...
“Reagan claimed his mandate as he had won it, with a rippling sea of American
flags before him and his wife, Nancy, at his side.. .her gaze as adoring and his mes¬
sage as rousing as ever. He harked back to the simple but evocative themes that
had launched his political career nearly a generation ago. ‘...Here in America the
people are in charge.’
Buried in the coverage of mythic America’s mythic election was Newsweek’s
own observation that “the president remained, as he always had been, a polarizing
figure dividing the nation by sex, class, race and ideological persuasion; America
was lopsidedly white, male, conservative and well-to-do.”^ What Reagan personifies,
in other words, is the American logic of the minority.
Reagan’s Mythical Mandate

The American people were barely engaged in the political process, much less
in charge. The hidden key to the 1984 election was that many more eligible voters
stayed away from the polls (76 million) than voted for Ronald Reagan (55 million).
Reagan’s landslide was the product of an essentially non-participatory democracy.
Only 55 percent of the eligible electorate voted for president, and those who
voted were not a representative sample of the American public. The voting popula¬
tion is skewed toward higher-income brackets. In the 1980 election, for example,
an estimated 70 percent of Americans earning more than $25,000 in annual income
voted, compared with 25 percent of those earning less than $10,000.^ Reagan won
the votes of 27.6 percent of the eligible electorate in 1980, a smaller share than Wen¬
dell Willkie received in losing to Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. Reagan’s 32.3 percent
of the eligible electorate in 1984 was a smaller share than that of Eisenhower in both
his elections, Kennedy or loser Nixon in I960, Johnson in 1964 or Nixon in 1972.^
Reagan’s legendary popularity is fiction masquerading as fact. As political
analysts Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers observed, “Press claims that Reagan’s
first term marked him as the most popular President of the postwar period are simp¬
ly false. Over all of that term, his approval rating averaged 50 percent, lower than
the averages for Eisenhower (69%), Kennedy (71%), Johnson (52%), and Nixon
(56%), and not far above that of Carter (47%). Reagan’s high point was reached
shortly after taking office, when in May 1981 he recorded a 68 percent approval
rating. Four out of the five other elected postwar Presidents had higher peaks—
Eisenhower (79%), Kennedy (83%), Johnson (80%), and Carter (75%)—^while Nixon’s
67 percent approval peak was not significantly lower. Reagan’s low point of 35 per¬
cent, on the other hand, reached in January 1983, was significantly lower than those
Ballots, Bullets and MIGs 191
of Eisenhower and Kennedy, matched the level Johnson sank to just before he
withdrew from national politics in 1968, and came close to the.. .approval rating that
Nixon received in July and August 1974, just before he resigned the Presidency in
disgrace.”
What about the common view that Reagan has had a special bond with the
American people—that they liked him personally, even while disapproving of his
policies? As Ferguson and Rogers explain, “significant differentials between perfor¬
mance and personal approval ratings of Presidents are utterly routine.. .[and] in fact
the differential Reagan enjoyed was proportionately smaller than those of most of
his predecessors, not larger...[If] one controls for economic conditions, Reagan’s
popularity does not differ significantly from Jimmy Carter’s.”^ The difference is that
the press helped create and protect Reagan’s so-called Teflon coating, while mag¬
nifying Carter’s scratches.
Polls during the Reagan presidency have shown substantial majorities disap¬
proving of many policies and priorities, such as cutbacks in education, health care,
job training and aid to the poor.® By November 1984, polls on Central America had
tracked a consistent record of opposition to policy in El Salvador and Nicaragua.
“The public does not believe that the U.S. interests at stake in the region are as vital
as the Administration has portrayed them,” explained William LeoGrande in a study
of polling data, “and they are fearful that U.S, involvement will lead to ‘another Viet¬
nam.’ While a majority opposed intervention, most people were also uninformed.
The percentage knowing which side the United States was backing in Nicaragua
fluctuated from 22 percent in a March 1982 NBC poll, to 13 percent in a June 1983
CBS poll, to 29 percent in an August 1983 ABC poll.^°
Administration disinformation has influenced public opinion, though not
enough to command majority support for U.S. policy. A March 1982 Los Angeles
Times poll asked people whether they believed administration charges that
“Nicaragua is being used as a staging area by Cuba and Russia to send military sup¬
plies and men to the rebel forces in El Salvador.” Only 11 percent disagreed, while
45 percent said they believed the claim and 44 percent said they didn’t know. A
CQS/New York Times poll that month found that 17 percent of the respondents
thought there were Cuban or Soviet troops in El Salvador, 20 percent thought there
were Cuban or Soviet advisers and 13 percent thought there were both advisers and
troops; only 7 percent knew there were neither troops nor advisers. From March
1982 to August 1983, ABC/Washington polls found the public divided evenly
between those who thought there would be no war in El Salvador without Cuban
and Nicaraguan involvement and those who thought there would. On the other
hand, “when people are explicitly asked whether the main cause of the turmoil in
Central America is Cuban and Soviet subversion or the domestic conditions of pover¬
ty and human rights abuse, they overwhelmingly see the indigenous causes as more
important.”^'
Anti-communism has been a strong force in public opinion, but not strong
enough to shift the polls in favor of administration policy. For example, “public
opinion is strongly opposed to the deployment of U.S. combat troops to El Salvador,
but opposition is 25 to 30 points lower when the alternative is posed as a ‘com-
munist takeover’ of the government there.” When the Nicaraguan government is

characterized as “Marxist” people are more likely to support aid to the contras.
Between early 1983 (when pollsters began asking about U.S. involvement in
the war against Nicaragua) and January 1984, opposition to administration policy
ranged from a low of 48 percent (following the Grenada invasion) to a high of 78
percent, with most polls registering between the mid-50s and low-60s. Support for
overthrowing the government of Nicaragua was generally in the low-20 percent
range.The trend of two-to-one opposition to contra aid continued after Reagan’s
reelection. So did widespread public confusion about which side the administration
was on. For example, an April 1986 New York Times/poll, showing that 62 per¬
cent were opposed to contra aid while 25 percent favored it, found that 38 percent
knew the United States was supporting the contras; others didn’t know or thought
the United States was supporting the Nicaraguan government.
The 1986 poll found that “opposition to aid for the contras crossed all politi¬
cal, ethnic and regional and socio-economic lines. No demographic group favored
it. But within that broad picture, some differences emerged. Aid was opposed by a
lower percentage of men than women, whites than blacks. Republicans than
Democrats and conservatives than liberals.” The poll also found that “the higher the
education and income, the less the opposition. Those earning more than $50,000 a
year were against aid by a margin of 52 to 40 percent, while those earning less than
$12,500 a year opposed it by 68 to 17 percent.” When asked directly, 62 percent
said they feared the United States would get involved in Nicaragua the way it did
in Vietnam. When asked to volunteer reasons for opposing contra aid, “the most
frequent reason given against the aid, and given most often by urban residents and
those with lower incomes and less education^ was that problems in the United States
were more important.” The funds should be spent on domestic problems.
The Reagan administration clearly had no popular mandate to support the
contras and overthrow the Nicaraguan government. That didn’t stop the administra¬
tion from pursuing its policy, or hypocritically accusing the Nicaraguan government
of violating the will of its people.
Cruz Control
Two days before Reagan’s reelection, Nicaraguans went to the polls to elect a
president, vice president and legislative National Assembly. Months before the elec¬
tion occurred Reagan branded it a “Soviet-style sham.” Months afterward he declared
that the “Sandinista government is a government that seized power out of the bar¬
rel of a gun—it’s never been chosen by the people.
Later, a U.S. ambassador in Central America told me something quite different:
“I worked hard to project the Nicaraguan election. There was no evidence of cheat¬
ing. And the count came out pretty much as I called it—60 percent plus or minus
for the FSLN. If Arturo Cruz would have stayed in he would have shaved three or
four points off the Sandinistas, but most of his strength would have come from other
opposition parties.
Arturo Cruz was central to Washington’s strategy to discredit the Nicaraguan
election and portray the contras as a “democratic resistance”: package Cruz as the
major democratic opposition candidate; then, use his withdrawal from the election
as the standard for denouncing the election as a sham. The ploy was exposed, but
the press and Congress bought it anyway. Later, it was revealed that by spring 1984
Cruz was already receiving CIA funding.
As early as August 1984, Mario Rappaccioli, a leader in the Coordinadora
(Democratic Coordinating Committed), the rightwing alliance that nominated Cruz,
told reporters that “Cruz does not intend to run and is interested only in discredit¬
ing the elections.”^®
Two weeks before the election. New York Times reporter Philip Taubman
quoted a U.S. official: “The Administration never contemplated letting Cruz stay in
the race, because then the Sandinistas could justifiably claim that the elections were
legitimate, making it much harder for the United States to oppose the Nicaraguan
Government.”
Taubman reported that several administration officials familiar with activities
in Nicaragua said the CIA “had worked with some of Mr. Cruz’s supporters to in¬
sure that they would object to any potential agreement for his participation in the
election.” Officials specifically named COSEP, a major player in the Coordinadora.
COSEP was “in frequent contact with the C.I.A. about the elections.” COSEP presi¬
dent Enrique Bolanos and other leaders of the group “met during the spring and
summer with C.I.A. officials in Washington and San Jose, Costa Rica.” Bolanos
claimed that he and COSEP “have nothing to do with the C.I.A.” But U.S. intelligence
officials said “that Mr. Bolanos and other Nicaraguan business leaders had had a
close association with the agency since 1980,” under the Carter administration’s
covert aid program.
A closer look at Cruz and the Coordinadora shows why Cruz never had a
chance of winning a free and fair election, which is precisely why he could only
serve U.S. purposes by not running. Cruz appeared as a counterpart to Salvadoran
President Jose Napoleon Duarte. Like Duarte, he was cultivated by Washington to
present a “moderate” face for U.S.-backed forces. But unlike Duarte, Cruz was not
a longtime political leader with a proven domestic base, nor a charismatic figure.
Although he signed on to the Group of Twelve, opposing Somoza during the insur¬
rection, Cruz chose to remain in Washington in his post at the Inter-American
Development Bank when other members of the Twelve returned to Nicaragua in
1978, risking their lives as well as their careers. As Cruz himself acknowledged, “Due
to the understandable personal limitations imposed by my career as an officer in an
international institution, sometimes my contribution, of necessity, was somewhat
marginal. Cruz had lived in Washington since 1970, except for the July 1979-March
1981 period when he returned to Nicaragua to serve as head of the Central Bank
and a member of the government junta. In April 1981, he went back to Washington
to serve briefly as Nicaragua’s ambassador to the United States. By the summer of
1983, Cruz had openly promoted Eden Pastora in an article in Foreign Affairs.
Nicaraguan Vice President Sergio Ramirez, a founding member of the Group
of Twelve, made a prophetic observation when I asked him about Cruz in 1986:
“We invited Mr. Cruz to be a member of the Group [of Twelve] after the second
meeting of the Group in Cuernavaca in July 1977. And, he accepted... but in a very
reluctant way. He never accepted to come to Nicaragua when the Group decided
to come back here to confront the dictatorship...He said that it risked his process
of retirement [with] the Inter-American Development Bank.. .1 am very surprised that
he participates now so openly with a political group, because I know him very well.
He’s a very shy man in politics. He’s not a man of decisions. He prefers to be in the
theory world.. .1 have heard now about internal fighting in the cupola of the counter¬
revolutionary leadership. And he’s now participating in these confrontations, trying
to get.. .more power in the cupola. But I think...he’s going to be discharged or he’s
going to resign, and he’s going to go back to his desk in the bank where he prefers
to be.”^’
The internal opposition group behind Cruz, the Coordinadora, was an alliance
of COSEP; two small unions that had been tolerated by Somoza, the Social Chris¬
tian CTN and the AIFLD-backed CUS; and the four most conservative political par¬
ties: the Social Christian Party (PSC), affiliated with the international Christian
Democratic movement; the Nicaraguan Conservative Party (PCN), founded in June
1984; the Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC), a 1967 split from Somoza’s Liberal
Party; and the Social Democratic Party (PSD), founded in August 1979. Pedro Joa¬
quin Chamorro Jr., the La Prensa codirector who went into exile in Costa Rica in
December 1984 and became editor of the contra paper. Hoy, and later a member
of the contra directorate, was a PSD leader.
“Internationally, the Reagan administration portrayed the Coordinadora as a
giant,” wrote one analyst of Nicaraguan politics, “but, in Nicaragua, this giant had
clay feet.”^^ The Coordinadora parties may have more supporters among Americans
than Nicaraguans. PCN leader Mario Rappaccioli said of the other three parties,
“They have so few people I could fit them all in a bus.”^^ Actually, the Social Chris¬
tian Party, not Rappaccioli’s PCN, was considered the largest party (and the least
reactionary of the bunch), but the PCN and COSEP dominated the Coordinadora.
Stripped of democratic rhetoric, the Coordinadora offered Nicaraguans the
Somocismo without Somoza that the U.S. had tried and failed to create before.
Rappaccioli’s reactionary outlook is evident in a remark he made about the United
States: “All the American media, especially the Washington Post, are communist.”^'*
Contra leader Adolfo Calero described the Coordinadora as “my political wing.”
La Prensa codirector Jaime Chamorro has claimed, “Our fight is the same as the
F.D.N.’s. It is like the difference between an infantry and an air force; two arms of
the same thing...Editorially we do not support the contras’ war; maybe we do per¬
sonally, individually, but our official position is not pro-contra...but [the fight for
democracy] can be won only by taking up arms. A government can be changed
only by a conjunction of factors: the military, the international, the diplomatic, the
church, the press.
Before, during and after the election. La Prensa acted, not as the independent
paper it is touted to be in the United States, but as a highly partisan supporter of
the Coordinadora and U.S. policy. It would not even carry paid advertising by the
other parties contesting the election. Clemente Guido, the presidential candidate of
the Democratic Conservative Party (PCD)—a party that has historically represented
land-owning interests, but has tried to broaden its base in the middle class—charged
La Prensa with exercising its own brand of censorship during the electoral cam¬
paign; the only coverage it gave the PCD was hostile. “We Conservative Democrats,”
said Guido, “call it a ‘dictatorship of paper.’ ” Guido found Nuevo Diario to be “more
pluralistic,” explaining that although he didn’t like its editorial policy, the paper gave
the opposition fair coverage.
A large share of La Prensa ’5 international coverage is devoted to the United
States, often featuring the views of U.S. government officials. On March I6, 1984,
for example, the day after the Council of State approved final legislation regulating
the upcoming election. La Prensa carried only a small article on that while its top
story was devoted to U.S. Ambassador Anthony Quainton. Its banner headline was
“Quainton at breakfast with correspondents, says: Fears of Nicaragua, very exag¬
gerated.” The article quoted Quainton’s remarks that tensions between Nicaragua
and the United States “were due to Nicaragua’s threatening attitudes toward El Sal¬
vador and Honduras.” It ended with Quainton’s assertion that the United States sup¬
ported a peaceful solution in Central America through the Contadora process, but
Nicaragua must stop helping the Salvadoran guerrillas and abandon its dependence
on the Soviet Union and Cuba and its militaristic path. That same month, I heard
Coordinadora leaders describe the U.S. military buildup in Central America as posi¬
tive, saying it had “obliged the Sandinista government to soften its conduct of the
revolution.
La Prensa is anti-Sandinista, not independent. Some analysts have compared
the role of La Prensa to Chile’s El Mercurio and Jamaica’s The Daily Gleaner in the
destabilization of the Allende and Manley governments.^ As far as Nicaraguan
government leaders were concerned, it was better to risk condemnation in censor¬
ing La Prensa then to receive post-mortem sympathy like Allende.
La Prensa would be shut down for over a year by the government in June
1986 after the U.S. Congress approved $100 million in aid for the contras. By then
La Prensa was being funded heavily by the U.S. National Endowment for
Democracy; it received $100,000 in 1985 and over $250,000 in 1986 and 1987.^^ La
Prensa editor Jaime Chamorro lobbied for the contra $100 million in an April 21,
1986 op ed. in the Washington Post. Imagine the New York Times funded by
and supportive of Japan or Germany during World War II, or the electability of the
candidate they sponsored being a litmus test for the 1944 U.S. presidential election.
Campaigns
In December 1983, the Coordinadora issued a nine-point list of requirements
for authentic elections. These included not only such conditions as the removal of
state of emergency restrictions on press and assembly, but demanded major chan¬
ges in government policy and direct negotiations with the contras as conditions for
Coordinadora participation in the election. A U.S. diplomat in Central America ac¬

knowledged, “the content of that [nine-point] statement showed that they had al¬
ready decided not to participate. These were things that the Sandinistas would never
accept.
The Coordinadora named Arturo Cruz as its presidential candidate in July;
Adan Fletes, previously nominated by the PSC as presidential candidate, became
Cmz’s running mate. When he arrived in. Nicaragua on July 22, Caiz reiterated the
nine points, emphasizing negotiations with the contras as a basic condition for par¬
ticipation.
The day before Cruz’s arrival, contras kidnapped Noel Rivera, a successful cof¬
fee grower in Matiguas, Matagalpa who cooperated with the government. Rivera, a
father of five, was beaten and bayoneted to death.
Cruz announced on July 25 that the Coordinadora would boycott the election,
but that he would continue to campaign as if he was an official candidate. The next
day “FDN contras murdered seven unarmed villagers in Tapasle, Matagalpa in an
effort to discourage their neighbors from registering [to vote]. All of the victims were
castrated and had their throats slit; some were dismembered and had their body
parts scattered. One had the skin scraped off his face. Two other men were kid¬
napped.”^'
The Coordinadora boycott, the Washington Post reported, “effectively means
that the domestic opposition is counting on the U.S.-financed covert guerrilla war
and on other international pressure—rather than taking a primary role itself—to
bring down the government or force it to further open the political process...Op¬
position leaders admitted in interviews that they never seriously considered running
in the Nov. 4 election but debated only whether to campaign for two months and
then withdraw from the race on grounds that the Sandinistas had stacked the elec¬
toral deck against them.” The Post added, “It remains unclear how well the
Democratic Coordinator would have fared in the election, as virtually all political
observers predicted that the Sandinistas would win easily, even without the
boycott.
The government declared a four-day holiday, July 27-30, so that people could
register to vote at over 4,000 polling stations throughout the country. More than 100
stations could not open because of the war.^^ On July 27, contras killed voter registra¬
tion workers in Yali and Muelle de los Bueyes and wounded the secretary of a local
voting precinct in an ambush in the Wilicon area. The next day, contras ambushed
groups of people who were transporting voter registration documents in the Santa
Cruz and La Vigia areas and stole the documents
Though voting was strictly voluntary, registration was required by law be¬
cause the information generated through the registration process was to serve as a
basis for a new nationwide census (there were no reported cases, however, in which
penalties were imposed for nonregistration). A total of 1,560,580 persons were
registered, representing 93.7 percent of the estimated voting age population.^^ Voting
age was set at l6 years, a reflection of the country’s relatively youthful population
(Nicaragua’s median age is about l6, compared to 32 in the United States) and the
massive participation of youth in the overthrow of Somoza, defense and programs
such as the literacy campaign.

The Coordinadora tried at first to boycott the registration and LaPrensavQfusQd
to run paid promotional advertising by the Supreme Electoral Council (a fourth,
autonomous branch of government that administers the electoral process, follow¬
ing the model in Costa Rica and other Latin American countries). But “the Coor¬
dinadora showed how weak its base of support is...In the first two days of the
[registration] drive the turnout was so massive despite the boycott.. .that Cruz’s sup¬
porters hastily changed their line and said they too favored registration.”^
Most state of emergency restrictions were lifted at the start of the electoral cam¬
paign on August 1. Press censorship was eased. As Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Jr. put
it, “Now they’re allowing us to publish almost anything regarding politics.
In late September, the FSLN asked the Supreme Electoral Council to extend
the period for registering candidates and reopened negotiations with Cruz and the
Coordinadora; Colombian President Betancur, Carlos Andres Perez and associates
of former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt acted as mediators. A provisional
agreement was reached on October 2 at talks in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Coor¬
dinadora dropped its demand for direct negotiations with the contras and pre-elec¬
tion changes in government policy. According to Cruz’s running mate Adan Fletes,
the FSLN agreed to “all our conditions,” including a large increase in free media time
to compensate for the Coordinadora’s late entry into the campaign. In a key provision
of the draft, the FSLN agreed to postpone the election to January 1985 in return for
a cease-fire with the contras to be negotiated by the Coordinadora.
A detailed report by election observers from the U.S. Latin American Studies
Association (LASA) reviewed different explanations for the failure to reach a final
agreement: “Adan Fletes told our delegation that the draft agreement was never
signed because the FSLN’s negotiator walked out of the talks. The FSLN claims that,
once the draft accords had been initialed, Coordinadora leaders in Managua insisted
on a delay of several days to reconsider the agreement, which the FSLN was un¬
willing to grant. Some independent journalistic reports corroborate this version.
Others believe that negotiators for both sides may have exceeded their authority in
Rio, and upon checking with their colleagues in Managua, they were urged to seek
any pretext for getting out of the agreement. The Sandinistas clearly wanted and
needed an agreement, to enlist the Coordinadora’s participation and prevent the
November 4 elections from being discredited internationally. Arturo Cruz, accord¬
ing to several key informants interviewed by our delegation, may also have wanted
to run; but the more conservative elements of his Coordinadora coalition (especial¬
ly the businessmen represented in COSEP), encouraged by hardliners within the
Reagan Administration, vetoed any agreement.”
The LASA report concluded: “The weight of the evidence available to us sug¬
gests that the Coordinadora group made a policy decision to pursue its political
goals in 1984 outside of the electoral process. Its abstention from the elections was
not the result of FSLN intransigence...Given the terms for campaigning and hold¬
ing the elections to which the FSLN had agreed by October 2.. .it is evident that the
FSLN was willing to ‘take specific steps to create an environment conducive to
genuine electoral competition,’ as the Coordinadora and the U.S. State Department
insisted that it
As election day drew closer, Washington stepped up pressure on opposition
parties outside the Coordinadora to join the abstentionist forces. “Within Nicaragua,”
observed the LASA report, “the behavior of U.S. diplomats was clearly interven¬
tionist. This behavior included repeated attempts to persuade key opposition party
candidates to drop out of the election, and in at least one case, to bribe lower-level
party officials to abandon the campaign of their presidential candidate, who insisted
on staying in the race.”^^
According to Democratic Conservative Party candidate Clemente Guido, the
U.S. embassy made large financial offers to several party leaders. “Two weeks before
the election,” said Guido, “a U.S. Embassy official visited my campaign manager and
promised to help him with money to succeed me as party leader if he withdrew
from my campaign. He did.”^°
Mauricio Diaz, the presidential candidate of the Popular Social Christian Party
(PPSC), was visited by the U.S. Embassy political counselor on October 24. Created
from a split in the Social Christian Party (PSC) in 1976, the PPSC characterizes itself
as “Christian Democrats of the Left” and the PSC as “Christian Democrats of the
Right.” Diaz and the PPSC resisted U.S. pressure and remained in the race."*’
Washington was more successful in disrupting the electoral campaign of the
strongest opposition party, the Independent Liberal Party (PLI), whose base is among
the middle class and professionals. Virgilio Godoy, the PLFs presidential candidate,
had sewed as minister of labor until February 1984. Two weeks before the election,
on October 20, Godoy was visited by U.S. Ambassador Harry Bergold and Embas¬
sy Political Counselor). Michael Joyce (this was one of many PLI visits by U.S. of¬
ficials during the campaign). The next day, Godoy announced his withdrawal from
the election. When the LASA delegation asked Godoy what was discussed at the
October 20 meeting, he replied, “The Ambassador wanted to express the point of
view of his government regarding the elections; that this was not the best time to
hold elections.” An old friend of Godoy commented, “I can’t explain his behavior.
He would not just sell himself to the U.S. Embassy. I think he was subject to terrible
pressure from the Embassy.”
Under U.S. pressure the PLI split into abstentionist and nonabstentionist fac¬
tions. Angry nonabstainers charged that Godoy was offered $300,000 not to run.
The PLFs vice-presidential candidate and a number of PLI candidates for the Na¬
tional Assembly remained in the race after Godoy’s withdrawal.'*^
“The PLI withdrawal from the elections has now left the Sandinistas holding
a near-worthless hand,” boasted a secret briefing paper for an October 30 National
Security Council meeting on Central America. “An election held on November 4 will
not give them the legitimacy they covet, although it will further consolidate San-
dinista control over Nicaragua. Efforts continue to press the Sandinistas to postpone
the elections and agree to Coordinadora demands.”
The NSC document described the administration’s domestic and international
“public diplomacy strategy” on the Nicaraguan election. Domestic propaganda in¬
cluded distribution of the Resource Book: The Sandinista Elections in Nicaragua,
“which documents the undemocratic nature of the election” and encouragement of
experts outside the government “to make public statements, prepare articles, and
appear on media programs, especially immediately prior to and following the
November 4 elections, e.g., the morning TV shows on November 5.” Plans for “the
International Community” included encouragement of “public statements condemn¬
ing the Nicaraguan elections” from “government officials, political party leaders.. .in¬
tellectuals, church, and labor leaders.” In a nonchalant reference to U.S. government
manipulation of the international press, the document noted, “Media contacts should
be encouraged to write editorials questioning the validity of the elections.”
“Congressional failure to fund the armed opposition [the contras] is a serious
loss,” the NSC document observed, “but our handling of the Nicaragua elections
issue and Sandinista mistakes have shifted opinion against the sham elections.” It
stated confidently, “We have succeeded in returning the public and private
diplomatic focus back on the Nicaraguan elections as the key stumbling block to
prospects for national reconciliation and peace in the region.
As former New York Tzmes editor John Oakes put it, “The most fraudulent thing
about the Nicaraguan election was the part the Reagan Administration played in
it.”^^
The FSLN itself was the target of some U.S. dirty tricks. In one case, Washington
tried to transform its wishful thinking of a split in the FSLN—between Borge
“hardliners” and Ortega “pragmatists”—into reality. In August, full-page ads ap¬
peared in newspapers in Costa Rica, Venezuela and Panama signed by the “Friends
of Tomas Borge.” Their message was “Not Cruz, not Ortega. Borge for President.”
The ads described Borge as “the last true Sandinista revolutionary, the only one that
can force through the promises of the 1979 revolution.
Contra radio and leaflets advocated abstention, and electoral institutions and
officials in the war zones were attacked. For example, Santos Jose Vilchez, presi¬
dent of the voter registration office at Pijibay was kidnapped along with four others
on August 3. On August 7, 50 contras invaded El Morado and kidnapped ten cam-
pesinos. They removed voter registration cards and threatened to kill those who
tried to vote. On September 14, contras kidnapped the president of the local voting
precinct in the district of San Martin.^^
The contras stepped up attacks in October as the election drew closer. Forty-
three civilians were killed during the week of October 21.On October 28, in El
Dorado, contras kidnapped the president and secretary of the local electoral board.
The next day, contras attacked the Santa Julia cooperative. A mortar landed in the
cooperative’s headquarters where three families were living.
“Maria Soza Valladares was sick in bed, but all her children were in the ixdd-
dle of the room ‘as if they were waiting for the mortar’ which killed Marta Azucena,
11 years old, Carmelita Azucena, five, and Ronaldo Miguel, three. Another child,
Alexis, eight, was severely injured and died on the way to the hospital. Maria Soza,
herself injured, tried to rescue her dead and dying cliildren, but it was too late. Her
daughter Maria, six, covered with blood, walked all the way to the health center in
San Gregorio through the ensuing crossfire.. Eventually, she and her mother spent
almost a month in the hospital...Aurelia Ortiz, eight months pregnant, was also in
the room with her children when the mortar exploded, killing Jose Rodolfo, five.
and Maura de Jesus, seven. A rnonth later, she gave birth to a stillborn child.” The
next day—the day the National Security Council was reviewing U.S. sabotage of the
Nicaraguan election—eighteen campesinos were kidnapped in the Casa de Tabla
area.'*®
Although the contras announced a cease-fire for election day, attacks con¬
tinued. According to the Supreme Electoral Council, sixteen polling places could
not function because of the war. Two polling places were attacked and an election
official was killed. Near Wiwili, contras kidnapped 100 civilians.'*^
Nicaragua Votes
On election day, Nicaraguan voters had a clear choice of political platforms
ranging from conservative to orthodox communist. If the Coordinadora had not
boycotted, the most rightwing parties would have been represented as well.
In addition to the PCD, PLI and PPSC, positioned to the right of the FSLN in
the Nicaraguan political spectrum, three parties on the ballot represented what could
be considered Nicaragua’s old left and far left. The Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN),
founded in 1944, is the communist party recognized historically by the Soviet Union.
The Nicaraguan Communist Party (PCdeN), a split from the PSN, regards the FSLN
as a party of petty-bourgeois reformers. The Marxist-Leninist Popular Action Move¬
ment (MAP-ML) advocates the expropriation of all business property.
On November 4, Nicaraguans turned out in large numbers, with 75.4 percent
of the registered voters casting ballots. The FSLN led the balloting with 67 percent
of the vote, winning 6l seats in the National Assembly. The PCD, second with 14
percent, won 14 seats. The PLI, which was expected to finish second before the
confused withdrawal of its presidential candidate, won 9.6 percent of the vote and
9 seats. The PPSC won 5.6 percent of the vote and 6 seats. The PCdeN, PSN and
MAP-ML won, respectively, 1.5, 1.3 and 1 percent of the vote, and 2 seats each in
the National Assembly. Of the total votes cast, 6.1 percent were invalid—including
unmarked or defaced ballots and ballots with more than one party or presidential
candidate marked—representing voter confusion (for many this was the first vote
in their lifetimes) as well as protest votes.Together, opposition parties (of the right
and left) won a significant one-third of the popular vote and 35 seats (36.5 percent)
in the 96-member National Assembly, including 6 seats designated for losing
presidential candidates. Not surprisingly, abstentionist forces such as COSEP dismiss
the Assembly as a “rubber stamp.
Most international observers, such as the Latin American Studies Association,
the International Human Rights Law Group and the British Parliamentaiy Human
Rights Group, judged the election to be free and democratic. LASA’s detailed analysis
of Nicaraguan election procedure illustrates why most observers considered the elec¬
tion free and fair: “The election of the Assembly was based on a standard model of
proportional representation.. .The choice of this kind of proportional representation
system [common in Western Europe] is significant because it tilts the National As-
sembly toward political pluralism, by assuring the representation of a wider range

of interests and opinions within the electorate than would be achieved under a U.S.-
style single-member district system.. .Without it, the smallest opposition parties
would have had virtually no chance of winning seats.
The electoral law provided for public financing and free, uncensored air time.
Each party, regardless of size, received an initial allotment of 9 million cordobas
(about $900,000) and were permitted to receive additional funding from domestic
and foreign sources. The Electoral Council also distributed donated materials such
as paper and ink to the parties. During the campaign, each party had “access to a
total of 22 hours (15 ininutes per day) of free, uninterrupted television time, in prime
early evening hours, on both channels; and 44 hours (30 minutes per day) of free
radio time on all state-run radio stations.”” As already noted, newspaper censorship
was eased during the electoral period. There was no censorship of Nicaragua’s 39
radio stations, with an audience far larger than the newspapers’ combined reader-
ship, including two stations run by the Catholic hierarchy which was supportive of
the Coordinadora. Also campaign billboards, posters and wall murals, as well as
graffiti, widely promoted the different party messages.
Nicaraguans could also tune in regularly to the AM and EM broadcasts trans¬
mitted by contra-run radio stations and pro-contra radio broadcasting in neighbor¬
ing countries. Over 70 foreign radio stations, including the familiar Voice of America,
penetrated Nicaraguan territory, mostly from Costa Rica and Honduras. Honduran
and Salvadoran television was received in northern Nicaragua, and in much of
southern Nicaragua Costa Rican television was received more clearly than
Nicaraguan.”
Nicaraguan electoral law “provided a broad array of protections and guaran¬
tees,” the LASA report explained. The “law created a system of open scrutiny of all
electoral proceedings (registration, campaigning, voting, vote tabulation) by party-
nominated observers, at each level of electoral organization. Systems for receiving
complaints and appeals for each step in the process were also established, as well
as mechanisms for evaluation of complaints, reports to the interested parties, and
correction of abuses of violations of the law.” Nicaragua received material or tech¬
nical election assistance from Sweden, Norway, Finland and France. And Nicaraguan
delegations toured democracies in Latin America, Western Europe and the United
States (after first being denied U.S. visas) to research electoral procedures.
“The actual voting process,” stated the LASA report, “was meticulously
designed to minimize the potential for abuses.. .In response to a request by opposi¬
tion parties, all voter registration cards were retained by election judges so that there
would be no possibility of them being used as an ex post facto way of checking on
whether a person had voted (as allegedly happened in connection with the 1984
election in El Salvador).” Also, unlike in El Salvador where voters marked ballots
that were transparent even when folded for deposit in clear plastic ballot boxes,
Nicaraguan voters deposited their folded ballots, designed for confidentiality (with
Swedish technical assistance) with dark-colored strips across the back, into non¬
transparent ballot boxes. By the end of the day on November 7, “not a single for¬
mal complaint about voting or vote count irregularities had been presented at the
Supreme Electoral Council, by any party. Spokesmen for several of the participat¬
ing opposition parties attested to the cleanness of the elections.”” (Months later, La
Prensa presented a charge of voter fraud; it was thoroughly discredited.)”
The LASA report concluded that the charge of systematic intimidation and
harassment of opposition candidates and supporters by Sandinista Defense Com¬
mittees and gangs, known as turbos, was unfounded. The sporadic disruptions that
did occur took place mainly in the pre- or early campaign period, and were not rep¬
resentative of the overall character of the campaign. The Electoral Council substan¬
tiated nine turba disruptions before and during a campaign with over 270 political
rallies and demonstrations. In at least one case, Cruz supporters acted as turbas, at¬
tacking a group of women, including widows of men killed by the contras or by
Guardia during Somoza’s reign, carrying placards protesting the Coordinadora’s call
for direct talks with the contras. Not one person lost their life as a result of cam¬
paign violence (civilians did die at the hands of the contras), “a remarkable record
in a country experiencing its first open electoral campaign in any Nicaraguan’s
lifetime, at a time of armed conflict and high emotions.”” In El Salvador and the
Philippines, in contrast, there were (and are) many political killings.
Regarding the charge that the FSLN abused its incumbency status, the LASA
delegation found that “generally speaking...the FSLN did little more to take ad¬
vantage of its incumbency than incumbent parties everywhere (including the United
States) routinely do, and considerably /c55than ruling parties in other Latin American
countries traditionally have done.” (LASA’s italics.) Sergio Ramirez observed, “We
do have an advantage over our opposition. We are in power...It’s certainly easier
to run for President from the White House; but nobody accuses Ronald Reagan of
anything illegal because he takes advantage of all that apparatus.””
The downside to incumbency was largely ignored: The party in power is
generally blamed for poor economic conditions, however fairly or unfairly, and by
1984 Nicaragua was experiencing a worsening economic crisis.
The LASA report concluded that by Latin American standards, the Nicaraguan
election “was a model of probity and fairness.. .we must conclude that there is noth¬
ing ih^X the Sandinistas could have done to make the 1984 elections acceptable to
the United States Government.”” (LASA’s italics.)
Democracies and Double Standards

When LASA observers asked a U.S. diplomat in Central America why the United
States enthusiastically endorsed the 1984 Salvadoran elections, where all political
groups to the left of the Christian Democrats were excluded, while condemning the
more inclusionary electoral process in Nicaragua, he replied: “The United States is
not obliged to apply the same standard of judgement to a country whose govern¬
ment is avowedly hostile to the U.S. as for a country, like El Salvador, where it is
not.””
Using a single standard. Lord Chitnis of the British delegation favorably con-
trasted Nicaragua’s election with El Salvador’s 1984 presidential election: “in every
relevant aspect, the situation in Nicaragua provided the necessary conditions for all
political parties to participate freely. This was not the case in El Salvador. In
Nicaragua .. .Arturo Cruz.. .was free to return to his country.. .and held public meet¬
ings without any perceptible fear for his life. In El Salvador, Guillermo Ungo, the
leader of the FMLN-FDR, would not have been able to do this. As the British
Government’s official observers noted he ‘would have run a very high risk of being
assassinated...’ ” In Nicaragua, Chitnis found genuine political choice. “By compar¬
ing, for example, the party political platform of the Democratic Conservatives with
that of the MAP on the extreme left, this seems to me indisputable. In El Salvador,
such political choice did not exist. As the British Government’s observers to the Sal¬
vadorean election said it was clear that in that country no political party from the
centre to the left would have been able to contest the elections, and none did.”
On the question of censorship, Chitnis criticized the Nicaraguan government
as well as La Prensa ’s decision not to publish official Electoral Council notices or
reports of deaths from contra attacks. “But, what of the anti-government journalist
in El Salvador?” he asked. “Assuming he finds a paper or magazine willing to pub¬
lish his articles—3. huge assumption—he too will be in fear of his life. Not long ago,
the mutilated, decapitated bodies of journalists were found on the roadside. Indeed,
there is now no opposition paper to censor. They have been forced into silence.”^’
In the words of Americas Watch, “Any discussion of press freedom in El Sal¬
vador must begin by pointing out the elimination of the country’s two main opposi¬
tion newspapers. La Cronica del Pueblo was closed in 1980 when members of tlie
security forces raided a San Salvador coffee shop where the paper’s editor and one
of its photographers were meeting. Editor Jaime Suarez, a 31-year-old prize-winning
poet, and Cesar Najarro, 28, were disembowelled by machetes and then shot. In
1981 ElLndependientewdiS closed when Aiiny tanks surrounded its offices. This was
the culmination of a long series of attacks, which included the machinegunning of
a 14-year-old newsboy, bombing attempts, and assassination attempts against editor
Jorge Pinto.” As for censorship of Salvadoran Church outlets, the “Archdiocese’s
radio station, WSAX, spent several years out of commission after its offices were
repeatedly bombed. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 65
reporters have been murdered in El Salvador and Guatemala. In short, the press in
El Salvador and Guatemala have been “censored by death squads.
The mainstream U.S. media applied the administration’s double standard. One
study found that at the time of El Salvador’s 1982 election, “during a seven-day
period centered on election day the three, networks ran a total of twenty-two stories,
the average length of which was just under five minutes, making it one of the most
thoroughly covered foreign elections in television history. The Nicaraguan election
was, by comparison, all but ignored, receiving a total of 18 minutes and 40 seconds
of evening news coverage between August 1 and November 7.”^''
The coverage mirrored the administration line, playing up both Salvadoran
elections as democratic triumphs, virtually ignoring the state of siege and the an¬
nihilation of independent and opposition press, and dismissing the absence of the
major political opposition (the FDR-FMLN) as a factor in judging fairness. Coverage
of Nicaragua, in contrast, highlighted the state of emergency, played up Cruz and

the Coordinadora (who were not the major opposition) and dismissed the election
as a sham.^^
Ignoring or trivializing even their own reporting about manipulation by U. S.
officials, the major media stuck to the administration’s Cruz control setting. A New
York Times editorial of November 7, 1984 was headed “Nobody Won in Nicaragua”:
“Only the naive believe that Sunday’s election in Nicaragua was democratic or
legitimizing proof of the Sandinistas’ popularity...The Sandinistas made it easy to
dismiss their election as a sham. Their decisive act was to break off negotiations
with Arturo Cruz, an opposition democrat whose candidacy could have produced a
more credible contest. He sought delay until January but was denied time to deliver
a truce from the U.S.-armed ‘contra’ rebels.” In the Hmckdistorted account, the San¬
dinistas scorned Cruz not only as a democrat but as a peacemaker.
A Washington editorial of November 26 was even more contemptuous:
“The Sandinistas produced a big turnout—easy in Central America where the
democratic tradition is weak and the power of official suggestion is strong. They
also produced a big victory. That too was easy: the major opposition didn’t run, and
while the minor opposition had a fling in the media, the Sandinistas alone control
mass organizations and used them to bring in a landslide—although it was not one
of those 99.93 percent Soviet jobs.” The Post added: “The main reason the major
opposition did not run was that the Sandinistas cheated—^with mob violence, logis¬
tical harassment and on-and-off censorship. It is true, as some have charged, that
certain American officials quietly encouraged some in the Nicaraguan opposition
not to take part, although it’s not at all clear that this kept the Nicaraguan opposi¬
tion from joining the elections. The Sandinistas are tough customers with a Marxist-
Leninist streak, and the opposition had reason to doubt their good faith. Still, this
American dabbling created a damaging suspicion of American maneuver which
remains part of the post-election scene.”
Making a meek call for a political solution, the editorial contrasted Nicaragua
with El Salvador: “Politically underdeveloped countries consumed by externally
fueled civil wars need to negotiate as well as vote. El Salvador’s elected government
is now talking with the armed left elements, which shunned the last elections.
Managua is talking with its political opposition but has yet to match President Duarte
and address its armed opposition.”
The Post editorial is a lesson in double standards and double speak. Does
anyone recall hearing that it was “easy in Central America” to produce a big turnout
during the Salvadoran elections? To the contrary, the turnout (proportionately
smaller than Nicaragua’s) was taken as a triumph of ballots over bullets—not the
bullets of the government and its death squad offspring responsible for most Sal¬
vadoran murders, but the bullets of the PMLN who “shunned” the elections. During
the 1982 Salvadoran election, television news was bursting with pictures of long
lines of voters (without the background infonnation that the lines were a predict¬
able result of an inadequate number of polling sites).
In the Post editorial, the Nicaraguan government is referred to simply as
“Managua” while the Salvadoran is called “El Salvador’s elected government”; the
FDR-FMLN is atomized into “armed left elements” while the contras are credentialed
as the “armed opposition.” The portrayed the Sandinistas as a kind of “Mandst-
Leninist” Mafia—“tough customers” cheating with “mob violence.” U.S. officials, on
the other hand, “quietly encouraged”; the main result of their “dabbling” was to
create a “damaging suspicion of American maneuver”—maneuver sounding much
more benign than bribery and political extortion, not to mention contra kidnapping
and killing.
In his report of the Nicaraguan election results, buried on page 12 of the New
York Times, Stephen Kinzer presented a distorted assessment under the headline
“Sandinistas Hold Their [sid First Election.” It was a sharp contrast to New York Times
coverage of the 1982 Salvadoran election, with, for example, two March 29 front¬
page stories, headlined: “Salvadorans Jam Polling Stations; Rebels Close Some—
Votes Cast Amid Gunfire” and “Rural Voters Hike for Miles To Be Heard,” as well
as an inside story titled, “For First Time Since ’32 Crackdown, Democracy Is Trying
for a Comeback.”
Where El Salvador was made to seem like Beirut because of the FMLN,
Nicaragua was made to appear temporarily at peace thanks to the contras. Kinzer
wrote, “Although Nicaragua is torn by civil stiife, there were no reprted [s/c] clashes
today. The Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the largest of the pro-American guerrilla
groups fighting to depose the Sandinistas, had called a one-day cease-fire.”
“The Government established nearly 4,000 voting places,” observed Kinzer,
“and lines were generally short. There was little visible enthusiasm, though in the
capital there was a marked contrast between the poorer sections and the better
areas. Although there was movement and interest in the voting in some slums, the
large houses in comfortable neighborhoods were closed, and people who answered
their doors said they considered the election not worth their participation.”
This is a remarkable passage. The Times must assume the reader either doesn’t
realize that the overwhelming majority of Nicaraguans are poor or thinks the votes
of wealthier Nicaraguans are more important. In contrast to the United States, where
the largest party is the party of nonvoters and turnout is skewed toward those with
higher incomes, in Nicaragua voter turnout was high, with abstentions skewed
toward the wealthier minority of the population. The widespread enthusiasm found
among Nicaragua’s poor majority signified a marked redistribution of the political
franchise to those historically most marginalized.
Kinzer quoted a disproportionate mix of Sandinista supporters and opponents.
Supporter “Sebastian Guevara, 20, a health worker from Granada, said Mr. Cruz ‘is
a traitor because he wants us to negotiate with the killers who are murdering our
people.’ ” That’s in a passage headed “Some Support for Cruz,” mostly quoting and
reinforcing Cruz’s views about the election being a “farce.”
In an earlier section, we read that “Mr. Corea, like many older people who
spoke in interviews, expressed nostalgia for the days when there were only two
parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, instead of the seven that appeared on
the ballot today.” The article neglected to mention that the Liberal Party was the
Somozas’ domain. Some voters “recalled previous elections, when candidates would
slaughter animals and give steaks away to voters.” Kinzer made a multi-party politi-
cal system and an end to traditional vote buying sound sinister.

The insidious main message was nailed home in the article’s ending—^this elec¬
tion was like Somoza elections, minus the steaks, but not the fear: “In the dusty
town square at Masatepe, 25 miles south of the capital, 84-year-old Andres Aguirre
brushed aside offers of help as he deliberately made his way to the poll. His eyes
seemed to twinkle as he stroked his full beard.
“ T’ve always voted because it is always required,’ he said. ‘Of course, the law
says one thing, but after a while one realizes that voting is part of patriotism, and
patriotism leads to long life.’ In the New York Timesdeath squad environment
of El Salvador is projected onto Nicaragua.
A companion piece reported that the Nicaraguan election spelled heightened
tensions between Washington and Managua and undermined efforts for regional
peace. Eight paragraphs into the article is the news: “If the regional peace talks col¬
lapse and the negotiations between the United States and Nicaragua fail to make
progress. Administration officials said, the chances of some kind of American military
intervention in Nicaragua would increase if President Reagan is re-elected on Tues¬
day.”
The article ended with an all-too-typical press contortion to achieve “objec¬
tivity” at the expense of truth regarding U.S. policy: “Some Administration officials
have reported that the Administration, while publicly calling for free elections in
Nicaragua, argued in private that major opposition candidates should not take part
to insure that the elections would appear to be unrepresentative. This contention
has been denied by other officials.” Since the New York Times2.nd other papers had
already documented such manipulation, the passage was a big step backward into
the shadows obscuring U.S. intervention.^^
Pluralist Opposition Voices

A year and a half later, I asked some opposition leaders to comment on the
election and the U.S. role in it. Mauricio Diaz, the presidential candidate and secretary
general of the Popular Social Christian Party (PPSC), told me: “For us the 1984 elec¬
tions represented a challenge. The challenge of democratization—that it was pos¬
sible to initiate the construction of a Western-style, democratic electoral system
within a revolutionary process...
“Obviously, the natural intermediaries of the United States received a mistaken
slogan. The slogan of not participating in the elections was an erroneous measure,
whose costs have been paid by the individual political organizations...[In] spite of
the limitations of the electoral process, it was universally recognized as legitimate.
Those countries who sought to delegitimize, to question, to stigmatize or to accuse
it of fraud were isolated.
“The elections threw up a new political framework in the national political
context.. .The elections demonstrated that the FSLN is not the vanguard of the whole
Nicaraguan people, as they claimed.. .It is interesting that as a result of the electoral
process, the FSLN was obliged to give a ‘turn of the wheel’— a turn of the wheel
that meant the recognition of a duly instituted pluralism, of a National Assembly as
representation or expression of the Nicaraguan will. And that [Assembly] now has a
mandate to make a constitution, which for us should be democratic or it won’t be
useful to the Sandinistas or the opposition. In this sense, the U.S. position of pres¬
suring the organizations closest to its policies is an error that has forced President
Reagan to assume ever more radical attitudes upon not finding duly legitimized in¬
terlocutors within the rules of the game of the revolutionary process...
“The Coordinadora’s position was a simple one: all or nothing, the power or
nothing.
“We believe that you can’t, with integrity, ask that a recently installed govern¬
ment, which leaves behind almost a half century of dictatorship without any civil
practice on the part of the people, with very little political culture—that suddenly,
from night to morning, we should arrive at Costa Rican-style democracy. I think
that’s infantile. And that, in any case, the organizations that believe it’s possible to
create a democratic system in Nicaragua should also act to create the conditions for
it. To nourish and enrich the public political debate. Not to assume a death house
attitude, by locking oneself up in one’s organization and waiting for the gringos to
resolve matters...
“I’ve always maintained that in Nicaragua the true freedom fighters are the
political parties that are trying to endow this country with a democratic political con¬
stitution and not those famous ‘freedom fighters,’ who, in the hypothetical case that
they triumph, I don’t believe it would be to restore democracy in Nicaragua. We
have terrible experiences like Mr. Pinochet in Chile, where it was supposed that he
would assume power transitionally while creating conditions for returning power
to civilians.”
I asked Diaz to elaborate further on the impact of U.S. policy on the develop¬
ment of pluralism in Nicaragua. He said, “It is illogical to think that a democratic
regime in Nicaragua will be achieved through aggression. There’s a wise saying that
the peasants have: ‘The Yanquisdo it to the Sandinistas, they charge the Sandinis¬
tas and the people pay’.. .What do they mean by this? That while the North American
administration is taking drastic, aggressive measures against Nicaragua, the Sandinis-
ta government takes other measures [e.g. the state of emergency] whose fundamen¬
tal effects are felt by the people...[The] United States would have done better by
Nicaragua if the $100 million [in 1986] had gone for the municipal elections rather
than the contras.. .Nicaragua is a bleeding country in which the quota of lives given
in the defense of the nation’s sovereignty is too high.”^
Rafael Cordova Rivas of the Democratic Conservative Party (PCD) also believes
“it was an error on the part of the United States and an error on the part of rightist
groups and classes in Nicaragua not to have participated in the election.. .[The elec¬
tion] was an open trench...He who wanted to fill it could fill it. We filled it..We’ve
proved through our positions taken in the Assembly that we still hold to conserva¬
tive principles...
“We live under constant pressure from the U.S. Embassy to get the PCD to
take a Reaganite position. Up to now they haven’t achieved that, nor do I believe
they’ll achieve
Eduardo Coronado, then vice president of the Independent Liberal Party,*
noted two objections to a U.S. policy that “has sought a military solution to the
Nicaraguan and Central American crisis. First, for a practical reason. The more aid
the United States gives the contras, the more aid the Soviet Union gives to the FSLN.
As the world powers put up the money and the arms, we put up the dead, which
is no business for any country. Second, politically, in the sense that we are anti-in¬
terventionists, we believe that we should resolve our own problems. Any foreign
inheritance, whether right or left, takes away our independence and creativity for
driving forward or forging our own revolution.”
In the view promoted by the United States, said Coronado, “our revolution is
seen as polarized between two approaches. The approach of the counterrevolution
supported by the United States and the approach of the FSLN and the other left [par¬
ties] supported by the Soviet Union or Cuba.. .We consider it an erroneous view be¬
cause here within the political spectrum you must account for the civic opposition
parties.. .As civic opposition parties we are placed outside the drama that Nicaragua
is being submitted to. We’re [made] marginal to the drama Nicaragua is living. In
spite of that, we’re the ones who, in the flesh, suffer the sudden attacks of the
counterrevolution and the security measures taken by the FSLN to defend itself,
which takes away space for our political development...
“We believe the rnilitary solution won’t solve anything; besides being a long
painful war it would lead to a dictatorship, or totalitarianism of the right or left. It
would oblige a radicalization of this process.. .It would dash the hope of an original
revolution for Latin America...
“We see that there must be reciprocal concessions...There can be no peace¬
ful solution without eliminating factors that interrupt an internal understanding—
elements such as the war and the state of emergency. These two disturbing elements
should be eliminated at the same time. The war and the state of emergency, both
sides must cease at the same time. Having eliminated those two interrupting factors,
negotiations can take place for the total dismantling of the counterrevolution, for
the democratization of Nicaragua under just tenns for all parties without falling into
the political hegemony of a single party. Rather, the formation of a system in which
all political parties have an equal opportunity to direct the destiny of the country in
accord with its political calling.
The nonabstentionist opposition parties are neither a monolithic bloc nor a
rubber stamp for the FSLN. They harshly criticized the FSLN during the election and
they continue to do so today. They represent a broad spectrum of political, economic
and social beliefs whether on church-state relations, agrarian reform, the roles of
private and state enterprise, women’s rights, or relations with the Soviet Union. The
parties to the right of the FSLN, outside the Coordinadora, generally affirm the prin¬
ciples embraced by the Government of National Reconstruction in 1979 and institu-
* Later in 1986, Coronado and four other PLI delegates in the National Assembly broke ranks
with PLI president Virgilio Godoy and voted with the Assembly majority to approve
Nicaragua’s new constitution. In November 1987, a majority of PLI members voted to elect
Coronado party leader; the party is divided into factions led by Coronado and Godoy
tionalized by the constitution: political pluralism, a mixed economy and nonalign¬

ment. But they have different visions of how these principles should be carried out.
They want the chance to test their principles, programs and popular appeal without
the pressures of war.
The MIGs are Coming! The MIGs are Coming!

Nicaragua was in the news on election night in the United States, but the story
was not Nicaragua’s election. The story was Soviet MIGs. As reported by CBS Even¬
ing News on November 6, 1984, the Soviet freighter Bakuriani was on its way to
Nicaragua with MIG 21 fighters aboard—according to administration officials citing
satellite surveillance (Robert McFarlane was later identified as the lead leaker).
The “sham election” story was succeeded quickly by the security threat story.
The CIA terrorist manuals were ancient history.
U.S. officials told Moscow that delivery of MIGs to Nicaragua would not be
tolerated—portraying the vintage 1950s MIGs as if they were intended for use in a
Soviet blitz. The administration warned that it would take military action to destroy
MIGs and MIG facilities. Senator Christopher Dodd and other prominent liberal
Democrats agreed. A U.S. warship appeared off the Nicaraguan port of Corinto
where the Soviet freighter docked. This was no idle threat of gunboat diplomacy;
Corinto had been rocketed and mined in the last year.
The Nicaraguan government reiterated its sovereign right to import jet fighter
aircraft for defensive purposes, but insisted that no MIGs were being delivered.
Three weeks earlier, Daniel Ortega had told Newsweek, “We have been making ges¬
tures to different countries, [including] Western countries, in a search for intercep¬
tor planes.. .Nicaragua is the only country [in the area] that doesn’t possess this type
of plane. And yet Nicaragua is the one country that needs it.”
Referring to the Contadora peace proposal which Nicaragua agreed to sign
in September only to have Washington pressure its allies into withdrawing their in¬
itial approval (discussed in chapter 13), Ortega noted, “The Contadora proposal con¬
templates a freeze on the introduction of annaments into Central America 29 days
after [the plan] is signed. Thus that problem would be overcome, because then
negotiations would address the issue of how to find a balance within the armed for¬
ces of the region...At the same time, the best thing would be that the Central
American counfries that have this type of airplane get rid of them, so that those of
us that don’t have them won’t be forced into seeking them.”^^
As the State Department-sponsored Jacobsen report pointed out, “All-too-many
US claims [about Soviet bloc military aid to Nicaragua] proved open to question. In
May 1983 the White House announced that reconnaissance photos proved the Soviet
ships Novovolynsk and Polotosk carried heavy military equipment; American
reporters present at the unloading saw only field kitchens from East Germany, and
12000 tons of fertilizer...President Reagan later declared that the ship Ulyanov was
‘loaded with weaponry’; yet a respected Conservative British observer saw ‘no signs
of offensive weaponry or armoured vehicles’, only 200 transport vehicles, 80 jeeps,

5 ambulances, and assorted civilian equipment.
By November 9, U.S. officials were acknowledging that they were almost cer¬
tain no jet fighters were aboard the Soviet freighter. However, they continued to
warn of military action in response to delivery of such aircraft. “Officials said they
would not rule out air strikes, sabotage or other military action to disable Soviet
MIG fighters if they were delivered to Nicaragua. They reiterated that the Administra¬
tion had no plans to invade Nicaragua.
Inside Nicaragua, there was widespread fear that the MIG scare was a pretext
for imminent U.S. invasion. On the morning of November 3, the day before
Nicaraguans went to the polls, a U.S. SR-71 Blackbird spy plane flew over the
country, purposely creating a sonic boom to rattle nerves below. It was the first in
a series of provocative self-announced spy flights.
The U.S. Air Force SR-71 is reportedly “the world’s fastest, technically most ad¬
vanced spy plane, capable of seeing more from a greater distance than any other
aircraft.” It “can survey 100,000 square miles from 15 miles up in only one hour.
Difficult to detect by radar, it can also track SAM [surface-to-air] missiles at a dis¬
tance of up to 100 miles. The Blackbird can reach speeds of up to Mach 4, or 2,600
miles per hour; no country has ever succeeded in shooting one down.” It has “a
pair of cameras that automatically produce 1,800 overlapping photos of up to 1,600
miles of terrain; and a camera that can produce pictures with a ground resolution
of 12 inches.Complementing the U.S. fleet of espionage satellites, the Blackbird,
with its cloud-penetrating infrared sensors, can provide speedy battlefield intel¬
ligence.
Reporter Marc Cooper described the impact of Blackbird sonic booms over
Nicaragua: “A few days after Ronald Reagan was reelected President...! was sitting
at breakfast with a group of Nicaraguan and Argentine cultural workers...The dis¬
cussion this morning was the same as every morning that week: Would there be an
invasion? I was arguing that direct American military intervention would be ‘politi¬
cally difficult, illogical.’ Others at the table rebutted that rationality had litde to do
with U.S. policy.
“And then at exactly 9:25 a.m., somewhere between the eggs and plantains,
and the pros and cons, the sky bellowed, the windows rattled, and our table shook
as a supersonic boom reverberated off the lush hills of the Nicaraguan countryside.
For the third morning in a row, and for the fifth time in 10 days, at precisely the
same hour, a U.S. SR-71 Blackbird spy plane had broken the sound barrier over
Nicaraguan national air space. You could almost touch the tension and the indig¬
nation in the kitchen. The morning newspaper reports of State Department denials
of invasion plans had been abruptly and rudely contradicted by the Pentagon’s
booming overflight.
“Twenty-five-year old [militia member] Maria Ester.. .was visibly shaken. ‘I wish
Reagan would just get it over with and send in the Marines. We are ready to fight
them,’ she pronounced in near-perfect English, a product.. .of an adolescence spent
in San Francisco. ‘This is the worst it has ever been. Worse even than last year after
Grenada. Last night in my neighborhood we were making plans on where to hide
our children.’
Imagine being forced into a duel in which the number of steps taken before
turning to shoot are not predetermined and the rules are that your adversary will
shoot first with vastly superior firepower. As you walk you’re assaulted and wounded
by the adversary’s proxies with the expectation you will surrender or die, or at least
be severely disabled before the final duel. Most of the time, you hope the ultimate
duel, a full invasion, will never come. But there are moments when you feel that
it’s so inevitable, why not get it over with. You want the opportunity to win peace
and recover. When the Blackbird flew over that morning, Maria Ester and her com¬
patriots were four years into that cruel duel.
The MIG warnings and Blackbird spy flights were not the only post-election
trumpets of war jarring Nicaragua. The Washington-based Center for Defense Infor¬
mation summarized other danger signs: units of the 82nd Airborne and the 101st
Air Assault Division, “which would spearhead any U.S. invasion force,” were in¬
volved in “Quick Thrust” combat exercises at Fort Stewart in Georgia. With Hon¬
duras and El Salvador, the United States was conducting the “King’s Guard” naval
exercise, moved up several weeks from its originally scheduled date, in the Gulf of
Fonseca. The battleship Iowa and 24 other ships were oil naval maneuvers in the
Caribbean. Two Pacific-based aircraft carriers and two Atlantic-based carriers were
apparently “close enough to reach Central America in a matter of days.”^^
U.S. officials denied plans for a military strike against Nicaragua. “A year ago,”
the New York Times reported, “just before the invasion of Grenada, spokesmen for
the Reagan Administration said United States warships had been sent to the Carib¬
bean as a precaution in case Americans on Grenada were endangered by the over¬
throw of the Government there. At the same time, they denied reports that an
invasion of Grenada was imminent.”^®
Nicaragua wasn’t taking any chances. The army and militia went on full alert.
Tanks were again deployed defensively around Managua. Agriculture Minister Jaime
Wheelock told 12,000 students about to leave as volunteers in the coffee harvest
that they were needed more for defense of the capital. “It’s better that the coffee
falls instead of our country,” Wheelock explained.
Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto told reporter Marc Cooper, “[Ifi you ask ‘is
a U.S. invasion possible,’ I answer that it hardly seems possible that such a man as
Reagan should be reelected, yet he has been. If we lived in a different country, we
could sit back and ask if the invasion was really coming. But living in Nicaragua we
don’t have that luxury. We must prepare for the worst.
As fall turned to winter, there was no direct U.S. invasion. The Nicaraguans
did not pave the way with a coup, as in Grenada. They mobilized rapidly. Inside
the United States, opponents of U.S. policy rang loud public alarm bells and
promised nationwide nonviolent civil disobedience should the administration esca¬
late. The Reagan administration knew it had four more years to try and overthrow
the Nicaraguan government without U.S. ground troops, and to smooth the way for
their possible deployment.
In the end, the MIG scare achieved much for the administration: It established
a remarkable bipartisan pretext for future military action, giving the United States,
the country waging war on Nicaragua, the right to limit how Nicaragua could defend
itself and, if Nicaragua crossed that line, to escalate the war under the guise of
protecting U.S. national security. Nicaragua continued to go without the jet fighters
necessary to intercept contra aircraft and disrupt contra air supply, much less chal¬
lenge U.S. spy flights or potential Honduran, Salvadoran or U.S. bombers.
Washington was able to study Nicaraguan forces and the Nicaraguan people in a
state of full alert, facilitating improvements in U.S. military strategy, including the
psychological operations component. The Nicaraguan economy was damaged fur¬
ther by the disruption of the coffee harvest. The mass media-promoted impression
of Nicaragua immediately following its election was one of militarization, not
democratization. In the face of escalating U.S. aggression, election-period moves to
ease the state of emergency were reversed, heightening political tensions within
Nicaragua and providing an excuse for Arturo Cruz and other Coordinadora leaders
to publicly embrace the contras.
Obscured by the MIG scare, was a reality acknowledged even by U.S. military
and intelligence analysts. In the words of a classified CIA report, Nicaragua’s “over¬
all [military] buildup is primarily defense-oriented and much of the recent effort has
been directed to improving counterinsurgency capabilities.”^ This included the
newly-acquired Soviet-built MI-24 helicopter gunships, which Nicaragua used with
great effect against the contras until the United States supplied them with Redeye
ground-to-air missiles.
Cold War Ghosts

Once again, the administration proved that image was more important than
reality in its campaign against Nicaragua. Nicaragua’s military buildup was projected
anew through Cold War lenses that filtered out the hot war with the contras and
the threat of U.S. escalation.
“The Nicaraguans seem intent on militarizing their society and accumulating
a level of weapons and armed capability that is entirely outside the standpoint of
any conceivable defensive mission,” asserted Secretary of State Shultz. “A senior
White House official compared the flow of Soviet-bloc weapons to Nicaragua to the
military buildup in Cuba that preceded the Cuban missile crisis in 1962,” the New
York Times reported. “He said that while there was no plan to block arms shipments
to Nicaragua at sea, ‘we’re not going to rule out any contingency there.’ “Any
contingency” hardly narrows the scope of Nicaragua’s “conceivable defensive mis¬
sion.”
The Reagan administration has published numerous reports on the alleged
Soviet-Cuban military buildup in Nicaragua. Like the 1981 White Paper on El Sal¬
vador, they fail to make their case even when using the most distorted evidence,
but they leave lasting threatening impressions. A 1984 State and Defense Depart¬
ment report warned, “A new military airfield at Punta Huete, when completed, will
have the longest runway in Central America (3,200 meters), and will be capable of
receiving any aircraft in the Soviet inventory.” The report claimed, “a basis has been
laid for the receipt of modern jet fighters and for accommodating large military
planes, such as heavy transport planes and Soviet ‘Backfire’ bombers.”*^
A glossy 1985 State and Defense Department booklet, The Soviet-Cuban Con¬
nection in Central America and the Caribbean, devotes a whole page to grainy
photos of President Daniel Ortega on official visits to the Soviet Union, East Ger¬
many and Poland. Photos of Ortega with Western leaders don’t pass U.S. censor¬
ship. The booklet includes a chart with the Pentagon’s estimates of “Soviet-Bloc
Military Deliveries to Nicaragua.”®^ The chart conveniendy measures in tons, weigh¬
ing heavily such unmighty weapons as the T-55 tank. Yet even the distorted picture
cannot hide the fact that the first jump in Soviet aid came in 1982, after contra at¬
tacks intensified and the doors of Western arms suppliers slammed shut under U.S.
pressure.
In 1986, administration officials claimed that Nicaragua had received more than
$500 million in Soviet military aid since 1981. The interesting point about that figure
is how small it is, when compared with U.S. military aid to other Central American
countries in the same period and considering that, unlike U.S. allies, Nicaragua’s
armed forces had to be (in the Carter administration’s words) “entirely rebuilt.” In
1985, the United States provided $136.3 million in military assistance for El Salvador
and $67.4 million for Honduras, not counting assistance provided through military
maneuvers or the CIA. In addition, a large part of security assistance is provided
through the more benign sounding “economic support funds,” of which El Salvador
was authorized $285 million and Honduras $147.5 million in 1985.^ Between 1980
and 1984, the U.S. provided over $2.3 billion in security assistance to Central
America, and the figure has since multiplied.®^ Using a formula that counted tlie costs
of military construction, exercises, troops stationed in the area, and maintaining
ground, air and naval forces assigned to the region, as well as military and economic
support funds, analysts Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers concluded that the actual cost
of U.S. military programs in Central America and the Caribbean for 1985 was rough¬
ly $9.5 billion.®^
As of early 1985, the Nicaraguan Air Force included no supersonic fighters or
fighter bombers and a total of 31 less advanced fighters, trainers, transport and sup¬
port craft, not including helicopters. By comparison, Honduras had 32 to 50 super¬
sonic fighters and fighter bombers and 48 armed and unarmed trainers, transport
and support craft; El Salvador had 53 supersonic fighters and fighter bombers and
64 other aircraft, not including helicopters.®^ Comparisons with U.S. airpower are
ludicrous. Nicaragua has less aircraft than a single U.S. aircraft carrier such as the
America, with its 85 jet fighters and other aircraft. And Nicaragua has virtually no
navy.
As for the Punta Huete airfield, Washington is inventing a threat, just as it did
with the Point Salinas airport in Grenada. Punta Huete was begun under Somoza,
with U.S. technical assistance, in order to provide the Nicaraguan Air Force with a
base apart from the civilian international airport in Managua. The need for such a
project was underscored by the CIA-backed bombing of the Managua airport in
1983- U.S. officials raise the concern that Punta Huete would give Soviet “Bear”
reconnaissance planes the kind of U.S. Pacific Coast surveillance capability they
have for the East Coast by operating out of Cuba. Nicaragua has said repeatedly it
has no intention of offering military bases to the Soviet Union. In any case, Soviet
aircraft already patrol off the U.S. West Coast from bases within their own territory
on the Kamchatka Peninsula across from Alaska.
Hypothetical Soviet submarines and “Backfire” bombers operating out of
hypothetical Soviet bases in Nicaragua are presented as plausible threats to Central
America, the Panama Canal, Caribbean sea lanes and the United States itself.®® One
scenario assumes Nicaraguan or Cuban-based attacks on U.S. shipping in the event
of conventional war with the Soviet Union in Europe or the Middle East, for ex¬
ample.
“Weinberger is always saying 40 to 50 percent of NATO sealift goes out of
Gulf ports,” a U.S. ambassador in Central America told me. “It would take a lot of
air wings to take Cuba out, maybe seven or eight; another five for Nicaragua.” The
Pentagon doesn’t “want to waste air wings in our own backyard.”®^
Pentagon planners assume the Nicaraguans are ready to waste their popula¬
tion and country as a platform for Soviet weapons. They pretend to believe that
prolonged World War Il-style conventional war is plausible in the nuclear age, when,
in fact, nuclear weapons are fully integrated into Pentagon war doctrine from bat¬
tlefield backpack nuclear weapons on up the escalation ladder. If the Soviet Union
was going to madly attempt a nuclear first strike against the United States, it would
hardly advertise it by launching a fleet of bombers from Nicaragua, or from Cuba—
where the largest foreign military base is the U.S. base at Guantanamo.
Talk of Nicaragua becoming “another Cuba” distorts reality in both countries.
As former U.S. diplomat Wâyne Smith points out, the “frightening Soviet military
buildup” in Central America and the Caribbean “is mostly an illusion.. .There are no
nuclear missile submarines operating out of Cuban bases...None. Nor has a single
Backfire bomber ever even landed in Cuba. Several Soviet “Bear” long-range recon¬
naissance aircraft are deployed to Cuba. They do not, however, as Dr. [Jeane]
Kirkpatrick stated, overfly American territory from Cuban bases. One can under¬
stand the indignation with which the North American Air Defense Command says
that is not so.”^
Former National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy sees Central America more
clearly than he did Vietnam: “the realities of relative strength make it totally clear
that no one is going to make war on us from Central America. There is something
genuinely zany in thinking about the area in those terms.
The idea of a Nicaraguan invasion of its neighbors is also zany. In the wake
of the MIG scare, Miguel D’Escoto wrote: “I am astonished that senior officials of
the Reagan administration accuse Nicaragua of obtaining arms in order to attack
Honduras and El Salvador. Besides all the bad things they say about us, do they
think we are insane?
“For us to attack our neighbors would be to serve ourselves up to our enemies
on a silver platter. It would give the Reagan administration precisely the pretext it
has been looking for to try to intervene against us by direct military means.
As the New York Times reported in March 1985, “Senior Administration offi-
cials in speeches and in public reports, have frequently said Nicaragua intends to
attack its neighbors. But State and Defense Department officials say unofficially that
they do not believe Nicaragua has any such intention.
Nicaragua, D’Escoto wrote, “has to obtain defensive arms for one simple
reason. The Reagan administration is trying to oveithrow the government of
Nicaragua. They have mined our ports. They have bombed our airport, attacked our
oil storage facilities, blown up vital bridges and highways. They have recruited,
trained and armed more than 10,000 mercenaries and directed them in an illegal
‘covert war’ against us.
“These CIA-supported mercenaries have been staging hit-and-run raids against
us from Honduran territory for over three years. There have been more than 1,000
raids in that time period.,.We have exercised restraint because we do not want a
war with Honduras or the United States...
“It is sheer hypocrisy for the Reagan administration to effectively close off
Western sources of arms and then denounce us for obtaining them from other sour¬
ces. What do they expect us to do, deny ourselves the means for self-defense at the
same time they are waging war against us?”^^
Wayne Smith states the all-too-often obscured obvious point: supporting the
contras “is certainly no way to limit the size and nature of the Nicaraguan armed
forces...The Sandinistas would hardly accept arms reductions at a time when their
ports are being mined by the most powerful nation in the world and that nation is
also supporting a force of guerrillas determined to overthrow them. The reaction of
any sensible government to such circumstances would be to strengthen its military
forces.
Policy Tilts
The MIG scare came amid a post-election joust over Nicaragua policy between
longer-term rollbackers (mainly in the State Department) and shorter-term rollback-
ers (mainly in the CIA and NSC staff). All wanted to prompt renewed congressional
support for the contras. The State Department sought to keep Nicaragua policy on
the two-track path of military assault with diplomatic maneuvers. Some CIA, NSC
and Pentagon officials were ready to escalate, at least by breaking diplomatic rela¬
tions with Nicaragua and providing the contras with more direct military support.
“Some of those who want us to adopt a harder line have long wished that
MiG’s [s/d would be delivered because they know that would tilt the policy in their
direction,” said one administration official. “The next best thing to the delivery of
MiG’s was the possibility that they might arrive any day.”^
On November 28, 1984, Secretary of Defense Weinberger gave a much-
publicized address to the National Press Club putting forth six tests for the commit¬
ment of U.S. military force (dubbed the six commandments): the United States should
not commit forces to combat overseas unless it is vital to the national interest; “if
we decide it is necessary to put combat troops into a given situation, we should do
SO wholeheartedly, and with the clear intention of winning”; political and military
objectives should be clearly defined; the “relationship between our objectives and
the forces we have committed, their size, composition and disposition, must be con¬
tinually reassessed and adjusted if necessary”; before the United States “commits
combat forces abroad, there must be some reasonable assurance we will have the
support of the American people and their elected representatives in Congress”; the
commitment of U.S. forces should be a.last resort.^^
Weinberger’s concern about winning was not new. During his 1981 confir¬
mation hearings, Weinberger reflected on the lessons of the Vietnam War and as¬
serted that the United States should not commit troops to “a war that is not vital for
our national security to enter and we should never enter a war that we do not in¬
tend to win or in which we do not expend every single effort of every weapon and
every facility that we have to win...Once we entered it [Vietnam], it became a war
that we should have won.”^®
The gist of Weinberger’s message was that the political will to win must be
strong and sustainable, and U.S. forces should avoid the danger of “a gradualist, in¬
cremental approach, which almost always means the use of insufficient force.” In
response to a question at the National Press Club, Weinberger refused to rule out
an attack on Nicaragua, saying he would let his text speak for itself.
Clearly, the political will for a direct invasion of Nicaragua among the people
and Congress was lacking. The administration would continue to support the con¬
tras, on and off the books, pursue its regional buildup and intensify the “public
diplomacy” campaign to narrow the gap between the will for a military solution
within the administration and among the people.
10
I’m A Contra Too!
I guess in a way they are counterrevolutionary, and God bless them for
being that way. And I guess that makes them contras, and so it makes me
a contra, too.
President Reagan, March 1986.
The idea is to slowly demonize the Sandinista government tin] order to

turn it into a real enemy and threat in the minds of the American people,
therby eroding their resistance to U.S. support for the contras and, per¬
haps, to a future U.S. military intervention in the region.
■j
U.S. government official, 1985.
Our assessment was that if there was not something done, beginning with
the...[Boland] cutoff of funds in ’84, and then the proscriptions later on
in the year, that within six to ten months the Nicaraguan resistance would
cease to be.
Oliver North, Iran-Contra hearings, July 9, 1987.
Before his metamorphosis from Coordinadora candidate to contra leader, Ar¬

turo Cruz painted a nightmarish portrait of FDN triumph. In June 1984, Cruz told
Reggie Norton of the Washington Office on Latin America that “he had been talk¬
ing with the ‘Key Biscayne mafia,’ the contra leadership, and they had threatened
that when they returned to power they wPuld hold a series of ‘Nuremberg’ trials
and Cruz would be among the first to be tried...‘the first persons they would hang
from the trees’ would be the ‘Sandinista arrepentidos,’ former Sandinistas who were
now sorry for their temporary Sandinista association.”^ A year earlier, Cruz called
Somocista FDN leaders “civic cadavers.” He warned of the responsibility facing
217
“people with good credentials” in the FDN’s political directorate—^he referred to

Calero and Robelo—to control events and prevent revenge in the unlikely event of
an FDN victory.
“Carrying perhaps an even greater responsibility,” Cruz wrote in Foreign Af¬
fairs, “those who sustain the forces inimical to the Sandinistas must not ignore the
fact that idealistic young boys and girls constitute the Revolution’s rank and file.
Therefore, those who aid insurrection in my country—^whose disenchantment with
the Revolution’s course and concern for the security of their own country I do not
dispute—should be aware of the risk they take of bearing a historical responsibility
for contributing, albeit indirectly and unintentionally, to a possible mass execution
of the flower of our youth.”
Cruz urged that “a line of distinction should be drawn, now more than ever,
between ‘contras’ and armed dissidents,” notably Eden Pastora.^ Pastora’s promise
was never realized and Cruz, ignoring his own warning, went to work with the FDN
Guardia he once deplored.
Three days after the Nicaraguan election, Oliver North wrote a top secret memo
to his boss Robert McFarlane. On November 6, 1984, North and Calero had “dis¬
cussed longer-range planning for a Calero-Cruz coalition and the requirements for
military cooperation with the MISURA in the seizure of Puerto Cabezas.” With
another person, whose name is deleted in the declassified memo. North “reviewed
the prospects for a liberation government in which Cruz and Calero would share
authority.”^
Cruz publicly announced his support for U.S. aid to the contras on January 3,
1985. Fie spoke of a “commonality of purpose” with the FDN.^ In March, Cruz en¬
dorsed the unity “Document of the Nicaraguan Resistance Concerning National
Dialogue” issued in San Jose, Costa Rica; among the signatories were Adolfo Calero,
Alfonso Robelo, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Jr., Alfonso Callejas, Steadman Fagoth and
Fernando “El Negro” Chamorro. The so-called San Jose Declaration was an ul¬
timatum for the Nicaraguan government’s surrender couched in the well-coached
public relations rhetoric of free elections and democracy. North and several other
Americans helped draft the document in a Miami hotel room. Eden Pastora and
Alfredo Cesar refused to sign and, instead, launched the Opposition Bloc of the
South (BOS).
In April, it was reported that Cruz, “an important figure in the Reagan
administration’s efforts to win congressional support for anti-Sandinista guerrillas,
secretly received money from the Central Intelligence Agency, according to U.S.
government officials.”^ (Cruz was receiving CIA funding by spring 1984.) Speaking
at Harvard Law School, Cruz acknowledged receiving the money as “a retainer” for
academic work from a foundation linked to the CIA. While admitting that the con¬
tras committed “damnable atrocities” against civilians, Cruz accused the Sandinistas
of “dictatorial” rule. “I don’t have to apologize for the contras,” he asserted.^
The National Strategy Information Center (NSIC), an intelligence lobby and
think tank cofounded by William Casey, paid Cruz $40,000 for six months as a “re¬
search fellow.” The NSIC, which receives U.S. government money, funded Cruz at
the behest of Oliver North and NSC official Vincent Cannistraro.®
I’m A Contra Too! 219
In June 1985, Arturo Cruz became one of three directors, with Adolfo Calero
and Alfonso Robelo (together known as the Triple A), of the new contra political
front, the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO). Pedro Joaquin Chamorro Jr. served
as information director. By August, Cruz and Robelo were frustrated with their
figurehead roles.
In a “For Your Eyes Only” memo to North (alias BG for Blood and Guts), aide
Robert Owen transmitted Robelo’s views: “To quote Robelo, T’m tired of the lack
of equivalency in the Triple A. Cruz and I were integrated into the FDN to clean
their face.’...[Robelo] Is finding it extremely difficult to work with Calero as he
believes Calero looks on him and Cruz as appendages, not equals...[Robelo] made
it clear he was not threatening to quit, yet. But he also wanted the message con¬
veyed that things must change and he expects Calero to be more accommodating,
or at least to make a pretense of it.”^
Cruz’s threats to resign carried into the fall. Renewed talk of a serious split
emerged in April and May 1986, but again U.S. officials were able to patch up UNO
with the promise of reform. “More and more,” declared Assistant Secretary of State
for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams, “the opposition today looks like what the
Nicaraguan people want their government to look like tomorrow.
At the time, Cruz, Robelo and Calero were all on the secret U.S. payroll
managed by North. Cruz received $7,000 monthly, Robelo $10,000 and Calero about
$12,500 a month. Some 40 UNO staff members and consultants reportedly earned
upwards of $36,000 a year.’^
On February 21,1987, Cruz acknowledged at a sparsely attended lecture spon¬
sored by CAUSA USA that the contra cause was “floundering because we haven’t
been perceived as politically legitimate.” When I asked him what he thought the
prospects were for achieving political legitimacy, he responded pessimistically: “The
Bay of Pigs of Nicaragua would be a political Bay of Pigs, not a military Bay of
Pigs...The real issue isn’t personalities like Calero, but whether this is a genuine
liberation movement or a vanguard-based conquest of power...[If] reforms are not
carried out the prospects for success are very remote.”’^
Cruz quit the contra directorate on March 9. His highly public resignation let¬
ter said that UNO “has clearly defined itself not as a pluralist structure in the service
of a goal equally pluralistic, but rather as an instrument of a small, exclusive circle.”
He dismissed contra political leaders as “right-wing hack politicians.”'^ The “Key Bis-
cayne mafia” had prevailed.
The Strongmen
Edgar Chamorro also thought that “moderates” could succeed when he joined
the FDN. He too quit, with greater revulsion than Cruz at contra practices. Chamor¬
ro characterized Cruz as a respected moderate with a history of working for busi¬
ness and banking elites. But he could never control the Guardia. No moderate could.
The administration saw Cruz “like a Duarte type,” he told me. “They are just using
people’s different traits to sell the package to you Americans, to Congress. It’s a very
artificial thing. So Cruz is the same.”
Chamorro is less kind in his view of the contras’ other political leaders. Alfon¬
so Robelo, the millionaire agro-industrialist who served on the first National
Reconstruction Government Junta, “is an opportunist,” Chamorro said. “He’s now
an opportunist with the contras...He’s an ambitious guy. He just wants power.”
“Calero is much more a Somoza-style guy,” Chamorro told me. “He believes
he has to be a dictator. I’ve had many conflicts with Calero because he’s not a
democratic individual, in the sense that he won’t debate things; he’s not interested
in democratic process. He’s interested in pleasing the United States...He sees him¬
self as another Somoza, but this time a good one...
“They believe the country was good as it was, basically. That the labor laws
were good, that the educational system was good. Everything was fine. The only
thing was that there was too much corruption.. .Somoza, for them, was just a greedy
real estate agent that loved land and wanted to corrupt; once in a while there was
a little crime...I don’t find Calero a moderate. He and Bermudez would make a
strong Pinochet case or Guatemala kind of government.”
Aristides Sanchez is “one of the fellows close to Calero,” said Chamorro. “I
know him very closely. He was the landlord of Leon—^very rich. His father worked
for Somoza for many years. He’s a fellow who just sees this as going to get those
Sandinistas out of Nicaragua, to get back all his property and his control. Men like
him or Bermudez, they have no scruples, no remorse...If he’s a communist, they
say, then he deserves everything bad...
“They laugh at people who they have had to kill, or be cruel to. They make a
joke of it. I can’t find the word for you...You have to be cruel or hard. They’ll
celebrate it and even make it light. I have seen that in Americans also who are in
wars. Their psychology is to come to the celebration of the use of force as a way
to accept it. They have to glorify it. But in the contras I saw an element of even
laughing with it. I have seen it with some other people. It’s a defense with some of
these criminal, characters, to feel that they can do it.” I asked Chamorro if he meant
it was a self-defense mechanism. “Yes, but they have no doubts,” he replied. “They
haven’t even the slightest. They have no remorse. It’s a mixture of getting even and
also ‘this time we’re going to give you [the Sandinistas] what you gave us.’ ”
A tough critic of the Sandinistas, Chamorro still noted an important difference
between the Sandinistas and the Guardia: “The National Guard in Nicaragua don’t
relate...to people the same way. They are oppressors. They are used to looking
down on people. To exploit people. To get things out of them. The Sandinistas
came with a different philosophy, a different approach to people, much more
humane.. .in the sense that they were going to give them what they had been work¬
ing for. It’s a different relationship. That for me is very fundamental...That doesn’t
mean that they couldn’t ruin themselves if they become too autocratic.
Since the beginning, the main contra amiy has been led by National
Guardsmen. A March 1986 report by the congressional Arms Control and Foreign
Policy Caucus found ex-Guard officers in twelve of thirteen positions of tlie FDN
military high command. Colonel Enrique Bermudez is the supreme commander. At
I’m a Contra Too! 221
the time of the report, Lieutenant Walter “Tono” Calderon, who reportedly com¬
manded troops in Somoza’s palace guard, served as commander of tactical opera¬
tions (or theater commander). Lieutenant Harley “Venado” (the Deer) Pichardo was
commander of personnel (G-1). The commander of intelligence (G-2) was
Lieutenant Rodolfo “Invisible” Ample. Lieutenant Luis “Mike Lima” Moreno was com¬
mander of operations (G-3). Captain Armando “El Policia” Lopez, one of Bermudez’s
closest associates, was commander of logistics (G-4). His nom de guerre, “the
Policeman,” dates to the Somoza era when he commanded units of Managua’s
repressive Metropolitan Police, a branch of the National Guard. The commander of
airdrops was Captain Juan Gom.ez, “a close personal associate of Somoza’s and for
years his personal pilot.” Captain Justiniano “Tino” Perez, who served under
Somoza’s son in command of the Guardia’s elite training school and was spirited
out of Nicaragua by an American operative as the Sandinistas took power, was the
liaison with Miskito forces.
Major Ricardo “Chino” Lau was in charge of special operations. The FDN claims
that Lau left the FDN in 1983, but he continued to serve as commander of counterin¬
telligence until 1985. He then reportedly commanded “a small unit that carries out
special counter-intelligence missions in Honduras for Bermudez, such as execution
of suspected Sandinista informers.” Lau’s unit was said to include Lieutenant “El
Policita” Lopez, the son of Armando Lopez, also known as “El Bestia,” the Beast.
Lau’s replacement as commander of counterintelligence was Major Donald “El Toro”
(the BuU) Torres. The only FDN high command member reported not to have served
in the Guard was Carlos “El Pajarito” (Little Bird) Guillen, commander of special
operations for Nicaragua. According to the congressional caucus report, Guillen’s
father was a Guard officer but he himself was in Mexico studying medicine during
the revolution. According to the Nicaraguan government, however, Guillen joined
the National Guard as a private in 1976.^^
Chamorro believes that the contra political leaders “will promise to control the
National Guard. But they will keep killing people that are not like them, with death
squads or the army. It’s not a revolutionary group. It’s a mercenary group.
“They’re not interested in changing or in educating people [to control their
own destinies]. I never remember Calero talking about education for poor people
or the needy or building schools or hospitals. All they talk about is making the
economy work again according to the American way of economic development—
let’s invest in this farm and get money out of it. Let’s make money out of this country.
Let’s keep exploiting...They come from a background that sees life like an oppor¬
tunity to make money...
“And tliey are also not independent. They are very subservient to the United
States. This concept of servitude is very strong in people like Calero...like in the
twenties.. .The independent guy becomes persona non grata for Washington.
Chamorro’s views are echoed partly in a candid, confidential memo to Oliver
North from Robert Owen. In the March 17, 1986 memo, Owen described the
“FDN/UNO Political Situation” this way:
I put it as FDN/UNO because the FDN is now driving UNO, not the other way
around. UNO is a creation of the USG [U.S. government] to gamer support from Congress.
When it was founded a year ago, the hope was it would become a viable organization.
In fact, almost everything it has accomplished is because the hand of the USG has been
there directing and manipulating.
No doubt the hope was Cruz and Robelo would turn into strong leaders to some¬
what [counter] balance the strength of Calero and the FDN. Both Cruz and Robelo have
been disappointments. Calero, on the other hand, has used his strength and will and the
FDN to further consolidate his hold on the resistance and to gain control of UNO. Per¬
haps UNO is the correct acronym, for there is only one leader in the Democratic Resis¬
tance, Adolfo Calero.
As long as the USG understands this, one must look at what the FDN political stnac-
ture represents. Calero is the strong man and the only one who counts in the FDN; what
he says is law. Under him is his strong man, or enforcer, Aristedes Sanchez. Bermudez is
in the inner circle, but he is not 100% trusted, because he is seen as a potential rival for
power. Also within the inner circle is Mario Calero [Adolfo’s brother]. Off to the side, but
still part of the group and acting more like temple guards are Bosco Matamoros (loyally
devoted Washington rep) and Oscar Montes (the financial accountant). Both of these
people are intensely loyal and will do whatever Adolfo says. The next ring down con¬
sists of the Tefel brothers, Hyme Morales, Statahen, etc. None of these people can stand
Robelo or Cruz. At every turn they will undermine them and do all in their power to see
they are not given any power, thus the strength remains with Calero.
Should USG officials think any different than the above, they are not looking at the
facts. If members of the USG think they control Calero, they also have another thing com¬
ing. The question should be asked, can and does Calero manipulate the USG. On several
occasions, the answer is yes. Two examples are Mario Calero and Bosco. For well over
a year, USG officials have wanted to remove these two, yet they remain. Why, because
Calero won’t budge, they are part of his security; to threaten them is to threaten him.
I write the above only to point out the facts as I see them. Perhaps a strongman is
the only thing Nicaraguans understand; perhaps Adolfo Calero is the man to lead
Nicaragua back to democracy. He is a creation of the USG and so he is the horse we
choose to ride. I have no problem with this, as long as we know and understand his
shortcomings. The best way to point these out are to take a close look at who he keeps
around him, only those who he intimately trusts. Unfortunately, they are not first rate
people; in fact they are liars and greed and power motivated. They are not the people to
rebuild a new Nicaragua. In fact, the FDN has done a good job of keeping competent
people out of the organization. If it hasn’t, then Nicaragua is lost forever with the type of
leadership that has emerged...
UNO is a name only. There is more and more fluff being added, but there is no
substance...The reality as I see it is there are few of the so called leaders of the move¬
ment who really care about the boys in the field. THIS HAS BECOME A BUSINESS TO
MANY OF THEM; THERE IS STILL A BELIEE THE MARINES ARE GOING TO HAVE TO
INVADE, SO LETS GET SET SO WE WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE THE ONES PUT INTO
POWER.
If the $100 million is approved and things go on as they have these last five years,
it will be like pouring money down a sink hole. The Agency has done a shitty job in the
past, there is no evidence they are going to change, especially as they are going to have
the same people running it as far as I know. State Department is no better.. .Without sig¬
nificant changes, things will not get better, they will get worse. The heavy hand of the
gringo is needed...(Owen’s caps.)’^
Holding Body and Soul Together

The “heavy hand of the gringo” was not stayed by the Boland amendment.
Reagan administration officials anticipated a possible cutoff of contra funding in the
wake of the mining scandal, just as they had earlier anticipated a 1983-84 shortfall
with Operation Elephant Herd. In a 1983 interview preceding the approval of $24
million for the contras, Adolfo Calero asserted that covert U.S. aid would not end
even if Congress voted to halt it: “It would not be cut off. It would come from some
other place. It would be washed some way or another.”^®
By the time Congress voted against new funds for the contras in May 1984,
President Reagan had verbally approved a fall-back program to be run out of the
National Security Council—^with the guidance and cooperation of high officials in
the CIA, Pentagon, State Department and Justice Department, as well as the White
House. Oliver North became the chief action officer, charged with holding the con¬
tras “together in body and soul.”
In North’s words, “To keep them together as a viable political opposition, to
keep them alive in the field, to bridge the time between the time when we would
have no money and the time when the Congress would vote again, to keep the ef¬
fort alive because the President committed publicly to go back, in his words, ‘again,
and again, and again’ to support the Nicaraguan resistance.
The stakes were high. If the contras were not assisted after the Boland cutoff,
said North, “within six to ten months the Nicaraguan resistance would cease to
be.. .They would be annihilated in the field.
In February 1984, North drafted a National Security Decision Directive recom¬
mending “immediate efforts to obtain additional funding of $10-$ 15 million from
foreign or domestic sources to make up for the fact that the current $24 million ap¬
propriation will sustain operations only through June 1984.”^^ McFarlane struck that
draft language from the document, but pursued a similar course with Reagan’s ver¬
bal authorization. McFarlane also tried, without success, to have Israel take over
management of the contra program in addition to providing weapons, advisers and
funding.^^
CIA Director Casey hand-carried a secret “Eyes Only” memorandum to Mc¬
Farlane on March 27: “In view of possible difficulties in obtaining supplemental ap¬
propriations to carry out the Nicaraguan covert action project through the remainder
of this year, I am in full agreement that you should explore funding alternatives with
[Israel] and perhaps others [e.g. Saudi Arabia]. I believe your thought of putting one
of your staff in touch with the appropriate [deleted] official should promptly be pur¬
sued. You will recall that the Nicaraguan project runs out of funds in mid-May. Al¬
though additional moneys are indeed required to continue the project in the current
fiscal year, equipment and materiel made available from other sources might in part
substitute for some funding. We are therefore currently exploring two such alterna¬
tives.” One of these alternatives, which are blacked out in the declassified memoran¬
dum, refers to Israel. The other refers to South Africa, whose “officials already had
been approached” and “the initial reaction had been favorable.”
Casey added, “Finally, after examining legalities, you might consider finding
an appropriate private US citizen to establish a foundation that [unreadable] be
recipient of nongovernmental funds which could be disbursed to [deleted] and
FDN.”"^
Casey had personally discussed support for the contras with a South African
official in January. Since then he had received at least one affirmative cable from a
CIA official in South Africa. According to ClA documents, the South Africa approach
was widely discussed in the administration. An April 9 CIA cable noted, “SecState
has been briefed on the initiative and approved.” Shultz has denied this.
Between April 10 and 13, Dewey Clarridge traveled to South Africa to discuss
Nicaragua and other still-classified Latin America-related topics, but after arriving he
was told by CIA Deputy Director John McMahon to “hold off’ on contra discussions
because of the furor over the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors. Administration officials
were having second thoughts about the political risks of a South Africa-contra link
(Shultz’s first documented opposition to obtaining aid from South Africa is repor¬
tedly dated April 18).^'*
“Current furor over here over the Nicaraguan project urges that we postpone
taking [South Africa] up on their offer of assistance,” Clarridge wrote in a May 11
CIA cable. “Please express to [a South African official] my deep regret that we must
do this, at least for the time being, and I fully realize that he cannot crank up assis¬
tance on a moment’s notice, should we decide to go forward in the future.
Clarridge, the CIA station chief and his deputies in Honduras, and other U.S.
officials assured the contras (and their Honduran sponsors) they would not be aban¬
doned. Edgar Chamorro recalled for the World Court a spring 1984 visit to Hon¬
duras by NSC aide Christopher Lehman who “told us that President Reagan was
unable at that time to publicly express the full extent of his commitment to us be¬
cause of the upcoming presidential elections in the United States. But, Mr. Lehman
told us, as soon as the elections were over. President Reagan would publicly en¬
dorse our effort to remove the Sandinistas from power and see to it that we received
all the support that was necessary for the purpose. We received a similar assurance
of continued United States Government support, notwithstanding the refusal of the
Congress to appropriate more funds, from Lt. Col. Oliver North.Thus, the contras
learned administration respect for democracy and civilian majority rule.
The Washington Post reported in June that FDN leaders, speaking privately,
“insist they have received assurances the U.S. money wiU continue to flow despite
reluctance in Congress.” The Post added, “Some reports have said that the United
States has requested that Israel and possibly Saudi Arabia contribute support to get
around the congressional restriction, and rebel leaders said they already had set up
a support channel through Israel.The Postw2iS on target then, as were numerous
press accounts before and after, but Congress showed a dogged willingness to dis¬
believe the mounting evidence of Boland amendment contravention and to suspend
disbelief when it came to administration denials.
Before the Post account, FDN commander Bemiudez said on NBC News, “We
have received some weapons from the weapons.. .that [the] Israeli government took
from [the] PLO in Lebanon.” According to NBC, Israel had armed a quarter of the
I’m a Contra Too? 225
contra army “at Washington’s urging.” Earlier reports of this arrangement had ap¬
peared in the press in 1983.^® By the end of September 1984, Israel had reportedly
given the contras nearly $5 million more in aid, including cash and Eastern bloc and
Chinese-made weapons. In 1985, Israel supplied surface-to-air missiles along with
rifles, grenades, ammunition and other weapons.
Israel also supplied military advisers. According to an NSC document, there
were more than 30 Israeli advisers in Honduras by the end of 1983.^^ While their
total number has remained a well-guarded secret over the years, the Israeli advisers
were reportedly paid $6,500 to $10,000 a month. In 1985 and 1986, Israeli arms were
shipped to El Salvador’s Ilopango Air Base by the CIA proprietary Southern Air
Transport for delivery to the contras.^
Partnership with Apartheid
South Africa’s contra support also went forward. Several months after
Clarridge’s trip to South Africa, Safair Freighters (U.S.A.) Inc. was incorporated. The
parent company, Safair Freighters of South Africa, transferred three Lockheed L-lOO
aircraft to the U.S.-based Safair, which in turn leased them to Southern Air Transport.^’
According to Clarridge, the South Africans were reluctant to deal with the con¬
tras directly so he suggested they provide aid through a third country. David Dun¬
can, a Miami-based arms dealer, said that South Africa sold arms to the contras,
provided fifteen to twenty trainers stationed in Honduras and financed a $72 mil¬
lion military-owned industrial complex, port facility and hospital in Honduras. The
funds were reportedly laundered through a Liechtenstein holding company.^^
A Februaiy 1985 intelligence report stated that Pretoria shipped 200,000
pounds of weapons through Costa Rica to Eden Pastora. As North recorded it in his
notes, Clarridge told him on January 5 there were “200 T [tons] of arms en route
from South Africa to CR.” After a meeting with CIA officials in Central America, North
noted that the South African arms should be transferred to the FDN: “Move S/A
delivery from ARDE to FDN.”^^
South African support for the contras appears to have been part of a larger
deal involving U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia, Saudi oil deliveries to South
Africa (in violation of an international boycott) and Saudi and South African assis¬
tance to the Angolan UNITA and the contras.
Saudi Pipeline
A major source of third-country cash for the contras was the misogynist monar¬
chy of Saudi Arabia. Since the early 1970s, the Saudi kingdom has secretly con¬
tributed billions of dollars to movements and governments in at least a dozen
countries to further U.S. and Western objectives.
“It takes King Fahd about 10 seconds to sign a check,” said William Quandt,
a former NSC Middle East specialist. “It takes Congress weeks to debate the smal¬
lest issue of this sort. If you can get somebody else to pay for it, it’s nice and con¬
venient.” A former diplomat explained, “They have been terrific in lots of places.
Anytime we needed them to pay for something, we always turned to the Saudis.
We viewed them as this great milk cow.”^^
The Saudis paid Morocco to train the South African-backed UNITA forces of
Jonas Savimbi, trying to overthrow the government of Angola, while the Clark
amendment banned such aid by the United States. This Boland-like amendment was
in effect from 1976 until July 1985, when Congress repealed it and put the United
States openly on the side of the apartheid regime.^ In 1977, the Saudis financed an
airlift of Moroccan troops to Zaire to prop up the Mobutu dictatorship. The Saudis
algo helped Washington fund the Afghan rebels at a joint cost of over $500 million
a year. Other areas of U.S.-Saudi cooperation have included Yemen, Somalia, Pakis¬
tan and the Sudan. Saudi Arabia also leads the Middle East Council in the World
Anti-Communist League.
The Saudis reportedly undertook three operations at Casey’s personal request.
In early 1985, Casey arranged with Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States,
Prince Bandar, for the Saudis to deposit $3 million in a Swiss account to finance the
assassination of Sheikh Fadlallah, leader of the Hizbollah (Party of God) in Beirut.
The CIA fingered him for the bombings of U.S. facilities in Beirut. It wasn’t assas¬
sination, argued CIA Legal Counsel Stanley Sporkin: it was “preemptive self-
defense.”
The Saudis contracted a veteran of the British Special Air Services to arrange
the hit. On March 8, a car loaded with explosives blew up near Fadlallah’s high rise
residence, killing 80 and wounding 200 bystanders and neighbors. Fadlallah escaped
injury. His followers hung a “Made in USA” banner in front of a blown-out build¬
ing. To better cover their tracks, the Saudis led Fadlallah to some of the hired as¬
sassins (who didn’t know the Saudis were the paymasters, much less of the U.S.
role). At Casey’s request, the Saudis also backed anti-Qadaffi forces in Chad and
contributed $2 million to assist in a secret operation to block the Italian Communist
Party’s democratic ascent.
For Washington, Saudi funding of covert action was a perfect use of petrodol¬
lars. For the Saudis, it nurtured an alliance that delivered billions of dollars in military
supplies (also bought with petrodollars), including a 1981 purchase of AWACS radar
planes. The key Pentagon official shepherding that controversial AWACS sale
through Congress was General Richard Secord. By most accounts, including their
own. North and Secord met during this AWACS sale, which North assisted as a low-
level NSC staffer. (Some reports claim they actually met over a decade earlier, during
covert operations in Laos.)^
In May 1984, McFarlane met with Prince Bandar after official and unofficial
emissaries—including a Secord assistant, two chief executives of U.S. corporations
and the CIA’s Middle East division chief—received negative replies regarding con¬
tra support, thus creating a trail of deniability to cover administration tracks. (Secord
himself became involved in a 1985 solicitation.)^^ McFarlane claimed that he did not
technically solicit funds, but has acknowledged (in rather tortured language) that “it
was unmistakable in his [Bandar’s] own mind that my concern and my view of this
impending loss would represent a significant setback for the President, and if anyone
with any gumption could manage without being led or asked, then a contribution
would have been welcome.
At a White House meeting on June 22, McFarlane gave Bandar an index card
with a contra account number. The Saudis agreed to contribute $8 million in month¬
ly installments.
At a June 25 National Security Planning Group meeting attended by Reagan,
Bush, Shultz, Weinberger, Casey, Meese and McFarlane, the Saudi contribution was
apparently not discussed, but the general topic of third-country funding was. Shultz
conveyed the view of White House Chief of Staff James Baker that for the United
States to act as a conduit for third-country contra funding would constitute an “im¬
peachable offense.”
The next day, Casey and CIA Legal Council Stanley Sporkin discussed the
legality of third-country funding with Attorney General William French Smith and
Justice Department officials. Smith stated “that he saw no legal concern” if the U.S.
government “discussed this matter with other nations so long as it was made clear
that they would be using their own funds to support the Contras and no U.S. ap¬
propriated funds would be used for this purpose.” Smith added that “any nation
agreeing to supply aid could not look to the United States to repay that commit¬
ment in the future.” Casey said he would inform the Intelligence Committees if third-
country funding was pursued; he apparently did not."*^
Soon after the June 22 meeting, McFarlane telephoned Bandar using a pre-ar¬
ranged code, “My friend did not get his cigarettes, and he’s a heavy smoker.” On
July 6, the first million was laundered through a Swiss Bank Corporation account
and deposited in account 54148 at the Miami branch of the BAC International Bank
of the Cayman Islands.
McFarlane informed Reagan of the Saudi contribution by placing a notecard
in his morning briefing book. “The President was pleased and grateful,” said Mc¬
Farlane.
McFarlane personally told Bush of the Saudi contribution and may have told
Baker and Meese. Without naming Saudi Arabia, he told Shultz and Weinberger that
the contra funding problem had been resolved.'‘^
In February 1985, with the Boland cutoff in effect, McFarlane met Bandar to
prepare for an upcoming visit from King Fahd, and they again discussed the con¬
tras. Reagan met privately with Fahd on February 11. The Saudis agreed to raise
their contra tribute.
“My Friend,” North wrote Calero, “Next week, a sum in excess of $20M will
be deposited in the usual account...It should allow us to bridge the gap between
now and when the vote is taken and the funds are turned on again.” The money.
North said, should be used to redeploy and hide contra forces from an expected
Sandinista offensive; outfit and train “the forces and volunteers”; and develop a
regular air resupply operation. “This new money,” he continued, “will provide great
flexibility we have not enjoyed to date. I would urge you to make use of some of
it for my British friend [Special Air Services veteran David Walker] and his services
for special operations. I can produce him at the end of this month...
“Please do not in any way make anyone aware of the deposit. Too much is
becoming known by too many people. We need to make sure this new financing
does not become known. The Congress must believe that there continues to be an
urgent need for funding. Warm regards, Steelhammer.”^'^ (North’s italics.)
McFarlane said he did not inform Shultz of the new Saudi funding, but Wein¬
berger and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman John Vessey Jr. “learned of the contribu¬
tion from other sources.” In a March 15 meeting with Deputy CIA Director McMahon,
Weinberger mentioned that Saudi Arabia “had earmarked $25 million for the con¬
tras.
North reviewed contra funding and operations in a top secret April 11 memo
to McFarlane. “From July 1984 through February 1985, the FDN received $1M [mil¬
lion] per month for a total of $8M. From February 22 to April 9, 1985, an addition¬
al $l6.5M has been received for a grand total of $24.5M. Of this, $17,145,594 has
been expended for arms, munitions, combat operations, and support activities.” An
itemized ledger of FDN expenditures and outlays for July 1984-February 1985 was
attached.^^
In the spring and summer of 1985, North tried to facilitate a contra donation
from a “Saudi Prince.” The Prince turned out to be an Iranian con man, later con¬
victed of bank fraud in Philadelphia. The FBI questioned North about his fundrais¬
ing with the Prince in July 1985. As the FBI agent left the interview with North on
July 18, North introduced him to Adolfo Calero, the “George Washington of
Nicaragua.
North was contacted by Kevin Kattke, a maintenance engineer for Macy’s
department store in Bay Shore, New York and amateur spy. Kattke founded the
Freeport, New York-based National Freedom Institute on North’s advice and was in
regular contact with North and Raymond Burghardt, NSC director for Latin American
affairs.'*® According to the FBI report, Kattke said he represented a Saudi prince in¬
terested in giving $14 million to the contras from oil sale profits. “North advised Kat¬
tke that inasmuch as US public law forbid expenditures of government funds to aid
Nicaraguan insurgants [5/cl, it was inadvisable for a member of the NSC (North) to
meet with the Prince directly. North advised Kattke that Richard Miller would con¬
tact Kattke to meet the Prince.” The FBI identified Miller as the president of Inter¬
national Business Communications who “has been doing confidential contract and
consultant work for NSC and U.S. Department of State for the approximate past 3
years. Miller’s work concerns the funnelling of private funds to Nicaraguan freedom
fighters who oppose the Sandinista government.”
According to the FBI report, “Information regarding the Prince’s expressed in¬
terest in donating to the Nicaraguan freedom fighters was discussed by North per¬
sonally with President Ronald Reagan and National Security Adviser Robert Mac
Farlane [s/cl as recently as June, 1985.”'*^ (The Prince also proposed assistance in
freeing American hostages in Lebanon. North followed up on this with the help of
a Drug Enforcement agent assigned to him for hostage-release efforts.)^
The FBI report was conveniently “lost” until Senate investigations in 1987.^*
Dollars from Dictators
“U.S. Is Considering Having Asians Aid Nicaragua Rebels,” stated the New York
Times headline of March 6, 1985. A Democratic congressional aide was quoted: “I
think they are convinced they are not going to get the $14 million, and they are
trying to figure out some way of getting money to the contras. They are not going
to get it through third countries or though humanitarian aid. Congress will see
through that in a minute.” Congress kept looking away.
By then the administration had already begun soliciting contraband from Asian
dictators with the help of retired General John Singlaub. In November 1984, Singlaub
met in Washington with representatives of Taiwan and South Korea, regimes he was
close to through his military and World Anti-Communist League activities, “I was
very specific,” said Singlaub, “in stating that they [the contras] needed bullets and
guns” and antiaircraft missiles. He suggested three options for providing the funds:
1) contributing directly to the contras’ bank account; 2) giving money to Singlaub
for arms purchases; and 3) colluding in a scheme whereby the proceeds from over¬
charges in purchases of U.S. weapons—in the United States or through a third
country such as Israel—^would be diverted to the contras.^^
Singlaub made a follow-up visit to Taiwan and South Korea in January 1985.
In a secret February 6 memo, North informed McFarlane that “the FDN is in urgent
need of near-term financing—approximately $2M,” Regarding this matter, he told
McFarlane that “as a consequence of GEN Singlaub’s recent trip, both the [Taiwan
representative?] and the [South Korean representative?] indicated to [deleted] that
they want to help in a ‘big way.’ [Deleted] (CIA) has withheld the dissemination of
these offers and contacted me privately to insure that they will not become com¬
mon knowledge. Singlaub will be here to see me tomorrow. With your permission,
I will ask tiim to approach [deleted] at the [Taiwan] Interests Section and [deleted]
at the [South Korean] Embassy urging that they proceed with their offer.””
The next day, Singlaub told North that the two countries wanted a signal of
approval from a recognized administration spokesman.” The signals were arranged.
In the summer of 1985, Gaston Sigur Jr., then an NSC aide and, since March 1986,
assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, was asked by North to
contact Taiwan’s U.S. representative to facilitate a contra donation. In August, North
met the Taiwanese official at the Hay Adams Hotel in Washington, resulting in a fall
donation of $1 million. Later that fall. North directed Sigur to ask Taiwan for more
money and they came through with another $1 million in early 1986. Sigur also ar¬
ranged for North to meet an official of South Korea in the summer of 1985.
This wasn’t Sigur’s first involvement in contra solicitation. In November 1984,
he had arranged a meeting between North and the senior military representative of
the Peoples Republic of China at the Cosmos Club in Washington.” North informed
the FBI beforehand and asked for surveillance so that there would be no
misunderstanding about the meeting’s purpose. “The Director of the FBI was aware
of that meeting,” said North. “This was not some deep, dark secret.”
As North recounted it, he and the Chinese official “had a long philosophical
discussion over lunch about Soviet hegemony, the kinds of things that I thought
would be attractive and of concern to him...and I made him aware that there was
a purchase under way [through Richard Secord], that these things [SA-7 surface-to-
air missiles] were desperately needed. And he then facilitated that.”^
The Sultan of Brunei was recommended as a likely contra donor in a Decem¬
ber 1984 letter to North from Edie Fraser of the public relations firm, Miner and
Fraser. Fraser said that the Sultan had donated $500,000 to Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug
campaign and “it has been recommended that he might kick in a million dollars.. .for
the Refugees for Central America.
The Sultan was tapped a year and a half later by the State Department. (State
also asked Singapore for contra assistance, but Singapore didn’t manufacture the
desired long-range communications equipment.)^ In December 1985, Congress had
changed the law to permit solicitation of third countries for “humanitarian aid.” As
Shultz put it later at a May 16, 1986 National Security Planning Group meeting, “It
would be easier to get money for the contras from a third country than it would
from Congress.
In August 1986, traveling under the alias “Mr, Kenilworth,” Assistant Secretary
of State Elliott Abrams solicited funds from a Brunei official while walking in a Lon¬
don park. He gave him a card with a bank account number provided by North. But
an unplanned diversion occurred. North or his secretary. Fawn Hall, transposed two
numbers for the Lake Resources account at Credit Suisse Bank in Geneva. Brunei
transferred $10 million into the wrong account, and the mix-up wasn’t resolved in
time to redirect the money before the Iran-contra scandal broke
In the fantasy North spun for the Iran-contra committees, other countries were
eager to contribute toward the fight for “democracy” when the U.S. Congress would
not. In reality, as Adolfo Calero acknowledged, the FDN tried unsuccessfully to raise
money from other countries when Congress cut off funds. “I realize,” said Calero,
“if the United States didn’t wink an eye to other countries we wouldn’t get anything.
Officials from other countries told me this,”^’
North & Company

To outwit the gullible congressional watchdogs. President Reagan authorized
the NSC staff to add extensive operational activities to its better-known planning
and coordination role. In January 1983, the president had signed National Security
Decision Directive No. 77, authorizing the NSC to coordinate the interagency
program known as “Project Democracy.” It combined “public diplomacy” with an
extra secret covert operations arm. The post-Boland Nicaragua operation came under
the “Project Democracy” rubric.^^ North took on functions normally performed by a
CIA official and, in John Poindexter’s words, became “the switching point that made
the whole system work.”^^
The retooled contra support system depended upon the complicity of the Na¬
tional Security Council, composed of President Reagan, Vice President Bush,
Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger (statutory

members) and CIA Director William Casey (a de facto member), as well as the com¬
plicity of numerous government officials outside the NSC staff, including Vice
Presidential National Security Adviser Donald Gregg; Vice Presidential aide Colonel
Sam Watson; CIA Deputy Director for Clandestine Operations Clair George;
European Division and Counterterrorism Unit Chief Duane “Dewey” Clarridge;
Clarridge’s successor(s) as CIA Latin American Division chief (unidentified); CIA
Central America Task Force Chief Alan Piers, formerly station chief in Saudi Arabia;
CIA station chiefs Joe Fernandez (alias Tomas Castillo) in Costa Rica and John Mal-
lett (alias George) in Honduras; the late Joint Chiefs of Staff aide Admiral Arthur
Moreau; Generals Paul Gorman and John Galvin of the Southern Command; Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense Nestor Sanchez; various officials of the Special Opera¬
tions Division and Intelligence Support Activity; U.S. Military Attache to El Salvador
Colonel James Steele; Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott
Abrams; State Department Office of Public Diplomacy Directors Otto Reich and
Robert Kagen and Assistant Director Jonathan Miller; Ambassadors Lewis Tambs in
Costa Rica, Thomas Pickering and Edwin Corr in El Salvador, and John Negroponte
and John Perch in Honduras; White House Office of Public Liaison Directors Faith
Whittlesey and Linda Chavez; FBI Director William Webster; FBI Executive Assis¬
tant Director Oliver “Buck” Revell; Attorney General Edwin Meese; Assistant Attor¬
ney General Lowell Jensen; and others.
In Marine Lt. Colonel Oliver North, the president found a player who could
be trusted to carry the contra ball over, under and around congressional obstacles.
As two associates heard him tell it, “If it weren’t for those liberals in Congress, we
wouldn’t be doing half of what we do illegally.
“Fm not in the habit of questioning my superiors,” North told the Iran-contra
committees. “I saluted smartly and charged up the hill. That’s what lieutenant
colonels are supposed to do.”
Like his boss Admiral John Poindexter, North saw himself as a soldier serving
his commander in chief, more like an aide to a military junta than to an elected
president. “This Lieutenant Colonel,” North said, “is not going to challenge a decision
of the Commander in Chief.. .And if the Commander in Chief tells this Lieutenant
Colonel to go stand in the comer and sit on his head, I will do so.” Part of North’s
mission was to shield his superiors, especially the president. “That is the part of any
subordinate,” said North. “Every centurion had a group of shields out in front of
him, a hundred of ‘em.”^^
North epitomized the Reaganaut view that revolutions were Soviet-Cuban
plots. Rep. Michael Barnes first met North in 1983 when North was White House
liaison to the Kissinger Commission. “I remember him doing a briefing for the com¬
mission... in which he said, and I quote, ‘Fidel Castro is responsible for 90% of the
problems in Central America.’ Well, anybody who knows anything about Central
America knows that’s laughable.”^
NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw was briefed by North in April 1985. Pointing
to the usual grainy surveillance photos. North called Nicaragua a “major asset of the
Soviet bloc.” Describing a military camp. North told Brokaw, “ ‘The interesting thing
here is the baseball diamond. Nicaraguans don’t play baseball. Cubans play baseball’
I looked to see if he were kidding. He was not,” said Brokaw.^^
North matched Kissinger as a sportsologist. In 1970, Kissinger rushed into
White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman’s office with a file of classified reconnais¬
sance photos. “ ‘It’s a Cuban seaport, Haldeman, and these pictures show the Cubans
are building soccer fields...These soccer fields could mean war. Bob.’ Haldeman
asked why. ‘Cubans play baseball Russians play soccer,' Kissinger replied.”^ In
reality, Nicaraguans and Cubans play both baseball and soccer.
The stories would be funny, if not for the fact that reporters protected North’s
cover and used him as a major background source for news no less disinforming
than the baseball claim, and far more harmful. Time magazine reporter David Halevy
met with North an average of once a week: “Ollie tried, through me, to get the
American public informed, and he did a very good job in trying to do it.”^^
North was assigned in August 1981 to the NSC staff, then headed by Richard
Allen, to assist in the preparation of briefing materials on the sale of AWACS and
other military equipment to Saudi Arabia. He then became a member of the defense
policies group, specializing in counterterrorism. When foreign policy novice Wil¬
liam Clark became national security adviser. North played an increasing role in crisis
management. North’s three-year tour of duty with the NSC was extended at the re¬
quest of McFarlane, who took over as national security adviser in October 1983, the
same month North was promoted to lieutenant colonel.
North was an increasingly trusted “can-do” officer, famous for his long hours
and red tape cutting. In June 1983, he became deputy director of poHtical-military
affairs under Donald Fortier (Fortier died of cancer in August 1986) and then replaced
Roger Fontaine as the NSC principal on the Central America RIG chaired by Assis¬
tant Secretary of State Langhorne Motley (Elliott Abrams succeeded Motley in 1985).
Poindexter, who moved up from deputy national security adviser in December 1985,
would have recommended that North be promoted to the third-rank title of special
assistant to the president. But, he explained, there was “more flexibility” with the
lower titleMore deniability, in other words.
The Iran-contra affair was not North’s first mystery. His official biography states
he served in Vietnam as an infantry platoon commander from December 3, 1968 to
August 21, 1969 and then in a G-3 operations billet at Headquarters Battalion, 3rd
Division, until November 23, 1969. According to the bio. First Lieutenant North was
then assigned to the Basic School, Quantico, Virginia from November 29, 1969 to
February 2, 1973. However, while testifying as a character witness at the New York
securities fraud trial of NSC aide Thomas Reed, North said he was on active duty in
Vietnam “from 1968 through the early part of 1970, and then again in 1971.” He
said, “I was an infantry platoon and company commander in the Special Operations
Force, team commander.” Marine records show no such outfit, but North reported¬
ly performed covert missions under the joint CIA-Pentagon Special Operations
Group headed by General Singlaub.^^
During December 1974 and January 1975, North, most recently a company
commander in Okinawa, Japan, was hospitalized voluntarily for three weeks at
Bethesda Naval Hospital for emotional problems. (Some sources claim he was hospi-
talized before that, in August.) North was reportedly found by a superior officer run¬
ning around naked, babbling incoherently, waving a pistol and threatening suicide.
After North was discharged from Bethesda and found fit for duty, the record of his
hospitalization was removed from his medical and personnel files.
Cut-Outs: Owen, Hull and Singlaub

Like previous covert operations, the Nicaragua operation relied upon a net¬
work of intermediaries, or “cut-outs,” and nominally private commercial enterprises,
known as “proprietaries,” used to conceal U.S. government involvement.
Robert Owen was a key North cut-out. Owen and North first met in 1983 when
Owen was working for Senator Dan Quayle (R-IN). Before that Owen had worked
briefly for the U.S. program in Thailand for Cambodian, Vietnamese and Laotian
refugees. An expatriate Indiana constituent living in Costa Rica, John Hull, visited
Quayle’s office along with two other Americans and “a Nicaraguan who had just
come in from the jungles of Nicaragua [contra Luis Rivas].” North was one of the
people Owen took them to see. In August, Owen went to Costa Rica on a round-
trip ticket paid for by Hull, a longtime CIA asset.
Owen went to work for the public relations firm Gray & Company which, in
April 1984, was asked to represent the contras. Assigned to pursue the matter, Owen
went to see North and then worked with Senior Vice President Neil Livingstone to
develop proposals for contra support. “The first proposal,” Owen explained, “was
one on setting up proprietary companies which could be used to purchase goods
overseas and provide assistance to the Contras. Another one was using a nonprofit
organization to provide assistance through raising funds here in the United States
to provide humanitarian and non-lethal assistance.
After further discussion with North, Owen traveled to Costa Rica and Hon¬
duras in late May and early June to assess contra needs. In a July 2 letter referring
to weapons as toys and firecrackers, Owen told North that $1 million to $1.5 mil¬
lion a month was needed.^'* In August, Owen met with North, Singlaub and Calero
while in Dallas for the Republican Convention. They discussed contra anns require¬
ments. In late October, Owen arranged to leave Gray & Company and work for the
FDN at $2,500 a month plus expenses. Gray & Company decided not to take on the
contra account, but Neil Livingstone (who is affiliated with the American Security
Council) put a nonprofit organization he started, called the Institute on Terrorism
and Subnational Conflict, at the contras’ disposal.^^
Owen’s code name was “the Courier” or “TC.” North used a variety of code
names, such as “Steelhammer,” “B.G.” (Blood and Guts), “Mr. Green” and “Mr.
Goode.” Calero was codenamed “Sparkplug.” Secord was “Copp.” Owen acted as
North’s liaison to the contras—passing letters and weapons lists, delivering maps
and reconnaissance photos (North got them from the CIA and Pentagon), facilitat¬
ing the development of an airstrip in Costa Rica and cashing travelers checks to pay
contra salaries. When Owen got married on October 19,1985, North gave him $1,000
in travelers checks as a present. The checks came from the slush fund North kept,
upon Casey’s advice, in his office safe to pay contra leaders and miscellaneous ex¬
penses.
According to CIA station chief in Costa Rica Joe Fernandez, CIA Central America
Task Force chief Alan Fiers “at one time was so impressed with Mr. Owen that he
was being considered as a possible applicant for the clandestine service. The man
is—has all the attributes that we want in our officers.
The ode to Ollie North that Owen read at the close of his Iran-contra testimony
was penned by John Hull, a crucial U.S. cut-out before and after the Boland cutoff.
In a letter to Owen in November 1983, Hull noted that B.G. (Blood and Guts) was
going to have McFarlane as'his new boss. He hoped this would make North “more
powerful as we need more like him.”^
Hull, the son of a military intelligence officer, moved to Costa Rica in the early
1960s and became the millionaire owner of extensive properties, including a 1,500
acre ranch in northern Costa Rica near the Nicaraguan border. On the ranch, where
he raises cattle and grows oranges, Hull pays his workers 60 cents an hour and
relishes his role as “El Patron.”^®
Congressional sources say Hull has worked for the CIA since at least the early
1970s. Hull has called himself a “coordinator” between the contras and the U.S.
Govemment.^^ In 1982, he rented a contra safe house in San Jose at CIA request.
Hull helped plan the 1983 bombing attack on Managua’s international airport and
assisted Pastora’s forces until he and the CIA broke with Pastora in 1984. The United
States used Hull’s ranch, with its six landing strips, to deliver supplies to the con¬
tras before and after the Boland cutoff. Contra sources have said that station chief
Joe Fernandez told them Hull was the CIA’s representative in northern Costa Rica.
Hull’s property served as a contra base camp and a meeting ground for competing
factions on the southern front.®°
In another twist on contra diversions, Hull received a $375,000 loan in 1984
from the U.S. government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) to
manufacture ax and wheelbarrow handles from local timber. OPIC did not follow
normal procedure in evaluating the loan’s collateral or assuring its use. The U.S. Em¬
bassy in Costa Rica, under Ambassador Curtin Winsor Jr., had strongly urged ap¬
proval of the loan to “strengthen” U.S. relations with Costa Rica. In late 1985 and
1986, Owen sought without success to get another $400,000 loan from OPIC for
Hull. In January 1986, an OPIC memorandum reported that “John Hull has done
nothing to get the business started or pay off the OPIC loan.”®^ OPIC referred the
case to the Justice Department.
Hull and Owen tried to avoid media attention. Retired General John Singlaub
did all he could to exploit it.
By his own account, Singlaub was in touch with North shortly after North
joined the NSC staff, but their first substantive meeting was a 1984 Singlaub brief¬
ing on the findings of a Pentagon panel on Central America. The panel, which
Singlaub chaired at the request of Undersecretary of Defense Fred Ikle, recom¬
mended an increased emphasis on small-unit operations and psychological warfare.
As panel member Harry Aderholt put it, “The U.S. military is a firepower, high-tech
outfit, and that’s not what’s needed. That’s what our Army likes to do; they like to
never see ’em, just shoot ’em,”®^
In January 1984, Singlaub offered to help Calero by raising money and provid¬
ing retired military advisers. Singlaub’s World Anti-Communist League chapter, the
United States Council for World Freedom (discussed in chapter 4), established the
Institute for Regional and International Studies (IRIS), a tax-exempt “educational”
organization to recruit people with skills in intelligence and psychological warfare
ready to train the contras and the Salvadoran police and military. IRIS Director
Alexander M.S. McColl is a veteran of Singlaub’s Vietnam-era Special Operations
Group and the military affairs editor of Soldier of Fortunef^
Singlaub was optimistic about contra prospects. “Given the tools,” he told the
Iran-contra committees, “this band of brave warriors can seize and shut down the
first Soviet base on continental American soil.” The contras, he said, compared
favorably with other U.S.-backed forces: they were better motivated and had geog¬
raphy on their side. What’s more, Singlaub claimed, with no indictment of the other
forces intended, they had a better record on human rights.®^ In August 1985, he was
reported as favoring the use of more former Somoza guardsmen by the FDN.®^
Singlaub also worried that the Soviets wanted to build a canal through Nicaragua,
threatening the U.S. with not just a second Cuba but a “second Canal.”
Singlaub, like North and others in the administration, saw congressional op¬
ponents as communist fellow travelers: There “are some hard-core left wing [mem¬
bers of Congress] like Michael Barnes and Boland and Ron Dellums and quite a few
others that have always supported the communist organizations around the world.
Singlaub believes that “Congress has a role in foreign policy,” the role of advice and
consent through appropriations, “unless it interferes with U.S. sovereignty and the
ability of the President to carry out security.” Then the president can act unilateral-
ly-
Singlaub channelled $5.3 million worth of East-bloc weapons to the contras
in 1985 through the Washington-based arms brokerage, GeoMilitech, for which he
was a consultant. On at least two occasions between July and December 1985,
Singlaub discussed GeoMilitech’s contra arms shipments with Casey. As Singlaub
recalled, these conversations were probably at a social event and not in Casey’s of¬
fice “because he and I agreed that I would not mention the subject of support for
the Nicaraguan freedom fighters to him. He threatened to throw me out of his of¬
fice if I did.”®^ Thus, Casey’s deniability was maintained. As Singlaub earlier told
CBS’s “60 Minutes,’* Casey “has indicated approval, and.. .has been encouraging. He
introduces me to the people that need to have the detailed information. So, he’s
been cooperative and sees me when I come into town on short notice.”®®
In December 1985, Casey met with GeoMilitech President Barbara Studley, a
contra supporter who formerly hosted a radio talk show in Miami. They discussed
a three-way diversion proposal, which Singlaub had reviewed earlier, with the ob¬
jective “to create a conduit for maintaining a continuous flow of Soviet weapons
and technology, to be utilized by the United States in its support of Freedom Fighters
in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia, etc.” The problem: “With
each passing year. Congress has become increasingly unpredictable and uncoopera-
tive regarding the President’s desire to support the cause of the Freedom Fighters.”
To meet the objective without needing “the consent or awareness of the
Department of State or Congress,” the proposal suggested a three-way trade. The
United States would provide credit toward Israel’s purchase of U.S. high technol¬
ogy; Israel would provide military equipment to China to upgrade China’s armed
forces; and China would provide Soviet-compatible arms which would be laundered
through a foreign trading company and dispersed to insurgents “per U.S. instruc¬
tions.”®^
Casey, Israel and China were said to be receptive to the proposal. In addition
to Casey, the plan was reportedly briefed to Alexander Haig and Richard Allen (they
deny it). The unsigned proposal was later found in North’s safe. Singlaub told the
Iran-contra committees that he didn’t like that particular plan because “one of the
countries involved [China! was one that I did not feel we ought to be enhancing
their military capability.”^
As Singlaub began to receive increasing notice in the news media, he and
North discussed the pros and cons of heightened visibility. On the negative side,
Singlaub’s association with North could create problems. On the positive side, the
visibility was useful for fundraising and also boosted contra morale. Moreover, said
Singlaub, it served “as sort of a lightning rod if the press was following me and ask¬
ing me questions about this aid, and I was working clearly within the Boland Amend¬
ment and every other law that I thought existed, then that would take the heat off
of those who were trying to be more covert in their actions.
This “lightning rod” role was no less important than Singlaub’s role in broker¬
ing arms sales, soliciting third-country funding or raising donations through the
World Anti-Communist League network. Before the Saudi contribution was known,
Singlaub was credited along with Calero in raising $15 million to $25 million for the
contrasBehind that smokescreen, Singlaub had actually raised $279,612 in 1985
and $259,173 in 1986, according to figures reported by the Iran-contra committees.
Private Aid Auxiliary
Singlaub is the most visible leader of a rightwing network of retired military

officers, mercenaries, missionaries, fundraisers and lobbyists. The network has not
been a private substitute for government, but an auxiliary arm of the executive
branch.
Congress partly sanctioned this auxiliary when, in October 1984, it passed the
Denton amendment, named for Senator Jeremiah Denton (R-AL), authorizing the
Pentagon to use ships and planes on a space-available basis to transport “nonlethal”
private aid.
In February 1985, former Justice Department attorney John Lofais sent Con¬
gress a report detailing his suspicions that Casey and Singlaub, using the World Anti-
Communist League, had resurrected an old private conduit system for laundering
money to “freedom fighters.” The old conduit was tlie Crusade for Freedom, a public
charity established by retired General Lucius Clay that provided “private” support
for the National Committee for a Free Europe (now Radio Free Europe) and the
American Committee for Liberation (now Radio Liberty). The two committees—
home to Nazis and Nazi collaborators who, as Loftus noted, migrated to WACL—
were secretly laundering government money to Eastern European insurgents at the
direction of the NSC and the State Department’s clandestine Office of Policy Coor¬
dination. Private citizen Ronald Reagan was an apparently unwitting celebrity
fundraiser for the Crusade for Freedom.^^ When in 1982, President Reagan first in¬
troduced the public version of “Project Democracy,” now institutionalized in the Na¬
tional Endowment for Democracy, he called for a “crusade for freedom.
According to a 1985 report of the congressional Arms Control and Foreign
Policy Caucus, “close to 20 privately incorporated U.S. groups have reportedly sent
(or plan soon to send) aid, supplies or cash contributions to Nicaraguan refugees
in Honduras and to the contras themselves...IThe] driving forces behind the major
groups are a small group of about a half a dozen men, most of whom have military
or paramilitary backgrounds or mercenary experience...While many of the groups
work closely together, they have different stated purposes. Some openly admit their
aid is for military purposes...Most groups call their aid ‘humanitarian,’ but either
privately or publicly acknowledge that some of it (e.g. medical supplies and food)
ends up at contra camps. These groups also have conceded that their ‘humanitarian’
aid to refugees (which include families of the contras) may indirectly aid the con¬
tras by freeing up the contra accounts to purchase weapons and pay combatants.
The contra auxiliary^ includes the World Anti-Communist League and its U.S.
Council for World Freedom, the American Security Council, Council for Inter-
American Security and Western Goals discussed earlier (also see chapter 15). Among
the other key groups in the auxiliary are the following:
The Florida-based Air Commandos Association, led by retired Brigadier
General Harry “Heinie” Aderholt, is a group of approximately 1,600 past and present
members of the U.S. Special Forces. Aderholt, Soldier of Fortune’s unconvQnXiomX
warfare editor, coordinated the joint CLA-Pentagon-AID program to provide
“humanitarian” relief to the Hmong secret army in Laos and served as chief of covert
air operations in Singlaub’s Special Operations Group. When established in 1968,
the Air Commandos distributed supplies, donated primarily by World Medical Relief,
to the Hmong and other paramilitary forces in Laos and Thailand. In addition to dis¬
tributing aid to the Miskito Indians and contra families in Honduras, Air Comman¬
dos has assisted the Salvadoran Army and worked with the Guatemalan Army’s
counterinsurgency “civic action” program which has forcibly resettled Guatemalan
Indians into so-called development poles (known as strategic hamlets during the
Vietnam War).
Soldier of Fortune (circulation about 200,000) was founded in 1975 by the
Colorado-based Omega Group headed by retired Lt. Col. Robert K. Brown, a veteran
of the Phoenix program and special operations in Laos and ex-mercenary in white-
ruled Rhodesia. Brown sports a T-Shirt boasting, “I Was Killing When Killing Wasn’t
Cool.” Soldier of Fortune (SOF) runs articles on counterinsurgency warfare,
glamorizes training and combat missions by S’OApersonnel, advertises weapons and
mercenary services and encourages donations to its affiliated El Salvador/Nicaragua

Defense Fund, which printed and distributed some 500 copies of the CIA contra
manual, and Refugee Relief International, which provides medical training and sup¬
plies to El Salvador and the contras. Refugee Relief is led by Thomas Reisinger, the
assistant director of SOF for special projects; board members include Singlaub, Ader-
holt and SOF Military Affairs Editor Alexander McColL (In March 1988, a Texas jury
ordered Soldier of Fortune to pay $9.4 million in damages to the family of a woman
killed by a hit man her husband hired through a classified ad in the magazine; SOF
is appealing the verdict.)
The CIA contra manual is mild compared to some of the murder and sabotage
manuals SOF promotes, with such tides as How to Kill Vols. I-V, Hit Man (“Learn
how a pro makes a living at this craft without landing behind bars”), Techniques of
Harassment and Elementary Field Interrogation. The last manual includes explicit
instructions for psychological and physical torture. Under a section titled, “the cook
out,” the manual advises:
Ignite a piece of C-4 [explosive] in front of your subject and use it to boil water in
a small pot...Pour a little of the boiling water on his genitals for effect, if you wish.
Now, take a similar amount of the same explosive and tape it over the subject’s
eye, leaving one eye unobstructed to see that you are holding a lighted match within a
few inches of the material on his eye. Begin your questions, if the subject panics or refuses
to answer, hold the flame to his nipple to let him know you’re serious. No one wants to
be blinded by fire.^
Civilian Materiel Assistance (CMA, formerly Civilian Military Assistance), based

in Memphis, Tennessee, was founded in 1983 by Tom Posey, a former Marine Cor¬
poral, John Bircher and Ku Klux Klansman, along with fellow members of the
Alabama National Guard. Posey appeared in Newsweek in front of a banner with
the slogan “Kill ’Em All: Let God Sort ’Em Out.”^^ On an approved U.S. Treasury ap¬
plication to become a firearms dealer, Posey wrote, “I plan to buy weapons and
ammo to send to El Salvador.”^® CMA has chapters in most states and recruits heavi¬
ly through state National Guards and gun shows. It has provided men, training, arms
and other supplies to the contras. “We like to think of ourselves as missionary-mer¬
cenaries,” explained Posey.^
Two CMA mercenaries, Dana Parker and Jim Powell, were killed on Septem¬
ber 1, 1984 when their CIA-supplied helicopter was shot down over Nicaragua.
Parker and Powell—as well as two of the three Cessnas supplied by the Pentagon
to the CIA for the contras under Operation Elephant Herd—^were part of an air-
ground attack on a northern Nicaraguan military school near Santa Clara. The bomb¬
ing raid killed one woman and three children.
CMA has also reportedly aided the United Lao National Liberation Front, a
rightwing Laotian organization based in California and headed by Vang Pao, the
exile leader of the CIA’s secret army. According to a longtime associate of Vang Pao,
CMA tried to recruit Lao pilots for the contra war.^°^
The Virginia-based National Defense Council was founded in 1978 by Andy
Messing, a close friend of North’s and member of Singlaub’s Pentagon advisory
panel, who has said “that going to war is his favorite pastime.Singlaub, Aderholt
and the late Edward Lansdale have served on the board. The Defense Council or¬
ganizes “fact-finding” tours to Central America for members of Congress, and the
Air Commandos Association distributes Defense Council aid to Guatemala’s “civic
action” program.
Brigade 2506, made up largely of Bay of Pigs veterans, has sent personnel and
supplies to the contras in Central America and provided a warm sanctuary in Miami.
Brigade 2506 has close ties to the Dade County Republican Party formerly headed
by George Bush’s son, Jeb. The kind of freedom fighting the Brigade supports is
evident in its choice of Chilean dictator Pinochet for its first Freedom Award in 1975.
Brigade members have undertaken terrorist attacks against Cuba and, in 1976, former
Brigade leaders joined in creating a terrorist alliance called the Congress of United
Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). CORU has worked with the Chilean military
and European fascist movements in political assassinations around the world, in¬
cluding the 1976 Washington car bombing that killed Orlando Letelier, Chile’s am¬
bassador to the United States under Allende, and his Institute for Policy Studies
colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt.^°^
Brigade 2506 member Felipe Vidal, a reported CIA operative, hoped to provide
a permanent paramilitary infrastructure for an “international anti-communist
brigade,” based first in Costa Rica where he worked closely with John Hull and
CMA. As Vidal explained it, Nicaragua is “a strategic point from which to begin at¬
tacking Castro...During the 1970s, the form of [our] struggle was terrorism against
Castro in Mexico, France, Barbados and the United States...Once Reagan got into
power, there was no need for these organizations because the [U.S.] government’s
policy coincided with the Cuban community’s.Actually, Cuban exile terrorist or¬
ganizations still operate. But many of their members found employment in the con¬
tra war, among them Luis Posada, Felix Rodriguez and Rafael Quintero (discussed
later).
The Virginia-based Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) was founded by the
Reverend Pat Robertson, a 1988 Republican presidential candidate. CBN’s 700 Club,
a pillar of televangelism, reaches 30 million homes. Its relief organization. Opera¬
tion Blessing, has supported the contras. In distributing aid to the contras and other
Central America projects, CBN has worked with the Air Commandos, Refugee Relief
International, World Medical Relief, Friends of the Americas, Knights of Malta and
other groups.
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), known as the Knights of Malta,
is an elite, international Vatican order dating back to the Crusades. SMOM has the
unique status of a nation state with no territory, but with its own constitution,
diplomats and passports, and the benefit of shipping internationally through
diplomatic pouch without Customs inspection. Every year, in a Rome ritual on St.
John’s Day, Knights and Dames of Malta “dressed in scarlet uniforms and black
capes, brandishing swords and waving flags emblazoned with the eight-pointed
Maltese cross...swear allegiance to the defense of the Holy Mother Church.
The late William Casey was a Knight, as was former CIA Director John Mc¬
Cone and the legendary chief of the pre-CIA Office of Strategic Services (OSS),
General William “Wild Bill” Donovan. In July 1944, Pope Pius XII decorated
Donovan with the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Sylvester, the oldest of papal
knighthoods, an award “given to only 100 other men in history, who ‘by feat of
arms, or writings, or outstanding deeds, have spread the Faitli, and have safeguarded
and championed the Church.’ ” Donovan’s Knighthood personifies the often close
links between the Church and the CIA (OSS) in combating communism, real and
imagined—from intervention in the 1948 Italian elections to contemporary Latin
America. In 1948, the SMOM gave a high award of honor to General Reinhard Geh-
len. Hitler’s chief of intelligence for the Soviet front, who folded his operation into
the Cold War crusades.
The American Knights are led by J. Peter Grace (who once called food stamps
“basically a Puerto Rican program”), chairman of the multinational W.R. Grace &
Company and the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) and ap¬
pointed by Reagan to head the Private Sector Survey of Cost Control in the Federal
Government. Peter Grace assisted the U.S. “Project Paperclip,” which brought some
900 Nazi scientists to the United States, including war criminal Otto Ambros, a
chemist, poison gas expert and director of the LG. Farben Company which used
Aushwitz concentration camp inmates as slave labor for the Nazi war machine.
Other U.S. Knights and Dames include former Secretary of State Alexander
Haig, former Treasury Secretary William Simon, former National Security Adviser
William Clark, former Director of the U.S. Information Agency Frank Shakespeare,
Senator Jeremiah Denton, Attorney Prescott Bush Jr. (brother of George Bush), Wil¬
liam F. and James Buckley, the late Clare Boothe Luce, Chrysler Chairman Lee lacoc-
ca and former Mayor of New York Robert Wagner, who served as a Carter emissary
to the Vatican to discuss Nicaragua. The “Grand Protector and Spiritual Adviser” to
the Knights has traditionally been the archbishop of New York, from the time of
Francis Cardinal Spellman through John J. O’Connor.^®®
Active before in support of the U.S. war in Vietnam, the Knights distribute as¬
sistance to the contras and through military-run “civic action” programs in Honduras,
Guatemala and El Salvador. Roberto Alejos, whose plantation was used to train for¬
ces for the Bay of Pigs invasion, is a leader of the Knights in Honduras and
Guatemala.
Knights of Malta has distributed millions of dollars worth of medical and other
supplies donated by Americares, an organization led by Robert Macauley, which
also did “humanitarian” work in Vietnam. A June 1985 Americares fact sheet boasted
of the Shoeshine Boys Foundation, “so named because resident children [in
Americares’ Saigon rescue mission] helped raise money for their welfare by shining
the shoes of American G.I.s.” Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski
is Americares’ honorary chairman; Peter Grace chairs the advisory commission,
which includes William Simon, retired General Richard Stilwell and Prescott Bush.
PRODEMCA (Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America) is an ad¬
ministration-backed effort to win bipartisan support for its Central America policy^
which has been funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
PRODEMCA was a major conduit of NED funding for La Prensa and the so-called
Nicaraguan Center for Democratic Studies, and has lobbied heavily for contra aid.
PRODEMCA’s president is Penn Kemble, a leader in the neoconservative Coalition

for a Democratic Majority, and members include Jeane Kirkpatrick, Peter Grace, Wil¬
liam Simon, AIFLD Director William Doherty, Boston University President and Kis¬
singer ComiTiission member John Silber and Institute for Religion and Democracy
founder Michael Novak. In March 1986, PRODEMCA ran an ad in the New York
Times and other papers: “We Support Military Assistance to the Nicaraguans Fight¬
ing for Democracy.” Among the signers were Carter officials Brzezinski, former
Deputy National Security Adviser David Aaron and former Assistant Secretary of
State Richard Holbrooke.
Citizens for America (CFA) was established in August 1983 by Rite Aid
drugstore heir and Reagan friend Lew Lehrman. Donors include Nelson Bunker Hunt
and Joseph Coors of Coors Beer and numerous rightwing causes. “We are the
President’s grass-roots lobby,” said CFA’s Tracee Howell.CFA has lobbied heavi¬
ly for contra aid. In June 1985, it sponsored the meeting between Adolfo Calero,
UNITA’s Jonas Savimbi and leaders of U.S.-backed forces in Afghanistan and Laos
that led to the founding of “Democracy International.”
The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church has assisted the contras
largely through its affiliates, CAUSA and the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund. Adolfo
Calero, Steadman Fagoth, Pedro Chamorro and other contra leaders said that the
Unification Church sometimes paid their bills for strategy meetings and fundraising
events and helped them build state-level political support in the United States.
CAUSA (discussed in chapter 4), has aided the contras since at least 1981 with sup¬
plies, cash and propaganda. It cooperates closely with rightwing organizations such
as WACL, Western Goals and the Council for Inter-American Security. Thomas Dowl¬
ing, a member of CAUSA USA’s board of advisers who posed as a Catholic priest in
1985 testimony defending the contras before Congress, received $2,500 in travelers
checks from North’s slush fund."^ Another Unification Church affiliate, the Collegiate
Association for the Research of Principles (CARP), is active on college campuses
and has a record of physically harassing opponents of U.S. policy in Central America
and providing surveillance information to the FBI.^^^
In 1985, the Unification Church-owned Washington Times established the
Nicaraguan Freedom Fund to raise funds for the contras. Moon’s deputy. Colonel
Bo Hi Pak, pledged $100,000 to the fund which was headed up by William Simon
and Michael Novak; board members included Charlton Heston and Midge Decter,
head of the Committee for a Free World (Elliott Abrams is Decter’s son-in-law;
Commentary’s Norman Podhoretz is her husband). Jeane Kirkpatrick pledged
$20,000 to the fund and donated another $2,500 she received for her cat’s appearance
in the Ralston Purina calendar. The Nicaraguan Freedom Fund reported raising
$350,000 in six months and distributed it through Americares.
Friends of the Americas (FOA) was founded in 1984 by Louisiana State
Representative “Woody” Jenkins and his wife Diane Jenkins, a former assistant at¬
torney general. The Baton Rouge-based FOA provides aid to Miskito Indians and
contra families in Honduras, including “Shoe Boxes for Liberty” packed with per¬
sonal supplies. FOA material was transported to Honduras by Air National Guard
units in Louisiana and Mississippi even before the Denton amendment. In 1985,
President Reagan awarded Diane Jenkins the First Annual Ronald Reagan
Humanitarian Award at the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund dinner in Washington.
The Nicaraguan Refugee Fund was founded in September 1984. Its chairman,
True Davis, said he was recruited to that post by Somoza’s longtime ambassador to
the United States, Guillermo Sevilla Sacasa.^^^ In April 1985, the Fund sponsored a
$250 to $500-a-plate fundraising dinner at the Marriott Hotel Ballroom. The dinner
committee included Joseph Coors, Jeane' Kirkpatrick, Peter Grace, Penn Kemble,
Ellen Garwood and Nelson Bunker Hunt. President Reagan addressed the nearly
700 guests: “While the world was turning away, you were helping. People like you
are America at its best.”"'* Pat Robertson gave the invocation.
The Nicaraguan Refugee Fund was the successor to a CIA-FDN front called
the Human Development Foundation, a Panamanian corporation with a Miami ad¬
dress, which in July 1984 took out newspaper ads soliciting contributions: “The Vic¬
tims of Communist Dominated Nicaragua Need Your Help.” According to Edgar
Chamorro, the ads brought in a few checks totaling $750 and an envelope full of
dead cockroaches."^ The following September, the New York reported contra
claims that millions of dollars from private individuals, corporations and foreign
governments “including Israel, Argentina, Venezuela, Guatemala and Taiwan” had
been channelled through the foundation."^
The Nicaraguan Refugee Fund dinner, keynoted by Reagan, raised $219,525.
After expenses were deducted, however, the contra “refugees” received only $3,000.
Various consultants reaped the bulk of the money. The public relations firm Miner
and Fraser, employer of former Somoza diplomat Alvaro Rizo, was paid $50,000.*"
Carl “Spitz” Channell was another consultant (discussed later).
“Public Diplomacy”
“The whole treatment of Nicaragua in the U.S. is a public relations opportunity,
an ad man’s treatment.” That’s what a U.S. ambassador in Central America told me
in April 1986.**®
The administration’s domestic propaganda-lobby operation transgressed laws
regulating the activities of tax-exempt organizations and prohibiting unauthorized
government propaganda and political lobbying, CIA influence in domestic politics
and the participation of active duty military officers in partisan political activities
(Hatch Act). Reagan’s own 1981 Executive Order 12333 prohibited the CIA from un¬
dertaking operations intended to “influence United States political processes, public
opinion, politics, or media.” Nonetheless, the CIA regularly instructed contra leaders
in all of the above, including how to tailor their lobby pitch to sway specific con-
gresspeople.
As Edgar Chamorro told the World Court, “I attended meetings at which C.I.A.
officials told us that we could change the votes of many members of the Congress
if we knew how to ‘sell’ our case and place them in a position of ‘looking soft on
Communism.’ They told us exactly what to say and which members to say it to.
They also instructed us to contact certain prominent individuals in the home dis¬
tricts of various members of Congress as a means of bringing pressure on these
members to change their votes.
Chamorro recalled for me how CIA personnel would contact the contras before
politicians came through Honduras “and tell us who was coming, who was who,
what to say, what not to say, how to treat them.. .They would brief us if he was a
liberal or non-liberal. That kind of thing. Make distinctions.. .Sometimes they would
try not to mix liberals with conservatives. Be careful when you are in a group of
liberals...you talk to them like you talk to a reporter. You know how far you can
go. So there was some manipulation of how much you would talk.”^^°
An April 1982 National Security document (discussed earlier) had warned: “We
continue to have serious difficulties with U.S. public and Congressional opinion,
which jeopardizes our ability to stay the course.” It recommended a “concerted
public information effort.” Following the January 1983 National Security Directive
No. 77, the “public diplomacy” effort would be overseen by a special planning group
including the national security adviser, secretaries of state and defense, and direc¬
tors of AID and the U.S. Information Agency (USLA.).
The CIA retained a Miami-based public relations firm. Woody Kepner As¬
sociates, with a six-month contract beginning in February 1983 and extended
through mid-1985 for a total of $1.8 million. Kepner rented the FDN an office suite
at the David William Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida, produced slick promotional
materials and arranged speaking tours and media appearances for contra repre¬
sentatives.^^^ To Edgar Chamorro, the contract typified CIA-FDN relations: “Although
I signed the contract as FDN public relations director, it was nearly impossible for
me to evaluate Kepner’s work...or to get him to respond to our demands...He
responded only to the C.I.A.’s suggestions. Of course, I must admit, it was not my
money.
According to Chamorro, Woody Kepner helped edit and publish a CIA-spon¬
sored book by former La Prensa editorial page editor Humberto Belli, Nicaragua:
Christians Under Fire, published by the ostensibly independent Puebla Institute.
“The Puebla Institute grew and took on other projects. One was ‘human rights’ work
which is neither thorough nor accurate, but which is used alongside the work of
more established and reputable human rights organizations in order to counter their
criticisms of the human rights abuses.
One of the charges slapped on Nicaragua was anti-Semitism although it was
discredited by many sources, including U.S. Ambassador Tony Quainton who cabled
Washington in July 1983: “the evidence fails to demonstrate that the Sandinistas have
followed a policy of anti-Semitism or have persecuted Jews because of their religion.”
Undeterred by the evidence, the administration pretended that Somoza associates
who happened to be Jewish sought exile because of anti-Semitism.’^'*
Edgar Chamorro recalled a meeting with three CIA officers in the spring of
1983 to discuss ways of promoting the contras inside the United States. One
propaganda idea was to target American Jews by portraying the Sandinistas as anti-
Semitic. According to Chamorro, the CIA officers “said that the media was control¬
led by Jews, and if we could show that Jews were being persecuted it would help
a The real anti-Semitism emanated from Washington.

In 1985, Congress asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to determine
whether the CIA had violated the prohibition against political activity in the United
States. On September l6, when investigators interviewed the FDN’s Washington
spokesperson, Bosco Matamoros, he stated that “he is not engaged in any lobbying
activities, and that his salary and expenses are paid from private funds.” Eight days
later, Matamoros registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, declaring that
he was a lobbyist and had “received aid from the U.S. government.” He cited pay¬
ments of $2,500 per month dating back as far as June 1981.^^^
The “public diplomacy” effort involved a network of rightwing donors, or¬
ganizations, lobbyists and public relations (PR) specialists working in conjunction
with the National Endowment for Democracy, NSC, CIA and two special offices: the
White House Office of Public Liaison and the State Department Office of Public
Diplomacy. In May 1983, the White House Office of Public Liaison, headed by Faith
Ryan Whittlesey (the former ambassador to Switzerland), established the Outreach
Working Group on Central America.
The Outreach Group was a vehicle for packaging PR themes, networking and
briefing administration supporters, and encouraging them to rally their constituen¬
cies behind administration policy. A rare article on the public diplomacy effort noted,
“White House officials scoffed when a reporter asked whether they might be run¬
ning a ministry of propaganda.
On May 20, 1983, NSC official Walter Raymond Jr., a propaganda expert and
former senior CIA officer, informed National Security Adviser William Clark that the
“Faith Whittlesey effort” was “off to a good start” and discussed the establishment
of a “Coalition for a Democratic Central America.” In a section headed “Private Fund¬
ing Effort,” Raymond wrote, “I have provided Jeff Davis with a list of funding
programs that require private sector support...Roy Godson reported that he met
early this week with a group of private donors that Charlie Wick [chief of the USIA
and top fundraiser for the 1980 Reagan campaign] brought to the sitroom two months
ago. The group made their first commitment of $400,000 which includes support to
Freedom House, a pro-INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] group in Holland,
Accuracy in Media, and a European based labor program. These are useful steps
forward. More to follow.”’^®
On August 9, Raymond further informed Clark about “Private Sector Support
for Central American Program.” The objective was to “move out into the middle sec¬
tor of the American public and draw them into the ‘support’ column.” A number of
proposals to “market the issue”—all endorsing the creation of a “bipartisan coali¬
tion”—^were under discussion among government officials such as Casey, Whittlesey,
Wick and Kirkpatrick, and conservative public relations specialists, lobbyists and
donors (e.g. the Richard Mellon Scaife group). Raymond and Godson “recom¬
mended funding via Freedom House or some other structure that has credibility in
the political center. Wick, via [publisher Rupert] Murdoch, may be able to draw
down added funds for this effort.
Roy Godson, a Georgetown University professor, was a member of the 1980
CIA transition team and has been a paid consultant to the USIA, the NSC and the
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He is Washington director of the

National Strategy Information Center, which provided funding to Arturo Cruz. God¬
son has also been a paid adviser to the CIA-connected U.S. Youth Council, the parent
of the International Youth Year Commission, which is assumed to be the “Inti. Youth
Comm.” named on the flow chart of North-supervised contra support entities
published in the Tower Board Report}^ Godson solicited donations for North and
the Nicaragua operation, at least once using the Heritage Foundation as a conduit.^^^
Whittlesey returned to Switzerland as ambassador in May 1985 (she served
there from 1981 to 1983) and turned the embassy into a contra propaganda outpost.
Journalist Diana Johnstone described the Whittlesey embassy as “a de facto branch
office of the World Anti-Communist League and its protegees the contras.
Psywar at Home
Complementing and then superseding the Outreach Group was the State
Department Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean
(S/LPD), directed by the Cuban-born Otto Reich, a former AID official and instruc¬
tor at the U.S. Army School of the Americas. Though based at State, the Office of
Public Diplomacy was an interagency office, including personnel from Defense, AID
and USIA, operating under the direction of the NSC (Raymond and North).
“If you look at it as a whole,” said a senior U.S. official, “the Office of Public
Diplomacy was carrying out a huge psychological operation of the kind the military
conducts to influence a population in denied or enemy territory.
The Office of Public Diplomacy worked to destroy positive images of
Nicaragua, cultivate negative images, discredit administration critics and reverse
public and congressional opposition. In Reich’s words “attacking the President was
no longer cost free.”'^^
Part of the strategy was for administration officials to refuse to appear in public
forums with well-versed opponents. In a noted case in May 1986, Harvard
University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government buckled to administration pres¬
sure and withdrew an invitation to Robert White, the fonner U.S. ambassador to El
Salvador now with the International Center for Development Policy, to respond to
a speech on “Democracy in Central America” by Assistant Secretary of State Elliott
Abrams. Abrams’ press secretary explained that “Secretary Abrams doesn’t object to
sharing a platform with critics, and even suggested to Harvard officials which mem¬
bers of the faculty could serve in that capacity.” But White was not a “serious critic,”
the press secretary said; “he’s become something of a crank. In the administra¬
tion version of democratic pluralism. White, a liberal with years of experience in
the foreign service, was outside the bounds of debate—not to mention leftist critics.
Reich acted as a quasi-govemment censor, monitoring and pressuring the news
media to toe the administration line and accusing critical reporters of being agents
of Nicaraguan disinformation. Eollowing a November 1984 National Public Radio
(NPR) report about the slaughter of civilians in a farming cooperative by contras.
Reich protested the “biased” coverage to top editors and producers of NPR, which
he called “little Havana on the Potomac”—a label that by Reicli’s standard would
apply to anyone left of the New York Times. As NPR foreign affairs correspondent
Bill Buzenberg recounted, “Reich bragged that he had made similar visits to other
unnamed newspapers and major television networks...Reich said he had gotten
others to change some of their reporters in the field because of a perceived bias,
and that their coverage was much better as a result. Whatever the direct impact
of Reich’s visit, NPR later made Linda Chavez, Whittlesey’s successor as director of
the White House Office of Public Liaison and before that the reactionary staff direc¬
tor of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, a regular commentator—another
victory for rightwing propaganda masquerading as editorial “balance.”
The Office of Public Diplomacy also romanced the press by selectively leak¬
ing classified information all too often accepted as fact by reporters. It produced
reams of disinformation in the form of publications (such as the Soviet-Cuban Con¬
nection in Central America and the Caribbean), sometimes produced joindy with
the Defense Department, spiced with declassified information and surveillance
photos. In its first year alone, S/LPD took credit for sending material to 239 editorial
writers in 150 cities and arranging 1,500 speaking engagements.
The congressional Iran-Contra Report said “public diplomacy” meant “public-
relations lobbying, all at taxpayers’ expense.”’^ Beginning in 1983, the Office of
Public Diplomacy worked closely with the pro-contra lobby. Citizens for America
(CFA). S/LPD also issued contracts to private firms and individuals, including a small,
secret contract with Arturo Cruz
The most important contractual relationship was with Richard Miller, Frank
Gomez and International Business Communications (IBC). Richard Miller, director
of broadcast services for the 1980 Reagan campaign, formed the public relations
firm IBC upon leaving his post as AID director of public affairs in 1984. Miller began
working with Frank Gomez, formerly deputy assistant secretary of state for public
affairs and director of USIA’s foreign press centers. Gomez received a contract to
assist S/LPD immediately upon leaving his government post in February 1984. The
contract was renewed in May and assumed within a few months by IBC, function¬
ing by then as a Miller-Gomez partnership. These sole-source Gomez/IBC contracts
totaled more than $441,000 through September 1986.^'*°
IBC prepared briefing books, newspaper op eds. and other materials; arranged
interviews, press conferences and speaking tours for contra leaders and pro-contra
Nicaraguan exiles; and prepared a computerized mailing list of some 3,300 groups
and individuals in a position to influence the debate over Central America. The Oc¬
tober 1984 contract also required IBC to analyze guerrilla documents captured in El
Salvador and identify “support groups in the United States.In September 1984,
IBC was hired to represent the FDN front group, the Nicaraguan Development Coun¬
cil, a secret sponsor of the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund dinner.’'*^
The Office of Public Diplomacy engaged in so-called white propaganda. S/LPD
Deputy Director Jonathan Miller (no relation to Richard) described “white propagan¬
da” operations in a confidential “eyes only” memorandum to White House Com¬
munications Director Patrick Buchanan. Among the examples given were: a March
1985 Wall Street Journal op ed. piece written with the secret assistance of S/LPD
staff; op ed. pieces for the New York Times and Washington Post written by
an S/LPD consultant “for the signatures of opposition leaders Alphonso Rubello [sid,
Adolpho Callero [sic] and Arturo Cruz”; and a series of meetings and interviews with
print and broadcast media for “Alphonso Rubello” arranged through an S/LPD “cut¬
out.”
“I will not attempt in the future to keep you posted on all activities,” Miller
told Buchanan, “since we have too many balls in the air at any one time and since
the work of our operation is ensured by our office’s keeping a low profile.” Miller
asked that “as you formulate ideas and plans of attack, you give us a heads-up since
our office has been crafted to handle the concerns that you have in getting the
President’s program for the freedom fighters enacted.
In 1986, Reich became ambassador to Venezuela and was replaced by Robert
Kagen. Walter Raymond prepared a secret memorandum for Poindexter to send to
Casey, assuring him that “the departure of Otto Reich has not resulted in any reduc¬
tion of effort...Although the independent office was folded into EUiott Abrams’
bureau, the White House has sent a clear tasker to the community that this limited
reorganization in no way reflected a dimunition [sid of activities. On the contrary,
the same interagency responsibilities are being exercised, and the group reports
directly to the NSC...In reality, the reorganization also means that Elliott Abrams
plays a strong public diplomacy role, and in this way we have harnessed one of the
best public diplomacy assets that we have in the government.”
Raymond noted that he chaired a weekly Central American public diplomacy
meeting with participants from the NSC, the CIA’s Central American Task Force,
State, USIA, AID, Defense and the White House Press and Public Liaison Offices:
“This group takes its policy guidance from the Central American RIG and pursues
an energetic political and informational agenda.”^'*'* (In mid 1987, Raymond became
an assistant director of the USIA.)
A 1987 GAO investigation of the Office of Public Diplomacy concluded that
it “engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities designed to influence the
media and the public to support the Administration’s Latin American policies. The
use of appropriated funds for these activities constitutes a violation of a restriction
on the State Department annual appropriations prohibiting the use of federal funds
for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by the Congress.
By then the propaganda-lobby operation had scored dramatic success in win¬
ning renewed congressional support for the contras. It had also merged with the
underground NSC program of contra military support through the fundraising
partnership of Richard Miller and Carl Channell.
channelling Contrabutions
Carl “Spitz” Channell made his first mark in rightwing fundraising as finance
director for the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC). In 1982,
he formed a succession of entities, including the lobby organization, Sentinel; the

tax-exempt “educational” National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty
(NEPL); the American Conservative Trust (ACT), a political action committee (PAC);
the tax-exempt American Conservative Foundation; and another PAC, the Anti-Ter¬
rorism American Committee. In 1986, Channell took over the McCarthyite Western
Goals Foundation.
Channell’s direct involvement in the contra cause began in January 1985 when
PR consultant Edie Fraser asked him to help organize the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund
Dinner. Channell recruited San Francisco fundraising consultant Daniel Conrad, who
later became the number two person in Channell’s lobby-fundraising empire. On
March 4, following a conversation with Channell and Conrad, Fraser provided
material on the dinner to Oliver North with a handwritten note: “Ollie, Very Imp.,
Two people want to give major contribs i.e. 300,000 and up if they might have one
‘quiet’ minute with the President.
The two-part pitch by North and Channell became a key source of money for
the contras. On June 27, Channell and Miller organized their first WTdte House brief¬
ing for a group of donors, with North as principal speaker. Similar group briefings
took place on October 17 and November 21, 1985 and January 30 and March 27,
1986. As described in the Iran-Contra Report, “the White House briefings were
meticulously planned by NEPL, IBC, North, and White House personnel. Internal
White House memorandums.. .show that North was the switching point for arrang¬
ing and coordinating the briefings with White House liaison. White House Counsel,
and White House security.” Among those participating in the briefings, besides
North, were Pat Buchanan, Elliott Abrams, Political Assistant to the President Mitch
Daniels and Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Public
Liaison Linda Chavez.
After the briefings, donors would be taken across the street to the Hay-Adams
Hotel for a reception and dinner often attended by government officials and contra
leaders, where donors were directly solicited by the “private” fundraisers. The
January 30 briefing included a presidential “drop-by” arranged by NEPL/IBC con¬
sultant David Fischer. Fischer was Reagan’s top personal assistant on the campaign
trail and then in the White House from January 1981 until April 1985. Between
December 1985 and February 1987, Fischer and his partner Martin Artiano were paid
$662,400 by NEPL/IBC for consulting services, including arranging donor meetings
with the president.^^®
An account of a typical North “briefing” was provided by donor William
O’Boyle: North “described the military and political situation in Nicaragua. He had
photographs of an airport in Nicaragua that had been recently built...One of the
uses for which the airport was intended was to recover the Russian Backfire bom¬
bers after they made a nuclear attack on the United States...
“He described the refugee problem...We could look forward in the next few
years to millions of refugees flooding across our borders...
“He showed photographs which indicated that the Nicaraguan government of¬
ficials were indicated D/c] in smuggling dope.. .He also told an anecdote about some
Nicaraguan agents that were recently caught with dope and money and so forth and
disguised as American agents.

North’s dramatic fairy tales helped raise millions of dollars for the contras. Con¬
rad described the North pitch as preparation for “the call to the alter.” North met
privately with Channell, Miller and star donors such as Ellen Garwood and Nelson
Bunker Hunt. He even took his family in the spring of 1986 on a plane chartered
by NEPL to spend the weekend at donor Barbara Newington’s estate in Connec¬
ticut; Channell and Miller were also there. Newington merited two private meetings
with President Reagan.^^°
NEPL’s funds-for-guns program was called the “Toys Project.” Donor E.
Thomas Claggett contributed $20,000 after a personal meeting with Channell and
North. “I wasn’t interested in it going for chocolate bars or soda pops,” he said. “I
wanted something to kill the commies—direct military support for the troops—guns
and ammunition...Certainly nobody ever told me it was going to buy toys.”^^^
Twelve contributors accounted for just over 90 percent of NEPL’s 1985 and
1986 contributions. Garwood was the largest donor, with $2,518,135 in 1986, near¬
ly $2 million of which went to “Toys.” During 1985-86, Newington gave $2,866,025
and Hunt gave $484,500.^^^
“The President obviously knows why he has been meeting with several select
people to thank them for their ‘support for Democracy’ in [Central America],” North
told Poindexter in May 1986.’^^
Reagan claimed to have thought the donations were for political advertising.
But Poindexter has testified, “There wasn’t any question in my mind” that the Presi¬
dent was aware that he was thanking contra contributors. “In the White House during
this period of time that we were encouraging private support, we really didn’t dis¬
tinguish between how the money was going to be spent.David Fischer arranged
presidential photo opportunities or meetings with at least seven major contributors
in 1986. At least five of the six contributors who donated more than $300,000 to
NEPL were invited to meet with Reagan.^^^
NEPL raised over $10 million on behalf of the contras, of which more than
$1.2 million went for political advertising and lobbying; over $1.7 million was
laundered through IBC and I.C. Inc. to the contra-related Lake Resources account
(I.C. Inc. was a Cayman Islands corporation established by Miller and Gomez to
receive profits expected from marketing the oil of the Prince who turned out to be
a con artist; in May 1986,1.C.’s name was changed to Intel Co-Operation Inc.); about
$1 million was laundered through IBC and I.C. Inc. into accounts controlled by
Calero; and nearly $500,000 was distributed at North’s request to other persons and
entities engaged in contra-related activities. The rest went to NEPL/IBC fees, salaries,
commissions and expenses. Miller and Gomez took a 10 percent commission on
payments funnelled to the contras through their companies.’^
In a November 1985 notebook entry. North wrote under the heading “R Miller”:
“On hand & acted on: [Deleted.] 180K moved to Copp for [deleted.] lOOK for Calero—
sent. [Deleted] 48K [illegible] to Copp. IBC—10%.”^^^ Copp was code for Richard
Secord, manager of the pro-contra “Enterprise.”
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11
The Enterprise
and Other Fronts
We were in some measure trying to recreate [the CIA’s Air America], on a

smaller scale, of course.
Richard Secord, Iran-Contra Hearings, May 8, 1987.^
I felt that this [Nicaragua] was a very important issue—that is, showing the
Russians that we can deal with this phenomenon—but we didn’t choose
the right instrument to do it. Succinctly put, where I went wrong was not
having the guts to stand up and tell the President that. To tell you the
truth, probably the reason I didn’t is because if I had done that. Bill Casey,
Jeane Kirkpatrick and Cap Weinberger would have said I was some kind
of commie.
2
Robert McFarlane, Iran-Contra Hearings, May 14, 1987.
The core of the pseudo-private “Project Democracy” contra support operation

was the Enterprise, a conglomerate of proprietary corporations run by Richard
Secord and Albert Hakim. The Enterprise (Secord’s term) was shielded by the more
visible private auxiliaries and fueled by laundered donations and diversions.
At CIA Director Casey’s direction, the Enterprise was to be an “off-the-shelf,
self-sustaining, stand-alone entity” that could carry out operations in Nicaragua, Iran
or anywhere in the world independent of congressional appropriations. As North
recounted, Casey wanted “something you can pull off the shelf and use on a
moment’s notice.”^ The formal CIA apparatus was subject to congressional review
(however inadequate); the Enterprise was not.
251
In Hakim’s words, “whoever designed this structure, had a situation that they
could have their cake and eat it too. Whichever [sid[ they wanted to have, a private
organization, it was private; when they didn’t want it to be a private organization,
it wasn’t.”^
Using the discreet financial services of former IRS lawyer Willard Zucker’s
Compagnie de Services Fiduciaries (CFS), Hakim established a network of collect¬
ing, treasury and operating companies. A portion of the funds went to a “reserves”
account for building up the Enterprise as a self-sustaining entity. Between April and
September 1985, the Enterprise expanded rapidly with tlie establishment of Lake
Resources, which took over from Energy Resources as the main collecting company;
Gulf Marketing; Udall Research; Dolmy Inc.; and Albon Values. Toyco was estab¬
lished in April 1986. The treasury companies held funds for specialized operating
companies for different regions: Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Albon
Values was the Central American treasury company, channelling funds into two
operating companies: Toyco, which, in the now-familiar vernacular, purchased con¬
tra arms and made payments to contra leaders, and Udall, which brought and
operated aircraft and built an airstrip in Costa Rica.
“The idea,” explained Hakim, “was that each collecting company would serve
as the sole receiver of funds for the Enterprise for a period of time. When the first
collecting company became too visible it could be cast aside and the next company
would be taken off the ‘shelf and brought into use.”^ Exposure of any one com¬
pany would not bring down the compartmentalized network.
Yellow Fruit Seeds
The Enterprise pursued activities similar to those described in a draft plan

delivered in late July 1983 to Business Security International (BSI)—the cover com¬
pany for the Pentagon Special Operations Division’s “Yellow Fruit” unit (discussed
in chapter 7)—^by Colonel James Longhofer and Rudy Enders, head of the CIA’s Of¬
fice of Special Activities in the International Activities Division. Retired Army Intel¬
ligence Officer William Golden told congressional investigators that he last saw the
plan in BSI’s safe. Golden, currently a civilian employee at the Fort Huachuca,
Arizona Army intelligence base, was assistant Army attache in Managua from Decem¬
ber 1981 until July 1983, where he provided military intelligence to the CIA and
Defense Intelligence Agency and helped coordinate activities with the Honduran
military and the contras. In July 1983, Golden became tlie operations officer and
financial manager for BSI and ended up as a whistleblower in the Yellow Fruit scan¬
dal.
In his deposition for the Iran-contra committees. Golden said the document
he saw at BSI was “a contingency plan that would be implemented in the event that
funding for the contras was cut off for any reason.” He believes that a draft presiden¬
tial finding was included. The plan, he said, didn’t mention the Boland amendment
per se, “but that is what was talked about in the office.. .Everybody was worried
The Enterprise and Other Fronts 253
about the Boland Amendment. It was going to cut off funds for the contras and we
would all be out of a job and how are we going to get around this thing.”
According to Golden and journalist Steven Emerson, the contra support plan
had three key components: (1) contra weapons were to be funnelled through in¬
flated sales of equipment to other countries, including Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil
and Argentina; (2) offshore bank accounts would be established; (3) Yellow Fruit
agents would assist in building airstrips in Costa Rica on John Hull’s ranch and other
sites.
Golden said he believes “implementation [of the plan] was attempted. At least
the mechanisms were being put in place to do that, because they started surveying
the airfield. I believe that [a bank account] was established or was in the process of
being established when I left there to support that operation.” Several weeks after
seeing the plan, Golden signed a dozen bank signature cards related to Yellow Fruit
projects. He assumed that the bank accounts were never established because of
BSFs demise, until CBS News contacted him regarding their report (first confirmed
by the Pentagon and later retracted) that he was a signator to a Credit Suisse ac¬
count along with Richard Secord and Oliver North. Golden verified he was a sig¬
nator to an account with a bank official.
According to news reports, $2.5 million was withdrawn from the account on
a single day in 1985; of that, $75,000 was reportedly used to charter the Danish
freighter Erria to deliver arms to the contras.^
The Enterprisers: Secord-Wilson Orbits

According to North, Casey recommended Secord “as the person to assist us
outside the government to comply [s/c] with the Boland proscriptions.” Secord, said
Casey, was “a person who had a background in covert operations, a man of in¬
tegrity, a West Point graduate...a man who...got things done, and who had been
poorly treated.”^
Air Force Major General Richard Secord was on the fast track in 1981 as deputy
assistant secretary of defense for the Near East, Africa and South Asia when he was
linked to Edwin Wilson, the ex-CIA operative later convicted of selling arms to Libya.
Secord was introduced to Wilson in 1974 by CIA officers Theodore Shackley and
Thomas Clines. At the time, Secord was an Air Force colonel serving as the
Pentagon’s desk officer for Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, then as executive assistant
to the head of the Defense Security Assistance Agency; Shackley was chief of the
CIA’s Far East division (before that he was head of the Western Hemisphere division);
and Clines was in the CIA’s International Communism branch.
Their paths had crisscrossed since the 1960s, when Secord was directing air
operations for the secret war in Laos and Shackley was CIA station chief and Clines
his deputy, first in Laos and then South Vietnam. Before going to Laos, Clines was
Wilson’s case officer in Special Operations. Wilson was assigned to the CIA’s Spe¬
cial Operations division in 1964, after CIA work as an undercover labor organizer
whose main job was to fight leftwing unions in Europe, Latin America and Vietnam;
at one point, he carried payoffs to Corsican mobsters hired by the CIA to oust com¬
munist dockworkers from the port at Marseilles, France.
Special Operations set Wilson up as head of a new CIA proprietary. Maritime
Consulting. As author Peter Maas explained, Wilson’s “job was to bring in cargoes
wherever the CIA wanted its participation untraceable.. .He sent incendiary, crowd-
dispersion and harassment devices to Chile, Brazil and Venezuela. Arms to the
Dominican Republic.. .Advanced communications gear to Morocco. Weapons of all
kinds to Angola. A whole range of high-tech electronics equipment to Iran. More
arms for a CIA-backed coup in Indonesia. Military parts and supplies to Taiwan and
the Philippines. Logistical support for the so-called secret war the CIA began to wage
in Laos. He also arranged for boats—flotillas of them, if required—such as the ones
used in continuing raids against Cuba.”®
Clines and Shackley served during the early 1960s as chief and deputy chief
of the Miami station, which under the code name JMAÂVE ran Operation Mon¬
goose against Cuba. Operation Mongoose included sabotage raids and plots to as¬
sassinate Fidel Castro employing Cuban exiles and Mafia gangsters. Among the
Mongoose saboteurs and would-be assassins were future contra operatives FeHx
Rodriguez, Luis Posada and Rafael “Chi Chi” Quintero.
Wilson added other business to the CIA assignments, making money for him¬
self and enhancing his cover. Wilson delivered; the CIA did minimal auditing. In
1971, Wilson left the CIA to join Task Force 157, a supersecret arm of the Office of
Naval Intelligence with a need for proprietaries. In 1976, Wilson’s contract was ter¬
minated and Task Force 157 was disbanded under a cloud of impropriety.
An ex-CIA operative named Frank Terpil interested Wilson in Libya. Terpil’s
sales company. Intercontinental Technology, had been purchased in 1975 by Stan¬
ford Technology Corporation, a California-based electronics and security firm
founded in 1974 by the Iranian-bom Albert Hakim to sell surveillance equipment
to the Shah. Terpil and Wilson used Stanford Technology as a base for Libyan trans¬
actions, at least through 1976, reportedly without Hakim’s knowledge.^
Hakim and Secord met in Teheran when Secord was chief of the Air Force
Military Assistance Group (1975-1978). According to the Iran-Contra Report, “CIA
files disclose that in August of 1976, CIA officer Ted Shackley tried to arrange for
Secord to assist Hakim in his efforts to obtain security contracts with the Iranian
government in return for Hakim providing intelligence for the CIA. Under Shackley’s
proposal, Clines was supposed to introduce Hakim to Secord. Shackley’s proposal
was rebuffed by a CIA official, in part because Hakim had taken advantage of the
Iranians by selling them ‘unneeded over sophisticated equipment at exorbitant
price[s]’...Hakim testified that Wilson introduced him to Clines and Shackley and
that Wilson set up this arrangement on the understanding that he, Wilson, would
receive a share of any profits made by Hakim.
By 1980, if not before, Hakim was a CIA asset. Secord said he gave Hakim’s
name “to the U.S. intelligence people for.. .vetting and possible use in the opera¬
tion to rescue the American hostages being held in Iran. He was contacted by the
intelligence people, was vetted, and did volunteer his services as did several
others.Hakim procured jeeps, vans and other vehicles. Major Oliver North, then
based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, reportedly led a secret group of Marines to
the mountains of eastern Turkey in April 1980 to back up the hostage rescue mis-
sion.^^ Secord served as deputy task force commander and air commander of a
second hostage rescue mission in April-November 1980 that was never carried out.
In 1976, Wilson contacted Rafael Quintero, a former colleague from Task Force
157, to arrange the assassination of a Qadaffi enemy. Before hearing the actual as¬
signment, Quintero checked Wilson out with Clines, who said Wilson “still pulled a
hundred percent.” Assuming the job “was an authorized hit,” Quintero recruited two
Cubans, Rafael and Raoul Villaverde.^^ They backed out after hearing more about
the Wilson-Terpil Libyan operation; as far as they were concerned, Qadaffi was in
the communist camp and they didn’t kill/or communists.
Clines and Shackley tried at first to shield Wilson as his Libyan activities came
under investigation, but in the end they couldn’t protect even their own careers
under George Bush’s successor as CIA director. Admiral Stansfield Turner. Shack¬
ley, who was widely expected to be appointed CIA director in a second Ford ad¬
ministration, was demoted from his post as associate deputy director of Operations
and made deputy head of the National Intelligence Tasking Center. Clines was
removed as head of the CIA’s Office of Training, but end-runned Turner to become
the CIA’s Pentagon liaison. In 1978, Clines made plans to quit the CIA and Wilson,
who had been lending Clines money for many years, helped him set up an oil-drill¬
ing equipment company. Clines brought in Quintero for whom he arranged a
$135,000 loan from Wilson. Clines also set up a security firm. Systems Services In¬
ternational. Shackley quit the CIA in 1979 and became a consultant to Clines’ com¬
panies, and later, Hakim’s Stanford Technology.As noted earlier, Somoza was one
of Clines’ security clients.
Secord stayed friendly with Wilson while serving as head of the Air Force In¬
ternational Programs Office (1978-1981), which directed all Air Force security assis¬
tance programs and foreign military sales. Wilson bought Secord out of a bad real
estate investment and gave him regular use of his private plane. In 1979, Wilson
loaned Clines $500,000 to set up a company to exploit the billions of dollars in arms
sales destined for Egypt after the Camp David accords. Clines reportedly had three
silent American partners: Secord, Shackley and Erich von Marbod, then deputy direc¬
tor of the Defense Security Assistance Agency.'^
Clines’ Egyptian American Transport Services Company (EATSCO) cashed in
on U.S. arms sales to Egypt, with von Marbod’s authorization. Clines cut off contact
with Wilson when his indictment became public in April 1980. In 1981, “as the press
coverage on Wilson intensified, Tom Clines suddenly appeared in the office of
Wilson’s Geneva lawyer, Edward Coughlin, to pay back the $500,000 that had been
advanced to him and three other unnamed ‘U.S. citizens,’ and to sever on paper any
business connection he had with Wilson.”’^ As the net tightened around Wilson, von
Marbod resigned abruptly from the Air Force in December 1981. EATSCO,
meanwhile, was investigated for massive abuse in billing the Pentagon. Secord was
removed from his Pentagon post as deputy assistant secretary of defense, pending
a polygraph test. But he was summarily reinstated by Deputy Secretary of Defense
Frank Carlucci, a former deputy director of the CIA.

In February 1982, Wilson prosecutor Larry Barcella was visited by Michael
Ledeen, then a State Department expert on terrorism. “Ledeen [said] that he had
heard disquieting rumors about an investigation of Shackley and von Marbod. Espe¬
cially von Marbod. He was a man of impeccable honor, practically his idol.. .Any
billing abuses that were being questioned might have gone for a covert operation.
Ledeen later became involved in the covert sale of U.S. arms to Iran, an operation
that some suspect was arranged by the Reagan transition team even before Reagan’s
inauguration (discussed in chapter 15). Erich von Marbod became a consultant for
Sears World Trade, a subsidiary of Sears Roebuck, that brokered aerospace technol¬
ogy, electronics, helicopters and other equipment for foreign customers. The presi¬
dent of Sears World Trade was Frank Carlucci, who would later replace Poindexter
as national security adviser and then succeed Weinberger as secretary of defense.
In June 1982, Barcella lured Wilson with ironic bait from his refuge in Tripoli
to the Dominican Republic, where he was put on a plane to the United States: Wil¬
liam Clark’s NSC, Wilson was told, “had decided to take up [his] recommendation
that he set up fronts to mount covert military actions against Communist guerrillas
in Central America.” Wilson’s briefcase was later “found to contain a comprehen¬
sive forty-page proposal for the covert Central American operation, featuring a 1,500-
man Special Mobile Arborne Reaction Force called SMARF.”^® After the Iran-contra
scandal broke, Wilson, then serving a 52-year sentence at the federal prison in
Marion, Illinois, told Newsweek, “If I wasn’t in jail. I’d have headed up this opera¬
tion.”’^
Clines claimed that the three unnamed American partners in EATSCO didn’t
really exist.^° On January l6, 1984, he pleaded guilty to EATSCO’s bilking the Pen¬
tagon of some $8 million. Under a plea-bargain, Clines paid a corporate fine of
$10,000 on behalf of his company. Systems Services International (part owner of
EATSCO), and was ordered to pay another $100,000 within 30 days to setde civil
claims.^’ The Iran-contra committees turned up a mysterious receipt, dated February
l6, 1984, for a $33,000 check payable to Clines from Secord. Secord associate Glenn
Robinette delivered the check to Clines’ bank. Secord claimed it was a loan, and
not a partner’s share of the $100,000 fine.
Athough Secord’s ties to Wilson and EATSCO never led to an indictment, his
reputation suffered and he retired from the Ar Force in May 1983. That was what
Casey meant when he said Secord was “poorly treated.” (The Justice Department
closed the conflict of interest and bribery investigation of Secord and Clines in
January 1986./^
Secord went into the international security business with Abert Hakim. He be¬
came president of the Stanford Technology Trading Group International, a Virginia-
based company owned 50/50 with Hakim. In July 1983, Secord also began working
for his old Pentagon office as a $242-a-day consultant.’’^ From January 1984 to August
1986, he was a member of the Special Operations Policy Advisory Group (SOPAG).
Air Central America

North enlisted Secord to help run the contra program in the summer of 1984.
It was not Secord’s first involvement with contra supply nor his first covert assign¬
ment since retiring from the Air Force. Secord reportedly managed a 1982 opera¬
tion in which Israel shipped weapons captured in the Lebanon invasion to a CIA
arms depot in San Antonio, Texas for shipm.ent to the contras.^^ In April 1984, Secord
was tapped to head a new antiterrorism task force established by a national security
directive signed by Reagan. The task force was responsible for helping to plan a
commando rescue mission to free hostages being held in Beirut.^^ A possibly related,
unexplained entry in North’s notebooks, dated April 27, 1984 reads: “Team to Israel
$54 million worth of arms...McFarlane talked to [Israeli official] can’t produce $;
similar to Secord arrangement; 65 lift vans; $750K.”^^
Sometime after meeting with North about the Nicaragua operation, Secord met
with Adolfo Calero in North’s office. At a follow-up meeting with Calero, Secord,
who was inexperienced in Latin America, brought along Rafael Quintero as an ad¬
viser. Quintero, said Secord, is “a man for whom I have a lot of respect.. .trust.” He
met Quintero years earlier through Tom Clines, “another very close associate.. .from
CIA days.”'"
By late 1984, the Enterprise had arranged the first of four contra arms deals
(through July 1985), totaling nearly $9 million plus a $2 million profit, financed by
the Saudi money in Calero’s account.'® During 1984 and 1985, the contras were also
supplied via Honduras with $2 million worth of rifles, grenades and ammunition
through R.M. Equipment, a firm led by Ronald Martin and retired Lt. Col. James
McCoy. McCoy was the last U.S. military attache during the Somoza regime and a
friend of Calero.'^ The first two Enterprise deals involved a Canadian arms dealer.
Transworld Armament. Then Tom Clines was brought in. Clines used Defex, a Por¬
tuguese arms dealer, to buy arms from Poland and Western Europe. Guatemala
provided false end-user certificates to mask the contra shipments. Quintero coor¬
dinated the arms deliveries and liaison with the contras in Central America.
To arrange air shipment for the arms, the Enterprise hired retired Air Force Lt.
Col. Richard Gadd, former liaison between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Special
Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Gadd retired in fall 1982 to set
up a private air transport system available for clandestine U.S. government opera¬
tions including Nicaragua. He was contracted by the Special Operations Division,
which was used, along with the Army’s Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), t6 aid
the contras both before and after the Boland cutoff. (See chapter 7.) Gadd provided
on-demand transport service to Yellow Fruit, ISA and Seaspray, including opera¬
tions such as the Queens Hunter reconnaissance project.^
Gadd set up several interlinked proprietaries: Eagle Aviation Services and Tech¬
nology (EAST), American National Management Corporation (ANMC), AIRMACH
and a short-lived company called Sumairco that flew logistical operations for the
Grenada invasion. ANMC and EAST received millions of dollars in government air
transport contracts, including a December 1983 contract from the Special Opera-
tions Command to “provide air logistics services in the Caribbean”; a February 1984
contract from a Special Forces unit to “plan and provide special services to transport
personnel and special equipment during training exercises” and “plan special
mobilization procedures for rapid response low visibility operations”; and a 1984
contract to provide transportation and logistical support for the Army Delta Force
during the Los Angeles Olympics. Gadd was also contracted to keep flight crews
and three types of aircraft available for sensitive short-notice missions, including the
Lockheed Hercules L-lOO, a large cargo plane that can land on short runways
In the clandestine world of air transit, Gadd worked closely with the CIA-spon-
sored Southern Air Transport. Southern Air is a spinoff of Air America, the best
known of the CIA airlines that secretly supported wars from China, Burma and Tibet
to the Bay of Pigs and the Dominican Republic to Indonesia, Laos and Vietnam. Air
America’s motto was “Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.” As Air America chronicler
Christopher Robbins put it: “Its civilian status allowed it to operate without the
bureaucracy and red tape that surrounded the military, cross international borders
with a minimum of fuss, and break the rules whenever a mission demanded it.”^^
In the early days, before its workforce grew into the thousands. Air America
relied on Air Force pilots. The pilots would “disappear from the military in a com¬
plex process known as ‘sheep-dipping’ after seeming to go through all the legal and
official motions of resigning from the services. The pilot’s records would be pulled
from the Air Force personnel files and transferred to a special AF intelligence
file...The man would become, to all outward appearances, a civilian. At the same
time his ghostly paper existence within the intelligence file would continue to pur¬
sue his Air Force career: When his contemporaries were promoted, he would be
promoted, and so on.”^^ Whether or not Lt. Col. Richard Gadd actually had a clandes¬
tine file still with the Air Force, he was following the path of sheep-dipped person¬
nel who had gone before him into “civilian” covert operations.
Southern Air Transport was a small Miami-based company when the CIA
bought it in I960 and transformed it into its Caribbean and Latin American air arm.
Another proprietary. Intermountain Aviation, was formed in 1961 to provide spe¬
cialized support for guerrilla operations. Intermountain was used in 1965 to secret¬
ly violate Washington’s stated embargo policy and sell B-26 bombers to Portugal for
use against independence movements in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau.^
Like the Enterprise would later, the CIA’s proprietary network turned a profit-
padded by hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with the U.S. Air Force and
AID. The CIA general counsel had ruled in 1958 that “income of proprietaries, in¬
cluding profits, need not be considered miscellaneous receipts to be covered into
the Treasury but may be used for proper corporate or company purposes.” Critics
warned about a “back door” process where “profits were being used to provide
secret funding for covert operations.
The CIA air empire was franchised in the 1970s as it came under increasing
scrutiny. Southern Air was sold on December 31, 1973 to the man who had fronted
for the CIA as nominal company owner. The current chairman of Southern Air is
James Bastian, the longtime attorney for Air America. Intermountain’s assets were
eventually acquired by the Oregon-based Evergreen Helicopters in March 1975. A
former Intermountain officer managed the Investair Leasing Corporation whose

plane was used in the 1983 bombing of the Managua airport.^
Southern Air flew military supplies to the contras when the CIA was still offi¬
cially running the operation. In 1985, Gadd arranged for Southern Air to transport
the Enterprise arms shipments from Portugal to Central America. Gadd and Southern
Air established Amalgamated Commercial Enterprises (ACE), a front company
registered in Panama, to hold title to aircraft acquired by the Enterprise and serviced
by Southern Air.
Aircraft were among the “big-ticket” items that “private benefactors” were
asked to pay for. On June 18, 1985, for example, Reagan “Kitchen Cabinet” mem¬
ber Joseph Coors met with Casey in the Old Executive Office Building to ask him
how he could help the contras. Casey told Coors he couldn’t answer, but arranged
an immediate meeting with North. North told Coors that the contras needed a Maule
aircraft, costing $65,000, and gave him the Lake Resources account number at Credit
Suisse. Later, North showed Coors a picture of the plane said to be bought with
Coors’ money.^^
In May 1986, Secord felt the airlift operation was not functioning well, espe¬
cially on the southern front. Gadd was phased out and replaced as operational
manager by Air Force Colonel Robert Dutton. Dutton, another heir to the sheep¬
dipping tradition, began working for Secord right after his retirement on May 1,1986
as assistant director of the Air Force Office of Special Plans. Dutton brought twen¬
ty years experience in Air Force special operations to the Enterprise. He had served
under Secord in the Air Force Military Assistance Group in Iran and in the second
Iran hostage rescue mission.
Dutton later told the Iran-contra committees that based upon his past ex¬
perience with special operations, he assumed the Nicaragua operation was
authorized by the president. He didn’t see how they could have done what they did
without presidential authority. When Dutton insisted that the Nicaragua operation
was like other government-run operations he had participated in, chief Senate Coun¬
sel Arthur Liman asked him to acknowledge that the others didn’t involve private
people. Dutton rightly replied that the others did involve private people. Pressed,
he would only say that the others may not have involved private individuals to the
extent this one did.^®
The others may not have used “private” personnel as extensively because (with
the exception of the Clark amendment for Angola) they weren’t operating under a
Boland-type prohibition. In any case, virtually all the key “private” people were os¬
tensibly retired military and CIA officers such as Secord, Dutton, Gadd, Clines,
Quintero, Rodriguez and Singlaub, or CIA agents and assets like Hull and Hakim.
In a case about which less is known, one of Casey’s two special assistants, Ben
Wickham Jr., reportedly told associates in early 1985 that he was resigning to raise
money for the private network supervised by North. Wickham served as CIA sta¬
tion chief in Nicaragua from 1982 to 1984. In 1987, he was reported back at work
at the CIA.^^
Just Say Uncle

A mere six months after the Boland cutoff, Congress reenlisted in the war on
Nicaragua under the fraudulent banner of “humanitarian aid.” The administration’s
propaganda-lobby operation paid off, with dividends to the Enterprise.
North told Poindexter in January 1985 that “with adequate support the resis¬
tance could be in Managua by the end of 1985.”^° Psychological warfare escalated
as the administration requested $14 million in new military aid for the contras who
Reagan called “our brothers.
Meanwhile, Washington tightened the economic vise on Nicaragua. Secretary
Shultz sent the president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) a January
30 letter warning that the United States might curtail contributions to the bank if it
looked favorably upon a proposed $58 million agricultural loan to provide credits
to small and medium-sized farmers in Nicaragua. Acknowledging that the loan
“would be used to support and expand the production of coffee, cotton, grain, sugar
and other crops,” Shultz wrote IDB President Antonio Ortiz Mena: “As you are aware,
money is fungible; monies received from the Bank would relieve financial pressures
on the GON [Government of Nicaragua] and free up other monies that could be
used to help consolidate the Marxist regime and finance Nicaragua’s aggression
against its neighbors.”
An IDB official said, “we read” Shultz’s letter “as a threat...Even during the
time of Allende [when Washington blockaded Chile economically], there was never
such a communication from the secretary of state.” Dropping the pretense that U.S.
opposition to the Nicaragua loan was based on non-political economic criteria as
stipulated in the IDB charter, a U.S. official said that it “shouldn’t come as a great
surprise to anybody that we favor loans to friendly countries and discourage them
to unfriendly countries.Nicaraguan farmers lost out as Washington blocked the
IDB loan.
In a February 21 news conference, Reagan acknowledged that his objective
was to “remove” the Sandinista government “in the sense of its present structure, in
which it is a Communist totalitarian state and it is not a Government chosen by the
people—^so you wonder sometimes about those who make such claims as to its
legitimacy.” Asked if that was not advocating overthrow, Reagan dissembled: “Not
if the present Government would turn around and say—all right—if they’d say uncle,
or all right, and [say to the “freedom fighters”] come back into the revolutionary
Government and let’s straighten this out and institute the goals”—^the goals the San-
dinistas supposedly betrayed.
Some reporters helped Reagan maintain the illusion that “remove” did not
mean overthrow. Said Connie Chung of NBC News, “Reagan wants to remove the
Sandinistas in Nicaragua, not oust them.”'*'* Business Week, on the other hand, ac¬
knowledged that Reagan had “stripped the camouflage from U.S. support” for the
contras and called on Congress to reject renewed aid “as equivalent to a declara¬
tion of war against Nicaragua.
The day after Reagan’s remarks about removing the Nicaraguan government,
Shultz told the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco: “Those who would cut off
these freedom fighters from the rest of the democratic world are, in effect, consign¬
ing Nicaragua to the endless darkness of Communist tyranny. And they are leading
the United States down a path of greater danger.. .We may find later, when we can
no longer avoid acting, that the stakes will be higher and the costs greater.” A senior
State Department official (perhaps Shultz himself speaking on background)
remarked, “He is saying that the United States should follow a middle ground be¬
tween passivity and invasion, and this can be done by aiding the contras.
General Paul Gorman, the retiring head of the Southern Command (May 1983
to February 1985), claimed before the Senate Armed Services Committee that Central
American countries, while publicly calling for diplomatic measures, had unofficial¬
ly said the Nicaraguan government “must change” and “if that means they must be
removed, then so be it.” Yet Gorman acknowledged, “I don’t see any immediate
prospect that these guys in blue [camouflage] suits in the hills are going to march
into Managua. It seems to me that the whole resistance movement has got another
year or more of slogging to go before that were ever in prospect.
Reagan’s rhetoric reached new heights on March 1. He said the contras “are
the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the
French Resistance.”
Later that month, reporter Joel Brinkley spelled out administration intentions
on the front page of the New York Times. Renewed aid to the contras would bring
additional measures such as trade sanctions, economic boycotts and reduced
diplomatic relations. Moreover, administration officials were making a point of tell¬
ing members of Congress that the first Boland amendment had expired and, with
renewal of aid, there would be no legal prohibition to seeking the overthrow of the
A senior intelligence official said the White House “is bent on overthrowing
them” and “that’s why they’re making such a point of saying they are not constrained
by law.” Another senior administration official was more coy: “The President has
spoken on this very clearly, but I wouldn’t say a military overthrow is the best pos¬
sible way of changing the Government. It would be better if Daniel Ortega packed
his bags and moved to Havana.”
Apparently unworried that Congress might start behaving less willingly gul¬
lible, a senior State Department official “said the idea that the rebels had been armed
and equipped initially so they could intercept arms shipments was ludicrous.” As
for the current rationale of “pressuring” the Sandinistas to negotiate, administration
officials explained that “the ultimate aim of the pressure, and the only acceptable
outcome in Nicaragua, is a change of Government in Managua.” The “only Con-
tadora agreement that would be acceptable in Washington...is one in which the
Sandinista Government renounced its Marxist ideals, invalidated the recent elections
and turned the country into a ‘pluralistic democracy’ with leaders acceptable to the
Reagan Administration.” Officials expressed a next best hope that the “pressure,”
with the war’s rising economic and political costs, would cause the Nicaraguan
government to “disintegrate.
Trojan Horses
North and Donald Fortier, the NSC director of political-military affairs, wrote a
secret March 22 memorandum to McFarlane with the inter-agency/private auxiliary
plan for winning the requested $14 million in military aid. A sample of items on the
lengthy, confidential “Clironological Event Checklist” illustrates the scope of the
propaganda-lobby effort;
•Assign U.S. intelligence agencies to research, report, and clear for public release San-
dinista military actions violating Geneva Convention/civilized standards of warfare.
Responsibility: NSC (North, Raymond).
•Nicaraguan internal opposition and resistance announce unity on goals and prin¬
cipals b/d (March 2, San Jose) (completed). Responsibility; State/LPD (Miller), NSC
(North).
•Request that Zbigniew Brzezinski write a geopolitical paper which points out
geopolitical consequences of Communist domination of Nicaragua (paper due March
20). Responsibility: NSC (Menges).
•Brief presidential meeting with Lew Lehrman and other leaders of the influence
groups working on MX and resistance funding. Responsibility: NSC (Raymond,
North).
•Brief OAS members in Washington and abroad on second term goals in Central
America. Explore possible OAS action against Nicaragua. Responsibility: OAS (Mid-
dendorO, NSC (Menges), State/LPD (Reich).
•Prepare a “Dear Colleagues” [letter] for signature by a responsible Democrat which

counsels against “negotiating” with the FSLN. Responsibility: NSC (Lehman).
•Results due on public opinion survey to see what turns Americans against Sandinis-
tas (March 20). Responsibility: NSC (Hinckley).
•Joachim Maitre [currently dean of the Boston University College of Communica¬

tions]—Congressional meetings, speeches, and op-ed pieces. Responsibility:
State/LPD (Kuykendall).
•Prepare document on Nicaraguan narcotics involvement. Responsibility: Justice (Mul¬

len).
•VP [Vice President Bush] in Honduras; meeting with Pres Suazo (March 16). Respon¬
sibility: VP (Hughes).
•Production and distribution of La Prensa chronology of FSLN harassment. Respon¬

sibility: State/LPD (Reich).
•Pedro Juaquin [5?cl Chamorro (Editor La Prensa) U.S. media/speaking tour (March
25-April 3). Responsibility; State/LPD (Miller/Gomez).
•Request Bernard Nietschmann to update prior paper on suppression of Indians by

FSLN (to be published and distributed by April 1). Responsibility; State/LPD (Black¬
en).
•25 Central American spokesmen arrive in Miami for briefing before departing to visit
Congressional districts. Along with national television commercial campaign in 45

media markets. Responsibility: CFA [Citizens for America] (AbramofO.
•Targeted telephone campaign begins in 120 Congressional districts...Responsibility:

CFA (AbramofO.
•Nicaraguan Refugee Fund (NRF) dinner, Washington, DC; President as Guest Of

Honor (April 15). Responsibility: State/LPD (Miller), NSC (Raymond).
•AAA [Calero, Cruz, Robelo] available to Washington press. Responsibility: State/LPD

(Gomez).
North and Fortier informed McFarlane of “military operations and political ac¬
tion... timed to influence the vote,” including “special operations against highly
visible military targets in Nicaragua” and “various efforts designed to support sig¬
nificantly increased military operations immediately after the vote.”
On the Spitz Channell front, North and Fortier told McFarlane: “Next week the
networks auction their air time for 15, 30, and 60 second commercials during prime
viewing hours...[U.S. interest groups are prepared to] commit nearly $2M for com¬
mercial air time and the production of various advertising media.
In early April, with the congressional votes still lacking to win a straight-out
vote on military aid, the administration concocted a peace plan ploy, following up
on the contra ultimatum issued in San Jose. “Humanitarian” aid would go to the
contras during a 60-day ceasefire period. If at the end of 60 days (June 1), the
Nicaraguan government had not reached a peace settlement with the contras, the
assistance would revert to military aid. Nicaragua rightly called the proposal a “public
relations” maneuver. Less diplomatically. House Speaker Tip O’Neill called it a “dirty
trick. The administration claimed Latin American support for the plan, but that too
was trickery. Colombian President Belisario Betancur explained that when he called
the proposal for a ceasefire and negotiations a positive step, he wasn’t informed it
was linked to the renewal of contra funding, which he and other Contadora leaders
opposed. Betancur said the contra aid linkage made it “no longer a peace proposal,
but a preparation for war.”^’
Meanwhile, the administration was secretly sabotaging actual peace talks be¬
tween Miskito leader Brooklyn Rivera and the Nicaraguan government. As North
later wrote in a secret May 31 memo to McFarlane, “After nearly two months of care¬
ful coordination with Rivera, he agreed on Saturday to break-off his discussions with
the Sandinistas and announced the end of the Indian/FSLN dialogue from Bogota.
Congress was essentially told to go along with Reagan on contra funding, or
the administration would go around Congress. As Reagan put it, “We’re not going
to quit and walk away from them, no matter what happens.”
North wrote up a “Fallback Plan for the Nicaraguan Resistance.” He told Mc¬
Farlane in March 1985, “Secrecy for the plan is paramount.” It required that “present
donors [chiefly Saudi Arabia] continue their relationship with the resistance beyond
the current funding figure...The current funding relationship...is sufficient to pur¬
chase arms and munitions between now and October—if additional monies are
provided for non-military supplies (e.g. food, clothing, medical items, etc.).”
The fail-back plan envisioned the administration bypassing Congress with a
presidential appeal to the public for “humanitarian” aid: “Send your check or money
order to the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters, Box 1776, Gettysburg, PA.” McFarlane
rejected the presidential speech idea, but he approved the already-initiated creation
of a tax-exempt “Nicaraguan Freedom Fund, Inc.”” The Nicaraguan Freedom Fund
was subsequently launched by the Washington Times and endorsed by Reagan
(described in chapter 10).
Casey met with McFarlane on March 22 and, according to a CIA record of the
meeting, “expressed some concern, based on his conversation with Poindexter ear¬
lier in the day, that the Administration was going to be content to seek authoriza¬
tion for non-lethal aid to the contras, relying on third countries to supply either arms
or funds for arms.” Casey worried that continuing this way would leave Congress
“off the hook” and congressional opponents would attempt to discover and punish
third countries supporting the contras. McFarlane “noted that was a good point and
he felt that rather than have another meeting on this subject he would take the issue
to the President and let him decide.”” The president apparently decided to go with
public “humanitarian” aid and secret arms funding. Later that year. Congress allowed
third-country support for “humanitarian” aid.
Word leaked in mid April that the administration had sent congressional ap¬
propriations committees a top secret document revealing plans to expand the con¬
tra force to put more “pressure” on Nicaragua. This was presented as the only
alternative to an expensive “containment” strategy which could raise the cost of U.S.
military and economic aid programs in Central America from $1.2 billion to $4-5 bil¬
lion a year (administration figures). The document said the administration had, for
the present, ruled out “direct application of U.S. military force,” but warned that this
course “must realistically be recognized as an eventual option, given our stakes in
the region, if other policy alternatives fail.””
Leading Democratic supporters of contra aid, such as Senator Sam Nunn (D-
GA) and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Dante Fascell (D-FL), promoted
the plan to launder contra funds through a “humanitarian” aid account.” Amid this
congressional brokering, the New York Times illustrated how “humanitarian assis¬
tance can indirectly support guerrilla fighters” with an account of a $7.5 million AID
program approved by Congress in June 1984 to provide medical and food aid for
Miskito refugees in Honduras near the contra base camp at Rus Rus, as well as road
building and other construction.” Auxiliary groups like Friends of the Americas were
also active in the area.
Representatives Barnes and Hamilton proposed an alternative aid package,
with $10 million for Nicaraguan refugees to be distributed through the Internation¬
al Red Cross or UN High Commissioner for Refugees and $4 million to defray
peacekeeping costs in the event of a successful Contadora peace plan. Reagan at¬
tacked the aid proposal in his April 20 radio address as a “shameful surrender” that
would “hasten the consolidation of Nicaragua as a Communist-terrorist arsenal.””
On April 23, the Senate approved $14 million in military and paramilitary aid
linked to a non-binding Reagan pledge to use the funds for non-military purposes;
the House voted it down. The next day, the House voted down other aid alterna¬
tives as liberals and conservatives unexpectedly combined to kill the Bames-Hamil-
ton compromise. As William LeoGrande observed: “The press headlined the votes
as a total defeat for Reagan’s Nicaragua policy because all the aid proposals had
failed. In fact, the votes indicated that the administration’s position was stronger
than anyone had anticipated.”^^
Red Herring
The House votes left a vacuum, not a policy decision. A group led by conser¬
vative Democrat Dave McCurdy of Oklahoma began meeting to draft a new bill.
Opportunity quickly knocked in the form of Ortega’s trip to Moscow. Ortega had
traveled to Moscow before so the Nicaraguans were shocked by the unprecedented
outcry in the United States. Nicaragua’s ambassador to the United States, Carlos Tun-
nermann, recalled how the trip was presented as “a mortal sin. President Ortega,
the foreign minister, myself and others have explained to dozens of congresspeople
what produced the trip.. .how it wasn’t scheduled [to coincide with the vote].. .The
trip was not exclusively to Moscow. It encompassed five socialist countries and
seven Western European countries. It was a trip that could not have been changed
simply because of a congressional vote. It was vital to us because we had a shortage
of oil.”^ Nicaragua could no longer count on Mexico to supply oil and it was an¬
ticipating U.S. sanctions that would require immediate alternative outlets for
Nicaraguan imports and exports.
U.S. politicians and commentators screamed insult and outrage over the “Mos¬
cow trip” and pretended that if Ortega hadn’t taken such an “ill-timed” trip the House
“No” votes on contra aid would have stood.
On May 1, Reagan cited the trip as one reason for declaring a “national emer¬
gency” because of Nicaragua’s “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national
security and foreign policy of the United States” and slapping Nicaragua with the
economic embargo that had been waiting in the wings. Although the embargo hurt
Nicaragua economically and “disrupted a natural trading partner relationship,”
Alejandro Martinez Cuenca, the minister of foreign trade and commerce, believes it
backfired against the United States. No country joined in the embargo, it was con¬
demned in international forums and Nicaragua was able to shift its primary export
market to Western Europe and build upon its policy of diversifying international
economic relations—a policy of “not putting all your eggs in one single basket.
The embargo had wide support in Congress. Neoliberal Rep. Stephen Solarz
(D-NY) called it “an appropriate approach” and opportunistically equated Nicaragua
with South Africa. “I don’t see how you can support sanctions against Nicaragua
and not against South Africa,” said Solarz. “In both instances, you have Governments
deeply committed to policies we are opposed to. In South Africa it is apartheid and
in Nicaragua it is repression at home and revolution abroad.”
“There’s a movement on our side to accommodate the lust members feel to
strike out against Communism,” said Rep. Bill Alexander (D-AR), the chief deputy
whip.^^ Shultz played to the mix of anti-communist lust and fear of “another Viet-
nam,” claiming on May 23 that without contra aid “we will be faced with an agoniz¬
ing choice about the use of American combat troops.
Brinkmanship
The option of U.S. combat troops was the subject of two New York Times ar¬
ticles in early June: “U.S. Military Is Termed Prepared for Any Move Against
Nicaragua” and “An Invasion Is Openly Discussed.” The first stage of the U.S. military
buildup in Central America had been completed with “a vigorous tempo of war
games, construction of staging areas and listening posts, the creation of an elaborate
intelligence network and a major effort to fortify allied armies”; the Southern Com¬
mand had even stored 100 percent of its estimated oil requirements. As part of a
continuing effort to draw Costa Rica deeper into the war. Green Berets were train¬
ing the Costa Rican civil guard in counterinsurgency skills at a new camp near the
Nicaraguan border.
Talk of the invasion option had “become commonplace in official circles,” the
New York T/mcs reported. The apparent consensus was that the United States “could
quickly and easily rout the Sandinistas.” As one intelligence official put it, an in¬
vasion of Nicaragua was undesirable “from a propaganda point of view” but, if
necessary, it would be “like falling off a log.”
Intelligence sources said “major Nicaraguan installations are lightly defended...
With minimal risk, American pilots could destroy the small Nicaraguan Air Force,
radar, artillery, tanks, supply depots and conimand centers.” Colonel William Comee
Jr., then Southcom director of operations and later commander of the Joint Task
Force in Honduras, reportedly estimated “it would take the United States two weeks
to gain control of 60 percent of the Nicaraguan population.”
In the most likely scenario, the United States would install a contra govern¬
ment and army. “The Sandinistas would be up in the hills, but that would be a
problem for the new Nicaraguan government,” explained one U.S. officer. “It
wouldn’t be our problem. We’d probably have a program like El Salvador, advisers
and assistance, but no Americans involved in the fighting.” The officer downplayed
the threat of prolonged guerrilla war, asserting that the Sandinistas have “lost the
support of people in the mountains. They’ll get their heads chopped off up there.
Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, said he thought the United States would break diplomatic relations with
Nicaragua, “But I don’t know how soon...We might recognize a government in
exile.” With “a second Cuba,” he said, “we might be invited” by Nicaragua’s neigh¬
bors to invade “as we were invited in the East Caribbean” to invade Grenada.^
Contrary to the impression left by the Times articles, there was no consensus
behind the “falling off a log” rhetoric. The administration had, as suspected, secret¬
ly studied what it would take to invade Nicaragua. As was reported a year later,
however, the Joint Chiefs urged caution, “arguing that it would take 125,000 U.S.
troops and that casualties would number between 3,000 and 4,000 in the first few
days—and sharply questioning whether American public opinion would back such
an effort.” Unlike Grenada, Nicaragua would not be a “quick hit victory.” The ad¬
ministration remained divided over the invasion option.^^
One 1984 study, drawing on scenarios developed by military analysts and con¬
sultants, estimated that after more than four months of “relatively high intensity war¬
fare” an occupation force of U.S. and CONDECA troops would be needed to confront
sabotage and insurgency for the remainder of a five-year period. Assuming “per¬
haps unrealistically, that the opposition to the American occupation diminishes
dramatically over time, and that the internal resistance is effectively prevented from
receiving support from outside the country” and that contra and CONDECA troops
“carry the burden of pacification” after the initial occupation, U.S. casualties would
total “between 2,392 and 4,783 dead with 9,300 to 18,600 wounded.” Nicaraguan
casualties would be far higher. The total economic cost to the United States would
be nearly $10.7 billion, including equipment losses, operating costs and economic
assistance.
While some officials were cautious, others were itching for an opportunity to
invade. “There were these guys in the White House who were just dying for an ex¬
cuse to send in the 82nd Airborne,” said a former senior official. “The line they had
was that with 125,000 troops and 4,000 to 5,000 casualties, we could occupy the
country in four to six weeks.
In a 1984 dinner discussion with reporters, McFarlane had “railed against the
Pentagon’s unwillingness to use power in Central America. They want the weapons,
he declared in substance, ‘but they don’t want to use them.’ ” For example, Mc¬
Farlane and other officials from various departments had urged a naval blockade of
Nicaragua, a subject of constant study since early in the administration. But the Pen¬
tagon brass consistently argued that a blockade would tie down too many assets
needed elsewhere. In the words of former Army Chief of Staff General Edward
Meyer, “The civilians in the State Department have always been more willing to
employ force than the military. Military men know that once a war starts it’s hard
to stop. They are not sure that the civilians who ordered it are going to be around
when the chips are picked up.”
According to past and present policymakers, “the Reagan administration has
been on the brink of war [i.e. direct invasion] in Central America from its first year
in office.. .They say the question of whether U.S. combat troops will be sent remains
to be settled.
“Humanitarian” Aid
On June 12, 1985, the House reinvigorated the war on Nicaragua by approv¬
ing $27 million in “humanitarian” aid. The Senate had approved $38 million on June
7. Ortega’s trip to Moscow became the convenient excuse for the pro-contra com¬
promise promised weeks in advance. “Ortega’s visit was a red herring,” Rep. Mc¬
Curdy acknowledged. “I’m trying to go to Moscow in October myself.
By 1985, the Reaganaut propaganda-lobby operation had succeeded in

demonizing Nicaragua to the extent that even most policy critics mouthed the
administration’s deluded rhetoric. Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR) chided his col¬
leagues, “In the debate in April we had a hate-in—everybody said, ‘I hate the San-
dinistas more than you do; I just hate them differentiy.’
Six weeks before Congress voted to renew aid to the contras, Newsweek ran
a gruesome series of photos titled “Execution in the Jungle”; “The victim dug his
own grave, scooping the dirt out with his hands...He crossed himself. Then a con¬
tra executioner knelt and rammed a k-bar knife into his throat. A second enforcer
stabbed at his jugular, then his abdomen. When the corpse was finally still, the con¬
tras threw dirt over the shallow grave—and walked away.” The photos were taken
by Frank Wohl, a conservative student sympathizer traveling with the contras
House Speaker Tip O’Neill advised Reagan to look at the Newsweek
photographs if he wanted a good reason to vote against contra aid. “I saw that pic¬
ture,” Reagan replied, “and I’m told that after it was taken, the so-called victim got
up and walked away.”^^
The “Execution in the Jungle” fit the continued pattern of contra terror. Public¬
ly, the administration covered up the contra trail of blood, but internal documents
acknowledged the human rights problem, as illustrated by a secret briefing paper
for Elliott Abrams to use for the September 1985 chiefs of mission conference at¬
tended by key U.S. officials involved in Central America: “The armed Nicaraguan
resistance is a potent force but still a long way from success. Public support is grow¬
ing but is still tenuous. They must understand the absolute necessity of fighting a
‘clean’ war.”^^ Considering the training provided in the CIA contra manual, for ex¬
ample, it’s no wonder the contras didn’t fight a “clean” war.
The Boland prohibition against using funds to support military or paramilitary
activities in Nicaragua remained in effect through October 18, 1986, when the $100
million aid legislation supplanted it. Funds of $27 million were authorized only for
“humanitarian” aid: “food, clothing, medicine and other humanitarian assistance,
and it does not include the provision of weapons, weapons systems, ammunition,
or other equipment, vehicles or material which can be used to inflict serious bodi¬
ly hann or death.” There was also a loophole allowing the exchange of intelligence
information with the contras
“Humanitarian” aid was Orwellian double-speak and everyone knew it. In
the words of Congressional Quarterly, “It was difficult for members to oppose some¬
thing labeled ‘humanitarian’ aid for the contras, even though everyone understood
that the money would be used to keep a military force fighting in the field.
In adopting the humanitarian aid label, the U.S. government debased a term
well established in international law and practice. Eleven nongovernmental volun¬
tary organizations, including Lutheran World Relief, American Friends Service Com¬
mittee and OxFam America, issued a statement explaining that under the Geneva
Conventions combatants have no claim to “humanitarian” aid. Governmental or non¬
governmental providers of genuine humanitarian assistance must be recognized as
neutral parties to the conflict. Humanitarian aid must be offered impartially and
provided strictly to noncombatants on the basis of need. Providing “humanitarian
assistance to a military force is a contradiction in terms.

On August 29, 1985, President Reagan signed an executive order creating the
Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office (NHAO) for the purpose of disbursing
the $27 million to UNO. Ambassador Robert Du ending was named director. Abrams
was responsible for day to day policy guidance. After a conversation with North in
September, Duemling wrote in his notes: “War costs $2 mil/mo. North thinks that
$1.25 mil. can come from NHAO.”^^
In October, UNO leaders Calero, Cruz and Robelo signed a letter to Duem¬
ling requesting that he retain Robert Owen’s Institute for Democracy, Education and
Assistance (IDEA). IDEA was a nonprofit front group established by Owen in January
1985. Duemling agreed to the Owen contract in November after additional pressure
from North. The IDEA-NHAO contract for $50,675 stipulated that “Owen shall not
during the term of this Grant perform any service which is related to the acquisi¬
tion, transportation, repair, storage or use of weapons, weapons systems, ammuni¬
tion or other equipment, vehicles or material which can be used to inflict serious
bodily harm or death. Owen not only facilitated lethal aid for the contras during
this period, he did so employing NHAO planes at North’s direction. Duemling him¬
self acknowledged twice ordering planes to shuttle weapons in “mixed loads” for
the contras in early 1986 at the direction of Elliott Abrams.®^
Enterprise airlift operative Richard Gadd also enjoyed NHAO largesse. His AIR-
MACH corporation received at least $487,000 in classified NHAO contracts to deliver
“nonlethal” aid after the reported intervention of Abrams.®^ AIRMACH subcontracted
with Southern Air Transport to deliver “humanitarian” Supplies to Ilopango Air Base
in El Salvador where the planes were reloaded with arms and ammunition for drops
to the contras before returning to the United States.
A June 1986 GAO report revealed that millions of dollars in “humanitarian”
aid had been traced to offshore bank accounts (e.g. Cayman Islands, Bahamas) and
to the Honduran Armed Forces, raising questions about illegal diversion of funds
and payoffs.®^ Later that month, several alienated contra military officers described
corruption among the top contra leaders. “They have clean boots and dirty hands,”
was a common complaint.
“I think the entire leadership is corrupt,” said Gerardo “Chaco” Martinez, former
commander of the Jeane Kirkpatrick Task Force. Former task force commander
Marion “Gordon” Blandon said he was carried on the contra payroll at $400 a month
for two years during which he wasn’t paid. A fonner contra intelligence officer, Al¬
berto Suhr, recalled seeing a receipt for 5,000 rifles at $600 a piece; the rifles were
actually purchased for $l60 each. He described other methods of fraud, such as bill¬
ing for higher-cost grades of rice, beans and com, while actually buying lower-cost
grades. Currency exchange was another profit maker. As Suhr explained it, dollars
were changed to Honduran lempiras'BX the black market rate (then about 2.60-2.65
to the dollar) while accounting was done at the official rate (then about 2 to the
dollar) at which Washington was billed for supplies, creating a 30 percent profit on
each transaction—amounting to nearly $1 million graft for every $3 million in U.S.
aid.®"
The GAO reported that as of September 4, 1986, NHAO disbursed $26.8 mil-
lion. According to receipts, about $9.8 million was paid to U.S. suppliers and $17
million was spent in Central America. The GAO could not verify the bulk of the ex¬
penditures. Regarding payments to Central American brokers, it found, for example,
that “of the total amount of about $3 million deposited to one broker account as of
May 10, 1986, only $150,000 could be traced to Central America, none of which was
paid to suppliers shown on the invoices and receipts received by NHAO. Instead,
most of the funds were transferred from the account to other bank accounts in the
United States and other countries. Thus, from the broker’s bank records, we could
not determine whether the funds reached the intended suppliers in the region.” The
GAO confirmed that “currency was exchanged at rates higher than the in-country
official exchange rate—ûp to 31 percent higher.”®^
Among the known “humanitarian” expenses were color televisions, volleyball
uniforms and living room sets.®^
Enterprise liftoff
On April 1, 1985, Owen wrote a memo to North (alias “The Hammer”) filling
him in on discussions concerning the development of a new southern front. Owen
described a meeting arranged by Arturo Cruz Jr. with contra leaders Leonel Poveda,
Guillermo Mendieta and Alejandro Martinez: “They say they represent El Negro
Chamorro’s camp, which now consists of some 43 men under the command of Jose
Robelo (Chepon), and another camp which is under the command of the Cubans
and Calero’s people.” They would be a southern front alternative to Eden Pastora.
Owen reported that “some of Pastora’s field commanders are ready to join any side
which will provide them with food and medicines. They have not been resupplied
in at least 8 months.”
In an April 9 update to the memo, Owen added, “Sparkplug [Calero] has
decided to go with El Negro Chamorro as the military commander of the South.
There will be a political/military council which will have supervisory capacity over
Chamorro,” made up of Chamorro, Donald Lacayo, Indalacio Pastora, Picasso, “who
is married to Calero’s wife’s sister,” Poveda and possibly others.
“The concern about Chamorro,” continued Owen, “is that he drinks a fair
amount and may surround himself with people who are in the war not only to fight,
but to make money. People who are questionable because of past indiscrestions
[sic] include: Jose Robelo (Chepon): potential involvement with drug running and
the sales of goods provided by USG [U.S. government]. Carlos Coronel: Talks with
all sides, potentially too much with the Sandinistas and is making $ on the side.
Leonel Poveda: Rumored to have been involved with the sale of goods and pock¬
eting certain ‘commissions.’ Sebastian Gonzalez (Wachan): Now involved in drug
running out of Panama...
“Whatever structure is established for the South, tight control must be kept on
the money and resources. In the past it has been too easy to sell goods and too
many people have learned how to make a good living off the war.”®^
On July 1, North, Calero, Bermudez, Secord, Clines and Quintero met all night
in the Miami Airport Hotel. “The meeting,” Secord recalled, “commenced on a pret¬
ty hard note, with Colonel North being worried about and critical of the Contras,
because he had been receiving reports that the limited funds they had might be get¬
ting wasted, squandered, or even worse, some people might be lining their pock¬
ets.” North specifically mentioned Adolfo Calero’s brother, Mario, who handled
contra purchasing out of New Orleans.
The meeting then turned to a review of military problems. It was agreed that
airlift was the most urgent concern. The contras had a few old aircraft operating out
of Honduras, but when the CIA pulled back under Boland there were few people
trained in logistics, maintenance and communications—^what Secord called the
“sinews of war.” The contra task forces inside Nicaragua were dependent on the
resupply of consumables—beans and bullets—from air. “You either had to develop
an air drop capability or they were going to be forced from the field,” said Secord.
It was tacit admission of the lack of a real popular base.
The second major problem was the peed for a new and successful southern
front, based in Costa Rica, to divert Sandinista forces from the Honduras-based north¬
ern front. The third problem was the contras’ “lack of access to their urban areas
and the need for them to get into some of the urban areas.”
North asked Secord to take over contra procurement and organize an airlift
operation for supplying existing FDN forces and the new southern front. Secord
asked Gadd to organize the airlift. Quintero went to El Salvador and, with the as¬
sistance of his friend Felix Rodriguez, arranged for the airlift operation to be run out
of Ilopango Air Base. “That,” said Secord, “was the key. Without that we had noth¬
ing.”®®
Felix Rodriguez (alias Max Gomez) is an old CIA hand. He came to the United
States from Cuba in 1954 to go to high school and moved here permanently in 1958,
a year before the triumph of the revolution. In 1959, Rodriguez went to the
Dominican Republic with the Anti-Communist Legion. He returned to the United
States and in late I960 began training for the Bay of Pigs operation. When the April
1961 invasion of Cuba failed, Rodriguez, who had infiltrated into Cuba in advance,
sought refuge for over five months in the Venezuelan Embassy in Havana. He then
returned to the United States, trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, and joined the anti-
Cuba operations being run by Theodore Shackley and Tom Clines from Miami. In
1967, Rodriguez was sent to Bolivia to help track Che Guevara. After Che was cap¬
tured, interrogated and executed, Rodriguez took his watch; he still wears it.
Rodriguez then went to train a special intelligence unit in Ecuador and police
counterintelligence in Peru.
Rodriguez served in Vietnam from 1970 to 1972 as a provincial reconnaissance
unit trainer under the Saigon area command of Donald Gregg. There Rodriguez
helped develop the concept of using low-level helicopter reconnaissance and small,
mobile paramilitary teams for search and destroy missions against guerrilla units.
According to Edwin Wilson, Rodriguez worked in the Phoenix program: “He was
the kind of guy who really impressed gung-ho people.. .They’d take three Viet¬
namese up in a helicopter, throw two overboard and the other guy talked.”®^
Rodriguez went on to CIA operations in South America and the Caribbean

before taking disability retirement in 1976. He reportedly served as an adviser to the
Argentine military for two years in the early 1980s.^ This was during the period he
was, as mentioned earlier, reportedly working with Tom Clines to support the con¬
tras.
Rodriguez became a business partner of Gerard Latchinian, a Miami-based
arms broker. In February 1986, Latchinian was convicted of conspiring to assassinate
Honduran President Roberto Suazo and received a 30-year sentence. The 1984 con¬
spiracy, which involved smuggling $10.3 million of cocaine into the United States
to finance a hit squad and coup, also included General Jose Bueso, the chief of the
Honduran Armed Forces Joint Command who was ousted along with General Al¬
varez in March 1984. In the fall of 1986, North, Clarridge and General Paul Gorman
urged the Justice Department to grant Bueso leniency as “a friend of the United
States,” i.e. of the contras and the U.S. military.
They wanted to ensure, as North put it in computer notes to Poindexter, that
Bueso didn’t “break his longstanding silence about the Nic[araguan] Resistance and
other sensitive operations” and “start singing songs nobody wants to hear.” Poin¬
dexter told North, “You may advise all concerned that the President will want to be
as helpful as possible to settle this matter.” Abrams also supported the leniency re¬
quest at an early October meeting. Although Bueso was not pardoned, he was al¬
lowed to serve a five-year prison sentence at a minimum security prison at Eglin Air
Force Base in Florida.^'
In March 1982, Rodriguez drew on his Vietnam experience and wrote a five-
page proposal for the creation of an elite mobile strike force, called the Tactical
Task Force (TTF), that would “be ideal for the pacification effort in El Salvador and
Guatemala” (reminiscent of the SMARF proposal discovered upon Ed Wilson’s ar¬
rest). Rodriguez dubbed the search and destroy units “Pink Teams” and advocated
using napalm and cluster bombs to give them “more destructive power.” Rodriguez’s
proposal included a map of Central America which indicated that Nicaragua would
be a target of Pink Team operations (based in El Salvador and Honduras).
Rodriguez met with his old friend Donald Gregg, national security adviser to
George Bush, and Richard Stone, special envoy for Central America, in early March
1983. Gregg, a CIA officer from 1951 to 1979, served as head of the NSC Intelligence
Directorate before moving to Bush’s office in August 1982. On March 17, Gregg sent
Rodriguez’s Pink Team plan to then Deputy National Security Adviser McFarlane
along with a secret one-page memo on “anti-guerrilla operations in Central America.”
Gregg indicated his support for Rodriguez’s plan, as well as that of Stone and CIA
official Rudy Enders. McFarlane forwarded the documents to Oliver North.
On March 21, McFarlane sent National Security Adviser William Clark the
Rodriguez proposal, Gregg’s memo and a description of Israeli paramilitary support
for the contras. McFarlane noted: “This is representative of the kind of things we
can do with Israel if we work quietly behind the scenes. I set this in motion with
my Israeli counter-part, David Kimche, over a year ago. We could do a lot together
if we would work at it.”
Clark approved and wrote “Great” on McFarlane’s cover memo.^^ Rodriguez
went on to advise the Salvadoran military along the lines of the Pink Team strategy
as well as help manage the contra supply operation.
In January 1985, Rodriguez met twice with Vice President Bush. At the second
meeting before Rodriguez left for Central America, he showed Bush a picture taken
with Che Guevara. Rodriguez arrived in El Salvador on March 15.^^ Before that he
had contra business to attend to.
According to Central American intelligence sources, Rodriguez met with
Guatemala’s General Mejia to discuss “a plan, first broached by Rodriguez during a
previous visit, whereby Guatemala would provide cover for U.S. arms shipments to
the contras in exchange for increased U.S. aid.”^"* On March 5, North informed Mc-
Farlane that the Guatemalans would falsely certify that the Guatemalan Army was
the final destination for “nearly $8M worth of munitions to be delivered to the FDN,”
beginning on or about March 10. North told McFarlane that the end-user certificates,
which he attached to the memo, “are a direct consequence of the informal liaison
we have established with GEN [Mejia] and your meeting with he and President
[deleted].” North recommended an increase in U.S. aid to Guatemala as compensa¬
tion for “the extraordinary assistance they are providing to the Nicaragua freedom
fighters.U.S. aid to Guatemala jumped from $18.6 million in 1984 to over $98 mil¬
lion in 1985 to $114.2 million in 1986.
On February 14, 1985, General Gorman sent a confidential “eyes only” cable
to Ambassador to El Salvador Thomas Pickering and Colonel James Steele, the com¬
mander of the U.S. Military Group in El Salvador: “I have just met here with Felix
Rodriguez...He is operating as a private citizen, but his acquaintanceship with the
VP [Vice President] is real enough, going back to latter’s days as DCI [Director of
Central Intelligence]. Rodriguez’ primary commitment to the region is in [deleted]
where he wants to assist the FDN. I told him that the FDN deserved his priority.”
Gorman earlier told Pickering that Rodriguez “has been put into play by Ollie North.”
Pickering forwarded that cable to Craig Johnstone at the State Department.^
Gregg met with Rodriguez on February 19, supposedly only to discuss El Sal¬
vador. North recorded a February 19 conversation with General Gorman in his
notebook: “F.R. [Rodriguez] told his priority should be FDN. Told him in delicate
stage of transition from CIA run op to Southern Command run op with LRPs [Long
Range Reconnaissance Patrols] and PROWL”—two classified operations in El Sal¬
vador. CIA operatives trained the small Salvadoran Long Range Reconnaissance
Patrols and accompanied them in their mission of tracking guerrillas in rebel-held
territory and calling in air strikes. This was one way the administration secretly ex¬
ceeded the public limit of 55 U.S. military advisers in El Salvador. Gorman, fearing
a higher risk of exposure, did not want “volunteers” like Rodriguez involved in the
Southern Command-run program. Nonetheless, with Ambassador Pickering’s ap¬
proval, Rodriguez did assist the search and destroy missions
On September 10, North met with Gregg and Steele. In his notebook. North
listed the following among the discussion topics: “Calero/Bermudez visit to [llopan-
go Air Base] to establish] loghstical] support/maint[enance],” as well as other pos¬
sible locations for the resupply base. (Gregg has denied knowledge of the contra
supply operation prior to summer 1986.)'^® On September 20, North wrote Rodriguez,
asking him to arrange space at Ilopango for the contra supply operation; Quintero
followed up. Rodriguez became the logistical coordinator for the airlift at the base
and liaison with base commander Juan Rafael Bustillo and other Salvadoran officers,
as well as with Colonel Steele.
Rodriguez recruited a friend from U.S. operations against Cuba, Luis Posada
(alias Ramon Medina), to assist the airlift as “support director” at Ilopango. Posada
handled finances, housing and transportation and coordinated aircraft landing,
refueling and takeoff. Eventually, Posada also became responsible for receiving,
refueling and relaunching NHAO flights.^
The CIA-trained Posada is a fugitive terrorist. On October 6, 1976, a bomb
destroyed a Cubana Airlines DC 8 en route from Barbados to Havana, killing all 73
people aboard. Posada and three other Cuban exiles living in Venezuela, including
CORU chief Orlando Bosch, were jailed (Posada went to Venezuela in 1967, where
he worked for DISIP, Venezuelan secret intelligence). In August 1985, Posada bribed
a prison supervisor and escaped. Months later, reportedly disguised by plastic
surgery as well as an alias, Posada was at Ilopango working for the airlift and
protected by his old contacts in the CIA and the Salvadoran military.
Congress granted additional money to the CIA in December 1985 to provide
communications equipment to the contras and allowed the State Department to
solicit third countries for “humanitarian” assistance. On January 9, 1986, Reagan
signed a new finding on Nicaragua which consolidated prior findings and authorized
the CIA to provide intelligence advice, training and communications equipment to
the contras; $13 million was allocated. In the copy of the finding published by the
Iran-contra committees, there is only one line not blacked out after the phrase “the
CIA is directed to”: “Provide assistance and non-lethal material support to the armed
Resistance forces of the Nicaraguan democratic opposition.”’®’
The CIA also spent “several million dollars” in “political funds” from the CIA
budget to support and influence contra activity from September 1985 through 1986.
The congressional Intelligence Committees were reportedly notified. CIA funding
went to Sandinista opponents inside Nicaragua; to support UNO and FDN opera¬
tions; to contra propaganda; and, in the words of one U.S. official, to “create the
aura that they are an actual political entity among our allies in Europe.”’®^ In sum¬
mer 1986, the CIA used “political funds” to transport FDN and Kisan (Miskito) rep¬
resentatives around Honduras in an effort to setde factional differences and
consolidate the contras for an offensive against Nicaragua pending congressional
approval of military aid. The CIA used Honduran Air Force helicopters with U.S.
pilots for the flights.’®^
Meanwhile, on January 15, 1986, North took new steps on the recommenda¬
tion of Casey and Poindexter to ensure secure communications for the Enterprise
contra operation. He distributed fifteen classified KL-43 encryption devices provided
by the National Security Agency to Secord, Gadd, Steele, Rodriguez, Quintero,
Southern Air Transport President William Langton, Fernandez and others. Costa Rica
station chief Joe Fernandez met with the new CIA Latin America Division chief while
he was on an orientation trip to the region in April and told him North had provided
a KL-43. Fernandez said he didn’t have time to participate in the resupply opera-
tion. The new chief told Fernandez he’d “look into it” back in Washington.’®^
Fernandez ended up playing a pivotal role in the resupply, relaying when and
where to make air drops. He said they “were able to obtain information about areas
where they [the contras] were and that they had under temporary control. I would
say temporary control means 48 hours and no more, because of the pressure of the
Sandinista military operations.”’®^ About the material dropped, Fernandez said, “This
was all lethal. Benefactors only sent lethal stuff.”’®^
On January l6, 1986, North wrote in his notebook that General John Galvin
(Gorman’s successor as Southcom commander) was “cognizant of the activities
under way in both Costa Rica and at [Ilopango Air Base] in support of the DRF
[Democratic Resistance Force, FDN].” North added, “Gen. Galvin is enthusiastic
about both endeavors.” North, Poindexter, Galvin and others met on January l6 to
discuss, among other things, “covert strategy/training/planning/support” for the con¬
tras. Galvin testified later that he knew of the resupply operation, but claimed to
have believed it was financed and run by private individuals.’®^
By April, the airlift was operating almost daily supply missions for the FDN’s
northern front. According to the Iran-Contra Report, “Most missions delivered sup¬
plies from the main FDN base [Aguacate, in Honduras] to the FDN’s forward-operat¬
ing positions. Other flights dropped lethal cargo to units operating inside Nicaragua.
Many of these flights were helped informally by CIA field officers on the ground,
who prepared flight plans for aerial resupply missions, briefed the air crews on
Nicaraguan antiaircraft installations, and provided minor shop supplies to the
mechanics. On one occasion, the CIA operations officer at an FDN base flew Ian
Crawford, a loadmaster for the resupply operation, in a CIA helicopter with lethal
supplies on board over the border area so Crawford could see where he and his
crew were airdropping cargo three to four times daily.”’®®
The operation still had problems, including poor maintenance and coordina¬
tion between the FDN and the southern front. On April 20, North and Secord flew
to Ilopango for a meeting with Steele, Rodriguez, Bustillo and Bermudez and other
FDN military leaders. On May 1, Gadd was replaced by Dutton as operational
manager. At that point, tlie operation had approximately nineteen pilots, loadmasters
(kickers) and maintenance operators at Ilopango, with one Maule and two C-7
aircraft and one C-123 cargo plane. Pilots earned $3,000 per month, plus a $700
bonus for every flight inside Nicaragua.’®® The crews lived in three safe houses in
San Salvador. The Enterprise warehouse at the base was stocked with machine guns,
grenades, C-4 explosive, ammunition, uniforms and otlier military gear.
As an Air America veteran once noted, “Every time there’s a war the same
damned people always show up.”’^® That was certainly the case with the war on
Nicaragua. Eugene Hasenfus was an Air America kicker in Laos. William Cooper,
the managing pilot, was a former Air America pilot who worked for Southern Air
along with pilot Wallace “Buzz” Sawyer; Sawyer also flew for Seaspray. Cooper’s
deputy John McRainey was an Air America veteran, as were pilots Frank Hines, Jerry
Stemwedel and Jake Wehrell.’”
It was Secord’s desire “to try to slowly replace the American crews with for¬
eigners,” assuming Congress didn’t give the CIA another green light. In Secord’s
view, the problem wasn’t a legal one, but an “appearance problem. If we were to
have one or more of these people captured, as ultimately occurred, it becomes a
real problem when it is American citizens.”"^
The Enterprise contracted David Walker, the retired commander of the British
22nd Special Air Services regiment, an elite commando unit, to provide two pilots
and a loadmaster, but they didn’t have the right experience.At least two South
African pilots were employed, as indicated on airlift payroll records, but the
Americans remained the mainstay of the operation.
David Walker was also contracted to resolve the urban access problem by ar¬
ranging military actions. As North explained, “Walker was involved—his organiza¬
tion, as I understand it—in support of the Nicaraguan resistance, with internal
operations in Managua and elsewhere, in an effort to improve the perception that
the Nicaraguan resistance could operate anywhere that it so desired.” Another un¬
named contract agent was apparendy responsible for “so-called policies of intimida¬
tion” which have not been explained.
On December 4, 1984, North wrote a top secret memorandum to McFarlane,
informing him that “This weekend, at the request of iNavy] Sec. John Lehman, I met
with Mr. David Walker, a former British SAS officer who now heads two companies
(KMS and SALADIN) which provide professional security services to foreign govern¬
ments. Walker had been approached several months ago.. .In addition to the security
services provided by KMS, this offshore (Jersey Islands) company also has profes¬
sional military ‘trainers’ available. Walker suggested that he would be interested in
establishing an arrangement with the FDN for certain special operations expertise
aimed particularly at destroying HIND helicopters. Walker quite accurately points
out that the helicopters are more easily destroyed on the ground than in the air.”^’^
In an April 11, 1985 memo to McFarlane on FDN military operations. North
referred to two operations probably involving Walker. The first involved an expen¬
diture of $50,000 “for the operation conducted in Managua against the ammunition
depot at the EPS [Nicaraguan Army] military headquarters.” The second, listed under
future operations, was “a major special operations attack against Sandino airport [in
Managua] with the purpose of destroying the MI-24 helicopters and the Sandinista
Air Force maintenance capability.”"^ Walker never succeeded in destroying helicop¬
ters on the ground.
Southern Front
In July 1985, Lewis Tambs prepared to take up his new post as ambassador
to Costa Rica. “Colonel North asked me to go down and open up the southern front,”
he said. Tambs never questioned whether his instructions were legal under the
Boland amendment: “There’s a saying in the foreign service: ‘When you take the
King’s shilling, you do the King’s bidding.’ Everyone knew where King Ron stood
on supporting the contras.
Tambs shared his southern front mandate with CIA Station Chief Joe Fernan-
dez (whose cover was first secretary of the U.S. embassy), Deputy Chief of Mission
George Jones and Defense Attache Colonel John Lent. On August 10, North met
with Fernandez and Tambs in Costa Rica and discussed the establishment of a secret
air base. Tambs informed Fernandez on August 12 that he had received permission
from the Costa Rican government to build an airstrip to resupply the southern front.
The next day, Fernandez cabled CIA headquarters with the news. “Headquarters
was pleased.”"®
Robert Owen arrived in Costa Rica on August 20 to pursue arrangements for
the airstrip. He surveyed the proposed site along with Fernandez and a Costa Rican
official and informed North of the plans: “The area decided on is on the west coast,
bordered by a National Park on the north, the ocean to the west, the Pan American
Highway to the east, and mountains and hills to the south. The property is owned
by an American living in New York. It is managed by a Colonel in the [Costa Rican]
Civil Guard who will be glad to turn it over to [deleted] who has been designated
by [deleted] to be an administrator for the project...
“The cover for the operation is a company, owned by a few ‘crazy’ gringos,
wanting to lease the land for agricultural experimentation and for running cat¬
tle... The Colonel will provide a cook, the peones [sid to work the farm, and
security.. .Once the new strip is completed, it will be designated a military zone and
will be guarded by the Colonel’s people.”"^ The airstrip, known as Santa Elena or
Point West, was built by the Enterprise subsidiary, Udall Corporation, and completed
in May 1986.
On December 12, 1985, North and Poindexter, who had just replaced Mc-
Farlane as national security adviser, took a one-day trip to Central America. In recom¬
mending the trip to Poindexter, North said that one of its real purposes was to deliver
to Central American officials the message that “we [the United States] intend to pur¬
sue a victory and that [a Central American country, probably Honduras] will not be
forced to seek a political accommodation with the Sandinistas.”^^°
Poindexter briefed Reagan on December 13, “including informing the Presi¬
dent of the efforts to secure the land necessary for the airstrip” in Costa Rica.
Poindexter’s notes refer to this as the “private airstrip.”'^’ In March 1986, just before
Oscar Arias was inaugurated president of Costa Rica, Reagan attended a photo ses¬
sion that wasn’t listed on his daily schedule. The unusual guest was Costa Rican
Minister of Public Security Benjamin Piza; North and Fernandez accompanied him.
Afterwards, Piza met with Secord to discuss the airstrip.
By March 1986, the resupply to FDN forces operating from Honduras was well
underway, but the southern front airlift was not. In a March 28 memo to North,
Owen wrote that he, Steele, Rodriguez, Posada and Quintero had decided to stock¬
pile lethal and nonlethal supplies at Ilopango and merge the air drops to southern
front forces. “The Caribou, or better yet a C-123, can be loaded at Cinci [Cincinnati,
code for Ilopango], takeoff for points south, deliver and refuel at Point West on the
way back to Cinci.” Until Point West was ready, the airlift could use the L-lOO aircraft
employed by NHAO. “According to Max Gomez [Rodriguez], the Salvos [Salvadorans]
are being very helpful and were even willing to provide an A-37 to fly support for
the L-100.”"'
The Enterprise stepped up efforts to supply the southern front with a C-123
and second C-7 Caribou acquired by Gadd in early April North coordinated virtual¬
ly every aspect of the first air drop of southern front lethal supplies into Nicaragua.
As explained in the Iran-Contra Report, “KL-43 messages among the planners show
both the level of detail in which North was concerned and the coordination among
various U.S. Government agencies to ensure that the drop succeeded.” The first mes¬
sage from North to Secord read:
The unit to which we wanted to drop in the southern quadrant of Nicaragua is in
desperate need of ordnance resupply...Have therefore developed an alternative plan
which [CIA Task Force Chief for Central America Alan Fiers] has been briefed on and in
which he concurs. The L-lOO which flies from MSY to [an FDN base, presumably Agua-
catel on Wednesday should terminate it’s h/c] NHAO mission on arrival at [the FDN base].
At that point it should load the supplies...which—theoretically [the CIA station chief in
Honduras] is assembling today at [the FDN base]—and take them to [Ilopango]. These
items should then be transloaded to the C-123...On any night between Wednesday, Apr
9, and Friday, Apr 11 these supplies should be dropped by the C-123 in the vicinity of
[drop zone inside Nicaragua]. The A/C [aircraft] shd [should] penetrate Nicaragua across
the Atlantic Coast...If we are ever going to take the pressure off the northern front we
have got to get this drop in—quickly. Please make sure that this is retransmitted via this
channel to [Fernandez], Ralph [Quintero], Sat [Southern Air Transport] and Steele. Owen
already briefed and prepared to go w/ the L-lOO out of MSY if this will help. Please ad¬
vise soonest.
Secord and Gadd leased the L-lOO from Southern Air Transport and, on April
8, Secord transmitted the following instructions to Quintero:
CIA and Goode [North] report Blackys [presumably El Negro Chamorro] troops in
south in desperate fix. Therefore, [the CIA station chief in Honduras] is supposed to ar¬
range for a load to come from [the FDN base] to [Ilopango] via LI 00 tomorrow after¬
noon. . .Notify Steele we intend to drop tomorrow nite or more like Thurs nite.. .Meanwhile
contact [Fernandez] via this machine and get latest on D2 [drop zone] coordinates and
the other data I gave you the format for.. .CIA wants the aircraft to enter the D2 area from
the Atlantic...
By April 9, arrangements were nearly complete. Fernandez sent a cable to CIA

Task Force Chief Fiers “requesting flight path information, vectors based on the coor¬
dinates of the drop zone, and hostile risk evaluation to be passed to the crew. CIA
headquarters provided the information, as it did on three other occasions that
spring,” according to the Iran-Contra Report. Fernandez provided the drop zone
location to Quintero and “Steele told the Southern Air Transport crew how to avoid
Sandinista radar.” However, on April 10, the L-lOO was unable to locate the contra
forces. It tried again the next day and was able to drop more than 20,000 pounds
of lethal supplies to contras inside Nicaragua. “This was the first successful drop to
the southern forces. Before the plane left, Steele checked the loading of the cargo,
including whether the assault rifles were properly padded.”
Fernandez reported to North: “Per UNO South Force, drop successfully com¬
pleted in 15 minutes...Our plans during next 2-3 weeks include air drop at sea for
UNO/KISAN indigenous force.. .maritime deliveries NHAO supplies to same, NHAO
air drop to UNO South...lethal drop to UNO South...
“My objective is creation of 2,500 man force which can strike northwest and
link-up with quiche to form solid southern force. Likewise, envisage formidable op¬
position on Atlantic Coast resupplied at or by sea. Realize this may be overly am¬
bitious planning but with your help, believe we can pull it off.”^^^
In May, Fernandez met with Eden Pastora’s field commanders in a San Jose
safe house. He told them they would only get more U.S. aid if they transferred their
allegiance to “El Negro” Chamorro. According to several contra officials, Fernandez
provided $5,000 cash rewards to the six Pastora commanders who defected.^^"*
North asked Dutton to acquire another C-123 (the first had been damaged in
flight) and arranged, with Tambs’ assistance, for the C-7 Caribou to refuel at the San
Jose International Airport after dropping supplies. On June 16, North told Fernan¬
dez that in order to facilitate future southern front air drops, he had “asked Ralph
[Quintero] to proceed immediately to your location. I do not think we ought to con¬
template these operations without him being on scene. Too many things go wrong
that then directly involve you and me in what should be deniable for both of us.”^^^
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12
Hits, Guns and Drugs
[Senators Kerry, et al.] are traitors to our country. If I had the power—
believe me I’m not an assassin, I never participated in any assassination,
my work here has been humanitarian—but if it were within my power
people like [Senators] Kennedy and Keny would be lined up against a
wall and shot tomorrow at sunrise.
John Hull, CIA contra liaison in Costa Rica.^
Everything I know from human intelligence [deleted] would suggest that

anybody that was in the game of subversion down there was in one way
or another involved with drugs...If you have an intention, whether you
are on the right or on the left down there, to be involved in violent ac¬
tivities, the easy way to get into them, to fund them, to get the informa¬
tion, the people, the guns, the people who are willing to commit murder,
you deal in drugs because that’s just a convenient way to put yourself in
touch with unscrupulous and violent people.
General Paul Gorman, former chief of U.S. Southern Command, commenting on
the contra leadership’s involvement in drug trafficking, July 1987.
Eden Pastora was not only out as the star of the southern front, he was lucky
to be alive. In the spring of 1984, the CIA gave Pastora’s ARDE forces a 30-day ul¬
timatum: unite with the FDN or get cut off. ARDE began to splinter. Chief political
spokesman Alfonso Robelo favored the merger while Pastora remained opposed.
“There are strong pressures by the CIA,” said Pastora in a May 23 interview with
Costa Rica’s Radio Monumental, “and they have blocked all help to us. For the last
two months, we have not received a bullet or a pair of boots, we have not received
anything.” Pastora declared on Costa Rican TV that the CIA was pressuring ARDE
to join the FDN, “but the CIA will have to kill me first.
281
\
The majority of ARDE’s leaders broke with Pastora at the end of May and voted
to unite with the FDN. Pastora called a news conference for May 30; Costa Rican
authorities insisted it be held at an ARDE camp in Nicaraguan territory.
La Penca
About two dozen journalists made the trip from San Jose (a four-hour drive
followed by two hours in outboard-powered canoes) to the La Penca camp on the
Nicaraguan side of the San Juan river. They did not all make it back alive.
Reporters Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan described what happened: a sup¬
posed Danish freelance photographer known as “Per Anker Hansen” placed a metal
camera box “containing the bomb on the floor by a counter where Pastora, sur¬
rounded by journalists, was standing. Then he snapped a few pictures and, mutter¬
ing loudly that his camera was malfunctioning, backed away from the crowd...
“At 7:20 p.m., the bomb exploded, killing Rosita [a contra radio operator] in¬
stantly and ripping [huge] holes in the ceiling and floor. Most of the journalists and
guerrillas in the room were wounded, some fatally.”
Pastora was rushed from the scene with shrapnel wounds, burns and broken
ribs in the only available speedboat. Linda Frazier, an American working for Costa
Rica’s English-language Tico Times, and Jorge Quiros Piedra of Costa Rica’s Chan¬
nel 6 TV died at La Penca from their wounds; Evelio Sequeira, also of Channel 6,
died a week later. Tony Avirgan, an ABC cameraman, was one of eighteen jour¬
nalists injured. (Martha Honey was not at La Penca.)
According to Avirgan and Honey (Avirgan’s wife and colleague), “Shortly after
the blast. La Nacion reporter Edgar Fonseca contacted his newspaper with his two-
way radio, begging for speedboats and helicopters to evacuate the wounded.. .but
neither Costa Rican officials nor the U.S. Embassy [whose citizens were among the
dying and injured] seriously attempted to arrange helicopters...The U.S. Embassy’s
response to the bombing was, essentially, to do nothing.”^ Tico Times publisher
Richard Dyer was shocked at the embassy’s uncharacteristic refusal of assistance.^
Though within hours Costa Rican investigators were given a description of “Han¬
sen,” the borders were not closed for 48 hours.
Pastora immediately blamed the CIA for the bombing. U.S. and Costa Rican
officials blamed the Nicaraguan government. Reporters generally followed
Washington’s “leads” away from the CIA. U.S. officials and contra supporters such
as Robert Leiken of the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and Internation¬
al Studies spread the story, carried in the U.S. and Costa Rican press, that the Basque
separatist group, ETA, had carried out the bombing for the Sandinistas. Arturo Cruz
Jr. added a vicious twist, telling reporters, “The perpetrator of the bombing may
have been a newswoman (Linda Frazier) who herself was blown up by the ex¬
plosion.” Avirgan was also named as a prime suspect. U.S. Ambassador Curtin Win-
sor Jr. commented, “other diplomats, not myself of course, are saying that Tony has
ties to ETA.”
Hits, Guns and Drugs 283
The ETA was set up as a scapegoat by the CIA at least a year earlier. Edgar
Chamorro recalled that in mid 1983 a CIA agent working with the FDN in Honduras
asked him to distribute a stack of posters showing a hand holding a gun superim¬
posed over a map of Central America, with text claiming the ETA was planning ter¬
rorist activities in the region.^
Honey and Avirgan began assembling evidence that the La Penca bombing
was carried out by a terrorist group made up of Cuban exiles, North Americans and
FDN members—including John Hull, Felipe Vidal, Rene Corvo and Adolfo Calero,
among others. Costa Rican intelligence officials and John Hull reportedly facilitated
“Hansen’s” movements in Costa Rica before the bombing. A source told Honey and
Avirgan that the plotters planned to make EARN leader Fernando “El Negro” Chamor¬
ro commander of the southern front. As discussed in the previous chapter, El Negro
became military commander of the new southern front in 1985.
Eden Pastora believes John Hull is a probable conspirator in the assassination
attempt. He calls him “the most untouchable man in Costa Rica.” Two senior CIA
officials have said that the CIA investigation of the bombing led to Miami and was
then dropped.^
Honey and Avirgan identified “Hansen” as a Libyan terrorist named Amac Galil
who was recruited in Chile. The plotters reportedly reasoned that if Hansen were
identified, it would be assumed—mistakenly—that he was working for Qaddafi.
Robert Owen was in Costa Rica meeting with Hull and CIA Station Chief Joe
Fernandez when the bombing took place. He told the Iran-contra committees, “I
was down there on a survey for Colonel North. The evening actually that it hap¬
pened, I was in San Jose. As a matter of fact, Senator, if I can just say, I have been
named in a lawsuit in this case [by Honey and Avirgan, discussed later], which is
absolutely scurrilous, and there is no truth to it...
“We [Owen, Hull and Fernandez] discussed what was going on. And I was
just shocked as everyone else when we learned, about 3:30 in the morning, when
some of the Nicaraguans came to the apartment and talked with us, and told us
what had happened.”
Owen was asked by a sympathetic Senator Orrin Hatch about his knowledge
of the bombing incident. “One [theory] is the United States was behind it,” Owen
replied. “I don’t give that any credence whatsoever. Eden Pastora received from my
understanding, over $3 million from Colonel Qadhafi. Before the bombing, he
received a message Colonel Qadhafi wanted him to come and meet with him.. .Some
people believe Colonel Qadhafi was sending him a message.”® Owen’s disinforma¬
tion went unchallenged.
Pieces of Puzzles
In early May 1985, about a year after the attempted assassination of Pastora,
Leslie Cockburn of the CBS News program “West 57th” was in Tegucigalpa, where
she encountered a U.S. military delegation whose apparent mission was to scout
locations for additional airfields and work on contingency planning for an invasion
of Nicaragua, The invasion talk, she recounted, took parochial turns: “The air force
representatives sipped their beers and lobbied passionately for a strategy based on
precision bombing strikes on various key targets around Managua. The army men
argued with equal force for a graduated invasion, to commence with a landing on
the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua and the establishment of a base at Bluefields...The
navy was no less heated in pleading the wisdom of using the fleet to blockade the
country while Seal teams sabotaged coastal installations.”
Cockburn met privately with a worried Army Special Forces officer who “had
been down in Costa Rica, ostensibly overseeing the military training of the Civil
Guard, but he had also gone on missions inside Nicaragua.” He said a group of
Cuban exiles and U.S. mercenaries were training on American-owned land near Los
Chiles, close to the Nicaraguan border. It was a flashpoint where a Nicaraguan “in¬
cursion” against the mercenary forces could trigger a confrontation between the U.S.
military and the Nicaraguan Army.^
Shortly before that conversation, Costa Rican authorities arrested a group of
Civilian Military Assistance (CMA)-Brigade 2506-backed mercenaries on John Hull’s
land and charged them with violation of Costa Rican neutrality and possession of
explosives. This was a rare exception to the Monge government’s pattern of com¬
plicity with contra activity. The five mercenaries arrested that April 25 were Steven
Carr and Robert Thompson of Florida, Claude Chaffard of France and John Davies
and Peter Glibbery of Britain. Glibbery and Davies were soldiers of fortune in South
Africa when they heard about jobs in Central America.
Steven Carr and Peter Glibbery came to feel abandoned in jail and betrayed,
and then threatened, by Hull and company. They began to talk to the few reporters
who cared then to listen about John Hull, the CIA-contra liaison in Costa Rica, and
Robert Owen, the messenger from Washington. Glibbery recalled meeting with
Frank Camper, who ran the Recondo mercenary training school in Alabama, and of
hearing about Camper’s ties to the FBI, CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),
Through Camper, he and John Davies met CMA leader Tom Posey and Sam Hall,
the mercenary who would later be arrested in Nicaragua while scouting a military
base. Glibbery and Davies met John Hull and Felipe Vidal in Miami before heading
to Costa Rica where they received VIP treatment at the San Jose airport.
Carr said he had traveled to Hull’s ranch in March via a charter aircraft flying
from Fort Lauderdale to Ilopango Air Base in El Salvador, where six tons of contra
weapons were unloaded in the presence of U.S. military personnel. He talked of
collecting those weapons from safe houses in Miami, and seeing three kilos of
cocaine in a house belonging to Francisco “Paco” Chanes, a Brigade 2506 supporter
in the “shrimp importing” business. Carr said Rene Corvo was in charge of the opera¬
tion.
Glibbery talked about incursions into Nicaragua to a contra camp about fif¬
teen kilometers east of the Los Chiles border crossing. And Carr described an attack
on La Esperanza in Nicaragua, led by Corvo over Hull’s objection: “Hull told him
not to do it because of an upcoming vote in Congress. He told him tlie publicity
would be bad [should any Americans get killed] and [would] blow the chances” for
millions of dollars in new contra funding.

Shortly after Carr, Glibbery and the other mercenaries were arrested, Honey
and Avirgan came in contact with Carlos Rojas Chinchilla, a Costa Rican with a
strange and scary story. Carlos said a contra named David had appealed to him for
help in defecting from a dirty tricks unit based at John Hull’s ranch. According to
David, members of the group behind the La Penca bombing planned to place a
bomb outside the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica, assassinate the new ambassador,
Lewis Tambs, and blame it on the Sandinistas to provoke Costa Rican and U.S.
retaliation. Honey and Avirgan warned the U.S. Embassy of what they had heard.
On July 18, the Reagan administration issued a warning of its own—to
Nicaragua. It asserted that hard intelligence indicated Nicaragua was supporting
planned terrorist attacks against U.S. personnel in Honduras. There would be
“serious consequences,” U.S. Ambassador Harry Bergold warned, if Nicaragua car¬
ried out such actions anywhere in Central America.”
The administration claimed that Nicaragua had provided support to the Sal¬
vadoran guerrillas who killed four U.S. marines and two other U.S. citizens in San
Salvador on June 19. According to senior officials, the United States had seriously
considered attacking a base in Nicaragua where Salvadoran guerrillas were alleged¬
ly trained. With the July 18 warning, the administration had, in the words of a senior
U.S. official, “laid down the gauntlet”; another attack blamed on Nicaragua would
warrant a “limited” U.S. military strike. It would be “another situation like acquiring
MIG’S.
David and Carlos were captured during a subsequent meeting and reported¬
ly taken to John Hull’s ranch. They managed to escape, but sources told Honey and
Avirgan that David was recaptured and murdered. Honey and Avirgan continued
their investigation in the face of death threats.’^
The alleged subplot to assassinate Ambassador Tambs has been tied to the
contra drug connection. By this account, Tambs had earned the wrath of Colom¬
bian cocaine tycoons such as Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa brothers when he was
ambassador to Colombia between 1983 and 1985; there was said to be a $1 million
bounty on Tambs’ head. There is another, perhaps more plausible, explanation: the
plotters may have planned to place the bomb outside the embassy, killing mainly
passersby, and accuse the Nicaraguan government of attempting to assassinate
Tambs, without ever intending that Tambs be harmed.’"* Subordinates may have
thought there was a real intent to assassinate Tambs; the Colombian drug lords may
have been told that to encourage them to donate funds and other support. At this
writing, a definitive account is not possible.
Jesus Garcia, a Miami Cuban, was working as the booker at the Dade Coun¬
ty jail—^where drug traffickers and gun smugglers who contributed to the anti-Castro
and contra causes reportedly received special treatment—^when Tom Posey was ar¬
rested in January 1985 on the charge of carrying a concealed weapon at the Miami
airport. After Posey was bailed out by Jose Coutin, CMA’s Miami representative, and
Jack Terrell, a CMA field commander, he and Garcia kept in contact. In February,
Posey, Rene Corvo, Bruce Jones (a former CIA liaison to the contras in Costa Rica),
and others brought Garcia into the plan to hit the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica and
allegedly assassinate Ambassador Tambs.

Although Garcia was alienated by the embassy plot, he helped Rene Corvo,
Steven Carr and Robert Thompson with an arms shipment leaving Fort Lauderdale
airport on March 6. Within a few months, Garcia was apparently set up by a Posey
associate and arrested on August 13 for selling a machine gun and silencer. He was
assigned a Miami public defender by the name of John Mattes who unexpectedly
found himself with a complex and controversial case. Garcia was convicted in
December and federal prosecutor Jeffrey Feldman tried to deter Mattes from pursu¬
ing the larger potential federal case—arms and drug trafficking, criminal con¬
spiracies—in which Garcia was a bit player.^^
The continued investigations by Mattes and Honey and Avirgan compiled a
growing list of sources, among them Alabaman Jack Terrell. Terrell, known as
“Colonel Flaco” (the Thin One), knew about assassination plots. He worked with
CMA for a short period, beginning in September 1984, and kept a diary of his ac¬
tivities. One entry described a December 1984 meeting in Adolfo Calero’s Miami
home, where a second assassination attempt against Pastora was plotted; John Hull,
Robert Owen, Felipe Vidal, Enrique Bermudez and Aristides Sanchez were said to
be present:
The termination of Zero [Pastora] discussed with Adolpho [s/d, Aristedes, John Hull,
Donald Lacy and a man not identified but told [he is with] ‘company’ [CIA]. Many people
involved. Some look like Cubans, some Nicaraguans, some Argentinian.—Â.C. Adolfo
Calero very upset with statements made by Pastora. Says he too Sandinista. Must die. Big
problem. Asks me to put it together and not tell them how it will be done, just do it. Will
have complete cooperation of all Costa Rican officials. Have several safe houses in C.R.
[Costa Rica] under control of John Hull and Bruce Jones. Seems Rob Owen in on most of
this. Am told he is private consultant and liaison man for U.S. (Company)...
Must appear that Sandinistas did it. Discussion on capturing Zero and having men
dress in captured uniforms. Am told this must be very visible hit and people must believe
the Sandinistas did it. Am told to let Hull know when ready to move...A.C. open to any¬
thing. He desperate. Wants and needs southern front.^^
According to Terrell, Vidal remarked, “We put a bomb under him [Pastora] the
first time, but it didn’t work because of bad timing.”'^
Pumping Smoke
Joseph “Shooter” Adams, a former U.S. Marine intelligence officer, was Calero’s
security chief and personal bodyguard from fall 1984 to spring 1986. Adams also
told reporter Allan Naim of a December 1984 meeting to plot Pastora’s assassina¬
tion and said that both Posey and Terrell were present.
For two months, from January to March 1985, Adams was on special assign¬
ment, leading a team—including eight U.S. mercenaries and a man named Paul
Douglas Johnson, who described himself as a DIA agent—on an Operation Pegasus
mission inside Nicaragua’s Mosquitia. Adams said he first heard of Operation
Pegasus, which was under Terrell’s command, in December 1984 from Tom Posey
in a series of meetings at Calero’s house. Posey “said Pegasus’s goal was to be pump¬
ing smoke in Managua when the F-15s came over.”
Adams also said he helped maintain a list of Managua civilians, including a
nun and priests, and political leaders such as Daniel Ortega, who would be marked
for assassination when FDN forces entered Managua. Contra Commander Enrique
Bermudez was involved in preparing the list in January 1985. “If the FDN would oc¬
cupy the city, we would go in and pull these people out and exterminate them,”
explained Adams. “The average soldier in the FDN wouldn’t know who these people
were from anybody, whereas we would be able to profile them and know where
they were working and living.”
Adams said he had access to the list “because my specialty was close-in urban
tactics. They wanted me to train an elite urban team for house-clearing techniques.”
Adams claimed he learned about house-clearing while training with the U.S. Delta
Force in 1983. “In DELTA, we were trained for hostage situations. You simply go in
and kill all the bad guys and get the good guys out.”^®
Terrell described Operation Pegasus as a plan to train an elite corps of 30
Americans and 210 contra special forces to raid Managua, destroy electric utilities,
blow up dams and assassinate Sandinista leaders, including Tomas Borge, Miguel
D’Escoto and Nora Astorga (who died of cancer in February 1988). “We wanted to
send a message to the Sandinistas that they could be struck at their heart at will and
there would be personal consequences,” said Terrell.
According to Terrell, the Managua operation was timed for March 1985 to in¬
fluence the upcoming vote on contra aid. This fits the scenario of actions, includ¬
ing “special operations against highly visible military targets in Nicaragua,” outlined
in North and Fortier’s March 22 memo to McFarlane (discussed in the previous chap¬
ter). Terrell said the operation was cancelled when CMA activities at the Las Vegas
contra base camp in Honduras were disrupted after the visit of a reporter. By January
1985, Terrell had begun to distance himself from CMA and work directly with the
MISURA forces whom he considered poorly treated by FDN leaders.
On January 31, Owen wrote to North with concern about Terrell’s increasing¬
ly independent activities:
Flacko h/c] is back in Miami. On Tuesday he met with Steadman Faggoth [sic] to
work out an arrangement. In essence, Flacko is to assume the responsibility of training
the Indians at Rus Rus. Supposedly the Council of Elders will agree to this...
Flacko has been working on getting the support of some of the Cuban community,
including: the Cuban legion and Joe Contine (sp?) b/c]; the Brigade; the Cuban Indepen¬
dent Movement, which is Monto’s group; and Alpha 66. He hopes this support will be
both financial and manpower.
Flacko’s long term goal is to build up the Miskito and train them to the point where
they can start taking land. The area he wants them to concentrate on is where there is a
port and where one of the operating gold mines is. The ultimate plan is to open the port
and take the gold mine. Once the port is open a boat would sail from Miami directly to
the port with men and supplies, drop them off and take out the gold which is captured.
Flacko is also setting himself up to be the one who handles all financial support to
the Miskitos. Thus everything going to them in terms of support from groups in the U.S.
goes through him. He and his buddy Tieador then have an opportunity to make a little
on the side...
All this is being done under the guise of CMA.. .Flacko met with the Honduran con¬
sul in Miami today and he is supposed to be going back to Honduras in the next day or
so to ensure Flacko and his people can get in on Monday.
Owen went on to discuss possible ways of getting Terrell out of the picture,
including having him arrested;
Would seem a good idea to deal with Flacko as soon as possible. Probably will not
be scared off as he believes he has done nothing to violate the neutrality act. If he is held
probably will still move forward after he is let out, unless he can be locked up for a good
long time. Best bet might be to dry up his funds, have someone talk to him about Na¬
tional Security and put the word out that he is not to be touched. But, if possible it might
be wise to do this in some way that doesn’t ruin whatever pr potential CMA has for the
good of the cause.
Posey has been doing the best he can to either sit on Flacko or deal him out, but
that is not possible because right now Flacko knows too much and it would do no one
20
any good if he went to the press. He has got to be finessed out.
Terrell and Owen shared the view that many contra leaders saw the war as a
business. Terrell complained of Indian families going without while the families of
FDN commanders came “from their leased houses in Tegoose [Tegucigalpa]” to pick
up canned goods donated by Miami Cubans “like they were shopping at Safeway.”
Terrell’s assessment of the contra leadership was cutting: “Whatever you want to
call this operation in Honduras, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, the closest thing that the
[contra] leadership have to a combat situation is when they put on their pinstripe
uniforms and come to Washington to do combat for money.. .You’ve got estimates
ranging between five thousand and thirty thousand tough contra soldiers on this
border, yet they hold not an inch of dirt. The only progress they’ve made is in pur¬
chasing condominiums...Bottom line it’s business.
The plan to seize the mines and the port of Puerto Cabezas was not a Terrell
rogue action, but a plan advocated by North. On April 11, 1985, North informed
McFarlane of future operations, including: “a major ground operation against the
mines complex in the vicinity of Siuna, Bonanza, and La Rosita (Nicaragua)—the
purpose of the operation is to secure the principal lines of communication in and
out of Puerto Cabezas.
North repeatedly advocated plans to seize Puerto Cabezas, declare a
provisional government and divide Nicaragua as a prelude to conquering it. He im¬
pressed contra donor William O’Boyle in March 1986 by telling him of a “secret
plan” to overthrow the Nicaraguan government that would involve a U.S. naval
blockade and contra seizure of territory for a provisional government. North said
that if Congress did not approve new contra funding the plan would proceed quick¬
ly as a “last ditch” effort. With funding, it would proceed “on a slower time schedule,
giving the contras more time to consolidate their position.”^
On May 2, 1986, North informed Poindexter that the contras were preparing
to launch a major offensive to capture a “principal coastal population center” (Puer¬
to Cabezas) and proclaim independence. If so, said North, “the rest of the world
Hits, Guns and Dmgs 289
will wait to see what we do—recognize the new territory—and UNO as the govt—
or evacuate them as in a Bay of Pigs.”
Not surprisingly, North advocated that the United States back the contras. Ac¬
cording to Elliott Abrams, the plan was discussed in the RIG, but rejected. Abrams
acknowledged he might have indicated to North that he supported the plan, but
claimed he never took the idea seriously: “It was totally implausible and not do¬
able. In December 1987, contra forces would try and fail to capture Siuna, Bonan¬
za and La Rosita.
Bluffs and Suits

Terrell was “dealt out” in March 1985. He was picked up by Honduran
authorities on March 15 and put on a plane for Miami. Since then, he has told his
story to government and nongovernment investigators and been a critic of continued
U.S. aid to the contras. Whatever the limits to Terrell’s credibility, he knew enough
to concern Owen and North.
North tried to muzzle Terrell in 1986 using the FBI and Enterprise security man
Glenn Robinette, a retired CIA technical services employee working as a security
consultant. Robinette posed as an attorney interested in collaborating with Terrell
on a book, movie and television project. In mid 1986, the FBI received (dis)infor-
mation from a “classified source” that pro-Sandinista individuals might be con¬
templating the assassination of President Reagan. Terrell was set up as an FBI suspect
in the alleged threat.
At North’s suggestion, Robinette became an FBI informer. Robinette briefed
FBI Associate Director Oliver “Buck” Revell, who discussed Terrell with the White
House Sub-Group of the Terrorist Incident Working Group (OSG/TIWG). North
prepared a memo for Poindexter to send Reagan titled “Terrorist Threat: Terrell.
North himself was interviewed by the FBI and said he had heard that Terrell tried
to import guns from Miami into a Central American country. At the same time, “North
stated that neither he nor his staff are responsible for funding, arming, or administrat¬
ing Contra programs” and denied he was “involved with any covert operations being
run in the United States.” The FBI reportedly dropped its investigation of Terrell
after agents surveilled him and concluded he was not a threat.^^
Meanwhile, the investigation by Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan was
progressing, much to the dismay of contra supporters. In October 1985, after Honey
and Avirgan published the results of their initial investigation, John Hull sued them
for libel in Costa Rica, denying that he worked with the CIA. In May 1986, a Costa
Rican judge threw out Hull’s complaint after two days of testimony that did more
to substantiate the Honey and Avirgan case than discredit it. Hull appealed and lost
again.
On May 29,1986, the Christie Institute, a Washington-based public interest law
firm, filed a civil law suit, brought under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Or¬
ganizations (RICO) Act, on behalf of Honey and Avirgan in U.S. District Court in
Miami. The suit, amended in December 1986, named 29 defendants as conspiring

in a broad racketeering enterprise to assassinate Pastora and smuggle guns and drugs
in illegal pursuit of the contra war. The defendants are John Hull, Adolfo Calero,
Robert Owen, Richard Secord, Albert Hakim, Thomas Clines, Theodore Shackley,
Rafael Quintero, John Singlaub, Tom Posey, Bruce Jones, Rene Corbo [Corvo], Felipe
Vidal, Francisco Chanes, Pablo Escobar, Jorge Ochoa, Moises Dagoberto Nunez,
Ramon Cecilio Palacio, Ricardo Gris, William Gris, Roger Lee Pallais, Hector Cornil-
lot, Jorge Gonzales, Alvaro Cruz, Frederico Saenz, Mario Delamico, James McCoy,
Ronald Martin and Amac Galil. (While the lawsuit is valuable, the Christie Institute’s
concept of a rogue “Secret Team” conspiracy driving U.S. foreign policy is mistaken.)
At the time the suit was filed, few Americans had heard of most of the defen¬
dants and few observers took the suit seriously. Richard Secord, however, had hired
Glenn Robinette in late March 1986 to investigate Honey and Avirgan. He directed
Robinette to find out any “dirt.” Robinette was paid $4,000 a month plus expenses
from April to December 1986; he received additional payment in March 1987 and
continued investigating into April. Thousands of dollars in expense money was used
for bribes in Costa Rica. “I spread it out down there,” said Robinette, paying people
“for what I wanted to know.”^^
Although Robinette acknowledged discussing the Honey and Avirgan suit with
Owen and Quintero as well as Secord, he has denied knowledge of the contra sup¬
ply operation under the NSC-run “Project Democracy.” In a July 26, 1986 memo to
Poindexter, however. North referred to Robinette as a Project Democracy security
officer. In April 1986, Secord asked Robinette to install a security system at North’s
residence. The installation, contracted out to former CIA colleagues in Vatech and
another company called Autodoor, was completed in July. Later, North and Robinette
tried unsuccessfully to cover up the illegal gift with phony bills.
With the Iran-contra scandal some of the Christie suit defendants became
household names. Still, much information was being suppressed, notably in the area
of drug smuggling.
Drug Propaganda
The only Nicaragua drug connection the administration wanted publicized,
was the one it invented about Sandinista cocaine. Seeded with leaks from
anonymous U.S. officials and intelligence sources, that story broke in the
Washington Times on ]u\y 17, 1984 and was embellished in the major media.^
Drugs became a staple in the administration’s anti-Sandinista propaganda diet,
pushed yet again by President Reagan in his March 1986 nationally-televised ad¬
dress to win $100 million for the contras: “I know every American parent concerned
about the drug problem will be outraged to learn that top Nicaraguan government
officials are deeply involved in drug trafficking.” Reagan displayed a blurry photo:
“This picture, secretly taken at a military airfield outside Managua, shows Federico
Vaughan, a top aide to one of the nine Comandantes who rule Nicaragua, loading
an aircraft with illegal narcotics bound for the United States.. .No, there seems to be
no crime to which the Sandinistas will not stoop—this is an outlaw regime.
The White House source for the Sandinista connection was a millionaire drug
smuggler named Adler Berriman (Barry) Seal. In March 1984, facing a lengthy jail
term for a narcotics conviction, Seal made a final effort to turn informer with an ap¬
peal to Vice President Bush’s anti-drug task force (prosecutors in Florida and
Louisiana had turned him down). Through the Bush task force’s intervention, Seal
went undercover for the DEA’s operation against Jorge Ochoa and the Colombian
cartel.
Seal told a Miami grand jury in July 1984 that he had learned Nicaragua was a
transit point for drug shipments and the site of a proposed cocaine processing lab.
He claimed to have flown 1,500 kilos of cocaine from Colombia to Managua, where
Ochoa had instructed him to refuel on the way to the United States. According to
Seal, the plane was mistakenly hit shortly after takeoff by Nicaraguan antiaircraft
fire so a Nicaraguan official stashed the coke for later pick up. The CIA put a hid¬
den camera in the C-123 cargo plane Seal used to transport the cocaine on June 24.
The photos allegedly show Vaughan, Colombian drug smuggler Pablo Escobar and
men dressed in civilian clothes, said to be Sandinista soldiers, loading duffel bags
packed with cocaine onto the C-123 at a military airstrip outside Managua. Seal com¬
pleted the sting mission when he landed the C-123 at Homestead Air Force Base in
Florida.
U.S. officials called Vaughan an aide to Interior Minister Tomas Borge and im¬
plicated Defense Minister Humberto Ortega by claiming Seal landed at the “military
airfield” at Los Brasiles. The Nicaraguan government identified Vaughan as the
deputy manager of a state-run export-import company during 1982-1983 who had
left well before the Seal operation; he was not an aide to Borge.
Miami-based DEA agent Robert Joura said the DEA was disappointed when
the story leaked, as it threatened the larger operation against the Colombian cartel.
“When the C.I.A. asked if they could put a camera in the plane, it didn’t seem like
a big deal. But whoever ended up with the photo felt what they were doing with
the contrasw2iS more important than our work. Maybe certain people weren’t being
forthright with us from the beginning.”^
Jonathan Kwitny reviewed the Nicaragua drug story in April 1987 for the Wall
Street Journal: the DEA “says the cocaine on Mr. Seal’s C-123 is the only drug ship¬
ment by way of Nicaragua that it knows of—and Mr. Seal said he had brought it
there to begin with. The Nicaragua ‘military airfield’ that officials said Mr. Seal flew
from is in fact a civilian field used chiefly for crop-dusting flights, the State Depart¬
ment now concedes.” Richard Gregorie, the chief assistant U.S. attorney in Miami,
who supervised Seal’s work as an informer, “says he could find no information
beyond Mr. Seal’s word tying any Nicaraguan official to the drug shipment. As for
Federico Vaughan...federal prosecutors and drug officials now say they aren’t sure
who he is.”^’
Thanks to his CIA-DEA work. Seal got off on his prior drug charges with six
months probation. But the probation stipulated that he spend nights—unarmed—
in a Baton Rouge, Louisiana Salvation Army shelter. Seal was machinegunned to
death as he parked his car there on February 19, 1986, allegedly to keep him from
testifying against Jorge Ochoa. In May 1987, three Colombians were convicted of
Seal’s murder in a U.S. court.^^
Associates of Seal have said he assisted the contra supply program. One said
he flew DC-6s from Ilopango Air Base in El Salvador to the Aguacate contra base
in Honduras. Others are vague as to whether Seal flew himself “or simply assisted
in connecting planes with pilots for the secret flights.
There’s less mystery about the C-123 Seal used in the Nicaragua sting. Southern
Air Transport became the C-123’s owner in March 1986. In October, it was shot
down over Nicaragua while making a supply run for the contras. Eugene Hasenfus
was the sole survivor.
The Contra Connection

Stories on the contra drug connection were few and far between. A
groundbreaking piece by Brian Barger and Robert Parry ran on December 17, 1985
over the Associated Press Spanish wire, apparently by mistake. An editor there called
up the latest draft of the story on computer and ran it without checking if it was
cleared for publication; it was not. Barger and Parry were still struggling with their
editors who were engaged in the kind of self-censorship that goes on regularly in
the American press. The Spanish version referred to Brigade 2506 and Jolin Hull in
its discussion of contra cocaine smuggling through Costa Rica and carried a denial
from Hull, who called the charges “communist disinformation.” The English-lan¬
guage version, which ran on December 20, dropped Hull from the story.
Barger, as reported in the ColumbiaJournalism Review, recalled hearing about
contra drug smuggling the previous March. “His sources, he says, were concerned
that if the drug trafficking was discovered, the Reagan administration would be set
back in its efforts to obtain more military funding for the rebels.. .‘Later, Bob [Parry]
and I found that officials from several [U.S.] law enforcement agencies were look¬
ing into the charges, and there was a feeling that their reports were going into a
vacuum. Eventually, they began talking with us.’
Unfortunately, the major media created a contra drug vacuum almost as effec¬
tive as the administration’s. The New York Times did not pick up the December 1985
Associated Press story; the Washington Post, after some delay, buried it inside.
Another story broke in March 1986, this time in the San Francisco Examiner
Seth Rosenfeld reported that “a major Bay Area cocaine ring helped to finance the
contra rebels.” Julio Zavala and Carlos Cabezas, convicted in connection with a 1983
cocaine seizure considered the biggest in West Coast history, testified to financing
contra groups with cocaine profits. Prosecutors actually returned $36,020 seized as
drug money after two contra leaders claimed it was given to Zavala to do political
work in the United States. A letter signed by Francisco Aviles and Vicente Rappac-
cioli of the Conservative Party of Nicaraguans in Exile stated that Zavala “is a mem¬
ber of the Conservative party as assistant treasurer and is located in the United States
of North America promoting the reinstatement of democracy in Nicaragua, for which

mission he received forty-five thousand dollars in cash, on the last week of January
1983, in San Jose, Costa Rica.” Another letter stated that Zavala was a longtime mem¬
ber of the UDN-FARN.
Zavala told the San Francisco Examiner that Aviles handled funds for FARN
leader Fernando “El Negro” Chamorro and “that he delivered to Aviles a total of
about $500,000, mostiy from cocaine profits. Much of this was collected from other
cocaine smugglers in Miami, New Orleans and the Bay Area.” He explained “some
were idealistic, but others only wanted to curry favor with contra forces that had
power in the region and might one day rule Nicaragua.” Zavala also said that in fall
1982 he arranged a Bay Area deal for grenades and machine guns for El Negro’s
forces. As for Carlos Cabezas, an attorney, he said he worked with the UDN-FARN
and ARDE.^'
William Walker, deputy assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs,
acknowledged that “one or two” mid-level contras may have “succumbed to tempta¬
tion” and engaged in drug smuggling. He said, “Those people have essentially been
told to knock it off by their commanders.
The New York Times carried an Associated Press story on April 11 describing
a federal investigation into gunrunning and drug trafficking by contras and sup¬
porters. The investigation, run out of the U.S. Attorney’s office for southern Florida,
had undertaken FBI interviews with Jack Terrell, Steven Carr and others. It was
stalled by a Justice Department-White House coverup (described in chapter 14).
On May 7, the New York Times V2in a piece titled “Contras Cleared on Gunrun¬
ning.” As happens all too often, the acted as a platform for administration dis¬
information, in this case designed to help with passage of the $100 million in
requested contra aid. Referring to the Florida investigation into gunrunning and drug
trafficking, a senior Justice Department official was quoted, “There just ain’t any
evidence...We ran down all the allegations and didn’t find anything”—except “a
single individual who may have been involved with maybe a dozen guns.”
The next month, the San Francisco Examiner reported another contra drug
connection, this one involving Norwin Meneses (reportedly the brother of Somoza’s
chief of police for Managua),^^ described in a confidential 1984 DEA report as “the
apparent head of a criminal organization responsible for smuggling kilogram quan¬
tities of cocaine into the United States.” Meneses, who met several times with Adol¬
fo Calero and Enrique Bermudez in Honduras, hosted FDN fundraisers in California.
He also employed FDN members in his drug business, among them Renato Pena-
Cabrera, the FDN’s San Francisco spokesperson, convicted of cocaine possession in
1985."®
In late August, after the $100 million had been approved by both chambers
of Congress, the administration released a report. Allegations of Drug Trafficking
and the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance. It acknowledged some evidence of drug
trafficking by Pastora associates while covering up for the favored FDN-UNO: There
“has been no evidence that organizations associated with the major resistance
umbrella group [UNO] have participated in or benefited from drug trafficking.”^^
CBS’ “West 57th” ran two segments on contra drug connections in April and
July 1987, interviewing drug smugglers George Morales, Gary Betzner and Mike Tol¬
liver, and money launderer Ramon Milian Rodriguez, all convicted on charges un¬
related to their contra activities. Milian Rodriguez laundered $200 million a month
through his Panama-based operation for a clientele including Pablo Escobar and
Jorge Ochoa. His mentor in the money-laundering business was Manuel Artime, a
Bay of Pigs political leader. Milian Rodriguez arranged $200,000 payments for each
of the Cuban burglars jailed for their part in the “Plumbers” unit caught in the 1972
Watergate break-in.'‘° One of those burglars, Eugenio Rolando Martinez, reportedly
a close friend of Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada, was pardoned by President Reagan
in 1981.'^
Milian Rodriguez said that in the mid 1970s he arranged for the covert delivery
of $30 million to $40 million from the CIA to Somoza.'*^ Somoza’s 1980 assassination
in Paraguay may have been linked to drug smuggling. According to historian Thomas
Walker, “though the government of Paraguayan dictator Alfredo Stroessner sub¬
sequently captured or killed several Argentine ‘terrorists’ who it claimed responsible
for the killing, circumstantial evidence points to the involvement of high-ranking of¬
ficers in Stroessner’s own military who may have been upset at Somoza’s alleged
effort to elbow his way into the lucrative drug smuggling business previously
dominated by these officers.
Milian Rodriguez said he laundered $10 million from the Colombian cartel to
the contras from late 1982 through 1985. In secret, sworn testimony to the Senate
Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Opera¬
tions, Milian Rodriguez claimed that he had been solicited by his old friend Felix
Rodriguez and that Adolfo Calero was one of the cash recipients: “Felix would call
me with instructions on where to send the money.” (Felix Rodriguez has acknowl¬
edged that Milian Rodriguez was an old friend, but denied asking for drug money.)
According to Milian Rodriguez, Felix Rodriguez called in late 1984 for help in
laundering cash from about a dozen Miami companies to the contras. For one of
the companies. Ocean Hunter, he moved about $200,000 a month in cash through
a designated courier. Ocean Hunter shipped frozen shrimp from Costa Rica to Florida
and reportedly smuggled cocaine in the shrimp containers. It was at the house of
Ocean Hunter partner Paco Chanes that Steven Carr saw three kilos of cocaine—al¬
legedly part of a larger 350 kilo shipment—along with contra weapons
Ocean Hunter is affiliated with a Costa Rican shrimp firm called Frigorificos
de Puntarenas which received a contract from NHAO. As Leslie Cockburn sum¬
marized it, “The NHAO account, established at the Consolidated Bank in Miami, had
three signatories, Chanes himself, Luis Rodriguez, and a Costa Rican partner, Moises
Dagoberto Nunez. ‘Dago’ Nunez is a Cuban American and friend of John Hull’s.
Between January and May of 1986 this trio received no less than $231,587 of U.S.
taxpayers’ money. Some of the money was in turn paid out to accounts in Israel
and South Korea.. .at a time when the two countries were reportedly supplying arms
to the contras.”'*^
Robert Owen was selected by NHAO to oversee the Frigorificos contract, which
was designated for nonlethal aid to the Kisan Atlantic Coast forces. Owen reported¬
ly picked up a fraudulent receipt for uniforms and boots from the Creaciones Fancy
Store in San Jose. Instead, $15,000 in NHAO/Frigorificos money was spent on guns
and ammunition,'^^
Owen, as mentioned in the previous chapter, reported to North on suspected
drug smuggling by southern front leaders at least as early as April 1, 1985. After talk¬
ing with Owen on August 9, 1985, North wrote in his notebook: “DC-6 which is
being used for [contra supply] runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for
drug runs into U.S.”'*^ On February 10, 1986, Owen wrote a memo to North that ap¬
pears particularly ironic in light of his own apparently informed ties to Paco Chanes
and other operatives in the contra drug connection: “No doubt you know the DC-
4 Foley got was used at one time to run drugs, and part of the crew had criminal
records. Nice group the Boys [CIA] choose. The company is also one that Mario
[Calero] has been involved with using in the past, only they had a quick name
change. Incompetence reins [s/c].”'*^ Foley refers to Patrick Foley, a former CIA opera¬
tive working for Summit Aviation, the CIA-affiliated company involved in supply¬
ing planes to the contras.
George Morales is a powerboat racing champion and cocaine smuggler jailed
in June 1986. According to Morales, in spring 1984, contra-CIA operative Octaviano
Cesar offered to stall his indictment or get it dropped if he would donate $250,000
every three months to the contras, train pilots and put his planes at the contras’ dis¬
posal. Prior to that Morales had bought and leased contra safe houses in Miami.
Morales said he donated a total of $3 million in cash—$400,000 of it picked up with
Cesar at a Bahamas bank in October 1984. Cesar switched his allegiance from Pas-
tora to the FDN and, by August 1984, Morales’ pilots were reportedly ferrying guns
to John Hull’s ranch and bringing out drugs on the return trip. Hull was allegedly
paid $300,000 per flight.^"
A Morales pilot, Gary Betzner, claimed to have taken “two loads—small aircraft
loads—of weapons to John Hull’s ranch in Costa Rica and returned to Florida with
approximately a thousand kilos of cocaine, five hundred each trip.” It was Betzner’s
understanding “that it wasn’t the private guns that went down that were that impor¬
tant; it was what was coming back. That could buy much larger and better and more
sophisticated weapons, and it was unaccounted-for cash.”^^ According to at least
two pilots—Geraldo Duran and “Tosh”—the Enterprise’s Santa Elena airstrip was
also used for drug running.^^
Pilot Michael Tolliver had many years of experience flying guns and drugs
when he received a call in August 1985 from Barry Seal. Through Seal’s contacts,
Tolliver said he met a Mr. “Hernandez,” who introduced him to Rafael Quintero in
December 1985 to discuss flight arrangements (Quintero told Tolliver to cut off con¬
tact with Seal in January 1986). In March 1986, Tolliver flew a DC-6 loaded with
guns and ammunition from Butler Aviation at the Miami Airport down to Aguacate
Air Base in Honduras, where contras unloaded the plane. Tolliver said he was paid
$70,000 to $75,000 for flying the arms by “Hernandez,” who Tolliver believes to be
Felix Rodriguez.
After a three-day layover, Tolliver said he flew the aircraft, reloaded with over
25,000 pounds of marijuana, as a “nonscheduled military flight” into Homestead Air
Force Base near Miami. “We landed about one-thirty, two o’clock in the morning,”
said Tolliver, “and a little blue truck came out and met us. [It] had a little white sign
on it that said ‘Follow Me’ with flashing lights. We followed it.”
“I was a little taken aback,” Tolliver recalled for “West 57th.” “I figured it was
a setup, or it was a DEA bust or a sting or something like that.” It wasn’t. Tolliver
said he left the marijuana and took a taxi from the base.^^
“West 57th” traced the DC-6 to a company called Vortex, which had received
an NHAO contract in February 1986 for $96,961 to ship “humanitarian” supplies to
the contras. The contract was signed by Vortex Vice President Mike Palmer who, in
1985, had been jailed in Colombia for drug smuggling. In June 1986, Palmer was
charged with conspiracy and drug possession in Detroit. By then he was a Customs
and DEA informant. In September 1987, he participated in a sting operation netting
the “biggest drug bust in Michigan’s history”—piloting a DC-6 from Colombia with
$44 million worth of cocaine and marijuana seized by narcotics agents outside
Detroit.^
In April 1987, a Customs Service official told the Boston Globe that Tolliver’s
story had “credibility. We think he did land at Homestead.” But the official described
Tolliver as a “free-lancer,” who “bluffed his way” through the system whereby CIA-
arranged contra flights were able to fly in and out of U.S. airports free of Customs
inspections. It was not explained how Tolliver bluffed his way into an Air Force
base, leaving behind over 25,000 pounds of marijuana that apparently bluffed their
way out.
Customs said that 50 to 100 flights had gone through without inspection in the
two years prior to April 1987. That is an interesting admission, given the various
restrictions on CIA contra assistance before fall 1986. The Customs official tried to
squeeze the flights through the loophole for CIA communications exchange: “We
presumed the agency was shipping radio equipment and the like down there and
it was best not to have inspectors going through the cargo.
By early fall 1986, the DEA office in Guatemala had uncovered “convincing
evidence” that American contra supply crews were involved in smuggling cocaine
and marijuana. A crew member used North’s name and warned he had White House
protection when DEA agents searched his house in San Salvador. After the contra
supply operation collapsed in the wake of the Hasenfus crash, the drug investiga¬
tion was not actively pursued.^
In July 1987, Nicaraguan exile Leticia Thomas-Altamirano was convicted in
Milwaukee as a member of a cocaine trafficking conspiracy that allegedly supported
the contras. Her fugitive brother Detlaf Thomas had earlier told an undercover
federal narcotics agent that he was working for the contras, providing them 75 per¬
cent of his cocaine profits.
These are just some of the links—some more substantiated at present than
others—in the contra drug connection.^ Investigations are proceeding at this writ¬
ing in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, chaired by William Hughes (D-
NJ), and the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and
International Operations, chaired by Senator John Kerry (D-MA), which is looking
into drug involvement bv the Honduran and Panamanian military as well as the con¬
tras. “We don’t know the extent of the Honduran military’s involvement in drugs,”
Hits, Guns and Dnjgs 297
said a State Department official. “But our educated guess is that all of the senior of¬
ficers have knowledge, many are involved...and they are all reaping the profits.
The Iran-contra committees chose to short-circuit the contra connection. There
is a potentially explosive Bush connection to the contra drug network (beyond Felix
Rodriguez) that will be reviewed in chapter 15.
stranger than Fiction

The contra drug connection fits a historical pattern of collaboration between
covert warriors and gangsters—^from the southeast Asian “Golden Triangle” opium-
heroin trade; to anti-Castro operations involving Mafia gangsters angered at the loss
of their Cuban gambling and prostitution paradise; to the Miami cocaine trade with
its Bay of Pigs veterans; to the laundering of drug money through the Nugan Hand
Bank, with its old-boy network of spooks and military men; to the heroin-subsidized
Afghan resistance.^
In his book on the Nugan Hand Bank—another scandal involving Secord,
Clines and many others inside and outside the contra network—-Jonathan Kwitny
recounted a Vietnam War-era event that reveals just how sordid the interlocking
drugs and war trade can get: Investigators from the Army’s Criminal Investigation
Division “were investigating corruption in the sale of supplies to commissioned- and
noncommissioned-officers’ clubs. The corrupt U.S. and Vietnamese officers they
caught tried to bargain away jail terms by describing the heroin traffic involving
Vietnamese politicians and senior U.S. officers.” The reports checked out.
As one investigator told it, they “filed reports to the Pentagon revealing that
G.I. corpses being flown back to the United States were cut open, gutted, and filled
with heroin. Witnesses were prepared to testify that the heroin-stuffed soldiers bore
coded body numbers, allowing conspiring officers on the other end, at Norton Air
Force Base in California, to remove the booty—ûp to fifty pounds of heroin per
dead G.I.”
According to the former investigator, the Army “acted on these reports—not
by coming down on the dope traffickers, but by disbanding the investigative team
and sending them to combat duty.” Other reports corroborated the use of G.I.
corpses for heroin smuggling via military channels
As Robert Owen told the Iran-contra committees, regarding his role as an NSC
courier and bagman, “we used to joke that truth is always stranger than fiction. In
this case, it is true.”^^
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13
Contadora, Contradora
The Central American area down to and including the isthmus of

Panama constitutes a legitimate sphere of influence for the United
States.. .Our ministers accredited to the five little republics stretching from
the Mexican border to Panama...have been advisers whose advice has
been accepted virtually as law in the capitals where they respectively
reside...
We do control the destinies of Central America, and we do so for the
simple reason that the national interest absolutely dictates such a
course...Until now Central America has always understood that govern¬
ments which we recognize and support stay in power, while those which
we do not recognize and support fall. Nicaragua has become a test case.
Undersecretary of State Robert Olds,

“Confidential Memorandum on the Nicaragua Situation,” 1927.
Sixty years after Sandino battled the U.S. marines, Nicaragua is again a test
case of U.S. control. It is also a test case for a new era of Latin American inde¬
pendence. In Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto’s words, “Unless and until the United
States embarks on a serious process of reevaluation of what constiaites its vital in¬
terests and unless in a new listing of its vital interests it excludes the controlling of
the political, social and economic destiny of each country in Latin America, we are
going to continue with difficulties.”^
About two decades ago, Chile’s Foreign Minister Gabriel Valdes, a Christian
Democrat, gave an unwelcome lesson in Noith-South inequities to President Richard
Nixon. Valdes explained that for every dollar in U.S. aid, Latin America was export¬
ing $3.80 in return. Valdes remembered National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger
“looking at me as if I were a strange animal.” At a meeting the next day, Kissinger
299
rebuked Valdes, “You come here speaking of Latin America, but this is not impor¬
tant. Nothing important can come from the South. History has never been produced
in the South.
U.S. officials still see Nicaragua as “an appendix to North American history,”
Vice President Sergio Ramirez told me. The United States, he said, wants “to isolate
Nicaragua, to make us appear as a political project that has nothing to do with the
interests of Latin American countries,” as a- “very strange” thing linked with Soviet
interests. But “the situation is very different from the one we had in the sixties, when,
for the United States, it was very easy to get Latin American countries to isolate
Cuba.. .Now we have a real opportunity to confront the United States with the Latin
American position.”^ Contadora embodies that opportunity.
In January 1983, the foreign ministers of Mexico, Colombia, Panama and
Venezuela launched their quest for Central American peace from the Panamanian
island of Contadora. It was an appropriate site because the Panama Canal treaty had
been a symbol of Latin American solidarity in the seventies. As D’Escoto explained,
Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos (killed in a suspicious plane crash in 1981) made
the struggle for sovereignty over the Canal “a Latin American cause” and all Latin
American governments felt a “certain pride because they had managed to get some¬
thing as a result of this unity. President Carlos Andres Perez of Venezuela called
the treaty, “the most significant advance in political affairs in the Western Hemi¬
sphere in this century.”^
The Canal treaty holds a key to understanding the U.S. response to Contadora.
The so-called DeConcini Condition to the treaty states that “if the Canal is closed,
or its operations are interfered with, [the United States and Panama shall each] have
the right to take such steps as each deems necessary.. .including the use of military
force in the Republic of Panama.”^ The treaty thus preserved perpetual U.S. authority
to intervene unilaterally in the Americas.
U.S. control of Latin American destiny was challenged successfully at the June
1979 OAS meeting when members rejected the Carter administration proposal to in¬
tervene militarily in Nicaragua. Contadora would institutionalize that unprecedented
constraint. Three years after that historic OAS meeting, came a more profound shock
to the Inter-American system. In the spring of 1982, when Argentina attempted to
assert its sovereignty over the Malvinas Islands (Falklands), the United States out¬
raged Latin Americans by siding with Britain, an “extra-hemispheric” power, in the
ensuing war. It taught Latin America a lesson on the limits of cooperation with the
United States given Argentina’s support of the contras.
Latin America was ready for new initiatives in regional cooperation outside
the parameters of the traditional U.S.-dominated Inter-American system. In the words
of Guadalupe Gonzales, director of the International Affairs program of the Mexican
Center for Economic Investigation and Training (CIDE), Contadora was the “first
historical pilot program” of a new style of regional coordination.^
Contadora, Contradora 301
An Urgent Appeal
At their January 1983 peace summit, the Contadora foreign ministers expressed
“their deep concern regarding foreign intervention—direct or indirect—în Central
American conflicts” and advised against classifying “such conflicts in the context of
an East-West confrontation.” They made “an urgent appeal to all Central American
countries to reduce tensions and establish a framework for a permanent atmosphere
of peaceful existence and mutual respect between nations through dialogue and
negotiation.” And they “warned all nations to abstain from actions which could wors¬
en the situation and create the danger of a general conflict which could extend
throughout the region.”®
Washington quickly rebuffed Contadora by carrying out the first Big Pine
military maneuvers with Honduras, less than ten miles from the Nicaraguan border.
By May, President Reagan had publicly embraced the contras as “freedom fighters”
and, in a speech to Cuban exiles in Miami, he praised Teddy Roosevelt’s Big Stick
credo.^ Secretary of Defense Weinberger freshly staked the U.S. claim to the region,
redrawing the map to assert that El Salvador is “on the mainland of the United States”
and “we do have responsibility for the defense of the continental United States, over
and above all other priorities.
Meeting in Cancun, Mexico the next month, the presidents of the Contadora
countries expressed their deep concern for the rapid deterioration of the situation
in Central America and stated: “Peace in Central America can become a reality only
in so far as respect is shown for the basic principles of coexistence among nations:
non-intervention; self-determination; sovereign equality of states; cooperation for
economic and social development; peaceful settlement of disputes; and free and
authentic expression of the popular will.”^^
Contadora cooperation could be mutually beneficial. Panama sought support
from other Latin American countries to protect the transfer of the Canal under Presi¬
dent Reagan who had campaigned against the treaty. For Venezuela, an OPEC mem¬
ber, the practice of political bargaining was “seen as an important means for
protecting its petroleum, resolving border disputes with Colombia and Guyana, and
keeping the United States at bay.”^^ Mexico worried about the threat of regional war
as well as closer U.S. military ties with Guatemala. As one analyst observed, “The
militarization of Central America has deeply exacerbated the Mexican regime’s sense
of threat to its own sovereignty.. .While few policymakers openly discuss the pos¬
sibility of a U.S. intervention in Mexico itself, the thought of U.S. troops on the
country’s southern flank and close to the oil fields—^for whatever purpose—is hard¬
ly comforting. As one high official of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) ex¬
plained: We already share one border with the United States. We do not want to
share two.’
Daniel Ortega backed the Contadora initiative with a six-point peace proposal
during a July 19, 1983 speech commemorating the fourth anniversary of the
Nicaraguan revolution: 1) sign immediately a nonaggression pact between Nicaragua
and Honduras; 2) cut off all arms supplies to El Salvador from any country; 3) stop
all military aid to forces opposed to any Central American government; 4) guaran¬
tee respect for the right of self-determination of Central American countries and non¬
intervention in domestic affairs of each country; 5) stop economic discrimination or
hostility against any Central American country; 6) prohibit foreign military bases in
Central America and suspend all military maneuvers that involve foreign armies/^
When Nicaragua first entered the Contadora process it desired a series of
bilateral nonaggression pacts with the United States and other Central American
countries, following up on Mexico’s 1982 initiatives. Honduras, in contrast, adopted
the Reagan administration position opposing bilateral negotiations and proposing
that all regional issues be negotiated multilaterally and simultaneously, “a negotiat¬
ing process in which the United States could exercise an effective veto (albeit by
proxy).To prevent the Contadora process from collapsing over procedural issues,
Nicaragua made a major concession and accepted the multilateral negotiating
framework.
The United States, meanwhile, proceeded with plans to hold naval maneuvers
just off Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast as well as Big Pine II maneuvers with Honduras.
“We’ve virtually slapped the Contadora group across the head,” protested Senator
Christopher Dodd. Anbassador Quainton refused to rule out a possible naval
“quarantine” of Nicaragua.
On September 9, 1983, the Contadora Group and five Central American
countries—^Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala—endorsed
a “Document of Objectives” with 21 Basic Points for Peace in Central America cover¬
ing political, security and economic issues. Three days later. Undersecretary of
Defense Fred Ikle endorsed a military solution: “We do not seek a military defeat
for our friends. We do not seek a military stalemate. We seek victory for the forces
of democracy...We must prevent consolidation of a Sandinista regime in
Nicaragua.. .If we cannot prevent that, we have to anticipate the partition of Central
America. Such a development would then force us to man a new military front-line
of the East-West conflict, right here on our continent.”'^
Washington encouraged the military leaders of Honduras, Guatemala and El
Salvador to reactivate CONDECA, the Central American Defense Council. On Oc¬
tober 25, the United States invaded Grenada, coating the Big Stick with a veneer of
collective defense. A majority of OAS members voted to censure the United States.
The Contadora process became more urgent.
“Drop Dead or We ll Kill You”

All versions of the Contadora treaty have addressed stated U.S. security con¬
cerns with detailed provisions for withdrawal of foreign military advisers and
elimination of foreign military bases; prohibition of aid to irregular forces or armed
bands seeking to overthrow or destabilize other governments; restriction of military
maneuvers; and limits on military personnel and armaments. Treaty compliance
mechanisms have been strengthened systematically to include an International Corps
of Inspectors and a Verification and Control Commission. The treaty also commits
the signers to undertake measures for national reconciliation, including genuine am¬
nesties, and to establish or enhance democratic political systems with free elections,
civil liberties and respect for human rights.
The Contadora system of collective security contrasts starkly with the U.S. con¬
cept of “collective self-defense” rejected by the World Court. Contadora would hold
the United States accountable, not only to international law, but to an autonomous
treaty system.
Aiming to sabotage Contadora at the least political cost to the United States
and the greatest cost to Nicaragua, the Reagan administration employed a three-part
strategy: paying public tribute to the Contadora process in order to coopt Congress
and paint Nicaragua as the intransigent party; pressuring Contadora countries to
realign their policies with U.S. objectives; and pressuring Central American allies to
oppose restrictions on U.S. actions and isolate Nicaragua—^vetoing treaty drafts when
Nicaragua approved and professing support when Nicaragua required changes.
An April 1983 NSC Summary Paper secretly stated the U.S. position of “co-opt¬
ing cut-and-run negotiating strategies by demonstrating a reasonable but firm ap¬
proach to negotiations and compromise on our terms.” Compromise on our terms
means capitulation by Nicaragua. Washington’s position was, in D’Escoto’s words,
“Drop dead or we’ll kill you.” If Nicaragua would not negotiate surrender, then the
United States would force concessions in the Contadora process while blocking a
final treaty from being enacted. Said one State Department official, “The U.S. would
like to go on supporting Contadora as long as nothing happens.”’®
The administration agreed in May 1984 to open talks with Nicaragua at the be¬
hest of Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid. In return, de la Madrid agreed to
upgrade relations with El Salvador under newly elected President Jose Napoleon
Duarte. The Nicaragua negotiations also served important domestic political pur¬
poses: mollifying Congress in the wake of the mining scandal, easing public fears
of “another Vietnam” and undercutting the Democrats during the 1984 presidential
campaign.
Mexico was the focus of a behind-the-scenes dispute leading to the resigna¬
tion of the CIA’s senior national intelligence officer for Latin America, John Horton.
Casey had insisted that Horton revise an intelligence report on Mexico to portray its
economic and political problems as a threat to Mexican stability and an indirect
danger to Central American and U.S. security. When Horton refused, contending
that intelligence data did not support that alarmist conclusion, Casey had another
analyst rewrite it. As Horton put it later, there was “pressure from Casey on subjects
that are politically sensitive to jigger [intelligence] estimates to conform with policy.”
According to administration officials, Casey wanted a tougher report “to help
persuade the White House to approve a program of covert and economic American
pressures on Mexico to induce its support for United States policies in Central
America.” President Reagan reportedly rejected such a program at that time because
Mexico appeared to be lessening its support for Nicaragua and the Salvadoran
revolutionaries.’'^ Mexico was nonetheless subject to various forms of pressure to
pull back from Contadora, stop supplying Nicaragua with oil and otherwise ally it-
self with U.S. policy in Central America, As one administration official explained, “It
is not usually done in a direct manner. We deal more effectively with Mexico in¬
directly.” In one concrete case, “the U.S. Agriculture Department passed word to its
counterpart in Mexico City that the State Department was blocking an agreement
for exporting Mexican fruits and vegetables because of Nicaragua.
Trumping Nicaragua
Fall 1984 should have been a turning point toward peace, capped by the
Boland amendment and the Contadora treaty. Instead, the Reagan administration
wrought more war and lawlessness.
Nicaragua agreed to sign the Contadora treaty on September 7, 1984. El Sal¬
vador, Costa Rica and Honduras had all indicated their preliminary approval.
Washington coached its proxies to backpedal from the treaty summit as if it were
the edge of a cliff.
“It is important to note,” wrote analysts Jim Morrell and William Goodfellow,
“that Secretary Shultz, while stating reservations about verification and timing pro¬
cedures, had called the treaty ‘an important step forward,’ one that ‘presents many
positive elements.’ Only after Nicaragua accepted it did it become ‘unsatisfactory’
and ‘one-sided.’ And only after Nicaragua agreed to sign was the treaty
downplayed as a draft. Diplomats from the four Contadora countries insisted that
“everyone has treated it as a final document,” including U.S. officials.Senior U.S.
officials discussed denying Ortega a visa to visit Los Angeles, following that year’s
UN General Assembly meeting, partly to “punish Mr. Ortega and the Sandinistas for
accepting the Contadora peace proposal.
A secret NSC background paper of October 30, 1984 proclaimed: “We have
trumped the latest Nicaraguan/Mexican efforts to rush signature of an unsatisfactory
Contadora agreement...Following intensive U.S. consultations with El Salvador,
Honduras, and Costa Rica,” this so-called Tegucigalpa bloc submitted a counterdraft
on October 20 that “reflects many of our concerns and shifts the focus within Con¬
tadora to a document broadly consistent with U.S. interests.” Washington sought to
isolate Nicaragua from the so-called Core Four: El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica
and Guatemala, whose position was less reliable. As the NSC document noted, “The
uncertain support of Guatemala for the Core Four is a continuing problem.. .We will
continue to exert strong pressure on Guatemala to support the basic Core Four posi¬
tion.”^'*
The Tegucigalpa draft deleted the ban on foreign military exercises in the
region as well as the requirement for removal of foreign bases within six months.
Only the United States (among foreign countries) actually had bases and conducted
military maneuvers in the region. The new draft also weighted the verification com¬
mission against Nicaragua by adding the five Central American countries (mostly
U.S. dependencies); four impartial outside countries would be chosen by the Con¬
tadora Group. And it dropped the final protocol, open to signature by all countries
“desiring to contribute to peace and cooperation in Central America” by agreeing

not to “thwart the aims and purpose of the act.” The State Department objected to
the protocol on the grounds that it admitted a political role in Central America for
the Soviet Union and Cuba, who would presumably be expected to sign.^^ More im¬
portantly, the United States did not want to sign such a protocol itself, in support
of a treaty it wanted to avoid.
Reflecting on the changes being sought in the treaty, a Mexican foreign policy
analyst observed, “Contadora is not strong enough to impose its will on the United
States.In January 1985, the United States broke off negotiations with Nicaragua,
claiming that Nicaragua was using them to undermine Contadora. By then, however,
a U.S. official had acknowledged “that the Administration doesn’t really want a set¬
tlement with the Sandinistas.” In another official’s words, “No one knows whether
the United States should invade Nicaragua, but people don’t want to foreclose that
option by signing some kind of agreement.
Foreigners in “Our Own Backyard”

The September 1985 version of the treaty, drawn up under concerted U.S.
pressure, was unacceptable to Nicaragua without revision. Nicaragua accepted 100
of 117 provisions of the new draft; on 17 it called for a return to the 1984 treaty.^®
For example, the new draft replaced the prohibition of international military
maneuvers with regulation of allowable maneuvers—maneuvers used by the United
States to train for future military action against Nicaragua, supply the contras,
strengthen military infrastructure and preposition equipment and troops in the
region. Prohibition of military maneuvers and foreign bases, the State Department
acknowledged in objecting to the September 1984 treaty, would “reduce our
presence and our pressure on Nicaragua. A freeze or moratorium on arms acquisi¬
tion was unacceptable to Nicaragua without a simultaneous prohibition of foreign
military maneuvers.
Nicaragua also demanded that the U.S. role be confronted directly by insist¬
ing that a Contadora treaty could not be signed unless the United States showed it
was prepared to abide by it. Nicaragua wanted “a halt to the US aggression against
Nicaragua in all its forms, including covert assistance delivered through private or¬
ganizations and individuals to the mercenary forces as well as official aid, and the
solemn commitment of the US government to refrain from promoting or permitting
similar acts in the future.” Nicaragua contended, “As long as the US government
does not assume, in a public, clear and responsible manner, an international com¬
mitment to not militarily invade Nicaragua, directly or indirectly, the Nicaraguan
people have the right to guarantee a level of armaments and of military and
paramilitary forces capable of putting them in a position to defend their sovereignty
with dignity.”^®
At the December OAS meeting in Cartagena, a Nicaraguan official summarized
Nicaragua’s position: “We are being asked to disarm without any promise that the
war against us will end. If we accept it [the revised treaty], we would be commit¬
ting suicide. Nicaraguans have a deeply etched historical example of disarming
in the face of an armed enemy: the 1934 assassination of Sandino and the slaughter
of his followers by the National Guard.
Analysts Morrell and Goodfellow wrote: “Nicaragua’s earlier concessions have
now limited its room for maneuver. Carried out in the face of an extremely hostile
US administration, they would clearly jeopardize Nicaragua’s safety. If Nicaragua is
now being called intransigent, it is paying the price for going the extra mile earlier
in the negotiations.”^^
Nicaragua’s objections to asymmetry in the Contadora treaty were the flip side
of U.S. objections to symmetry—symmetry between support of the FMLN and the
contras, between Nicaragua and its neighbors, and between the U.S. and other
foreign countries, principally Cuba and the Soviet Union. As D’Escoto told me, the
United States “considers it a terrible affront to be regarded as a foreigner in its own
‘backyard.’ (Latin Americans who emigrate to the United States, on the other hand,
are characterized as illegal or legal aliens^
A Contadora treaty that compromised on U.S. terms would prohibit extra-
hemispheric involvement (prohibiting Cuba as a Soviet ally). It would be a
Contadora Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, preserving perpetual U.S. authority to
intervene militarily, perhaps under the guise of “collective self-defense.”
“Who Negotiates with a Cancer?”

En route to the December 1985 OAS meeting. Secretary Shultz told reporters,
“Our commitment” to the contras “is indefinite.” At the meeting he cavalierly rejected
the possibility of resuming bilateral talks with Nicaragua, claiming past talks had
resulted in a Nicaraguan effort “to undermine” Contadora, “so we don’t intend to
go back to that.”^"*
Lunching with the four Contadora ministers on December 2, Shultz reported¬
ly said that Nicaragua was a “cancer” in Central America requiring a “surgical solu¬
tion.” Moreover, he told them that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “indicated to
President Reagan during last month’s summit in Geneva that the Soviet Union would
not move to stop a US attack against Nicaragua. As New York Times columnist
Tom Wicker noted later, “who negotiates witli a cancer?”^^
Shocked by Shultz’s remarks, the Contadora nations reunited behind a joint
resolution for submittal to the UN General Assembly, calling for new talks between
the United States and Nicaragua. The United States had earlier pressured Colombia,
Venezuela and Panama to temporarily withdraw their support for the resolution.
There was growing evidence of fatigue among the Contadora countries.
Mexico was pulling back from a leading role to concentrate on its domestic economic
crisis and work with the United States in debt renegotiations. Colombia had also
sought support from the Reagan administration in its negotiations with the Interna¬
tional Monetary Fund.^^ On December 7, the Contadora mediation effort was
suspended temporarily in response to a Nicaraguan request noting the upcoming

transitions of government in Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica. Voicing the con¬
ventional wisdom, a Western diplomat in Central America said, Contadora is going
“into a coma, it’s all but dead.”^®
Marco Vinicio Cerezo, the newly elected president of Guatemala, resuscitated
Contadora when he toured Central America in December and committed Guatemala
to a policy of “active neutrality.” Cerezo would not support the U.S. policy of isolat¬
ing Nicaragua.
On January 12, 1986, the Contadora Group and Support Group of Argentina,
Peru, Brazil and Uruguay rebounded with the Carabelleda Message. Together, the
Contadora and Support Group countries represent about 90 percent of the popula¬
tion and economic resources of Latin America. Luis Herrera Lassa, director of the
Mexican-based Latin American Center for Strategic Studies, described the Support
Group, formed in July 1985, as a very significant development. “The Uruguay-Ar-
gentina-Brazil rapprochement, starting with the democratization of all three, is some¬
thing more than a momentary historical identification between these countries.. .This
democratic nucleus of the Southern Cone could be a balancing factor in the hemi¬
sphere vis-a-vis the United States,” at least on some levels
Washington saw the Support Group’s formation as a threat. In a September
1985 meeting of U.S. officials, Elliott Abrams stated, “it’s necessary that we develop
an active diplomacy in order to hinder the attempts at Latin American solidarity that
could be directed against the U.S. and its allies whether these efforts are initiated
by the Support Group, Cuba or Nicaragua.
In his message to the Contadora ministers meeting in Carabelleda in January
1986, host Venezuelan President Jaime Lusinchi rejected the view that Contadora
had died: “Contadora has neither died nor can die, because it is more than an ideal
for peace: it is a will, a conviction.
According to the Central American Historical Institute, Contadora “had come
to a fork in the road: either abandon negotiations or take into account the Nicaraguan
thesis, i.e., recognizing that the presence of the US is an essential element in a real
solution.The Carabelleda Message called for steps “to establish an atmosphere of
mutual trust that will restore the spirit of negotiation,” including an end to external
support to irregular forces operating in the region, suspension of international
military maneuvers and freezing of arms purchases. It offered Contadora’s assistance
to foster negotiations between the governments of the United States and Nicaragua,
asserting that “respectful negotiation between them, with mutual and equitable con¬
cessions, is a condition for regional detente.”'*^
The Carabelleda principles were reaffirmed at the Central American presidents
summit in Guatemala on January 15, on the occasion of Cerezo’s inauguration, and
again at the Contadora ministers meeting in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in late February.
U.S. officials gave rhetorical support for revival of the Contadora process, but in¬
sisted the United States would continue to support the contras and refrain from talks
with the Nicaraguan government, advocating instead that Nicaragua talk with the
contras.
On February 10, the eight Contadora foreign ministers undertook an unprece¬

dented joint mission to Washington. Meeting with Shultz, they urged the administra¬
tion to halt aid to the contras, back a negotiated settlement and resume direct talks
with Nicaragua. Shultz repeated the U.S. position that a resumption of bilateral talks
would “undermine Contadora.” President Reagan snubbed the Contadora ministers,
choosing instead to meet that week with contra leaders.
Shortly after. White House spokesman Larry Speakes was asked if the ad¬
ministration aim was to overthrow the Sandinistas. He replied, “Yes, to be absolute¬
ly frank.
In his February 25 request to Congress for $100 million in new contra fund¬
ing, Reagan claimed, “Our persistent efforts to achieve a peaceful solution have
failed to resolve the conflict because Nicaragua has continued to reject meaningful
negotiations. Communist attempts to circumvent and subvert Contadora, apparent
from the beginning of the negotiating process, have left a clear trail of lost oppor¬
tunities for peaceful reconciliation. In most recent months, Nicaragua has repeated¬
ly frustrated negotiations aimed at producing a final, comprehensive Contadora
treaty.”
In March, the administration intensified pressure on Latin American nations to
recognize the contras as a legitimate political force and endorse the Reagan demand
for “democratization,” beginning with direct negotiations between Nicaragua and
the contras. Mexico, caught up in negotiations with the United States for an economic
aid package, was under the greatest pressure. In Colombia, Washington was urging
“the army and political right to pressure the government to take a more anti-San-
dinista stance.
President-elect Oscar Arias of Costa Rica had declared his opposition to con¬
tra aid on February 20, asserting, “the U.S. has forgotten the lessons of Vietnam.’'^
A Western diplomat acknowledged that Reagan’s newly appointed special envoy
for Central America, Philip Habib, was rebuking Arias as well as Honduran Presi¬
dent Jose Azcona for questioning the pro-contra policy. “They have been told they
have been embarrassing the President and that this could cost them.”^^
Borderline
White House Communications Director Patrick Buchanan led the $100 million
charge on Capitol Hill: “By cutting arms shipments to Nicaragua’s freedom fighters,
by tying the president’s hands with the Boland amendment, the national Democratic
Party has now become, with Moscow, co-guarantor of the Brezhnev doctrine in
Central America...With the vote on contra aid, the Democratic Party will reveal
whether it stands with Ronald Reagan and the resistance—or Daniel Ortega and the
commumsts.
Reagan compared the contras to Winston Churchill and likened the contra aid
package to Lend-Lease during World War IIOn March 20, the House voted down
the aid request. Although the McCarthyite rhetoric backfired in the short run.
Nicaragua was further demonized and the political stakes were raised for the next
round.
The House vote, as in 1985, was not the final word. As the New York Times
reported the day after, leaders in both parties agreed “that a majority of Congress
supports military aid for the rebels in some form.” Once again, a Nicaraguan action
served as an excuse for the predicted House reversal. Ortega did not go to Moscow,
but Nicaraguan troops attacked the contras in their border base camps. Though it
wasn’t the first time the Nicaraguan Amiy had denied the contras safe sanctuary, it
was the first time the administration had hyped one of the cross-border raids as an
invasion of Honduras. Nicaragua timed the counteroffensive to the battlefield and
seasonal calendar (March offers prime dry season conditions), not the Washington
political calendar. The CIA Intelligence Directorate considered it a routine raid,
prompting Casey to press for a politically biased reassessment. The “invasion” was
news to the Honduran government, who knew the Nicaraguan targets were the con¬
tras who Honduras publicly denied were in Honduran territory. Turning up the heat
on Congress, on March 25, Reagan ordered $20 million in emergency military aid
for Honduras and U.S. helicopters ferried Honduran troops to the border area. By
then the Nicaraguan counteroffensive was over.^
Congressional Democrats joined the White House melodrama. House Speaker
Tip O’Neill, who had argued passionately against military aid to the contras, accused
Nicaragua of aggression against Honduras and denounced Ortega as “a bumbling,
incompetent Marxist-Leninite communist.” House leaders again portrayed
Nicaragua’s action as a slap in the face and said it greatly enhanced the chances of
congressional approval of new aid, as if aid would not otherwise have passed.^^
While Washington pretended that Honduras was being invaded. President Az-
cona left for Easter vacation at the beach and the Honduran military refrained from
transforming the cross-border action into a war with Nicaragua. Within days, a senior
Honduran official told reporters that the Reagan administration had pressured Hon¬
duras and manipulated the event to influence Congress and derail Honduran efforts
to improve relations with Nicaragua. “Obviously they [U.S. officials] were interested
that the incident have the connotations of an international confrontation,” he said,
“but we had no interest in that.” He acknowledged that the contras’ border presence
had brought “a de facto occupation of our territory.” He said, “We couldn’t bring
our country to the brink of war because of a battle between the counter¬
revolutionaries and the Sandinistas.”^^
The “emergency” U.S. military aid provided another channel to launder assis¬
tance to the contras. On March 27, the Senate approved $100 million in military and
“nonlethal” contra support.
In April, the United States bombed the Libyan capital of Tripoli on a mission
to kill Muamar Qaddafi and his family. At least 17 persons died, including Qaddafi’s
fifteen-month old adopted daughter, and over 100 were injured in the veiled assas¬
sination mission widely applauded in the United States as a blow against “interna¬
tional terrorism.”” Reagan continued lobbying for aid to the contras to prevent the
Nicaraguan government from building “a Libya on our doorstep.” A U.S. ambas¬
sador in Central America told me, “It’s irresistible that if you get the American people
hating Libya, not to hitch on Nicaragua.
Peace is War
The Contadora countries did not buckle to U.S. pressure and recognize the
contras, but at the April ministers meeting in Panama they backed away from the
Carabelleda principle of simultaneity. Nicaragua was pressed to be more “realistic”
and sign the September 1985 version of the treaty without insisting that the United
States simultaneously halt its aggression against Nicaragua and renew bilateral
negotiations. Negotiators argued that by signing the treaty, Nicaragua would make
it more difficult for the United States to continue support for the contras since Con¬
gress would likely reject the requested funding. A June 6 deadline was set for sign¬
ing. The other Central American countries, including Guatemala, stated their
readiness to sign.^’
The Support Group presidents, however, did not abandon Carabelleda. Presi¬
dent Alan Garcia of Peru had taken a particularly strong stand, declaring on March
l6 that if the United States invaded Nicaragua, Peru would break diplomatic rela¬
tions with Washington: “We would consider whatever act of aggression against a
Latin American country an act of aggression against Pem.”^ Garcia and Uruguayan
President Julio Sanguinetti reaffirmed their support for Carabelleda, and specifical¬
ly the principle of simultaneity, in an April 11 letter to President Ortega. “What is at
stake,” they wrote, “is the possibility for the Cenhal American countries to con¬
solidate their own peace, and for Latin America to freely determine its own destiny.”
Argentine President Raul Alfonsin declared, “the US should recognize that the
democratic ethical-philosophical foundation which it proclaims for its internal na¬
tional life must be honored also in relations between the different nations of the
hemisphere. After all, Latin America has been shortchanged in terms of democratic
treatment.”^'
On April 12, President Ortega reasserted Nicaragua’s willingness to sign the
treaty in June, but only “if the United States has ceased its aggression against
Nicaragua by that date and if agreement has been reached on the pending issues
of the modified act, all within the framework of the concept of ‘simultaneity’ ex¬
plicitly set foith in the Carabelleda Message.” Ortega also reiterated Nicaragua’s
desire to form border commissions with Honduras and Costa Rica. A Boston Globe
editorial of April 14 expressed understanding of Nicaragua’s reluctance to sign under
the circumstances: “Some might argue that the Sandinistas would have been politi¬
cally wise to sign a Contadora peace treaty—even a hollow document—to prove
that they are not intransigent.
“From Managua’s point of view, there was little sense in giving the administra¬
tion a license to continue the war and—^when Nicaraguan demobilization is delayed,
as it will be if the war continues—^yet another opportunity to accuse the Sandinis¬
tas of bad faith.”
Controversy erupted in the United States when Special Envoy Philip Habib
seemingly misread his assignment as negotiations rather than public relations. In an

April 11 letter to Rep. Jim Slattery (D-KS), which the State Department projected as
an official statement of U.S. policy, Habib interpreted Contadora “provisions as re¬
quiring a cessation of support to irregular forces and/or insurrectional movements
from the date of signature.” Attention was focused on this point, but Habib went
on to say; “Although the United States is not a party to the Contadora negotiations
and ivoiild not be legally boundhy signature of a Contadora treaty, we will as a mat¬
ter of policy support and abide by a comprehensive, verifiable and simultaneous
implementation of the Contadora Document of Objectives of September 1983, as
long as such an agreement is being fully respected hy all the parties. We would not
feel politically bound to respect an agreement that Nicaragua was violating.” (Italics
added.)
Democrats portrayed the letter as a welcome shift in administration thinking.
Rightwingers saw red. The administration quickly corrected a one-word mistake: in¬
stead of “from the date of signature” it should have read “from the date of implemen¬
tation.” Nicaragua would have to disarm under the gun and meet U.S. demands for
contra democracy before the treaty was considered implemented. The position
remained, commit suicide or well kill you.
As the Contadora process neared the June deadline, the Department of Defense
released a report, “Prospects for Containment of Nicaragua’s Communist Govern¬
ment.” A prize May 20 New York Times headline summarized the report: “Pentagon
Predicts Big War If Latins Sign Peace Accord.”
The Pentagon report assumed that if a treaty were signed, Nicaragua would
violate it. The United States and its allies, meanwhile, would comply diligently for
two to three years—closing down U.S. military bases and on-site advisory and Gain¬
ing efforts; ceasing U.S. military assistance to El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and
Guatemala; reducing U.S. military exercises with Honduras; cutting off aid to the
contras; and disbanding contra forces in Honduras and Costa Rica. Then, to contain
communist expansionism, the United States could be forced to commit 100,000
troops and several carrier groups, and spend over $9 billion a year.
The often absurd report clearly expressed the well-entrenched administration
view, summarized by Sergio Ramirez: any “solution to the Central American problem
must start with the disappearance of the Sandinista government.
The State Department immediately challenged the brazen Pentagon report,
leading some to believe there was a serious dispute over the content of administra¬
tion policy rather than its form. In August 1985, however, Elliott Abrams had
remarked, foreshadowing the Pentagon report, “It is preposterous to think we can
sign a deal with the Sandinistas to meet our foreign policy concerns and expect it
to be kept.”^^ Around the time of the Habib furor, an unnamed high-ranking State
Department official (perhaps Abrams) said that the Reagan administration was
“hoping for the overthrow of the Sandinistas” and he “saw little benefit to be gained
from talking about a negotiated accord.
In April 1986, I asked a U.S. ambassador in Central America why there could
not be a tripartite agreement involving the United States, Nicaragua and Contadora
that accommodated the security concerns of all parties. He said there had been some
312 - WASHINGTON’S WAR ON NICARAGUA
possibility for this in 1984, at Manzanillo. Nicaragua would have agreed, provided
internal structures were not addressed. But, said the ambassador, “the U.S. was never
interested in that sort of deal.” Later, he observed, “It’s geography, as Henry Kis¬
singer said during his commission, ‘the U.S. could not accept even a Yugoslavia in
Central America.’
“Democratization”
“As a first-hand witness,” said Gerardo Trejos Salas, Costa Rica’s vice minister
for foreign affairs from 1985 until May 1986, “I can affirm that.. .Washington tried
by all means available to block tlie signing of the Contadora Peace Act.”^^
Washington attempted to further Nicaragua’s regional isolation by prompting
U.S. allies to challenge Nicaragua’s political legitimacy and demand “democratiza¬
tion.” In stark contrast to the positive nature of the Central American presidents’
summit during Cerezo’s inauguration. President-elect Oscar Arias discouraged Or¬
tega from attending his May 8 inauguration, claiming that Costa Rica could not
guarantee Oitega’s safety.
The isolation strategy backfired. As described by the Central American Histori¬
cal Instiaite, the San Jose meeting became Arias’ “first foreign policy failure.” Arias
“brought to the meeting a prepared document reflecting Reagan administration posi¬
tions, titled ‘For Democracy in Central America’; a document which also found its
way to the press. Nicaragua, according to this proposal, would have to ‘democratize’
within the next two years, by holding new elections, dissolving its legislative as¬
sembly, dialoging with the contras and introducing changes in the Constitution that
it is at this moment in tlie process of drafting. The idea was that Arias’ document
would be signed by all the presidents, but the plan was short-circuited by the Con¬
tadora and Support Group presidents present in the meeting. Instead Argentina,
Uruguay, Pern, Colombia and Panama (Mexico and Venezuela did not attend) signed
a document which exhorted ‘an extra-regional country’ with interests in the area to
give signals in favor of peace. President Alias did not hold back from publicly ex¬
pressing his disgust at this clear allusion to the United States.
With its new constimtion, said Nicaraguan Ambassador Carlos Tunnermann,
“Nicaragua will comply with the whole process of internal democratization of which
Contadora speaks,” institutionalizing guarantees for political pluralism and human
rights. “We don’t believe Contadora to be incompatible with the continuation of the
revolutionary process,” he told me. It is the United States that has problems because
Contadora “allows the survival of the revolution” and rejects the “option of force”
represented by the Reagan Doctrine
As the June deadline neared, U.S. officials worried that Nicaragua would sign
the treaty. Nicaragua went to the May Contadora meeting in Panama with what it
termed a position of “utmost flexibility.” It urged adoption of tlie concept of a
“reasonable balance of forces,” i.e. “the magnitude of military force of a defensive
nature each state needs to defend its national territory against an external attack.
Honduras again played the role of U.S. proxy by countering with a proposal for
equal weapons restrictions on the Central American nations, notwithstanding their
particular defense requirements.
The Central American presidents, including Ortega, met in Esquipulas,
Guatemala in late May. President Cerezo described the summit’s purpose as “not to
back the U.S. or Nicaragua, but to back Central America.” Latin Americans, he said,
“must become the protagonists of our own history. The presidents offered their
support of Contadora and agreed to establish a Central American Parliament to
strengthen Central American “dialogue, joint development, democracy and pluralism
as basic factors for peace in the area and for Central American integration.”^^
The Esquipulas summit deflated tensions as the June 6 deadline came and
went. On May 27, with the aim of breaking the deadlock over arms control,
Nicaragua announced a proposed list of military matters and materiel that it “is will¬
ing to reduce, limit, regulate or and do without in the framework of the current Con¬
tadora negotiations to achieve peace.” The list included “all type of military aircraft
[and] helicopters,” military airports, tanks, heavy mortars, foreign military advisers,
etc. Meeting in Panama in early June, Contadora ministers agreed to a compromise
treaty draft for further discussion.
On June 20, Nicaragua announced it would accept the revised treaty. Abrams
rejected it as “inadequate” and Reagan dismissed Nicaragua’s actions as “propagan-
distic.”^ Two days before Nicaragua’s announcement, the New York Times reported
that “administration officials intewiewed uniformly spoke in the past tense when
discussing the idea of negotiation.”
Swing Shift: Congress Contravenes World Court

The House of Representatives swung behind the administration on June 25.
The vote was 221 to 209, with 51 Democrats voting for the aid and only 11
Republicans voting against it. Among the eleven members who had opposed con¬
tra aid in March and voted for it in June were six Democrats, including Aimed Ser¬
vices Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-WI). “Eor Aspin, the motive was largely
ideological,” explained William LeoGrande. “Privately he had favored contra aid for
over a year, but he hesitated to break ranks for fear of further complicating liis al¬
ready difficult relations with the party leadership and the liberals, relations strained
by his championing the MX missile.
The aid package provided $70 million in military aid and $30 million in so-
called non-military aid for the contras, plus $300 million in economic assistance to
El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Costa Rica. The CIA was expected to provide
another $400 million to the contras from its secret contingency funds.
Rep. Gerry Studds responded to the aid passage with a ringing indictment: “I
fear that this body has made a mistake of truly monumental and historic propor¬
tions, a mistake which will come back to haunt us and our successors for many
years to come. I think it may well be the historic equivalent of the Gulf of Tonkin
Resolution and I fear there may be blood on the hands of this body.. .Such aid would
support a policy that is illegal, brutal, ineffective, historically ignorant, domestical¬
ly and internationally unpopular and it will deepen direct U.S. involvement in a war
in which we cannot with honor participate and which we cannot win.”
Two days after the House vote, the World Court issued its expected verdict
citing the United States for violating international law. Specifically, the Court rejected
the U.S. justification of “collective self-defense” and decided that the United States
“by training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying the contra forces or other¬
wise encouraging, supporting and aiding military and paramilitary activities in and
against Nicaragua, has acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its
obligation under customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another
State.” The Court also specifically condemned the overflights of Nicaraguan territory,
attacks on port facilities, mining of the harbors, production of the “psychological
warfare” manual and the trade embargo.
The World Court ruled not only that the United States “is under a duty im¬
mediately to cease and to refrain from all such acts,” but that it “is under an obliga¬
tion to make reparation to the Republic of Nicaragua for all injury carried to
Nicaragua by the breaches of obligations under customary international law.”^°
On August 2, President Ortega announced new peace initiatives in an address
to the Chicago-based Operation PUSH founded by Reverend Jesse Jackson. Ortega
called on the United States to comply with the World Court verdict and negotiate a
Peace and Friendship Treaty with Nicaragua; proposed joint border patrols with
Honduras and Costa Rica; called for signing the Contadora treaty on September 15,
the anniversary of Central American independence; and invited President Reagan
to visit Nicaragua, with the opportunity to meet all sectors of Nicaraguan society
and deliver a televised address to the Nicaraguan people.^’
Not surprisingly, the Reagan administration was not interested in pursuing
bilateral negotiations or a Contadora agreement. Elliott Abrams asserted, “No one
knows how long it will take either to get the Sandinistas to modify their behavior
[sic\ or for the people of Nicaragua to essentially throw them out. It could be sooner
than a lot of people think.
On August 14, the Senate voted 53 to 47 to approve a contra aid package iden¬
tical to that passed in the House. Among the eleven Democrats voting in favor of
aid, were Senators Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, Sam Nunn of Georgia and Bill Bradley
of New Jersey.
That same day, fundraiser Spitz Channell met in Washington with repre¬
sentatives of Mexico’s conservative opposition, the National Action Party. Accord¬
ing to notes taken by Jane McLaughlin, then an employee of Channell’s National
Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, Channell told the Mexicans that Presi¬
dent Reagan would help their cause at election time if they would support the con¬
tra program. A Channell spokesperson later said they had only discussed a possible
advertising campaign to pressure the Mexican government into supporting U.S.
Central America policy.^^
Intensive Care
The congressional swing shift drove more nails into Contadora’s coffin. But
the Latin Americans kept Contadora alive in the hope of a dramatic breakthrough.
In the words of Argentine Foreign Minister Dante Caputo, “Every time they try to
bury us, we resurrect ourselves.
The Contadora and Support Group ministers met in New York on October 1
and issued a statement titled “Peace is still Possible in Central America”: “Our demand
as Latin Americans is for room to act. Room to offer each other a peaceful, fair and
lasting solution.” There was no room for peace in Washington. The Reagan ad¬
ministration moved quickly with its congressional mandate for war. U.S. officials
reportedly prepared to press Central American allies to freeze or break relations
with Nicaragua.^^
In November, Honduras and Costa Rica conditioned their future Contadora
participation on Nicaragua dropping its suit against them in the World Court. Fol¬
lowing the favorable World Court ruling in its case against the United States,
Nicaragua had filed suit on July 28 against Honduras and Costa Rica for harboring
contra base camps. Nicaragua’s Deputy Foreign Minister Victor Hugo Tinoco ob¬
served that Nicaragua too could impose conditions on its participation in Contadora,
such as the removal of contra camps in Honduras and Costa Rica, but that “would
lead us nowhere.
Contadora diplomats grimly assessed the situation in an internal strategy paper
citing intensification of the war along the Nicaraguan-Honduran border, the threat
of direct U.S. military involvement and the impasse in talks among the Central
American countries. They observed, “The false impression that this stagnation is
caused by Nicaragua rather than by these other nations has been allowed to
prevail.
UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and OAS Secretary General Joao
Clemente Baena Soares joined together to revive Contadora. On November 18, they
offered the services of their organizations in monitoring border incidents and su¬
pervising the disbanding or relocating of irregular forces, the reduction of armed
forces, the dismantling of military bases and the expulsion of foreign military ad¬
visers. Later that month, the administration escalated the regional arms race with its
offer to upgrade Honduran airpower with more advanced F-5E fighter bombers.
Tensions rose with a cross-border clash between Nicaragua and Honduras in
early December, as Nicaragua attempted to keep the contras bottled up in their base
camps in the Las Vegas salient jutting into Nicaragua. U.S. helicopters again ferried
Honduran troops to the border area (utilizing the airstrip at Jamastran), violating
congressional legislation that prohibited U.S. troops from being within twenty miles
of the Nicaraguan border. General John Galvin, head of the Southern Command,
traveled to Honduras to supervise the operation. Under heavy pressure from
Washington, Honduran jet fighters crossed the border and conducted air strikes
against a Nicaraguan outpost in Murra and an airstrip in Wiwili, killing seven
Nicaraguan soldiers and wounding twelve soldiers and four civilians, including two
children/® Nicaragua blamed the United States for the air attacks to avoid escalating
hostilities with Honduras.
The Contadora and Support Group ministers met in Rio de Janeiro in mid
December and expressed deep concern for recent developments. In a reference to
the World Court judgement, they pointed to “exacerbation of interventionist policies
and actions by countries from outside the Central American area, which are clearly
in violation of international law.” They called for the creation of conditions that
would allow the implementation of actions proposed by the Carabelleda Message
and the Contadora Act. They also announced a new initiative for peace: an “urgent
visit” to Central America by the Contadora and Support Group ministers and the UN
and OAS secretaries general.
Alarmed by these peace initiatives, the U.S. ambassador to the OAS, Richard
McCormack, questioned the OAS secretary general’s authorization for the trip and
UN Ambassador Vernon Walters criticized Perez de Cuellar. The initiative went for¬
ward in spite of U.S. pressure. Before the regional tour got underway, however, El¬
liott Abrams and Philip Habib met in Miami on January 7, 1987 with Costa Rican
Foreign Minister Rodrigo Madrigal, launching a more brazen effort to undercut Con¬
tadora with an alternative Costa Rican “peace plan.”
The January Contadora mission was unsuccessful in reviving negotiations.
Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador all singled out Nicaragua as the problem. At
a news conference following a frosty meeting with Contadora mediators. President
Azcona declared, “While there are no free elections [in Nicaragua], meetings and
agreements serve no useful purpose.” He added, “We don’t want a war with
Nicaragua, nor do we want civil wars. But we want it to remain clear that we will
not permit any aggressions against our territory, nor are we going to assign economic
resources to watching our border to prevent the contras from passing through our
territory. Azcona was not interested in Nicaragua’s offer to drop the World Court
cases if Honduras and Costa Rica agreed to bilateral talks and the establishment of
demilitarized zones monitored by international peacekeeping forces.
Central American and Contadora representatives met with delegates from the
European Economic Community (EEC) on February 9 and 10. Three European rep¬
resentatives expressed their governments’ concern about a recent visit to Europe by
Ambassador Habib, during which “they said he strongly suggested the possibility of
an American attack on Nicaragua and asked for reduced European support for the
Avoiding Regional War
“The importance of Contadora,” said Sergio Ramirez, “should be measured in

what it has avoided rather than in what it has accomplished.”®’ Mexican analyst Luis
Herrera Lasso observed, “In the sense of a neutral peace, Contadora will never suc¬
ceed, because a neutral peace will never be achieved in Central America.. .The U.S.
presence, the external variable, will be determinant.. .We can say Contadora is des-
lined to fail. But that doesn’t mean Contadora isn’t justified.”®^

Even gravely ill, Contadora has served as Latin America’s alternative to U.S.
intei'vention, an antidote to Nicaraguan isolation, a cmcial forum for communica¬
tion and a support for Hondurans and Costa Ricans resisting the proxy roles as¬
signed their countries by the United States. On numerous occasions, Nicaragua,
Honduras and Costa Rica have pulled back from the brink of war to which the
United States was steering them. At the risk of an oversimplified analogy, Honduras
and Costa Rica are not resigned to going the way of Laos and Cambodia in a regional
war.
A Western diplomat (generally code for a U.S. diplomat) in Tegucigalpa ob¬
served, “Honduras has always been a means to an end.”®^ Many Hondurans and
Costa Ricans chafe at their U.S.-assigned roles of platform and pretext for U.S. in¬
tervention. Honduras’ most recent wartime enemy was not Nicaragua, but El Sal¬
vador, with whom Washington expects Honduras to have a cozy alliance. Under
U.S. pressure, noted Tom Farer, former president of the Inter-American Commission
on Human Rights, “power within the military tilted toward General Gustavo Alvarez
Martinez and his colleagues, who composed the faction that was most belligerent,
most authoritarian, most closely tied to extremist business leaders (this faction also
had connections with the Reverend Sun Myung Moon), and most eager to convert
the country into an American subsidiary. When General Alvarez was sacked in
March 1984 by fellow military officers, it was not only because he was too greedy
and autocratic, but because he was too eager to please Washington in forging an
alliance with El Salvador. (Alvarez was rewarded with $50,000 as a Pentagon con¬
sultant in 1986 and an undisclosed sum by the Rand Corporation in 1985 for a paper
on U.S. policy in Central America.)®®
The Honduran Association of Coffee Producers, representing some 33,000
Hondurans, has called for expulsion of the contras. The contras have occupied a
450-square kilometer area in the eastern province of El Paraiso (Paradise). Dubbed
Nueva Nicaragua (New Nicaragua; old Nicaragua would be more appropriate), the
area is complete with a Ciudad Reagan (Reagan City). The contra occupation has
brought killings, disappearances, rapes, robberies and the dislocation of some 20,000
Hondurans. Hondurans have also protested prostitution and child abuse by U.S.
troops stationed at Palmerola Air Base.
Honduran Vice President Jaime Rosenthal said bluntly, “Public opinion is
against the contras. The government will not be able to resist that for long.” About
contra leaders, he said, “They are living a very good life toff U.S. aidl. Calero lives
better than I do.”®^
“There is pressure” against the contra presence, acknowledged a U.S. ambas¬
sador in Central America, “even among businesspeople who hate the Sandinistas.
They’re tired of having the contras inhabiting part of the country. Their reputation
is shady—drug dealing, etc. If the contras fail, they’ll all fall on Honduras.”®^
Threats against Honduran contra critics have multiplied. The president of the
conservative opposition National Party, Nicolas Cruz Torres, and the head of the
Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH), Dr. Ramon
Custodio, have both received death threats for opposing the contra presence.
Custodio’s home and office were bombed. On August 4, 1986, terrorists blew up
the car of contra critic Rodrigo Wong Arevalo, news director of Radio America, who
escaped death only because he was running behind schedule.^
Hondurans have increasingly described their homeland as an “occupied
country”—occupied by the United States and the contras. Edmond Bogran, a con¬
gressman from Azcona’s own Liberal Party, said, “The truth is, we are a satellite
state, a client state of the United States. Our government can have no policy of its
own toward Nicaragua because of its total dependence.” He expressed shame that
Honduras had to do “Washington’s dirty work” in helping stall Contadora.®^
Costa Ricans complain of the “Hondurization” of their country. Social stability
is being undermined by U.S. pressures to convert from a welfare state to a warfare
state and by the rightwing forces feeding on U.S. intervention. In December 1985,
members of Costa Rica Libre, headed by World Anti-Communist League chapter
leader Bernal Urbina Pinto, stoned and teargassed participants in the international
March for Peace in Central America which included members of parliament from
Denmark and Norway. The year before, Bruce Jones, then a CIA contra liaison and
later an associate of Singlaub’s U.S. Council for World Freedom, told a reporter,
“We’re compiling a list of all the communists in northern Costa Rica, in case we ever
have to do an Operation Phoenix here.”^
Even anti-Sandinista Costa Ricans have become convinced the contras can’t
succeed. They are skeptical of the prospects for a U.S. invasion and fearful of the
consequences for their own country. “If you could guarantee to me,” said one Costa
Rican official, “that the US 82nd airborne would land in Managua, liquidate the San-
dinista comandantes and form a coalition government that would stand up, then a
lot of people would be for it. But, that couldn’t happen. They wouldn’t be able to
liquidate the Sandinistas. In the long term, they might democratize Nicaragua, but
de-democratize Costa Rica.”^’
As Tom Rarer observed, “the capitalist and military elites of Central America
are divided between those who lost their hearts to Miami and those with a passion
for an autonomous, national existence. And the latter know they are at a historic
crossroads. U.S. intervention can guarantee the status quo for another generation.
All that will be lost is national dignity. For some soldiers and politicians in Central
America that price now seems too high. Perhaps the real contribution of the Con-
tadora states has been to underline the price and to reinforce the belief that it need
not be paid.”^^
History Made in the South

Contadora is supported by the OAS, the UN General Assembly, the European
Economic Community, the Nonaligned Movement, the Socialist International and
the International Christian Democratic Movement. A U.S. ambassador in Central
America acknowledged “there’s widespread dislike of the American position.” But,
he said, “This is a strong, self-confident administration that welcomes support, but
doesn’t worry if it’s not there. This administration has showed its willingness to go
for unilateralism over and over again. Together with the enormous dependence of
Latin American countries on the U.S. banks, with the debt crisis, the dislike couldn’t
affect U.S. policy. There are no real costs...Maybe in historical terms there’s a real
cost, but not within the Reagan administration world view.”^^’
The consequences of U.S. compliance wiih Contadora would be far-reaching,
threatening the very structure of neocolonialism. With removal of U.S. military sup¬
port for the contras and Salvadoran regime, the contras would surely be defeated
and the Salvadoran revolutionaries would achieve recognition as a legitimate politi¬
cal force under a peace settlement or prevail militarily. Washington’s fears go beyond
the immediate impact of a Contadora treaty. “Contadora is not an isolated effort,”
explained Venezuelan President Lusinchi in his January 1986 address at Carabel-
leda. “Those who see or judge it as something out of touch with the new reality in
Latin America are mistaken. Ours is a reality marked by a renewed willingness to
deal with a number of adversities jointly, as one.” He specifically mentioned the
Consensus of Cartagena initiated by Latin debtor countries in 1984.^'*
Contadora must be seen “within the context of growing Latin American unity,”
reflected in the December 1986 agreement by the eight Latin American Contadora
sponsors to establish a permanent forum to discuss such regional issues as Central
America, foreign debt and “independent development.”^^ A Brazilian diplomat ob¬
served, “We’re aiming at something like the Group of Seven,” the annual Western
summit.^ The achievement of a Contadora treaty would sanction Nicaragua’s right
to reshape its economy and could galvanize collective action around the debt crisis—
the economic Big Stick. That could, in turn, rekindle the Third World movement for
a New International Economic Order.
“Deep down,” observed Ambassador Tunnermann, “Contadora signifies the
end of the Monroe Doctrine.” Solutions to Latin American problems will no longer
be “based on what is compatible with U.S. interests,” but rather on “that which is
compatible with Latin America’s criteria.” This doesn’t mean “Contadora is incom¬
patible with legitimate U.S. interests,” but if the United States wishes to maintain
supremacy in the region, said Tunnermann, “then, yes, Contadora implies a limita¬
tion to that illegitimate presence.
Contadora also challenges the Cold War order by rejecting the superpowers’
right to police their respective spheres of influence. In exercising its right of might,
the United States draws upon a vastly superior global bases network. A Contadora
treaty would give a boost to demilitarization efforts around the world—notably anti¬
bases campaigns in Panama, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and England—and estab¬
lish a precedent for autonomous systems of regional collective security. In short,
Contadora can be seen as a building block for Nonalignment and a New Interna¬
tional Economic Order, twin pillars of history made in the South.
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14
Under the Coverups
Legality was viewed as an obstacle that had to be gotten around. That was
the spirit of the program.
Reagan administration official who helped supervise the war on Nicaragua.^
By the time Congress voted $100 million more for contra war in the summer
of 1986, the public rationales of arms interdiction, freedom fighting and pressuring
Nicaragua to negotiate had all been shredded. The $100 million was a de facto par¬
don for administration deceit, contra atrocities, terrorist manuals, the mining of har¬
bors, sabotage of the Contadora treaty and widespread lawlessness condemned by
the World Court. Congress voted knowing that most Americans were opposed to
the policy of overthrowing the Nicaraguan government and that only U.S. combat
troops could install the contras in power.
With Congress back on board, the administration made plans to phase out the
Enterprise’s involvement in Nicaragua. NSC aide Oliver North, National Security Ad¬
viser John Poindexter, CIA Director William Casey and Enterprise manager Richard
Secord discussed selling the Enterprise’s Nicaragua-related assets to the CIA, as a
means of financing interim contra support operations and enhancing the Enterprise’s
self-financing capacity for covert activity elsewhere.
North sent Poindexter a secret computer message (known as a PROF note) on
July 24, 1986: “We are rapidly approaching the point where the PROJECT
DEMOCRACY [PRODEM] assets in CentAm need to be turned over to CIA for use
in the new program. The total value of the assets (six aircraft, warehouses, supplies,
maintenance facilities, ships, boats, leased houses, vehicles, ordnance, munitions,
communications equipment, and a 6520-[foot] runway on property owned by a
PRODEM proprietary) is over $4.5M.”^
321
CIA Deputy Director for Operations Clair George opposed using assets that
would link the CIA to the “private” resupply operation. The issue was still not
resolved when the Enterprise lost one of its assets: the Santa Elena airstrip.
Removing Fingerprints
After becoming president of Costa Rica in May 1986, Oscar Arias took action
on a campaign promise to uphold his country’s military neutrality. The contras’ Santa
Elena airstrip was no longer welcome. The U.S. Embassy assured Arias it would be
shut down. It was not.
On September 5, CIA Station Chief Joe Fernandez informed North that the
Costa Rican government was planning a press conference to announce the discovery
and closure of the airstrip. North jotted in his notebook: “0005—call from [Fernan¬
dez]—Security Minister plans to make public Udall role w/Base West [Santa Elena]
and allege violation of [Costa Rican] law by Udall, Bacon, North, Secord, et al.”
North held a conference call with Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams
and Ambassador Lewis Tambs, and recorded in his notes: “Tell Arias: Never set foot
in W.H. [White House]. Never get 5 [cents] of $80M promised by [AID Director] Mc¬
Pherson.” North informed Poindexter that he called Arias with the threats and that,
as a precaution, “Project Democracy” aircraft and personnel were removed from the
site. “Thanks, Ollie,” Poindexter replied in a PROF message. “You did the right thing,
but let’s try to keep it quiet.
Abrams and Tambs later testified that Tambs was the one to call Arias. Abrams
said he instructed Tambs to tell Arias that disclosure of the airstrip would jeopard¬
ize Arias’ upcoming meeting with Reagan. He reported this to Secretary of State
Shultz and also told Ambassador Habib to follow up on a visit to Costa Rica. North
later claimed he had not really called Arias, but only said that to cover Abrams.'*
Whatever actually happened, the Costa Rican government cancelled the news con¬
ference. Although Arias has denied receiving threats, other Costa Rican officials “say
a long delay in releasing $40 million of American economic aid” in 1986 “may have
been an attempt to pressure Costa Rica.”^
After a three-week lapse, the press conference occurred on September 26.
Costa Rica’s interior minister told reporters the government had shut down an airstrip
that had been used for supplying the contras, smuggling drugs or both. Udall cor¬
poration was named, as was Robert Olmstead (an alias for William Haskell, who
purchased the land), but Secord and North went unmentioned.
North assured Poindexter that “all appropriate damage control measures” had
been undertaken to “keep USG [U.S. government] fingerprints off this.. .Udall Resour¬
ces, Inc., S.A., is a proprietary of Project Democracy. It will cease to exist by noon
today. There are no USG fingerprints on any of the operation and Olmstead is not
the name of the agent—Olmstead does not exist. We have removed all Udall Resour¬
ces... to another account in Panama, where Udall maintained an answering service
and cover office. The office is now gone as are all files and paperwork.”^
Under the Coverups 323
Administration press guidance, prepared by North, Abrams and CIA Central

America Task Force Chief Fiers among others, and approved by Poindexter, lied:
“No U.S. Government funds were allocated or used in connection with this site nor
were any U.S. Government personnel involved in its construction. Any further in¬
quiries should be referred to the Government of Costa Rica.” In response to the ex¬
pected question, “Was the airstrip intended for use by the Contras?” the press
guidance suggested the answer: “The Government of Costa Rica has made clear its
position that it will not permit the use of its territory for military action against neigh¬
boring states. The U.S. Government respects that position.” North, meanwhile, sug¬
gested to Poindexter that steps be taken to “punish” Costa Rica for the disclosure.^
Exposure of the airstrip was just the kind of event Albert Hakim had planned
for. It did not blow the cover off the Enterprise.
Throughout September, the airlift based at Ilogango in El Salvador picked up
momentum. On September 9, airlift manager Robert Dutton flew with a C-123 crew
into southern Nicaragua in an attempt to drop military supplies. They were unable
to locate the contras and Dutton proposed to North that future missions use two
aircraft to increase delivery potential and protect against increased Nicaraguan an¬
tiaircraft fire. North approved the use of two aircraft, but cautioned Dutton not to
fly personally inside Nicaragua again. The operation couldn’t risk the fallout from
Colonel Dutton being shot down over Nicaragua.
By late September, the airlift was successful enough for pilot Bill Cooper to
write Dutton, “Ho-Hum, just another day at the office.” Now it was Dutton who
warned Cooper to be careful.®
Smoking Plane
On October 2, Secretary Shultz had occasion to quote Winston Churchill: “In
time of war, the truth is so precious, it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”^
Shultz was responding to the outcry following exposure of an administration disin¬
formation campaign against Libya which had hoodwinked the American press (the
novelty was not in the disinformation campaign, but in the unusually vigorous press
reaction). Shultz may as well have been speaking about Nicaragua. A few days later,
the bodyguard of lies attending that war came under fire.
On the morning of October 5, a C-123 cargo plane took off from Ilopango Air
Base loaded with about 10,000 pounds of ammunition, rifles, grenade launchers and
other materiel for the northern front contras inside Nicaragua. The crew included
an FDN radio operator and three Americans, all veterans of the secret air war in
southeast Asia: pilot Bill Cooper, copilot Wallace “Buzz” Sawyer and cargo kicker
Eugene Hasenfus. Contra supply planes regularly overflew Nicaragua with impunity.
Nicaragua’s air defenses were inadequate; it had no jet fighters to send up in pur¬
suit.
The C-123 flew a southern route to avoid Nicaraguan antiaircraft guns, head¬
ing south over the Pacific, then northeast from the Costa Rican border. At 12:30 P.M.,
the C-123 was detected by a Nicaraguan post near San Carlos along the San Juan
River. Five minutes later the Light Hunter Battalion Third Company had the plane
in its sights.
Nineteen-year-old Jose Fernando Corales raised his shoulder-mounted ground-
to-air missile launcher and fired. The plane spewed smoke and veered toward earth
as the soldiers cheered. Corales would later have the honor of throwing out the
opening ball for Nicaragua’s baseball championships.
Eugene Hasenfus was the sole survivor, having bailed out with a parachute
borrowed from his brother. (Parachutes weren’t standard issue for the airlift crews.)
About twenty hours later, Hasenfus surrendered to Nicaraguan troops who tracked
him to an abandoned hut in the jungle. He was the first American POW in the war
on Nicaragua.
Fernandez, meanwhile, had sent southern front forces to look for the missing
C-I23. Felix Rodriguez called Vice President Bush’s deputy national security adviser.
Colonel Sam Watson, to inform him the plane had disappeared.^^ North’s associate.
Colonel Robert Earl, reported to Poindexter on October 6: “one of the Democracy
Inc aircraft apparently went down on a resupply mission to FDN forces in the
north.. .It is currently unknown where or why the aircraft went down, but [country
deleted] assets are discreetly organizing a SAR [search and rescue] effort over inter¬
national waters & friendly territory portions of the route. Three Americans and one
Nicaraguan national aboard. I will keep you advised of details as I get them.”^^
Hasenfus spoke briefly at a news conference in Managua on the evening of
October 7: “My name is Gene Hasenfus. I come from Marinette, Wisconsin. Yes,
and I was captured yesterday in southern Nicaragua. Thank you.” Hasenfus’ good
fortune in surviving was bad luck for the Reagan administration.
In late July, U.S. Military Group Commander James Steele had met with mem¬
bers of the resupply crew in El Salvador to address logistical and security problems.
He warned them to “leave your billfold at home when you go out” to avoid the risk
of identification.’^ The downed C-123 crew carried identification.
The Nicaraguan government displayed ID cards and other documents taken
from the wreckage, indicating that Cooper and Sawyer were attached to the U.S.
Military Group in El Salvador and that Cooper was an employee of Southern Air
Transport. There were business cards for the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance
Office and Robert Owen. The Nicaraguans said the C-123 was one of five aircraft
operating from El Salvador.
On ABC’s “Nightline,” Ted Koppel argued with Alejandro Bendaha, the
secretary general of the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry; Bendaha insisted that the U.S.
government was behind the operation. The administration’s line, voiced by the presi¬
dent and top officials, was this was a private flight with no U.S. government con¬
nections.
“There’s no question,” Koppel told Bendaha, “that the Reagan administration
is not crazy about you folks and would like to see the Sandinista government col¬
lapse. There is also no question that it wants to see aid for the Contras. But if private
citizens want to donate money, and if some private Americans want to get aboard
some Korean-vintage airliner or cargo plane and try and drop supplies over your
country, that’s not quite the same thing as a new Vietnam, is it?”
“It’s not happening behind the back of the U.S. government,” Bendana
responded, “and, in fact, your own press has reported amply how many of these
operations were, in fact, directly run from the White House, from the office of a Mr.
North, I believe.”'^
Like other news media, “Nightline” followed administration leads and pointed
to John Singlaub as the master of the “private” supply operation. Coincidentally, the
day the C-123 was shot down—^before it was known in the United States—CBS’ “60
Minutes” aired a story on Singlaub. “During the 15 months that the Congress refused
to give President Reagan the $ 100-million he asked for to aid Nicaragua’s contra
rebels,” Mike Wallace declared, “retired General John Singlaub defied the will of
Congress by taking over for the CIA as virtual director of that war.” Singlaub was
quoted: “I made a point of getting word to the White House and to the agency [CIAl.
They saw what we were doing, and from time to time I would get a ‘Good job. Jack;
appreciate what you’re doing.’
Singlaub, who was in the Philippines at the time organizing death squads
under the guise of hunting treasure, wasn’t prepared to take the heat for the Hasen-
fus flight with its potentially serious legal ramifications.
Hasenfus appeared again at a news conference on October 9, this time with a
lot more to say. He explained that William Cooper had recruited him five months
earlier. They had worked together in Air America flying CIA supplies in Laos, Cam¬
bodia, Thailand and Vietnam from 1965 to 1973; before that Hasenfus served five
years in the Marine Corps. Hasenfus told reporters about “two Cuban naturalized
Americans” named “Max Gomez” (Felix Rodriguez) and “Ramon Medina” (Luis
Posada) who “did most of the coordination for the flights and oversaw all of our
housing, transportation, also refueling and some flight plans”; he assumed they
worked for the CIA. Hasenfus described “working out of the El Salvador Air Force
base at Ilopango” and “flying into Honduras to an air base called Aguacate” where
“we would load up small arms and ammunition and fly into Nicaragua.”
Hasenfus was a witness to the events long denied by the U.S. government.
The DEA, meanwhile, identified the C-123 as the aircraft used in the Barry Seal drug
sting operation.
The Nicaraguan government released flight logs and a code book taken from
the wreckage. The U.S. government code was “Playboy” and those of El Salvador,
Honduras and Costa Rica were “New Look,” “Hammerhold” and “Timex.” Felix
Rodriguez was “Condor.” The U.S. Palmerola Air Base in Honduras was “fruit stand”;
guns and explosives were “apples” and “pears.” Buzz Sawyer’s log books recorded
flights to Aguacate and Mocoron airfields in Honduras and Costa Rica’s internation¬
al airport in San Jose. They revealed still-unexplained May and June 1985 flights to
Robbins Air Force Base in Georgia and U.S. air bases in Puerto Rico, Panama and
Cuba, and a February 6, 1986 flight to McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento,
California. Sawyer also made frequent flights in Angola during 1985 while employed
by Southern Air Transport.’^ Though Southern Air has had a contract with diamond
mine operators in Angola, it is suspected of channelling U.S. aid to the antigovern¬
ment UNITA forces.
“RR was Briefed”
Nicaragua announced that Hasenfus would go on trial. North sent an October

12 PROF message to Robert McFarlane (who maintained secure communications
with North and Poindexter after leaving the national security adviser post) that clear¬
ly implicates Reagan in the contragate coverup:
We urgently need to find a high powered lawyer and benefactor who can raise a
legal defense for Hassenfus [sic] in Managua. If we can find such persons we can not only
hold Gene and Sally Hassenfus together (i.e., on our side, not pawns of the Sandinista
propaganda machine) but can make sorne significant headway of our own in counter-at¬
tacking in the media. Obviously, there is the added benefit of being able to do something
substantive in the legal system to defend this young man [Hasenfus, 45, was two years
older than North].. .By Tuesday, a Swiss lawyer, retained by Corporate Air Services [a front
corporation employing contra supply crew members], should be in Managua. We should
not rely on this person to represent the whole case since he is supported by covert means.
We would be far better off if we had an overt mechanism here in the States which rep¬
resented USG/Hassenfus’ interests, and who would not have to respond to questions
regarding the origins of Corporate Air Services, Inc. (CASI), or its other ongoing activities.
The CASI lawyer is being instmcted to cooperate fully w/ this U.S. Attorney, whoever
he/she may be. Have also located approx. $100K from a donor who does not care if this
contribution becomes known (although the donor has done things in the past to keep
CASI in operation—a fact which need not become known). Can you help? If need be, I
can meet w/ you/others tomorrow or Tues. Believe this to be a matter of great urgency
to hold things together. Unfortunately RR was briefed that this plan was being contemplated
before be left for Iceland [Summit] and am concerned that along about Wednesday when
people begin to think of things other than meetings in cold places, he will remember this
and nothing will have been done. Any thoughts wd be much appreciated. Elliott Abrams
willing to sit-in any time after Yom Kippur fast is finished tomorrow night. Pis Advise.'^
(Italics added.)
The congressional Iran-Contra Report diYoidQd this note (which was published
in a footnote to the Tower Board Report) and concluded “there is no evidence the
President knew of U.S. involvement in the Hasenfus flight.
Contra spokesman Bosco Matamoros said the contras took full responsibility
for the flight. “There was no United States Government connection,” he claimed.
But even government officials acknowledged this was, as with Singlaub, “just an ef¬
fort to deflect attention from the White House.Matamoros was following orders
originating at a RIG meeting attended by Abrams and Fiers. As reported to Poindex¬
ter by NSC aide Vincent Cannistraro, “UNO to be asked to assume responsibility for
flights and to assist families of Americans involved.
Meanwhile, the administration staged a photo opportunity over the caskets of
Sawyer and Cooper. After telling the Nicaraguans bearing the caskets to the U.S.
Embassy in Managua that they could not enter the compound, the administration
accused Nicaragua of “ghoulish behavior” when the caskets were left at the embas¬
sy gate. In Vietnam, the corpses of combatants were used to transport heroin to the
United States. In Nicaragua, they were used as props in the “public diplomacy” cam¬
paign.
“60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace interviewed Hasenfus in Managua

on October 19. “What would you like to say to the American people? What would
you like to say to President Reagan? What would you like to say to Bill Casey, the
head of the CIA?”
Referring to Casey, Hasenfus replied, “I’d like to be—have him sitting where
I’m at and see what he’d say.”^^
U.S. officials lied to Congress and the people in an effort to maintain deniability
in the face of growing evidence of U.S. government involvement.^^ Primed by
Hasenfus’ revelations, reporters, meanwhile, used Salvadoran telephone records to
trace frequent calls from airlift safe houses to Richard Secord and Oliver North.
Hasenfus was convicted on November 15 on charges of terrorism and other
crimes. He received the maximum sentence of 30 years. A month later, on Decem¬
ber 17, he was pardoned and freed by the Nicaraguan government. “This is a
Christmas and New Year message to the American people,” said President Ortega.
“It is a very concrete message of peace.
By then the administration was caught up in the widening Iran-contra scan¬
dal. Yet, the contra $100 million continued to flow.
Gullible’s Troubles
By the summer of 1985, long before the Hasenfus revelations, reporters such
as Robert Parry of the Associated Press (now with Newsweek) and Alfonso Chardy
of the Miami Herald were zeroing in on Oliver North and the White House’s con¬
tinuing role in running the contra war.
For North and company, freedom of La Prensa in Nicaragua was one thing;
freedom of the U.S. press was another. North singled out Chardy in a June 3, 1985
memo to Poindexter: “For several weeks now there have been rumors of stories
being prepared which allege an NSC connection to private funding and other sup¬
port to the Nicaraguan resistance. The rumors originally surfaced with a reporter .Al¬
fonso Chardi [5-zc]...At my request [deleted] went to Chardi...and told Chardi that if
he (Chardi) printed any derogatory comments about the FDN or its funding sour¬
ces that Chardi would never again be allowed to visit FDN bases or travel with their
units.
Reacting to the press reports and concerned about possible violation of the
Boland amendment. House Western Affairs Subcommittee Chairman Michael Bar¬
nes, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Lee Hamilton and, later. Senators
David Durenberger and Patrick Leahy, chairman and vice chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, wrote McFarlane seeking information about NSC contact
with the contras. McFarlane issued his now-famous categorical response that “at no
time did I or any member of tlie National Security Council staff violate the letter or
spirit” of congressional restrictions. In answering specific questions put to him by
the elected officials, McFarlane covered up tlie NSC role, including his own part in
arranging the Saudi contribution.^^ As Noith later testified about McFarlane’s respon-
ses, they were “erroneous, misleading, evasive, and wrong.”

Barnes made a series of attempts to review relevant NSC documents, prompt¬
ing McFarlane and North to prepare particularly revealing documents for alteration.
But the Barnes effort fizzled in the face of purposefully bothersome NSC condi¬
tions.^^ Barnes later said that if he had asked the Foreign Relations or Intelligence
Committees for subpoenas, he “would not have had sufficient support to get them.”
North “was a very respected guy back then,” Barnes said. “There was just not a
mood at that time to support an aggressive investigation.”^®
The following summer, amid new press accounts of the White House contra
program. Rep. Ron Coleman (D-TX) introduced a Resolution of Inquiry on June 4,
1986, directing the president to provide documents and information about NSC sup¬
port for the contras, including the provision of funds and supplies through private
individuals and foreign governments; contacts with the contras related to military
activities; and contacts with persons such as John Singlaub, Robert Owen and John
Hull. Coleman explained that “disturbing new reports that our own government of¬
ficials may have deliberately violated the law that prohibited any open or hidden
U.S. assistance for military operations inside Nicaragua [suggest that there] may have
been an intentional disregard for our own democratic process.”
The resolution was referred to the House Committees on Intelligence, Foreign
Affairs and Armed Services. Poindexter wrote Chairmen Lee Hamilton, Dante Fas-
cell and Les Aspin that information provided in fall 1985 by McFarlane had already
“made it clear that the actions of the National Security Council staff were in com¬
pliance with both the spirit and letter of the law regarding support of the Nicaraguan
resistance.” Poindexter later told the Iran-contra committees that he “felt that the
Boland Amendment did not apply to the NSC staff and I felt that indeed we were
complying with the letter and spirit of the Boland Amendment. Now, it doesn’t say
that we are not helping the Contras. We were.”^‘^
North met with House Intelligence Committee members on August 6 at their
request. He misled them in his opening presentation and lied in response to specific
questions. NSC staffer Bob Pearson attended the meeting and prepared a summary
for Poindexter:
Session was success—Hamilton will entertain motion soonest to report unfavorab¬
ly on Resolution of Inquiry and made clear believes [Intelligence Committee] can turn
aside future offers of similar resolutions. North’s remarks were thorough and convinc¬
ing—Hamilton underlined his appreciation to Admiral [Poindexter] and to [unclear] for
full cooperation offered by NSC...
In response to specific questions, Ollie covered following points:
—contact with FDN and UNO aimed to foster viable, democratic political strategy
for Nicaraguan opposition, gave no military advice, knew of no specific military opera¬
tions.
—Singlaub—gave no advice, has had no contact in 20 months: Owen—never
worked from OLN [North] office, OLN had casual contact, never provided Owen
guidance
Poindexter foiwarded Pearson’s note to North with the message, “Well done.”
It was well done indeed. Hamilton told Coleman on August 12 that the Intelligence
Committee would not move forward with the Resolution of Inquiry: “Based on our
discussions and review of the evidence provided, it is my belief that the published
press allegations cannot be proven.
Ed Meese could hardly have conducted a less inspired inquiry. It took a smok¬
ing plane to shake Congress from its oversight stupor.
Damage Control
The Hasenfus shootdown triggered new inquiries by Congress and investiga¬

tions of Southern Air Transport by the FBI and Customs Service. On October 5, Fer¬
nandez sent a KL-43 message to Dutton telling him that the “situation requires we
do necessary damage control.
While Reagan and his top officials denied U.S. government involvement in the
contra support operation, North and Poindexter worked behind the scenes to derail
or at least delay investigations into the activities of Southern Air Transport. North
and Poindexter later said they wanted to prevent disclosure of Southern Air’s invol¬
vement in U.S. arms shipments to Iran and protect the hostage negotiations. But
covering up the NSC-Southern Air contra operation was a chief concern.
As FBI agents began interviewing Southern Air employees. North called FBI
Executive Assistant Director Oliver “Buck” Revell on October 8. North assured Revell
that Southern Air was not involved in illegal activities and that he had no knowledge
of the plane that crashed. North said Southern Air was still flying arms shipments to
Iran, which Revell already knew about as a member of the Operations Sub Group,
and expressed his concern about the inquiry. Nonetheless, Revell obtained authority
from Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mark Richard to begin an official investiga¬
tion of Southern Air on October 10.
The day before. North had called William Rosenblatt, the Customs Service As¬
sistant Commissioner for Enforcement, and told him he was concerned about the
broad subpoena Customs had served on Southern Air. North said the Southern Air
people were “good guys” who had committed no crimes, and denied that the C-123
contained arms when it left the United States (the same C-123 North had denied
knowledge of to Revell). Rosenblatt narrowed the focus of the investigation to the
aircraft itself and to the question of whether arms or ammunition were being ex¬
ported without a license.
Poindexter called Attorney General Meese and asked him to delay both the
Customs and FBI investigations.^^ Meese called Treasury Secretary James Baker about
the Customs investigation (under Baker’s jurisdiction) and told Associate Attorney
General Steven Trott (now a federal appeals court judge) to ask FBI Director Wil¬
liam Webster to delay the Southern Air investigation for ten days. Trott called Webster
on October 30, telling him that without a delay the investigation could compromise
“sensitive hostage negotiations.”
Hostage David Jacobsen was released on November 2, just before the 1986
mid-term elections. North and Secord traveled to Beirut to coordinate his release.^^
The next day, the Lebanese magazine exposed the U.S.-Iran project which
most U.S. media had neglected for so long. Still, Meese waited more than ten days
before giving Trott the go-ahead for the FBI investigation.^^ The FBI investigation
did not resume until November 26, the day after the Iran-contra diversion an¬
nouncement (discussed in the next chapter)
Those post-Hasenfus maneuvers fit a pattern of interference with criminal in¬
vestigations that threatened to expose the contra support operation. In August 1986,
North had contacted Customs Service Commissioner William von Raab to complain
that Customs agents in Georgia were giving the Maule Aircraft Corporation a hard
time. Months before. Customs had held up a helicopter allegedly to be used only
to evacuate contra wounded from the war zones. It was purchased by Singlaub’s
U.S. Council for World Freedom with donations from Ellen Garwood. Singlaub called
von Raab and suggested he discuss the matter with North. When von Raab called
North, North told him the people involved with the helicopter were “good guys.”
Customs ended up issuing a license and releasing the helicopter known as the “Lady
Ellen.
In the Maule matter. Customs was following up on a July 1986 CBS News
report that showed a Maule aircraft on the airstrip at Aguacate and a registration
form signed by Secord for a Maule “dated July 26, 1984, one month after funds for
CIA aid to the contras had run out.” A Maule executive told CBS that Secord had
bought “over a period of a couple years, probably three or four” Maules. CBS reporter
David Martin added, “Two days after that interview Maule Air received a phone call
from someone—they won’t say who—^warning them they could be forced out of
business if they did not retract everything they had told CBS News.”
Martin continued: “These documents show that another of the planes Maule
says Secord bought was sold to a Panamanian corporation and exported to Hon¬
duras in September 1985...This battle plan, written by some of the contra com¬
manders, calls for using short-take-off-and-landing planes in an assault on the
Nicaraguan capital of Managua to ‘capture, eliminate or neutralize the Sandinista
leaders.’ ”
Martin reported that one of the checks used to pay for the Maules was drawn
on the account of the Geneva-based CSF Investment Ltd. and “sources close to the
contras claim the money for the planes originally came from Saudi Arabia.” Martin
also reported, “A well-informed source said North has used Secord on several secret
projects since Secord retired in 1983.”^^
This was some of the evidence reported in the press when House Intelligence
Committee Chairman Lee Hamilton rejected the Coleman Resolution of Inquiry.
The Customs Service began investigating allegations that Maule Air had
shipped four planes to Central America to support the contras—a possible violation
of U.S. export control laws. North told Commissioner von Raab that Maule Air
shipped “Piper Cubs” down south and that Maule was “a close friend of the Presi¬
dent.” Von Raab told North he would look into the investigation and assigned the
matter to William Rosenblatt. When Rosenblatt contacted North he was told that the
Maule people were “good guys” and that the four “super Piper Cubs” were used to
supply the contras with medical and humanitarian supplies.
Rosenblatt agreed to postpone issuing subpoenas in exchange for North’s

promise to produce documentation on the aircraft. After six weeks of stalling, North
produced some documents on November 17. They were insufficient and Rosenblatt
resumed the investigation, apparently informing North.^^
Rosenblatt was involved in another incident with North, this one related to
drug smuggling. Sometime in 1986, Joseph Kelso, who was on probation after being
convicted for illegally exporting arms to Iraq, approached Customs under an alias
and offered to work as an informer. Kelso and another informer traveled to Costa
Rica to gather information on a counterfeiting and drug ring. In August, two Cus¬
toms agents went to Costa Rica to debrief them and were told that DEA agents in
Costa Rica had been paid to conceal their knowledge of narcotics supplies and
laboratories.
The Customs agents revealed what they had heard to DEA agents in Costa
Rica. That night, Kelso and the other informer were arrested by local police accom¬
panied by a DEA agent. After interrogation they were driven to John Hull’s ranch
by Costa Rican security personnel, where Hull questioned Kelso. When Hull tried
to have Kelso arrested by Costa Rican intelligence officers, Kelso escaped. Hull in¬
formed North and Owen of the incident.
After returning to the United States, Kelso faced charges of parole violation
and negotiated through his lawyer with U.S. authorities. To demonstrate that Kelso
was working not only with Customs, but intelligence agencies, his lawyer provided
an assistant U.S. attorney with tape recordings Kelso made while working under¬
cover. According to a report by Representatives Peter Rodino, Dante Eascell, Jack
Brooks and Louis Stokes, included with the Iran-Contra Report, “These tapes were
provided only under the express condition they not be sent to Washington, D.C.
where, Kelso feared, they could get into the ‘wrong hands.’ ”
Ambassador Tarnbs, meanwhile, sent a complaint to Customs, which reached
Rosenblatt, about sending informers to Costa Rica without notifying the embassy.
Rosenblatt insisted on getting the tapes from the local Customs agent, notwithstand¬
ing the restriction against sending them to Washington.
“In or about” September, Rosenblatt called North to find out if Kelso was work¬
ing for U.S. intelligence. North suggested that Rosenblatt allow Robert Owen to lis¬
ten to the tapes to verify the claims. According to the Iran-Contra Report, “Rosenblatt
agreed on the assumption that Owen was part of the NSC staff, or otherwise assist¬
ing North.” Owen himself, however, told Rosenblatt he worked for a private or¬
ganization. In October, Rosenblatt gave Owen his only copy of the tapes.
Representatives Rodino, Eascell, Brooks and Stokes observed; “Not surprisingly,
Owen never returned the tape recordings. Instead he made two trips to Costa Rica
to meet with the DEA agents. When asked about the incident during his deposition,
Owen refused to answer questions, claiming a questionable ‘attorney work-product’
privilege. Owen claimed that all of his activities during the Kelso incident were at¬
tempts to investigate allegations made against him in the Avirgan-Honey lawsuit.
Miami Stall
More is known about an NSC-Justice Department coverup involving the inves¬

tigation conducted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Feldman in the Miami office
headed by U.S. Attorney Leon Kellner. In January 1985, the same month that CMA
leader Tom Posey was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon at the Miami air-
port, a rightwing film producer named Larry Spivey placed a call from a Miami motel
to FBI Special Agent Michael Boone in Los Angeles. Spivey had just met with Jack
Terrell, Tom Posey and others who were planning an assault into southern
Nicaragua.
According to Rodino, et al., Spivey met previously with North and North “also
called Boone to warn him that Adolfo Calero believed that Terrell was dangerous
and his invasion plot was untenable. Boone asked the FBI in Miami to interview
Spivey and Posey.
“FBI Agent George Kiszynski interviewed Posey and Spivey at the FBI office
in Miami. During the interview of Posey, Kiszynski called North from the FBI office.
Spivey told Kiszynski that North was relieved that the FBI was now involved and
in control of Posey, who had agreed to cooperate with the FBI. Kiszynski’s report
of the interview was sent to North, with the approval of FBI headquarters. There¬
fore, the FBI knew as early as January 1985 of North’s connection to their investiga¬
tion of the CMA and Posey.
“Two weeks later, Posey complained to Spivey that the FBI was not giving
him any guidance regarding what to do. Spivey called the Alabama FBI agent as¬
signed to Posey and also called FBI Executive Assistant Director Oliver ‘Buck’ Revell.
Spivey told them that they should not view Posey as a ‘target.’ He said that North
had earlier told him that during a meeting with Attorney General Smith and Robert
McFarlane, President Reagan told them that Posey and men like him should never
be prosecuted and called Posey a ‘national treasure.’ This statement was included
in the FBI report that was filed.”
Spivey also testified “that, in early 1985, North admitted he could go to jail for
violating the Boland Amendment, so he was going to ‘lay low’ until Ed Meese was
confirmed as Attorney General. Time did not permit the [Iran-contra] Committees to
investigate Spivey’s claim.As discussed in chapter 12, North was using the EBI in
an attempt to sideline Terrell without hurting Posey’s CMA.
On July 21, 1985, the Miami Herald ran an article by Martha Honey and Tony
Avirgan with Steven Carr’s allegations of a contra arms shipment from Fort Lauder¬
dale; it caught the attention of the southern Florida FBI. Carr’s allegations were cor¬
roborated in January 1986 by Jesus Garcia, who offered, as discussed earlier, to
provide information to federal authorities following his arrest in December 1985.
The FBI gathered documentary evidence such as flight plans and records and
interviewed additional sources who pointed to the involvement of North, Owen and
Hull. On March 14, 1986, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Feldman and an FBI agent
met with Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Ana Barnett. U.S. Attorney Leon Kellner
informed them that he had received a call from a Justice Department official want-
ing information about the investigation. That same day, Feldman and two FBI agents
asked to meet with Garcia’s lawyer John Mattes and Mattes’ investigator Ralph
Maestri. “I thought, this is great; they’re finally going to take this thing seriously,”
Mattes told the Village Voice. “We brought all our notes on Tom Posey, John Hull,
and Rob Owen.” Instead, Feldman warned them to end their investigation and ac¬
cused them of obstructing justice and tampering with witnesses.'*^
The House of Representatives opened debate on contra aid on March 17. That
same day, a Justice Department official called Kellner’s office and requested a delay
in the Garcia sentencing hearing, scheduled for March 19, at which Garcia planned
to tell the court what he knew about the contra arms network and its White House
connection. Feldman filed a motion for a 30-day continuance on March 18. Garcia
wasn’t sentenced until six months later on September 15, at which time he did men¬
tion North and Owen.^^
On March 20, FBI agent Kevin Currier responded to an urgent message from
headquarters to provide an immediate summary of the Florida investigation by send¬
ing a 38-page memorandum. Revell needed the update for Deputy Attorney General
D. Lowell Jensen (now a federal judge). Jensen discussed the case with Meese, and
Poindexter was briefed. Jensen forwarded a copy of Revell’s memo to Associate At¬
torney General Steven Trott, who, in turn, forwarded it to Deputy Assistant Attor¬
ney General Mark Richard, with the message: “Please get on top of this. [Jensen] is
giving a heads up to the N.S.C. He would like us to watch over it. Call Kellner, find
out what is up, and advise him that decisions should be run by you.”^
According to Jensen, Revell’s memorandum, which remains classified, indi¬
cated that the CIA and State Department were also being briefed. Jensen, Trott and
Richard “all contend that the sensitive nature of the investigation, its international
overtones, and the possible danger to Ambassador Tambs [the alleged assassination
plot] made an NSC briefing advisable.
That “heads up” to the NSC was no exception. North was regularly sent FBI
files on the contra support network, “in effect, letting him monitor the investigation
of his own activities.” He wasn’t cut out of the loop until October 31, when FBI
Director William Webster received a memo—^weeks before Meese announced the
Iran-contra diversion—^warning that North himself might be prosecuted for his
Central America activities; Webster told the Senate Intelligence Committee in April
1987 that, although he had initialed the memo, he did not remember it.'*^ North also
received confidential information from Republican aides on the Senate Foreign Rela¬
tions Committee regarding the investigation led by Senator John Kerry.'*^
On March 31, 1986, Feldman and FBI agents Currier and Kiszynski traveled to
Costa Rica to investigate the allegations of gunrunning and the Tambs assassination
plot. (North recorded their visit in his notes the same day.) Feldman briefed Ambas¬
sador Tambs at the embassy, showing him a chart illustrating the alleged conspiracy
with North’s name above Hull and Owen. According to Feldman, Tambs “turned
white...The only thing he said when I pulled out the chart was ‘Get Fernandez in
here.’ Fernandez spoke warmly of North as “the person who introduced me to
the President of the United States last week.”
During the next two days, Feldman and the FBI agents interviewed Steven
Carr and other imprisoned mercenaries. Hull cancelled his interview, declining to
meet without counsel on the advice of Kirk Kotula, the U.S. consul general in San
Jose.'*^ Fernandez, State Department Security Officer James Nagel and others at the
embassy had tried to discourage Feldman from seeing Hull and said the investiga¬
tion should be discontinued. In his deposition to the Iran-contra committees,
Feldman said, “I was told that the National Security Council had been in touch with
Mr. Hull.. .that Ronald Reagan knows who John Hull is.. .that certain agencies have
their operational requirement and it’s not fair for other agencies to interfere.”^
Owen wrote to North (alias “William”) about the investigation on April 7,1986:
“Feldman.. .had with him a Special Agent from Panama and two from Miami. They
are Kevin Currier and George Kiszynski, who is with the Anti-Terrorist Task Force.
In the past he has followed and been assigned to watch Felipe Vidal.
“According to [Fernandez], Feldman looks to be wanting to build a career on
this case. He even showed [Fernandez] and the Ambassador a diagram with your
name at the top, mine underneath and John’s [Hull] underneath mine, then a line
connecting the various resistance groups in C.R. [Costa Rica].
“Feldman stated they were looking at the ‘big picture’ and not only looking at
a possible violation of the neutrality act, but at possible unauthorized use of govern¬
ment funds...
“If and when I am contacted by the FBI, I will not answer any questions without
an attorney present. Even then, I will not answer any questions. It is the only way
I can see to stem the tide.” Owen added, “Perhaps, it is time I retire from this line
of work and focus on another part of the world and against another group of God¬
less communists.”^' Owen’s fears proved premature.
Feldman met with Kellner, Barnett and others on April 4 to discuss the results
of the Costa Rica trip. Feldman explained that while the assassination plot had not
been substantiated to date, the charges of gunrunning and Neutrality Act violations
warranted a grand jury. According to Assistant U.S. Attorney David Liewant, Kellner
spoke by phone with a high Justice Department official in Washington, and reported
that “Washington wanted him to go very slow on the case, since it could affect the
upcoming vote on contra aid in Congress.” (Kellner, Barnett and Feldman have
denied Liewant’s account.)^^
Kellner asked Feldman to draft a memorandum on the investigation explain¬
ing his approach to possible prosecution. On May 7, the New York Times ran a story
(mentioned earlier) quoting a “senior Justice Department official” that Kellner’s of¬
fice had found no evidence to support allegations of gunrunning and drug traffick¬
ing. On May 14, Feldman produced a detailed redraft of his memorandum which
concluded it was time to issue grand jury subpoenas for documents and witnesses.
A few days later, Kellner returned it with the notation, “I concur, we have sufficient
evidence to institute a grand jury investigation into the activities described herein.
Feldman’s memo contained detailed information about the contra supply net¬
work, including arms shipments and mercenary recruitment by Posey, CMA and
Rene Corvo, and evidence of U.S. government involvement. Feldman stated, “Fer¬
nandez...told me that prior to March 1984 the U.S. military used Hull’s Costa Rica
ranch to deliver equipment to the contras. Fernandez also said that since March
1984, Hull has assisted the contras by providing them with food, medical supplies,
and other nonlethal necessities.” Feldman noted, “It is unclear whether John Hull
has had an official role in U.S. sponsored contra operations since March 1984. Fer¬
nandez denied that Hull had been an operative for the CIA or [any] other agency
since that time. Hull, however, has allegedly made remarks that suggest otherwise.
Kellner held further staff discussions on May 20 and reversed the decision to
convene a grand jury as premature. Feldman rewrote the memorandum, stating that
a grand jury would be in order after he completed further “background work” on
the case. But a special counsel in Kellner’s office rewrote it to conclude that a grand
jury investigation “would represent a fishing expedition with little prospect that it
would bear fruit. The memorandum was then submitted to the Justice Department
on June 3 (it retained Feldman’s original May 14 date although it included a reference
to the May 30 filing of the Christie Institute suit). On July 31, the FBI agents com¬
pleted additional investigation and Currier gave Feldman a “prosecution memoran¬
dum” which was forwarded to Kellner on or about August 14. Kellner continued
the stall.
On October 6, the day after the Hasenfus shootdown. Chief Assistant U.S. At¬
torney Richard Gregorie told Kellner he felt the case was ready to go to the grand
jury. After further delay, Kellner gave the go-ahead to Feldman in early November—
“six months after Feldman had first suggested the need for a grand jury.”^
A few weeks later, an important witness was dead. In May, Steven Carr had
jumped bail and returned to the United States with the surreptitious aid of the U.S.
Embassy. Though concerned about threats from Hull’s group to keep his mouth
shut, he still talked to the press and investigators. On December 13, Carr collapsed
in a driveway in Van Nuys, California and was pronounced dead at 4 A.M. He was
27 years old. The Los Angeles coroner’s office concluded that Carr died of an ac¬
cidental cocaine overdose, but uncertainty remains. Another autopsy, commissioned
by Carr’s family, determined that marks behind Carr’s left elbow were not scratches,
but needle marks from an injection. “No one ever explained,” wrote Leslie Cock-
bum, “why Carr should have been injecting himself behind his left elbow. (He was
not a habitual needle user.)”^^
In April 1987, after the Carr case was closed, public defender John Mattes
received a call from mercenary Peter Glibbery who was still imprisoned in Costa
Rica. Glibbery told Mattes that Hull had just threatened him, saying he would wind
up dead like Steven Carr if he refused to sign an affidavit discrediting Senator Kerry,
Mattes and Honey and Avirgan, and recanting his earlier statements. The CIA killed
Carr, Hull reportedly said. Hull acknowledged visiting Glibbery with an affidavit on
March 29, but denied threatening him.^® If Glibbery’s account is correct, Hull’s
reference to the CIA killing Carr may have been bluster. Or, perhaps Hull knew Carr
was murdered, though not necessarily through the CIA.
The congressional Iran-Contra Report reviewed interference in seven inves¬
tigations (discussed here or in earlier chapters) and concluded incredibly that only
NSC staff members were at fault: “We do not mean to impugn the integrity of the
law enforcement officials involved. Suggestions that national security could be com¬
promised, coming from NSC aides, inevitably were given weight by law enforce-
ment officials and led them on occasion to provide information to the NSC staff and
to delay investigations.”^^
Reps. Rodino, Fascell, Brooks and Stokes diverged from the myopic majority:
“law enforcement agencies in these cases are not entirely without respon¬
sibility. . .[Media and investigative] leads [about North’s involvement] were never pur¬
sued until after the Hasenfus crash when members of the House Judiciary Committee
requested that these allegations be investigated and that an independent counsel be
appointed. Furthermore, officials from the FBI, Customs, and the Department of Jus¬
tice went out of their way to provide North with information regarding criminal in¬
vestigations. . .North used this information to conceal and divert attention away from
his unlawful operations.
“Our nation has painfully learned from past experience that a democracy can¬
not exist when those responsible for enforcing the law can be manipulated for politi¬
cal purposes.”^
Reagan’s Contradictions
The President was fully aware of the extent of the relationship between N.S.C. mem¬
bers and members of the democratic resistance group and he has been aware of it all
along.
Presidential spokeman Larry Speakes, August 1985,

quoted in Joel Brinkley, New York Times, February 15, 1987.
The President told the [Tower] Board on January 26, 1987, that he did not know that
the NSC staff was engaged in helping the Contras.
Tower Board Report, February 26, 1987.
Now the contra situation...There’s no question about my being informed. I’ve known
what’s going on there, as a matter of fact, for quite a long time now, a matter of
years.. .And to suggest that I am just finding out or that things are being exposed that
I didn’t know about—no. Yes, he—I was kept briefed on that.. .As a matter of fact, I
was very definitely involved in the decisions about support to the freedom fighters—
my idea to begin with.
President Reagan, meeting with editors. May 15, 1987.
The President told the truth about everything to everybody he talked to.
Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, November 19, 1987.
He just pleaded guilty to not telling Congress everything it wanted to know. I’ve done
that myself.
President Reagan, commenting on former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane’s

plea-bargain with Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh on charges of
withholding information from Congress, March 1988.
I still think Ollie North is a hero. And, on the other hand, in any talk about what I do
on pardons [for North and Poindexter], I think with the case now before the courts,
that’s just something I can’t discuss now. But I just have to believe that they are going
to be found innocent because I don’t think they are guilty of any lawbreaking.
President Reagan, March 25, 1988, regarding the March l6 indictment of North,
Poindexter, Secord and Hakim on charges including conspiracy to defraud the
government, false statements, falsification, destruction and removal of documents and
obstruction of justice. Carl “Spitz” Channel! and Richard Miller pleaded guilty
to conspiracy to defraud the government in 1987.
337
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15
Diversions
Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.
Richard Nixon, television interview, May 19, 1977.
When the Commander-in-Chief of a nation finds it necessary to order

employees of the government or agencies of the government to do things
that would technically break the law, he hAs to be able to declare it legal
for them to do that.
Ronald Reagan, agreeing with Nixon.^
Your work will make a great movie one day.

2
President Reagan to Oliver North, November 25, 1986.
The bombshell dropped in a Reagan-Meese press conference on November

25, 1986. Funds from the now widely exposed U.S. arms sales to Iran were diverted
to the contras. North was fingered as the culprit and fired. Poindexter, his alleged¬
ly unwitting accomplice, was allowed to resign.
The mid-term election had given Democrats control of the Senate and put the
administration on the political defensive. Behind the now torn Teflon curtain. Wizard
Reagan’s White House was trading guns for hostages. The “freedom fighters’ ” yel¬
low brick road was paved with slush funds.
The policy of selling arms to Iran may have originated in 1980 with a Reagan
campaign effort to deny Carter the opportunity to benefit from release of the
American hostages before the presidential election. According to former Iranian
President Bani-Sadr and others, Reagan advisers such as Richard Allen and Robert
McFarlane negotiated an October deal to trade weapons to Iran after Reagan took
office in exchange for Iranian stalling in the hostage negotiations with Carter. The
hostages were not released until the day Reagan was inaugurated—the ultimate
339
photo opportunity. Israel began sending weapons to Iran in the first half of 1981.
While these events are beyond the scope of this book, they should not be beyond
the scope of the Iran-contra investigations.^
cleansing
The televised diversion confession illustrated the principle that the best defense
is a good offense. The White House wanted to preempt the Watergate-style char¬
ges of coverup that would have ensued if investigators and reporters successfully
followed the money in the seemingly separate Iran and contra scandals to their in¬
tersection at North and Secord. In the days preceding the diversion announcement,
investigators at the International Center for Development Policy suspected a diver¬
sion of funds and were urging reporters to pursue the story.
Weeks earlier on October 7, CIA Director William Casey heard from a former
law client, Roy Furmark, that Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and two Canadian
investors were complaining of not being repaid monies advanced in the Iran arms
sales, and were threatening to expose the deal. Furmark also said that Iranian
businessman Manucher Ghorbanifar, the initial channel to Iran, was upset at being
cut out, and (by most accounts) told Casey that Ghorbanifar suspected funds had
been diverted to the contras.^
North later tried to pin the idea for the diversion on Ghorbanifar, with an ap¬
parently phony story about a bathroom conversation in late January 1986. It was
only one of many North flights of fancy at the Iran-contra hearings. The first diver¬
sion was authorized in late November 1985 when Israel was still the arms conduit.
On December 6, North told Israeli Ministry of Defense officials that he intended to
divert profits from future arms sales to Nicaragua operations. He recommended to
Poindexter that the United States take over the actual arms sales using Secord as a
conduit—an arrangement adopted in Reagan’s January 17, 1986 finding on Iran.^
By the time of the diversion announcement on November 25, much of the
paper trail had been shredded, burned or altered. “I started shredding documents
in earnest,” North testified, “after a discussion with Director Casey in early October
when he told me that Mr. Furmark had come to him and talked to him about the
use of Iran arms sales money to support the resistance. That.. .was preceded short¬
ly—by the crash or shootdown of the aircraft Mr. Hasenfus was on. And Director
Casey and I had a lengthy discussion about the fact that this whole thing was com¬
ing unraveled and that things ought to be ‘cleaned up’ and I started cleaning things
up.”^
The “cleanup” accelerated when Attorney General Meese began his con¬
veniently sloppy inquiry on November 21. In North’s office, Meese’s men quickly
found a smoking memo that had somehow escaped the shredders and bum bags.
In the so-called “diversion memo,” North described a planned arms sale to Iran and
stated:
The residual funds from this transaction are allocated as follows:
Diversions 341
— $2 million will be used to purchase replacement TOWs for the original 508 sold
by Israel to Iran for the release of Benjamin Weir. This is the only way that we have found
to meet our commitment to replenish these stocks.
— $12 million will be used to purchase critically needed supplies for the Nicaraguan
Democratic Resistance Forces. This materiel is essential to cover shortages in resistance
inventories resulting from their current offensives and Sandinista counter-attacks and to
“bridge” the period between now and when Congressionally approved lethal assistance
(beyond the $25 million in “defensive” arms) can be delivered.
The memo recommended to Poindexter “that the President approve the struc¬
ture depicted above under ‘Current Situation’ and the Terms of Reference at Tab A,
dated April 4, 1986.” The recovered memo’s spaces for a presidential “Approve” or
“Disapprove” were blank.^
Fall Guys
Whether accidental or contrived, the discovery and revelation of the diversion

memo allowed the administration to shape the Iran-contragate agenda around a
decoy question: What did the president know of the diversion and when did he
know it? If the Iran-Contra Report is correct, the diversion itself was not that sig¬
nificant financially: at least $3.8 million of the total $l6.1 million in arms sales profits
were used by the Enterprise for contra assistance.® That is far less than the tribute
solicited from third countries; donated by patrons of the American right; or diverted
through “humanitarian” assistance, military exercises, aid to Honduras and CIA-Pen-
tagon programs such as Operation Elephant Herd. And it is less than alleged
revenues from drug contraband, the subject that dared not speak its name at the
hearings.
Two Baltimore antiwar activists who tried to unfurl a banner at the hearings—
“Ask About Cocaine”—^were promptly thrown out and arrested. The only citizen
voices not considered a disruption in the hearing room were those represented by
the stack of telegrams displayed by Oliver and Betsy North. Some of those sup¬
posedly all sympathetic telegrams were actually protesting North’s behavior. Instead
of exposing the orchestrated telegram campaign designed to intimidate Congress,
the media played up “Olliemania.”
Newsweek’s COYQV for July 20, 1987 featured Oliver and Betsy North under the
headline: “The Fall Guy Becomes a Folk Hero: Ollie Takes The Hill.” Never mind
that Newsweek’s own poll presented later in the story indicated that more people
disagreed than agreed with the statement “He is a patriot and hero.” The lead raved
about North as “a new national folk hero who somehow embodied Jimmy Stewart,
Gary Cooper and John Wayne in one bemedaled uniform. He touched off a tidal
wave of telegrams, flowers and letters.” The networks gave North’s testimony star
treatment.
Watergate veteran Carl Bernstein commented that “the decision by the net¬
works not to offer gavel-to-gavel coverage of the hearings...said, in effect, that the
issues weren’t important or dramatic enough to justify keeping people away from
their soaps. When the networks got back on the air, they sent us a pack of theater
critics, not reporters, who assured us that Ollie was playing boffo.”^ North was
crowned a “winner.” Democracy was the loser.
To avoid the issue of impeachment. Congress conditioned it on the implausible
discovery of a diversion smoking gun covered with Ronald Reagan’s fingerprints.
The larger violations of law and constitutional responsibility to see that the laws are
“faithfully executed,” which were outlined in Rep. Henry Gonzalez’s (D-TX) lonely
resolution calling for Reagan’s impeachment, were ignored or underrated.In the
words of Sam Dash, chief counsel to the Watergate committee, “There is no reason
why the House Judiciary Committee could not define what President Reagan did as
an impeachable offense.””
Congress still trembled before the false idol of Reagan’s popularity and ac¬
cepted the symbolic sacrifice of North and Poindexter. When Poindexter testified
that Reagan did not know of the diversion, it was, for most politicians and commen¬
tators, time to “put the Iran-contra affair behind us.” Ronald Reagan would not go
the way of Richard Nixon. This time, the “fall-guy” plan worked.
The fall-guy plan, as described by North, was a scenario developed with Casey
as early as spring 1984 for someone to take the political rap for the president if the
contra support program was exposed. On the volatile Iran-contra diversion, Poin¬
dexter would have to take the fall with North if their “top boss,” Reagan, was to be
protected. The fall-guy plan worked even though North said he rebelled when he
learned on November 25 that he might be a criminal as well as political scapegoat.^^
And it worked although Poindexter winked that the buck stopped with Reagan,
even as he claimed it stopped with himself.
Poindexter testified that Reagan would have approved of the diversion as an
“implementation” of his policies, but he chose to “insulate” him “from the decision
and provide some future deniability for the President if it ever leaked out.” When
questioned about a White House statement contradicting his testimony and stating
that Reagan would not have authorized the diversion, Poindexter replied, “I under¬
stand that he [the President] said that, and I would have expected him to say that.
That is the whole idea of deniability.’”^
While most Iran-contra committee members understood that Reagan was
responsible, whether he explicitly authorized the diversion or not. Congress did not
hold him accountable. Deniability worked because Congress let it work, for the
diversion and larger crimes. Senate committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) was
relieved. He had hoped from the start “we never come across a smoking gun” link¬
ing Reagan to the diversion because “these are dangerous times to be going through
that type of exercise [impeachment].” He said the congressional report would avoid
critical assessment of Reagan’s role because “whenever our president is weakened
and our country divided, our adversary takes advantage.””
The Reagan administration sacrificed democracy in the name of “dangerous
times.” Congress did the same.
Diversions 343
Beating Around the Bush

While Poindexter protected the president’s deniability, Bush’s national security
adviser, Donald Gregg, covered up for the vice president. Bush was spared politi¬
cal discomfort during the Iran-contra hearings when his aides testified out of public
sight. He was treated again with kid gloves in the Iran-Contra Report. The news
media, meanwhile, gave more urgent attention to former Senator Gary Hart’s extra¬
marital relations than Bush’s extra-legal relations with the contras; at this writing,
Donna Rice is a household name, Donald Gregg is not.
George Bush’s potential smoking gun was Felix Rodriguez. As discussed in
chapter 11, Rodriguez met twice with Bush in January 1985 before traveling to
Central America. Though Gregg denies that he or the vice president knew of
Rodriguez’s work with the contras, the evidence suggests otherwise. Rodriguez met
in February with General Paul Gorman of the Southern Command who reported
Rodriguez’s work with the contras to both Colonel James Steele and the U.S. am¬
bassador to El Salvador, Thomas Pickering. Gorman highlighted Rodriguez’s “ac¬
quaintanceship” with the vice president dating back to Bush’s days as CIA director.
Rodriguez also met that month with Gregg, a longtime friend. On September 10,
North met with Gregg and Steele and, according to North’s notes, discussed estab¬
lishing contra airlift operations at Ilopango Air Base. Ten days later. North asked
Rodriguez to make the arrangements.
In November, Bush sent a handwritten note to North: “As I head off to Maine
for Thanksgiving I just want to wish you a Happy one with the hope you get some
well deserved rest...Your dedication and tireless work with the hostage thing and
with Central America realy gives me cause for great pride in you and Thanks.'' In
his deposition to the Iran-contra committees, Gregg claimed to believe that Bush
was thanking North for help with Bush’s Central America trip, two years earlier, in
1983.’'
On January 9, 1986, North wrote in his notebook: “Felix talking too much
about VP connection.
Gregg arranged for Bush and Rodriguez to meet again on May 1, 1986. The
scheduling memo for the May 1 meeting states: “To brief the Vice President on the
status of the war in El Salvador and resupply of the Contras.”
Phyllis Byrne, the secretary who typed the memo, testified that Colonel Sam
Watson, Gregg’s deputy, gave her that information. Watson, who met with Rodriguez
on April 30 and again in June, testified that he did not provide that description. It
seems obvious that Byrne would not have made up the business of the meeting or
accidentally slipped in “resupply of the Contras,” a subject supposedly unknown to
Bush and his staff at that time. The phrase “resupply of the contras” was retained
in Gregg’s briefing memorandum for Bush.^^
Gregg denied knowing of Rodriguez’s contra connection, although he met
with him periodically and was in frequent phone contact. And Watson denies it, al¬
though he spent three days in Central America, January 19 to 21, 1986, largely in
the company of Rodriguez and Col. James Steele. During the trip, ostensibly to “dis-
CUSS counterinsurgency operations” in El Salvador, Watson made two visits to con¬

tra camps in Honduras/®
According to Rodriguez, at the May 1 meeting he was planning to tell Bush
that he was leaving Central America, without telling him the reason—^which he later
explained as disgust with the Secord group and its Ed Wilson connections. Before
Rodriguez’s announcement. North and Ambassador to El Salvador Edwin Corr came
in and told Bush what a good job Rodriguez was doing. Rodriguez testified he was
then embarrassed to tell Bush he was leaving, and ended up staying on. Rodriguez
said at “no point in any of this conversation did I ever mention doing anything that
was remotely connected to Nicaragua and the contras.Former Senator Nicholas
Brady, who was also present at least for part of the meeting, testified that the resupp¬
ly operation was not discussed. If true, Brady’s presence may explain why the meet¬
ing did not cover the topic listed on the scheduling memo—if indeed it did not.
Rodriguez had a heated dispute with Rafael Quintero in August over whether
the Enterprise or the FDN, as Rodriguez believed, owned the supply planes. He
decided to take his complaints to Donald Gregg. Gregg claims that’s when he first
learned Rodriguez was working with the contras.
According to Gregg’s notes of their August 8 meeting, Rodriguez made the fol¬
lowing points: “Using Ed Wilson group for supplies...‘Mr. Green’ = Rafael
Quintero.. .A swap of weapons for $ was arranged to get aid for Contras. Clines and
General Secord tied in. Hand grenades bought for $3—sold for $9 [to Calero].. .DICK
GADD purchases things got 1st Caribou—big profit. Clines is getting $ from [name
deleted] or whatever: buying things at great profit. He hired pilots for Qadhafi with
Wilson. BOB DUTTON brought in as mgr for project after a flap..
Gregg convened a meeting on August 12 to discuss Rodriguez’s allegations
with Watson, Steele, Corr, Fiers, North’s NSC associate Robert Earl (formerly with
Bush’s task force on terrorism), NSC Director of Latin American Affairs Raymond
Burghardt and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Walker. Gregg reported¬
ly emphasized that he considered Clines unreliable, but had faith in Rodriguez. It
was reported in December 1986 that Gregg couldn’t remember whether he informed
Bush of the meeting.^’ But Gregg testified to the Iran-contra committees that he did
not pass on information about or from the meeting to Bush, because “it was a very
murky business.. .We had never discussed the contras. We had no responsibility for
it. We had no expertise in it. I wasn’t at all certain what this amounted to.
“I had the names of four or five Americans on an obscure air base in Centrai
America who apparently were ripping off donated funds and making unseemly
profits. I felt I had passed along that material to the organizations who could do
something about it, and I frankly did not think it was Vice Presidential level.
On its face, the explanation is absurd. Bush was a member of the National
Security Council, for which the contras were a primary concern. Bush’s involvement
is evident in the pre-Boland II paper trail on the contras. A November 1983 memo
from North and Constantine Menges (Burghardt’s predecessor) to McFarlane states
that the “President and Vice President have been asked to concur on these increases
[in the number of weapons supplied to the contras] in each previous case.”^^ Mc¬
Farlane, as noted earlier, personally told Bush of the Saudi money to finance the
Diversions 345
contras. On April 15, 1985, Bush and McFarlane gave a White House briefing on
Central America to donors attending the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund Dinner that
Reagan keynoted.
Gregg, a longtime CIA officer, headed the NSC Intelligence Directorate in
charge of covert operations, including the contras, until mid 1982. Bush seems a
logical person to talk with if Gregg were really concerned about Clines’ involve¬
ment since Bush was director of the CIA when the Wilson scandal surfaced.
Watson’s notes on the meeting state: “Felix—^Tom Clines, Secord—Ripping off
Contras—Fraud, a crime to profit.Conspicuously absent from Gregg’s list of people
representing “organizations who could do something about it” were officials of the
Justice Department. Gregg said he had no idea then that the resupply missions were
illegal. “The only illegality or the only unpleasant smell about what Felix had was
that there were corrupt, inept guys who were ripping off whatever operation it was
they were involved in.”^^
About Gregg’s note that “a swap of weapons for $ was arranged to get aid for
Contras, Clines and General Secord tied in”—^which sounds like the Iran-contra
diversion—Rodriguez professed ignorance and Gregg claimed it referred to the use
of “proceeds which were coming from the public donations, et cetera. It remains
unexplained in the Iran-Contra Report. So does a reference to North talking with
the “VP” about Rodriguez in an August KL-43 message from Richard Secord to Robert
Earl.
According to reporter Allan Nairn, citing “former intelligence agents who col¬
laborated with the Vice President’s office. Bush’s principal involvement with the
contras dates to a series of 1983 conversations between Bush and Casey concern¬
ing Congressional plans to restrict contra operations...[and] the prospects for alter¬
native contra aid channels. The conversations at times included President Reagan
and.. .Edwin Meese.”^^
Gregg wrote a secret September 18, 1984 memo to Bush, titled “Funding for
the Contras,” reporting: “In response to your question, Dewey Clarridge supplied
the following infomiation.” The memo discussed political and military aspects of
the contra war as well as private fundraising.^®
In 1983, Gregg provided a letter of recommendation to Gustavo Villoldo, a
fomier CIA agent and Bay of Pigs veteran, to work as a contra combat adviser in
Honduras. As described by Miskito leader Steadman Fagoth, who worked closely
with Villoldo, his strategy featured “small-group battle tactics, economic and com¬
mercial sabotage, and a program of political kidnappings, aimed at the wives and
children of Sandinista officials.” Villoldo worked in Honduras until late 1984; by
then his relations with FDN leaders and CIA officials had deteriorated.
Nairn wrote that “Villoldo was part of an old-boy network of former CIA agents
known to Gregg from his own career at the agency. According to intelligence sour¬
ces who dealt with Bush’s office, Gregg provided these men with contacts and in¬
troductions, gave them directions on how to tap into sources of clandestine funds,
and encouraged them to recmit contra advisers in the United States and Latin
America. Deniability was said to be a prime consideration, and none is known to
have had written contractual relationships with Bush’s office or the White House
Staff.
Richard Brenneke, an Oregon-based arms dealer and former CIA agent, said
his notes reflect conversations with Gregg about contra supply during 1985 and
1986. Brenneke said he checked the credentials of potential buyers with Gregg and
that Gregg and his staff provided guidance on buyers, suppliers and logistics.^
Gregg’s old-boy network reportedly said Yes to drug smuggling. FeHx
Rodriguez’s alleged involvement in funneling millions of dollars of cocaine money
to the contras was discussed in chapter 12. Other allegations implicate Gregg and
Bush.
As Robert Parry reported in Newsweek, Brenneke claims that he was recruited
by the Israeli Mossad station chief in Guatemala, Pesakh Ben-Or, to participate in
the contra supply network run by former Mossad officer Michael Harari, an adviser
to Panamanian General Manuel Noreiga. According to Brenneke, Gregg was the
Washington contact for the supply operation, which was financed by the MedeUin
cocaine cartel. The cartel provided planes to fly arms to the contras; the same planes
flew drugs to the United States. Noriega, who is under indictment for unrelated drug
charges in the United States, allegedly took a cut of the profits for drug traffic through
Panama.
Brenneke claims that he was aboard a plane flying drugs to Amarillo, Texas
in mid 1985. When he tried to discuss the drug connection with Gregg, he was told:
“You do what you were assigned to do. Don’t question the decision of your bet¬
ters.” Gregg denies ever speaking with Brenneke. Staff members of the Kerry nar¬
cotics subcommittee say they have corroborated part of Brenneke’s account with
another ex-Mossad agent and with former Panamanian Consul Jose Blandon. Blan-
don testified to Kerry’s committee that Noriega—^who was on the CIA payroll at
$200,000 a year, the same salary as the president of the United States—told him that
he knew things that “could affect the elections of the United States.”^’
In late August 1986, Barbara Studley, the Miami arms dealer who worked with
John Singlaub in supplying the contras, wrote a memo to North warning that the
disclosure of “covert black money” flowing into Honduras “could damage Vice Presi¬
dent Bush.” Studley wrote the memo after meeting with David Duncan, a Miami
arms dealer knowledgeable about South African support and other schemes to sup¬
ply the contras (see chapter 10).
One of the potentially damaging Honduras-contra connections is the so-called
Arms Supermarket run by Mario Delamico, a friend of Felix Rodriguez; Ronald Mar¬
tin; and James McCoy, the former U.S. military attache to the Somoza regime and
friend of Adolfo Calero. According to Brenneke, the Arms Supermarket was stock¬
ed by a network run by Mossad’s Honduras station chief, David Marcus Katz, which
was different from the network run by Harari in Panama.
North’s notebooks contain frequent references to the Arms Supermarket, which
North knew to be financed by drug money. A July 12, 1985 entry reads: “[deletionl
plans to seize all...when Supermarket comes to a bad end. $14M to finance came
from drugs.” North’s entry for September 10, 1985 (mentioned earlier), refers to a
meeting with Colonel Steele and Don Gregg and states: “Approached by Mario del-
Amico. Claims to be close to [deletedl. Claims to be close to the FDN.” In June 1986,
Diversions 347
North noted a need to “pay off” Supermarket partners Martin and McCoy
Another Bush-contra connection is his son, Jeb. In February 1985, John Ellis
“Jeb” Bush, then the Dade County Republican chairman and now Florida’s secretary
of commerce, gave his father a letter from Doctor Mario Castejon, a Guatemalan
politician seeking support for an international medical brigade to treat contra com¬
batants in the field. In a March 3 letter responding to Castejon, the vice president
suggested that he meet with North.^"* This was at a time when the U.S. government
was prohibited from supplying the contras directly or indirectly with any aid, lethal
or nonlethal.
Jeb Bush has been a key White House emissary to the Miami Nicaraguan com¬
munity and a champion of the contra cause. He has appeared at numerous contra
fundraising events.^^ According to Nairn, U.S. Customs agents from Miami reported¬
ly told Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh that Jeb Bush may have been linked
to contra arms shipments. Jeb Bush has acknowledged helping to raise funds for
“humanitarian” aid, but strongly denies any involvement in arms shipments. “Sure,
there’s a pretty good chance that arms were shipped,” he told Nairn, “but does that
break any law? I’m not sure it’s illegal. The Neutrality Act is a completely untested
notion, established in the 1800s.
As for George Bush, he agrees with Reagan that Oliver North is a hero. He
told “60 Minutes” correspondent Diane Sawyer, “Don’t put me down as feeling any¬
thing is definitely wrong with what Okie North has done in support of the Contras,
‘cause I’m for support for the Contras.. .And I keep repeating that. I want to get that
into every single question so it won’t end up on the cutting room floor...I support
strongly the Contras. I really feel viscerally on this.”^^
Watchdogs With Blinders

In a study of the 1975 Church Committee inquiry on the CIA, (led by the late
Senator Frank Church of Idaho) former committee investigator Loch Johnson ob¬
served, “The most conspicuous figure in the tapestry woven by the committee reports
was a blind and toothless congressional watchdog. During the May 1976 debate
over new intelligence oversight legislation. Senator Lowell Weicker (R-CT) lamented,
“We have had weak sight, we have had blind sight, we have had hindsight, we have
had short sight, but we have not had oversight.”
Years later, little has changed, and not all of the changes are positive. As Rep.
Norman Mineta (D-CA), a charter member of the House Intelligence Committee,
quipped in 1983, “We are like mushrooms. They [tho CIA] keep us in the dark and
feed us a lot of manure.
When the klieg lights turned on, the memories of government officials and
their intermediaries often turned off. “A mass epidemic of amnesia...seemed to
sweep Washington in the summer of 1975,” wrote Johnson. “Witnesses with vaunted
reputations for clear minds mysteriously could no longer remember essential details
of operations in which they had been intimately involved.
So it went in 1987. Poindexter and Meese held the convenient amnesia records,
but witness after witness said “I don’t recall,” “I can’t recollect,” on matters large and
small. A joke made the rounds during the Reagan-appointed Tower Board (com¬
posed of former Senators John Tower and Ed Muskie and former National Security
Adviser Brent Scowcroft): “What did the president forget and when did he forget
it?”
There was another problem. What did Congress want to know and when did
it want to know it? As columnist Mary McGrory remarked during the Church Com¬
mittee hearings, if the CIA preferred cloaks and daggers. Congress had a “penchant
for earmuffs and blinders.”'*^ The Iran-contra hearings made the Church Committee
hearings look like the Inquisition.
Regarding Nicaragua, the Iran-contra hearings acRially did more damage than
good: they served as a national soap box for contra disinformation. As Adolfo Calero
put it, “We came out of the hearings smelling like a flower.It often appeared that
the chief crime of the diversion was that the Enterprisers pocketed hefty profits while
the poor contras went without.
The hearings often degenerated into a one-sided contra aid debate. A two-
sided debate would have been stacked in favor of the contras; 17 out of 26 com¬
mittee members voted for the $100 million: Senators San Nunn (D-GA), David Boren
(D-OK), Howell Heflin (D-AL), William Cohen (R-ME), Warren Rudman (R-NH),
Orrin Hatch (R-UT), James McClure (R-ID) and Paul Trible (R-VA) and Representa¬
tives Dante Fascell (D-FL), Les Aspin (D-WT), Ed Jenkins (D-GA), Dick Cheney (R-
WY), William Broomfield (R-MI), Henry Hyde (R-IL), Bill McCollum (R-FL), Michael
DeWine (R-OH) and James Courier (R-NJ). Opposed were Senators Daniel Inouye
(D-HI), George Mitchell (D-ME) and Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and Representatives Lee
Hamilton (D-IN), Thomas Foley (D-WA), Peter Rodino (D-NJ), Jack Brooks (D-TX),
Edward Boland (D-MA) and Louis Stokes (D-OH). Informed and vocal contra critics,
such as Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Represen¬
tatives Pat Schroeder (D-CO), Ronald Dellums (D-CA), Gerry Studds (D-MA), George
Miller (D-CA), Les AuCoin (D-OR) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), weren’t there to
counter the diatribes of Hatch and Hyde.
To make matters worse, the contra supporters won not by advantage, but by
default. Contra opponents complied unilaterally with a prior committee agreement
to focus on process, not policy. They shared in the pretense that the objective of
the contra program was the “noble” cause of democracy in Nicaragua.'*^ They
preached platitudes such as “the ends don’t justify the means”—^belied by tlieir own
records, for example, in supporting the bombing of Libyan civilians to “combat ter¬
rorism.” Contra supporters argued passionately that the ends sometimes justified the
means, and they used an unchallenged, distorted version of reality to insist that na¬
tional security was at stake.
Even with contra critics such as Kerry on the committees, slander of the
Nicaraguan government would probably have gone unchallenged. As Boston Globe
editorial writer Randolph Ryan noted, “The general rule that governs all American
politicians and all American journalists who aspire to be taken seriously is that you
never, ever, give the Sandinista government a fair shake, at least not in public.”
Diversions 349
Senator Kerry, who John Hull (quoted in chapter 12) would like to see shot for
treason, has prefaced his comments about contra aid with the “serious” politician’s
disclaimer; “I agree with the president about the Sandinista problems, and yes, they
have been increasingly repressive within that regime. I don’t think there’s anybody
in the U.S. Congress who is saying anything positive about the Sandinistas. But that’s
not the issue.” As Ryan put it, “What the world sees when it looks at Washington is
a quavering Congress which is allowing President Reagan to shift the terms of debate
steadily to the right, steadily toward war, although the facts do not justify it.”'^
The combination of one-sided debate and Ollie-media-mania had an instant
impact on public opinion. During the hearings, someone asked me what had
changed in Nicaragua. Had the Nicaraguan government taken a sharp turn for the
worse? She assumed it had, having heard only bad things about Nicaragua and praise
aplenty for the contras. She wasn’t alone. Public opinion polls registered a significant
increase in the percentage of Americans favoring contra aid. Though the polls
reverted to large majorities opposing contra assistance, there were important linger¬
ing effects. The pro-contra grassroots base was rejuvenated. The Big Lies repeated
during the hearings have resonated loudly in subsequent pro-contra campaigns. And
senators and congressmen (they were all men) showed that even upon their loftiest
perch they could be cowed by an anti-communist stampede.
The $100 million flowed throughout the hearings and more was to follow. In
May 1987, the House rejected Rep. Barbara Boxer’s amendment requiring the presi¬
dent to certify that no roads, airports or other facilities improved as part of U.S.
military maneuvers in Honduras would be used to support the contras. In June, it
passed Rep. Robert Walker’s (R-PA) ambiguous amendment that found “that travel
by United States citizens to Central America for the purpose of performing services
or providing other assistance for the Government of Nicaragua or for Communist
or Communist-supported guerrilla groups causes serious damage to the national
security and foreign policy of the United States” and called for the State Department
to restrict travel by American citizens “if the purpose...is to perform services or
provide other assistance to the military operations of the Government of Nicaragua.”
Conservatives hoped the language would apply to volunteers working on develop¬
ment projects in Nicaragua’s war zones or Witness for Peace and Veterans for Peace
activists living in and visiting areas of likely attack.
With the public phase of hearings behind it. Congress authorized in Septem¬
ber the first $3.5 million in new installments on contra aid. That same month, the
contra support organization CMA held its national convention. Bumper stickers read:
“Give Aid to the Contras, Give AIDS to the Sandinistas.” CMA leader Tom Posey told
a reporter, “A lot of people in Congress, were it up to me, would be in prison by
sundown today.” (John Hull would shoot them at sunrise.) Adolfo Calero’s brother
Mario, the contra supplier who has lived in the United States since age ten, derided
the hearings as “Congress-gate.” He cited a flaw in the otherwise optimum American
political system: “There is a very good word in Spanish—^you don’t have it in
English—and it’s libertinaje. It means ‘excessive liberty.’
Assaulting Civil Liberties
A trail of abuse was excavated during the 1975 Church (Senate) and Pike
(House) investigations. As summarized by Church Committee investigator Loch
Johnson:
The CIA program to open mail frorn or to selected American citizens produced a
secret computer bank of 1.5 million names; the FBI intelligence unit developed files on
well over a million Americans, and carried out 500,000 investigations of “subversives”
from i960 to 1974 without a single court conviction; the NSA computers were fed every
single cable sent overseas by Americans from 1974 until 1975; Army intelligence units
conducted investigations against 100,000 American citizens during the Vietnam War.
The tactics sometimes used were alien to the principles embraced by the Bill of
Rights and the body of statutes that have evolved to protect civil liberties...They were, in
fact, more reminiscent of the means resorted to by Hitler’s SS and Beria’s secret police
under the Stalin regime; drug experiments conducted by the CIA on unsuspecting sub¬
jects; assassination plots attempted against foreign leaders in peacetime; murder and other
violence incited among blacks by anonymous FBI letters; the families and friendships of
dissidents disrupted by concealed bureau harassment; burglaries carried out in the homes
and offices of suspected subversives; elections manipulated in democratic countries; tax
information misused for political purposes; academic and religious groups infiltrated.'^^
Many such activities occurred in the 1980s. None received serious attention at
the Iran-contra hearings. The alleged U.S. role in the 1984 bombing of Pastora’s
press conference was treated as if it were baseless slander. There was no inquiry
into assassination programs against Sandinista officials and community leaders.
There was no investigation of government and rightwing surveillance, infiltration
and harassment of groups and individuals opposed to U.S. policy in Central America.
In November 1980, W. Mark Felt, former acting associate director of the FBI,
and Edward Miller, chief of the FBI Intelligence Division, were convicted of authoriz¬
ing break-ins into the homes of citizens without a warrant or probable cause. A few
months later, on April 15, 1981, President Reagan granted them an unconditional
pardon. Felt commented, “This is going to be the biggest shot in the arm of the in¬
telligence community for a long time.”'*^
In his book on political spying, Frank Donner observed, “The White House, it
is clear, viewed the two [FBI] men as heroes who were entitled not merely to for¬
giveness but to commendation; according to President Reagan, they ‘acted on high
principle to bring an end to terrorism that was threatening our nation.’ The “ter¬
rorism that was threatening our nation,” which for Reagan justified massive viola¬
tion of civil liberties, was not an invasion but the Weather Underground.
In December 1981, Reagan signed Executive Order 12333. It threw open the
floodgates on domestic spying that had been tightened somewhat after exposure of
the FBI COINTELPRO operations against the American Indian Movement, the Black
liberation movement, the antiwar movement and others. As summarized by the New
York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), “Under the labels of ‘foreign in¬
telligence,’ ‘counter-intelligence’ and ‘terrorism,’ the FBI and the CIA are permitted
to surveil Americans, even if they are not suspected of breaking the law or acting
Diversions 351
on behalf of a foreign power.. .Warrantless searches are permitted on probable cause

to believe that the target of the investigation, if not the target of the search, is ‘an
agent of a foreign power.’ The meaning of ‘agent of a foreign power’ is not even
defined.. .The Order also allows for the infiltration of lawful political organizations
not only for the purpose of gathering intelligence, but also for the purpose of con¬
trol.
Reagan administration action recalled the Nixon-era Huston Plan that recom¬
mended giving the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) wide authority to
monitor Americans’ international cables, telegrams and mail; intensify electronic sur¬
veillance of domestic dissidents; break into offices and homes; and expand surveil¬
lance of college students. Former Nixon aide Tom Huston, author of the plan, later
came to see the approach as dangerous. Huston testified in 1975: “The risk was that
you would get people who would be susceptible to political considerations as op¬
posed to national security considerations, or would construe political considerations
to be national security considerations—^to move from the kid with a bomb to the
kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with a picket sign to the kid with the bumper
sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line.”^ The
Reagan administration kept going down the line.
On November 6, 1984, election day in the United States, an Ohio political
science professor was returning from a trip to observe the Nicaraguan election. U.S.
Customs agents seized and photocopied Nicaraguan campaign materials (along with
a copy of the CIA’s contra manual). The photocopies were disseminated to a Cus¬
toms intelligence division and the following information was entered under the
professor’s name in the Customs computer: “INTELLIGENCE: SUBJECT IN POSSES¬
SION OF MATERIALS PERTAINING TO ELECTIONS IN NICARAGUA—ALLEGED.”
That’s only one of many such Orwellian welcomes greeting American travelers
returning from Nicaragua. Others have had their personal address books, diaries
and notebooks seized and copied.^^
Break-ins are another sign of the resurgent thought police. As of January 1988,
the Movement Support Network of the Center for Constitutional Rights had recorded
over 90 burglaries and break-ins with apparent Central America-related political mo¬
tives since 1983 when it first began tracking them. As described by the Center for
Constitutional Rights in congressional testimony, the “burglaries fit a pattern. The
targets are similar in that they are individuals or organizations engaged in dissent
from administration Central American policies. Many of the groups or individuals
targeted are the subjects of FBI investigations, or are at least referenced and indexed
in FBI files. Most significant is the fact that the burglaries appear not to be motivated
by any pecuniary interest. Only in a few instances is anything of monetary value
taken, although valuables, including cash, have been readily available...The in¬
truders... appear to know their victims’ schedules. They also appear to know the
general or precise location of the documents. In all cases files are rifled, in most
cases papers (most often membership or donor lists, or other important files, such
as those containing the names of persons [Central American refugees] being given
sanctuary) are strewn about the premises or left lying atop desks and filing cabinets.
In a few instances important documents have been stolen.”
For example, on November 30, 1986, days after the diversion announcement,
a break-in occurred at the Washington offices of the International Center for
Development Policy. Files were ransacked and one stolen document concerned a
Southern Air Transport contra arms flight.
On July 12, 1986, intruders ransacked the apartment of a Michigan woman ac¬
tive in the Central America Solidarity Committee. “They rifled her files and threw
papers and books on the floor. However,* her T.V., stereo, and rent money were ig¬
nored. Two weeks earlier, the woman’s name appeared in a Detroit newspaper, in
a story about the arrest of 12 persons (including herselQ for an act of civil dis¬
obedience.”
From November 1984 through June 1986, the offices sharing space in the base¬
ment of the Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were
broken into eight times. The targets included: the New England Central American
Network (NECAN), Central American Solidarity Association, Central American Infor¬
mation Office, Educators in Support of ANDES (the Salvadoran teachers union) and
New Institute of Central America (NICA). The Church itself had become a sanctuary
for Central American refugees the week before the first break-in. On May 15, 1987,
the NICA office experienced another break-in. Intruders poured muriatic acid on
some computer disks. NECAN was broken into again on May 3, 1988.
Among the other organizations and sancaiary churches that have experienced
break-ins are: the Central American Historical Institute, located on the campus of
Georgetown University in Washington, DC; MADRE, a New York-based national
friendship association with women in Central America and the Caribbean; Calvery
United Methodist Church in Washington, DC; Veterans Fast for Life, World
Peacemakers and Washington Pledge of Resistance, all housed in the Church of the
Saviour in Washington, DC; North American Congress on Latin America, publishers
of the NACLA Report on the Americas-, three offices at the Wheadon United Church
in Evanston, Illinois; United Church of Sante Fe, New Mexico; St. Williams Catholic
Church, Louisville, Kentucky; University Baptist Church, Seattle, Washington;
Michigan Interfaith Committee on Central American Rights.
There are different theories regarding the break-ins which are not mutually
exclusive: They may be carried out by FBI agents with headquarters’ authorization
or by members of rightwing groups at the behest of local FBI agents. Or they may
be the work of rightwing organizations working independently or in concert with
government agencies.
Following the long and sordid tradition of government-nongovernment col¬
laboration to counter the varied menaces of “radicalism,” the FBI has relied on a
network of so-called private intelligence informants to provide information on critics
of Central America policy, including background data on activists and donors and
reports on organizational activities. A central figure in this rightwing thought police
auxiliary is former Western Goals “subversive” tracker John Rees. Rees and his wife
S. Louise Rees have infiltrated left organizations (using pseudonyms) and worked
as informers for the Washington, DC police and the FBI. They publish the Informa¬
tion Digest, a newsletter focused primarily on left and liberal groups and individuals
that is circulated to the FBI and other federal security and intelligence agencies, local
Diversions 353
police units, rightwing organizations, corporate security offices, private detective

agencies and selected media such as Reader’s Digest. The Rees Digest 2i\so receives
information from local police and police informants. Among the other ideological¬
ly-biased sources of FBI “intelligence” are the John Birch Society; Young Americas
Foundation (founded by older, former members of Young Americans for Freedom);
the Council for Inter-American Security; Unification Church members, working, for
example, through their college-based affiliate, CARP; and rightwing Central
Americans inside the United States.”
An ex-FBI operative, Frank Varelli, has testified to infiltrating the Dallas chap¬
ter of CISPES (Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador) and compil¬
ing a “terrorist photo album,” with reports on such “subversives” as former
Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White, Rep. Michael Barnes and Senators Chris¬
topher Dodd and Claiborne Pell, now chairman of the Foreign Relations Commit¬
tee. The “terrorist photo album,” reportedly includes photos and reports on 690
individuals opposed to the administration’s Central America policies. According to
Varelli, the FBI provided him with John Rees’ material to prepare entries in the “ter¬
rorist” album.”
Varelli (born Franklin Agustin Martinez Varela) posed as a Salvadoran refugee
named Gilberto Mendoza whose family had been killed by death squads. In reality,
Varelli’s father was the ex-commander of the Salvadoran National Police. Varelli in¬
filtrated Dallas CISPES from 1981 to 1984. He said the FBI wanted to “break” CISPES
and conducted break-ins at the homes of CISPES members over a six-month period,
taking or photographing documents. He said an agent he worked with used to go
regularly to the Southern Methodist University campus “to pay the Moonies”; the
Moonies would start fights whenever CISPES held demonstrations. Varelli provided
the FBI with repoits on CISPES activities and prepared false literature to be dis¬
tributed under CISPES’ name. He said he did not follow suggestions that he plant
guns on CISPES members to make the peaceful organization appear to match the
FBI’s subversive image. Nor did he carry out an FBI plan to seduce a nun who was
a CISPES activist and blackmail her with hoped-for secret bedroom photos.”
Varelli testified in hearings before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil
and Constitutional Liberties, chaired by Rep. Don Edwards (D-CA), in February 1987.
So did the Center for Constitutional Rights and other concerned organizations. Un¬
fortunately, Congress and the media paid scant attention. Dan Noyes and Angus
MacKenzie of the San Francisco-based Center for Investigative Reporting were on
the FBI story before then and KRON television aired a report in February 1987;
Project Censored awarded Noyes, MacKenzie and KRON producer Jonathan D^nn
the top honors in their list of the ten most underreported stories of 1986. Not until
a year later, when CCR obtained and released a portion of the relevant FBI files
(heavily censored) under the Freedom of Information Act, did the sweeping FBI
surveillance receive wide exposure, however fleeting.
The FBI began investigating CISPES in 1981 for alleged violations of the Foreign
Agents Registration Act. Among the material the FBI submitted to the Justice Depart¬
ment in its request to investigate CISPES was an article by John Rees in the Review
of the News, a John Birch Society publication; FBI Assistant Director Revell cited it
later to defend the investigation. When no evidence of illegality was found, the FBI
renewed the nationwide investigation in 1983 under the wide counter-terrorism
authority described above. In the nationwide probe, coordinated from Dallas and
later from Washington, the FBI used wiretaps, undercover agents, informers and
photographic surveillance not only of CISPES but of hundreds of organizations
whose work brought them in touch with CISPES or its members. The FBI treated
other organizations as potential “front groups” of CISPES.
Among the groups included in the FBI CISPES files were Amnesty Internation¬
al, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Civil Liberties Union, Clergy
and Laity Concerned, First Run Features film distributors. Friends Peace Committee,
Maryknoll Sisters, Mobilization for Survival, National Association of Women
Religious, New Jewish Agenda, North American Congress on Latin America, Oxfam-
America, Peace Links, Progressive Student Network, SANE, Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, United Auto Workers, U.S. Catholic Conference, Washington
Office on Latin America and Witness for Peace.
As CCR Freedom of Information Act Coordinator Ann Marie Buitrago ex¬
plained, “failure to turn up evidence of illegality increased the pressure to expand
the hunt for ‘fronts’ and intensify the search for covert activities” supposedly covered
by peaceful, legal activity.^^
The “Intelligence” section of the Heritage Foundation report. Mandate for
Leadership, much embraced by the Reagan administration, states that “internal
security files cannot be restricted to actual or imminent threats...Clergymen, stu¬
dents, businessmen, entertainers, labor officials, journalists, and government
workers may engage in subversive activities without being fully aware of the ex¬
tent, purpose or control of their activities...An adequate internal security
program...must proceed on the understanding that many conventional and legalis¬
tic distinctions are serious impediments when imported into intelligence and inter¬
nal security work.” The report suggests: “One solution would be to contract with
one or several of the many private corporations that have specialized in providing
and analyzing such information, that can collect and disseminate relevant informa¬
tion without legal complications and that can respond to a crisis without transgres¬
sion of administrative jurisdictions.”^^ This is a mandate for destroying the already
battered heritage of civil liberties.
The CISPES investigation, which was carried out under former FBI Director
William Webster, now director of Central Intelligence, and Executive Assistant Direc¬
tor Oliver Revell, led to no indictments or arrests and found that CISPES was not
engaged in “international terrorism,” a result not at all surprising to those familiar
with the work of CISPES or other organizations opposed to U.S. policy in Central
America.
“This investigation has an odor of harassment about it,” said Rep. Don Ed¬
wards, whose committee oversees the FBI. “The FBI is supposed to catch criminals—
not political activists. [The late FBI Director}. Edgar] Hoover investigated long-haired
young people and Dr. Martin Luther King. This looks like sort of a repeat.”^®
Heavily censored documents being released by the FBI at this writing show
that the CISPES investigation was one of at least five probes concerning Central
Diversions 355
America policy dissidents. Eighteen FBI field offices hold files under the caption
“Nicaraguan Proposed Demonstrations in the US” and fifteen offices hold files under
the caption “Nicaraguan Terrorist.” One document headed “Nicaraguan Terrorist
Matters: International Terrorism—^Nicaragua,” a teletype from the Chicago FBI of¬
fice to FBI headquarters, deals with a 1986 demonstration by the Chicago Pledge of
Resistance. The Pledge of Resistance is explicitly committed to nonviolent protest.
As David Lemer of the Center for Constitutional Jhghts put it, “The FBI’s surveillance
of opponents of all of Reagan Central America policies is pervasive.
Home-Grown Terror
Opponents of contemporary U.S. policy toward Central America have not only
been surveilled, harassed and burglarized, they have been arrested, fined, im¬
prisoned and assaulted for using nonviolent civil disobedience to rouse the nation’s
conscience. On September 1, 1987, Vietnam veteran Brian Willson was struck by a
military munitions train during a demonstration outside the Concord Naval Weapons
Station, a shipping point for weapons for Central America. A few days later, Tom
Posey remarked, “I was rather delighted.”^
Willson had put his body on the line before, first in war and then for peace.
He and three other veterans—Duncan Murphy, George Mizo and Charles Liteky, a
recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor—conducted a 47-day fast on the
Capitol steps in the fall of 1986 to galvanize public action to stop the war in
Nicaragua. At the end of November 1986, Chicago FBI Special Agent John C. Ryan
was ordered to conduct a “terrorism” probe of Veterans Fast for Life after vandalism
at military recruiting offices. Ryan protested against applying the terrorism label to
investigation of a nonviolent organization and refused to proceed on that basis. In
August 1987, Ryan—^who had received commendations for investigating organized
crime—was fired after 21 years with the FBI.^^
Willson and the other participants in the “Nuremberg actions” outside the Con¬
cord Naval Base had informed the police and military of their planned protest, and
expected to be removed and arrested as they had been before. This time the train
came barreling through and Willson was struck as he tried to jump clear.
Willson lost both his legs, but not his spirit. “I feel like standing on those tracks
was like what we have often said the Germans didn’t do,” he explained. “Why
weren’t the Germans stopping the death trains going through Germany?...The life
of a Nicaraguan or an El Salvadoran or an Angolan is worth no less than my life
and we kill them every day with our policies. Therefore, the question I like to pose
is ‘How do we begin to stand in the way of that train?’
Those trying to reroute U.S. policy in Central America are facing a rising num¬
ber of death threats and personal attacks. It is reminiscent of the FBI-protected San
Diego-based Secret Army Organization terrorism against antiwar activists during
1967-1972 and of the CIA-nurtured terrorism of the Central American death squads
On July 7, 1987, a 24-year-old Salvadoran refugee support worker named
Yanira Corea was abducted outside the Los Angeles CISPES office. She was tortured
and raped by three men. They interrogated her about the activities of coworkers,
burnt her with cigarettes and carved the initials EM into her hands, which stand for
escuadron de la miierte, death squad. They raped her with a wooden stick. One
man said they should kill her. Another said, “No, this way we are going to let them
know that we are here.”
Before releasing Corea, they cut her tongue and wrapped her underwear
around her mouth, and they threatened to harm her three-year-old son if she didn’t
give up her work. A few days before her abduction, Corea had received a letter
with a stolen photo of her son. It contained petals of dried flowers with the note,
“Flowers in the desert die,” a Salvadoran death squad warning. In El Salvador, Corea’s
father received a letter warning that he would be punished if she persisted in her
political activities. In November, when Corea was in the New York office of MADRE
while on a speaking tour, a paper was slipped under the door. It was the torn half
of a poster announcing Corea’s appearance. There was a handwritten threat: “Do
you know where your son is?” A crude drawing showed the torso of a decapitated
child with a head lying nearby.^
On July 17, armed men abducted Ana Maria Lopez, a 31-year old Guatemalan
woman also working with refugees in Los Angeles. They warned her to stop criticiz¬
ing the Salvadoran government before releasing her 25 miles east of the city. In July
alone, 24 people reported death threats to the Los Angeles police. Father Luis
Olivares’ church received an anonymous letter signed with the chillingly familiar in¬
itials EM.^^
At this writing, the most extensive treatment given these death squad activities
in the mainstream media was the February 4, 1988 episode of the television series
“Simon and Simon.” Unfortunately, many viewers had no idea it was based upon a
true story. (A later episode of “Cagney and Lacey” also addressed the death squads.)
The Center for Constitutional Rights compiled 43 incidents of Central America-
related death squad activity and rightwing threats (e.g. from the Cuban exile ter¬
rorist group. Omega 7) in nineteen U.S. cities between January 1984 and October
1987—not including many acts of vandalism and threats left behind during break-
ins. Among the groups active on Nicaragua who have received threats are Pledge
of Resistance in Washington and the development assistance group, TecNica, in
Berkeley. A freelance journalist in Missouri, active on Central America issues,
received a death threat over the phone on May 1, 1987. The caller said, “We will
make one, two, many Benjamin Linders and you will be next.”^
Benjamin Linder is not a household name in the United States, but he should
be. Linder was an American engineer working in Nicaragua where, on April 28,
1987, he was ambushed and killed by contras along with two Nicaraguan colleagues.
They were surveying a stream for possible use in bringing hydroelectric power to
the village of San Jose de Bocay in northern Nicaragua. Linder had previously
directed installation of a small hydroelectric plant bringing the first electricity and
light to El Cua.
Doctor David Linder, a pathologist, analyzed his son’s autopsy. Ben Linder
was injured in the arm and legs and then executed. “They blew his brains out at
Diversions 357
point-blank range as he lay wounded,” his father said.^^ Pablo Rosales, one of the
Nicaraguans killed with Linder, was stabbed to death.
At Linder’s funeral in Nicaragua, President Ortega paid him tribute: “He didn’t
arrive on a flight loaded down with arms, or with millions of dollars. He arrived on
a flight full of dreams.”
Ortega invoked Hemingway in his eulogy for Ben Linder and those killed
before him. “So, for whom do the bells toll here in Nicaragua? For Pierre Grosjean,
33 years old, French doctor assassinated in Rancho Grande...Ambrosio Mogorron,
34 year old Spanish nurse, assassinated in San Jose de Bocay,. .For Albrecht Pflaum,
32 years old. West German doctor, assassinated in Zompopera...For Maurice
Demierre, 29 years old, Swiss agronomist assassinated in Somotillo...For Paul
Dessers, 39 years old, civil engineer from Belgium, assassinated in Guapotal...For
Joel Fieux, 28 years old, radio technician from France, assassinated in Zom-
popera...For Bernhard Erick Kobersteyn, 30 year old West German civil engineer,
assassinated in Zompopera...For Ivan Claude Leyraz, 32 years old, Swiss construc¬
tion engineer, assassinated in Zompopera.. .For Benjamin Linder, 27 years old. North
American engineer, assassinated in La Camaleona, Nicaragua...For more than ten
Cuban teachers, technicians and volunteers, assassinated during these last few
years...For the 40,000 victims that the US aggression has claimed from the
Nicaraguan population in these six years of war.” Ortega ended with an appeal for
a negotiated peace.
Contra spokesman Frank Arana announced in May 1986 that “any foreigner
who voluntarily aids in development and reconstruction projects is considered an
enemy.In April 1987, FBI agents in five cities visited employers of twelve volun¬
teers working with TecNica. The FBI agents had the employers call the volunteers
into their offices and then the agents criticized them for “helping the communists”
and warned them not to return to Nicaragua.^” About 1,500 Americans are working
in Nicaragua—teachers, engineers, computer technicians, agronomists, nurses, mid¬
wives and so on—^forming an unprecedented grassroots peace corps.
It Can Happen Here

On Monday afternoon, July 13, Iran-contra committee member Jack Brooks
was questioning Oliver North when he hit a sensitive nerve. Rep. Brooks asked,
“Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned at one time to work
on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?”
North’s lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, objected. Chairman Inouye told Brooks, “I
believe the question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area. So may I
request that you not touch upon that, sir?”
“I was particularly concerned,” Brooks responded, “because I read in Miami
papers and several others that there had been a plan developed by that same agen¬
cy, a contingency plan in the event of emergency that would suspend the American
Constitution, and I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the
area in which he had worked.” Inouye insisted that any discussion on the matter
be reserved for executive session.
The following day, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman David Boren ad¬
dressed the issue: “Colonel North, during the discussion earlier and under question¬
ing from Congressman Brooks, the question of the so-called Martial Law Plan had
come up. We had some discussion about this in the Executive Session...And the
White House counsel’s office has indicated it would be appropriate [to ask ques¬
tions]... as long as I refer to matter that’s been printed in the media and is in the
public domain.”
Boren asked North about a June 5, 1987 article in the Miami Herald-. “Let me
just quote one paragraph...It says, ‘Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, for example,
helped draw up a controversial plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of na¬
tional crisis such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent, or nation¬
al opposition to a US military invasion abroad.’ And I would ask you, did you
participate in or advocate any such plan to suspend the Constitution...?”
“Absolutely not.”
“To your knowledge, has the government of the United States adopted any
such plan, or does it have in place—in being, any such plan?”
“No sir. None.”
Boren mentioned that the Intelligence Committee would be briefed on the
matter.^^ End of discussion. But North was lying and Boren should have known it.
From 1982 to 1984, as Alfonso Chardy reported in the Miami Herald, North
was the NSC liaison to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), then
headed by Louis Giuffrida. As described by a government official, FEMA developed
a secret contingency plan that “was written as part of an executive order or legisla¬
tive package that Reagan would sign and hold within the NSC until a severe crisis
arose.” The plan called for suspension of the Constitution, appointment of military
commanders to run state and local governments and declaration of martial law
during a national crisis of the kind cited by Boren, including domestic opposition
to a U.S. military invasion abroad.
The Herald obtained a June 30, 1982 memo, written by John Brinkerhoff,
Giuffrida’s deputy for national preparedness programs, that outlined the martial law
portions of the plan. The scenario “resembled somewhat a paper Giuffrida had writ¬
ten in 1970 at the Army War College in [Carlisle, PA], in which he advocated mar¬
tial law in case of a national uprising by black militants. The paper also advocated
the roundup and transfer to ‘assembly centers or relocation camps’ of at least 21
million ‘American Negroes.’ ”
Attorney General William French Smith was reportedly alarmed by the FEMA
plans and wrote National Security Adviser McFarlane on August 2, 1984 with his ob¬
jections: “I believe that the role assigned to [FEMA] in the revised Executive Order
exceeds its proper function as a coordinating agency for emergency preparedness.”
The Herald did not know whether the executive order was signed and, if so, whether
it contained the martial law plan developed by FEMA.^^
There are other reports of an April 1984 National Security Decision Directive
No. 52 authorizing FEMA to undertake a secret nationwide readiness exercise code
Diversions 359
named REX 84. REX 84 was reportedly designed to test the readiness of FEMA to
supervise Department of Defense and National Guard personnel, as well as new
“State Defense Force” units, in the event the president declared a “State of Domes¬
tic National Emergency” concurrent with the launching of a direct invasion in Central
America (code named “Operation Night Train”). In the event of such a “national
emergency,” some 400,000 undocumented Central American “aliens would repor¬
tedly be held in detention camps throughout the United States.^^
Rep. Henry Gonzalez claimed that FBI dossiers on American citizens con¬
sidered security threats were forwarded to FEMA; the list was known as ADEX (Ad¬
ministrative Index). According to the Austin American-Statesman, internal
administration documents reveal a power struggle over an index with 12,000 names
between then FBI Director Webster, who wanted the FBI to retain control, and
Meese and McFarlane, who demanded that FEMA be given the list.^^
The ADEX list follows in a long line of military intelligence and FBI surveil¬
lance and “custodial detention” lists known as “Security Index,” “Communist Index,”
“Reserve Index,” “Agitator Index” and so on. Despite Congress’ 1971 repeal of the
emergency detention provisions of the Internal Security Act of 1950, the FBI con¬
tinued compiling the lists. The ADEX list contains data on individuals considered
“subversives” or members of “subversive” organizations as well as potential finan¬
cial contributors, teachers, lawyers, writers and intellectuals who the FBI thought
would influence othersMass detention happened here during World War II and
it could happen again.
FEMA (established in 1979) has responsibility for planning for “continuity of
government” during a period of national crisis—everything from earthquakes and
other natural disasters to nuclear war. “Whenever you start talking about martial
law, you get a lot of dark smoke at the Pentagon and FEMA,” said Joseph Gould of
the Center for Defense Information. “The planning is all done in the name of provid¬
ing for ‘continuity of government’ in a crisis.”
FEMA official Bill McAda has acknowledged that procedures for providing
“continuity of government” during an emergency would be authorized in executive
orders veiled in secrecy for “national security” reasons. And FEMA director Julius
Becton, a former Army general, has observed, “There is no congressional oversight
on executive orders.
When Reagan was governor of California, a state with a historically extensive
private-public political surveillance and harassment network, Giuffrida played a key
role with Edwin Meese, then Reagan’s executive secretary, in developing a martial
law plan embodied in Operation Cable Splicer (related to national Nixon-era plans
called Operation Garden Plot and Lantern Spike). Then Colonel Giuffrida was head
of Reagan’s California Specialized Training Institute (CSTI), a National Guard school.
Operation Cable Splicer (I, II and III) involved a series of martial “war games” during
1968-1972 involving state and local police, the National Guard and elements of the
U.S. Sixth Army. The targets of the exercises were activists on college campuses and
in the Black community.
Governor Reagan ordered mass arrests and advocated violent repression to
put down student protest he portrayed as communist-inspired insurrection. Speak-
ing to California growers, Reagan said that student militants want to “prove this sys¬
tem of ours, faced with a crisis, will not work. If there’s going to be a bloodbath,
let’s get it over with.” Meese expressed similar sentiment during the 1980 campaign
when staffers brought up the name of James Rector, a student killed in 1969 when
Reagan ordered highway patrolmen and National Guard troops to clear out
demonstrators in Berkeley’s People’s Park. Said Meese, “James Rector deserved to
die.”^
In a training manual titled “Legal Aspects of Managing Civil Disorders,” Giuf-
frida wrote: “There are severe statutory limitations and procedural requirements im¬
posed by the Government Code which are not present in a Martial Rule situation.
As stated above. Martial Rule is limited only by the principle of necessary force.”
A decade later, a 1981 Defense Department directive issued by then Deputy
Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci stated: “In those areas in which martial law have
been proclaimed, military resources may be used for local law enforcement. Nor¬
mally a state of martial law will be proclaimed by the President. However, in the
absence of such action by the President, a senior military commander may impose
martial law in an area of his command where there has been a complete break¬
down in the exercise of government functions by local civilian authorities.”
Constitutional protections have been lost before in the name of national
security. In the words of Harvard Law Professor Derek Bell, “When the factual situa¬
tion is perceived to be dangerous, either by the general public or by people in
power, then you could have here the kind of thing we’ve seen happen in the Third
World. It happened with Lincoln’s shocking suspension of habeas corpus by execu¬
tive order, it happened with martial law after Pearl Harbor, it happened with the in¬
terning of Japanese Americans in World War 11. The fact is, if you look at the things
this government has been doing in Central America, the mining of harbors, the il¬
legal arms shipments to the contras, there is good cause to worry about the pos¬
sibility of martial law here.”^®
An important safeguard against martial law in the future is to guard against
manifestations of police-state behavior in the present. The surveillance and harass¬
ment of opponents of U.S. policy in Central America is an intolerable abuse of civil
liberties today and a potential stepping stone toward greater repression tomorrow.
The Myopic Majority

Unfortunately, the Iran-contra hearings covered up the record of abuse dis¬
cussed above. The congressional inquirers insulated the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, Justice
and other departments from serious investigation and accountability. They put a
handful of men under a microscope and wore blinders to avoid looking at the in¬
stitutions they served. They treated the Enterprise as an aberration rather than the
latest mutation of covert warfare. And, in the end, their recommendations were, to
borrow Senator Rudman’s term for the Republican minority report, pathetic.
The committees opted to fine-tune the instruments of covert action while reaf-
Diversions 361
firming its legitimacy. One of their specific recommendations for the NSC, “that Presi¬
dents adopt as a matter of policy the principle that the National Security Ad¬
viser... should not be an active military officer” was quickly ignored with the
appointment of Lt. General Colin Powell. His deputy is none other than John
Negroponte, the former ambassador to Honduras and chief proconsul of the con¬
tra war.
CIA Director William Webster, who headed the FBI when it undertook a mas¬
sive spying campaign against critics of Central America policy, was embraced as
Casey’s “clean” successor. “If you can’t trust an agency like ours,” says Webster,
“you’re in trouble, because we are going to do a lot of things that we can’t tell you
about.
In 1975, James Angleton, the late former chief of CIA Counterintelligence, said
the task of the counterintelligence officer was to construct a “wilderness of mirrors”
in which the opponent would be forever lost and confused.®® Not accommodating
enough. Congress was treated as an opponent and a decade later it is even more
timid. Congress exhibits an occasional desire to tame that artificial wilderness and a
strong tendency to preserve it as a supposed barrier against perceived enemies
abroad. Meanwhile, the domestic dangers to democracy flourish.
The Iran-contra committees’ recommendations follow from their assumptions
and conclusions. “Covert operations are a necessary component of our Nation’s
foreign policy,” states the Iran-ContraReport.^^ The records of the House and Senate
Intelligence Committees testify to that.
As Chairman Hamilton said at the conclusion of North’s testimony, “During
my six years on the Intelligence Committee, over 90 percent of the covert actions
that were recommended to us by the President were supported and approved. And
only the large-scale paramilitary operations, which really could not be kept secret,
were challenged.”®^
“Covert operations,” the Iran-Contra Report concludes, “are compatible with
democratic government if they are conducted in an accountable manner and in ac¬
cordance with law. Laws mandate reporting and prior notice to Congress. Covert
action Findings are not a license to violate the statutes of the United States.” They
are, as Congress knows, a license to violate international law to which the United
States is legally bound.
The Iran-Contra Report defines covert action as “an attempt by a government
to influence political behavior and events in other countries in ways that are con¬
cealed.” If exposed, covert actions are expected to provide the U.S. government
with a cushion of “plausible denial.” As defined in President Truman’s 1948 Nation¬
al Security Council Directive, NSC 10/2, covert actions are: “propaganda; economic
warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and
evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to un¬
derground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and sup¬
port of indigenous anti-communist elements.”
The Iran-Contra Report perpetuates the myth that such covert actions as “sub¬
version against hostile states” do not constitute war: “Paramilitary covert actions are
in the ‘twilight area’ between war, which only Congress can declare, and diplomacy.
which the President must manage. This type of activity is especially troublesome as
a constitutional separation of powers issue.
Covert action is apparently not troublesome as a violation of national
sovereignty and international law. International law gives no state the right to “in¬
fluence political behavior and events in other countries in ways that are concealed.”
Quite the contrary, as the World Court reaffirmed. For example, the United Nations
charter, to which the United States is a signatory, states that “All Members shall
refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the ter¬
ritorial integrity or political independence of any state.” The only exception to the
principle of nonintervention is the right of self-defense, which is limited to acts of
self-defense against an armed attack. The United States has no legal right, much less
a moral one, to take military, paramilitary or any other covert action to “influence
political behavior and events” it doesn’t like. Indeed, it is obligated not to do so.
At the close of North’s testimony before the Iran-contra hearings. Senator In-
ouye, a highly decorated World War II veteran, began to speak of North’s “obliga¬
tion to disobey unlawful orders” under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. “This
principle was considered so important that we.. .the government of the United States
proposed that it be internationally applied, in the Nuremberg trials. And so, in the
Nuremberg trials, we said that the fact that the defendant—”
At that point. North’s lawyer interrupted, objecting vehemently to the Nurem¬
berg reference. Inouye never completed the passage upon resuming his remarks.
In closing, Inouye gave the hearing’s sole explanation of opposition to con¬
tra aid. His reasoning is instructive: “Throughout the past 10 days, many of my col¬
leagues on this panel, in opening their questions to the colonel, prefaced their
remarks by saying, ‘Colonel, I’m certain you know that I voted for aid to the con¬
tras.’ Ladies and gentlemen and Colonel North, I voted against aid to the contras. I
did so not as a communist. I did so not as an agent of the KGB. I did so upon in¬
formation that I gathered as a member of the bipartisan commission on Central
America...as chairman of the Foreign Operations Committee...as a senior member
of the Defense subcommittee, and...as chairman and member of the Senate Intel¬
ligence Committee...
“I voted against aid to the contras. It wasn’t easy to vote against your com-
mander-in-chief. It’s not easy to stand before my colleagues and find yourself in dis¬
agreement, but that is the nature of democracy. I did so because I was firmly
convinced that to follow the path or the course that was laid down by the Reagan
proposal was—^would certainly and inevitably lead to a point where young men
and women of the United States would have to be sent into the conflict...
“I know that the path of...diplomacy is frustrating—at times angering. But I
would think that we should give it a chance, if it means that, with some patience,
we could save even one life. So that is why I wish my colleagues to know that I
voted against aid to the Nicaraguan freedom fighters.”®'*
You would not know from Inouye’s defensive remarks that a majority of
Americans opposed aid to the Contras or that the contras were not freedom fighters.
There were no words for the Nicaraguan dead.
The mainstream media provided precious little commentary on the link be-
Diversions 363
tween Nuremberg and Nicaragua, which went far beyond Colonel North. As senior
Atlantic Editor Jack Beatty wrote: “The Iran-contra affair is not, however, the most
serious abuse of power for which the president has yet to answer. That distinction
belongs to the spree of political killings that Reagan has unleashed on the Nicaraguan
people...
“In 1946, at the Tokyo Tribunals, we hanged a former Japanese foreign min¬
ister because, to quote from the charge against him, ‘he was derelict in his duty in
not insisting before the cabinet that immediate action must be taken to put an end
to atrocities and was content to rely on assurances which he knew were not being
implemented.’ In other words, in regards to the atrocities being committed by
Japanese troops in Manchuria, he was in the same relation as Mr. Reagan and El¬
liott Abrams & Company have been in regard to the atrocities committed by the
contras in Nicaragua. Every year the administration has given its assurances that the
atrocities would stop; and every year they have continued...
“I remember one atrocity from 1985: a squad of contras raped a teen-aged
bride repeatedly, over several hours, and forced her husband to watch. And I remem¬
ber what a State Department man, commenting on such incidents, said at the time.
The contras, he said, have ‘a thing’ with young girls.
In the warped value system that rules Congress, it is the diversion of a few
million dollars from Iran to the contras and lying to Congress that are the real crimes,
not the war crimes committed against Nicaragua. The foreign policy problem we
face is not one of oversight. It is one of vision.
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Crosscurrents
Nicaragua does not pose a military threat to the United States. It is a few
hours’ exercise for the armed forces of the United States to remove the
tanks and the HINDS [helicopters] and all the rest of the stuff.
General Paul Gorman, National Defense University, November 14, 1986.^
The next chapter of history has yet to be written. We must write it our¬
selves.
2
President Oscar Arias, September 1987.
Events did not stand still in Central America while scandal unfolded in
Washington. As 1986 turned to 1987, the outlook for Central America was war and
more war. The question was whether war would take the form of deepening
“Lebanonization,” with the contras indefinitely in search of a country, or “Vietnamiza-
tion,” with a direct U.S. invasion.
“Someday,” said President Azcona, “someone is going to make a map of Central
America in which Honduras will appear as nothing more than the country where
the contras were.”^
Regarding Nicaragua, President Reagan’s 1987 State of the Union message was
as uncompromising and distorted as ever; “Our commitment to a Western Hemi¬
sphere safe from aggression...began with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823...Some in
this Congress may choose to depart from this historic commitment, but I will
not...Nicaraguan freedom fighters have never asked us to wage their battle, but I
will fight any effort to shut off their lifeblood and consign them to death, defeat or
a life without freedom. There must be no Soviet beachhead in Central America.”
Nicaragua had become the litmus test of Reagan’s Rollback Doctrine. “In
Nicaragua, we are talking about a place extremely far from the Soviet Union and
365
extremely close to our borders, and with a Western culture,” explained Elliott
Abrams. “If you can’t make it here, you’re not going to make it.”"*
Inside and outside government, most analysts thought the contras could not
make it, at least not during Reagan’s tenure. Perennial optimist Elliott Abrams
predicted a “political-military victory” for the contras in two to four years. General
John Galvin of the Southern Command claimed that “with sustained support, there
is no doubt that the contras can win.” He predicted, though, that victory could take
more than seven years. Galvin’s predecessor. General Paul Gorman, was more dis¬
paraging; he called the contras a “cross-border raiding force.
Gorman told a National Defense University audience of his “very deep doubts
about the present course of action” in Nicaragua. “I do not believe that the Central
Intelligence Agency is capable of mounting a successful insurgency, or supporting
it for that matter. And I do not see in the Nicaraguan rebels a likely alternative to
the present Sandinista regime.”^
“The rebels have never looked so isolated, nor more dependent on Washington
for their survival,” the New York Times reported in late 1986. “We’ve done this thing
badly,” a U.S. official in Honduras remarked, “and a lot of people who have helped
us are going to get hurt.”^
Would Washington abandon the failing contra war, as Truman did in 1952
with the Bui*ma-based Chinese nationalists, or Nixon did in 1973 with the Hmong
in Laos? Or would the war escalate under the dual slogan: no second Cuba, no
second Bay of Pigs?
Signs of Escalation
“Obviously, if the contras don’t do the job for him,” a U.S. ambassador in
Central America told me, “Reagan’s gonna ask himself if I’m going to leave office
with these guys still in power.”®
Looking toward 1987, there appeared to be a strong possibility of rapid es¬
calation—before the 1988 presidential election campaign. The contras could not do
the job and, as Poindexter put it, “the President does not want to leave this problem
to his successor. He wants to get rid of the Sandinistas now.” Options for escalation
included the U.S.-backed installation of contra forces in Puerto Cabezas and/or
Bluefields on the Atlantic Coast, naval blockade, air strikes and full-scale invasion.^
Domestic opposition had sometimes sidetracked Washington’s war on
Nicaragua, but it had not derailed it. Congress acted less concerned about ongoing
public opposition than a future charge of “losing Nicaragua.” Given the right pretexts
(e.g. portraying a Nicaraguan counteroffensive against border-area contra base
camps as an invasion threatening Honduras; staging a “Sandinista terrorist attack”
in Costa Rica or elsewhere; Nicaraguan acquisition of MIGs), congressional support
for U.S. action might be strong and opposition weak. Congressional opposition
would be even weaker if public opinion followed historical precedent and “rallied
round the flag”—albeit temporarily—^with the introduction of U.S. troops.
Crosscurrents 367
Many military analysts believed that the United States could consolidate con¬
trol over Nicaragua, install the contra heir to the National Guard and begin withdraw¬
ing U.S. troops in three to six months. Compared with Vietnam, U.S. casualties would
be relatively low and, instead of a protest-fueling draft, the Pentagon would rely on
reserve forces.
According to a December 1986 report by Jay Levin of the Los Angeles Weekly,
relying on a high-ranking Green Beret officer and other sources, preparations were
so far along that, prior to the Iran-contra scandal, a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua would
likely have occurred by April 1987. “I went down there and said, ‘Anybody who
thinks there is going to be an invasion is crazy,’ ” the Green Beret officer recalled.
“I thought that until the exercises in June [1986]. When I saw what the 75th Rangers,
which were the lead forces into Grenada were doing, it began to dawn on me that
perhaps I ought to take a closer look at this operation, take a look at Central Com¬
mand and check the order of battle and various unit trainings and officer position-
ings. And I became convinced we’re going in.”
“Except maybe at the very top,” the Green Beret Officer said, “there is no
longer a Vietnam syndrome”—reluctance by the Pentagon to fight another war
without solid congressional and public support. “Among the officer corps in Central
America,” the officer said, it was “taken for granted” that the United States would
invade Nicaragua. “In the regular Army, it’s seen as a rebound from Vietnam. The
officers who are now in charge of planning lost in Vietnam; it’s a chance for them
to cap off their careers with a victory. I don’t think we give a shit about the Central
Americans.” Other active-duty and reserve officers agreed that the “general belief”
in the military was that an invasion would occur.
When asked how he thought the United States might justify an invasion, the
Green Beret officer said, “The excuse is not the problem. Look how flimsy an ex¬
cuse they had to start Vietnam—a torpedo on the horizon. If they want to do it,
they’re going to do it. With anything. Contras dressed in Sandinista uniforms could
attack U.S. Reserve units, for example. I don’t think it’s going to be particularly well-
crafted or disguised.”
In the weeks before the Iran-contra scandal broke, there were unusual troop
movements, including the sudden transfer to Honduras of 1,000 troops of the Army
First Infantry Division (mechanized) and First Aviation Battalion units from Fort Riley,
Kansas, and over 200 troops in the First Air Cavalry’s 19th Aviation Support Unit
from Fort Hood, Texas, along with 21 UH-1 heavy-duty airlift helicopters and 3 UH-
1 Medivac helicopters.
At the beginning of November, the 82nd Airborne, the Army’s chief invasion
unit, completed a massive exercise code named Market Square, based at Fort Bragg,
to train 14,000 paratroopers for Central American combat. The 82nd Airborne was
supported by logistical elements from the 18th Airborne, Air Force transport and at¬
tack planes. Navy jet fighters. Marine Corps attack planes and simulated gunfire from
the battleship New Jersey.
Their mission was to defend the nation of “San Lorenzo” (Honduras) from ag¬
gression by “Macapa” (Nicaragua) and “La Palmera” (Cuba). The 82nd Airborne
made a parachute assault against Macapa and Air Force F-l6s bombed the ground
forces of Macapa and La Palmera. In the exercise, Macapa shifted to guerrilla war¬
fare and Airborne Infantry units practiced raiding guerrilla positions.“
During April and May 1987, the United States carried out a month-long exer¬
cise code named Solid Shield 87, involving 50,000 U.S. troops. Like the earlier Market
Square maneuvers. Solid Shield was designed to simulate operations against
Nicaragua and Cuba. It tested the ability of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and
Coast Guard to mobilize and coordinate operations. It included a simulated evacua¬
tion of the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo on the assumption (ill-founded in prece¬
dent or stated policy) that Cuba would retaliate for an attack on Nicaragua.
The purpose of the exercise, said U.S. officers, was “to wave a big stick at
Nicaragua. It was also a shield for the spring contra offensive, designed to inhibit
Nicaragua from destroying the contras in their border sanctuaries. Among the other
maneuvers that year was Lempira 87, in which the 237th Airborne demonstrated it
could be deployed from California to Central America within 48 hours.
There was talk of Honduras becoming another South Korea, with a permanent
U.S. military presence. “Our presence in Honduras...is temporary, and yet it’s in¬
definite,” Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage told Congress, justifying
another $65 million in construction funds to upgrade U.S. military facilities over the
next five years.
An Invasion Scenario
Believing that public airing of the costs in lives and dollars could help deter
invasion, the Center for Defense Information (CDI) published a “plausible” invasion
plan based on unclassified information and “structured to meet worst case condi¬
tions and insure early victory”; it was prepared by retired Army Lt. Col. John
Buchanan. According to the CDI scenario, an invasion of Nicaragua would likely
involve 50,000 U.S. troops supported by another 100,000 to 150,000 military and
civilian personnel outside of Nicaragua. Invasion forces would begin assembling to
move into assault positions 35 days before D-Day under the guise of maneuvers.^'*
Three days before invasion, carrier-based electronic warfare aircraft would
begin jamming Nicaraguan communications and air strikes would destroy
Nicaragua’s small air force, radar sites and most antiaircraft guns. In tlie next two
days, U.S. aircraft flying from Honduras would destroy most tanks and other
mechanized forces and take out resistance at the Punta Huete Air Base. A power¬
ful new radio station would begin broadcasting from a U.S. Navy ship calling on
Nicaraguans to support the friendly forces coming to “restore” the revolution.
On D-Day, U.S. Army Delta Force squads would carry out assassinations and
kidnappings of Nicaraguan leaders. Army Ranger battalions would spearhead an as¬
sault on Punta Huete where Army Airborne troops would land and begin a drive
toward Managua. An Army air assault brigade would invade Nicaragua from a dozen
points across the Honduran border and an Army mechanized infantry brigade and
light infantry division would strike from Honduras to destroy Nicaragua’s forces
Crosscurrents 369
along the Pan American highway. U.S. Marines would seize seaports and coastal
airports and, over the next five days, would seize the Rama riverport and move on
Managua from the southeast. Marine, light infantry and mechanized forces would
seize the port of Corinto and assault the main cities on the Pacific side such as Leon
and Esteli.
Air and water transport would be blocked and with oil supplies in U.S. hands
ground transportation would grind to a halt. U.S. forces would lay siege to Managua,
blocking food supplies and controlling the city’s water supply. According to the GDI
scenario, the capital would fall without the need for extensive urban warfare.
Two weeks after D-Day, U.S. troops would occupy all cities and Nicaraguan
forces would have shifted to guerrilla warfare and sabotage. Over the next two
weeks, U.S. troops would search out and destroy guerrilla forces and the first ele¬
ments of the U.S. assault forces would begin withdrawing.
All forms of communication would be controlled by the U.S. military com¬
mander. “Just as they did in Grenada,” the GDI report observed, “U.S. Army civil af¬
fairs and psychological operations (psyop) specialists will play a big role in the
invasion.” The United States would conduct a massive propaganda campaign on
radio and television and in the press. “Walls throughout Nicaragua will be plastered
with propaganda posters, leaflets will be dropped from helicopters on small villages,
and specially equipped jeeps will broadcast anti-Sandinista messages. Pro-U.S. graf¬
fiti, seemingly put there by friendly Nicaraguans, will be everywhere.”
During the next three months, Washington would install a new government,
shift the primary burden of military operations to the contras and continue withdraw¬
ing U.S. forces according to counterinsurgency requirements. Over the next two
years, the United States would construct a new Nicaraguan Army and reduce U.S.
military forces to approximately 14,000 for a minimum training and anti-guerrilla
presence. Four and a half years after D-Day, U.S. forces would be reduced to per¬
haps 8,000.
GDI estimates U.S. casualties at 410 killed in action and 2,650 wounded in the
first two weeks of fighting, plus about 50 non-batde fatalities. Nicaraguan military
casualties are estimated at 5,350 dead and 10,550 wounded. Total U.S. casualties
would number about 1,100 dead and 6,000 wounded at the end of four and a half
years. The Nicaraguan Army, militia and guerrillas would suffer 9,000 dead and
17,000 wounded. (A composite of Pentagon simulations suggests that the United
States would use 50,000 to 70,000 troops for two to four weeks of heavy fighting,
resulting in 5,000 to 10,000 casualties including 2,000 to 4,000 American dead and
wounded.)^^ Givilian casualties would likely be very high, perhaps five times as high
as military casualties, according to GDI. Using that formula, there would be 45,000
civilian dead, making an invasion at least as bloody as the overthrow of Somoza.
According to the GDI scenario, the Nicaraguan Army and militia would be un¬
able to mount an effective resistance after two weeks of heavy combat followed by
small-scale attacks and low-level sabotage. “Due to its peculiar geographical posi¬
tion, with oceans on two sides and U.S. allies on the other two, Nicaragua will be
relatively easy for American forces to police. Some weapons will get to the Sandinis-
tas but not enough to permit an intense level of guerrilla warfare.” The GDI scenario
assumes that “the initial assault will be executed with great speed, heavy firepower
and overwhelming numbers so as to destroy as many Nicaraguan units as possible
before they can retreat to redoubts. And the assault will promptly be followed by
aggressive action to dislodge those who do escape before they can regroup and
rearm.” Compared with Vietnam, U.S. forces would have an improved counterin¬
surgency capability because of technological advances, such as sophisticated
electronic sensors providing for greater detection over wider areas.
The GDI scenario also assumes that Nicaraguan opposition would diminish
dramatically in the final two years. Contra ranks would be purged of Somocistas to
make the pro-U.S. government more legitimate. The United States would effective¬
ly rebuild the Nicaraguan economy and buy Nicaraguans’ support with plentiful
consumer goods, education, medical care, public works and widespread prosperity,
at a cost of approximately $6 billion over four to five years—in addition to the $6
billion to $7 billion cost of prosecuting the war.
While the CDI scenario is instructive as a guide to potential U.S. plans, key as¬
sumptions range from rosy to incredible (assumptions Pentagon planners may
share). Throughout the contra war, Washington has favored the most rightwing ele¬
ments represented by Adolfo Calero and Enrique Bermudez at the expense of so-
called moderates such as Arturo Cruz. The Somocistas would wield power in
“liberated” Nicaragua, with or without a Duarte-type figurehead.
Prosperity did not follow the U.S. invasion of Grenada; instead, social programs
were dismantled in a country whose population is less than one-thirtieth that of
Nicaragua. The economic system Washington seeks to restore in Nicaragua is one
fueled by cheap labor, emphasizing production for export at the expense of domes¬
tic consuoiption. For ideological as well as practical reasons, U.S. aid will not sub¬
sidize living standards to foster widespread prosperity in a system that reproduces
mass impoverishment. The United States is already paying El Salvador’s annual
operating budget, with no end to the war there in sight. So-called civic action
programs have proved more conducive to elite corruption than mass cooptation.
Contra leaders have already demonstrated their skill at diverting U.S. aid to personal
coffers. And what about Honduras? Would this loyal proxy, poorer than Nicaragua,
be left to fall further behind or would some of the supposed U.S. beneficence flow
to Honduras?
On the military front, other analysts credit the Nicaraguans with being able to
impose far heavier casualties in the initial fighting and wage effective rural and urban
guerrilla warfare denying the United States victory—as in El Salvador—and ultimate¬
ly leading to a U.S, withdrawal in the face of widespread public protest.^^ Nicaragua
has an armed and war-hardened population—ûnlike in Grenada—^with tens of
thousands of experienced troops, reservists, militia, guerrilla fighters and Sandinis-
ta supporters experienced in urban insurrection. Moreover, during the Nicaraguan
revolution about 30 percent of the guerrilla forces were women. In a new guerrilla
war that figure might even be higher since thousands of women have undergone
militia training and women have much to lose under a rightwing government.
The CDI’s quick-occupation scenario also discounts the possibility of inten¬
sification of the guerrilla wars in El Salvador and Guatemala and anti-U.S. action in
Crosscurrents 371
Honduras and Panama, requiring an increased and more dispersed commitment of

U.S. forces. There could also be Spanish Civil War-type military brigades coming to
Nicaragua’s defense from Latin America and Europe, and even a Lincoln Brigade
from the United States. In the event of regionalized war, guerrillas could find north¬
ern sanctuary in Mexico and southern sanctuary in Colombia.
In the words of Mexican novelist and former diplomat Carlos Puentes,
“throughout Latin America, an invasion of Nicaragua could be the detonator the ex¬
plosive continent is awaiting. Yet another gringo invasion would be an intolerable
humiliation, a moral and political trigger to ignite issues of inflation, unemployment,
debt, fragile democracies and disillusioned middle classes. Latin America is waiting
for a reason to blow up. It has many negative reasons for doing so. Reagan could
give it a positive reason: self-defense against the United States on a scale, and with
consequences, that no one in Washington seems capable of imagining.
An invasion of Nicaragua would also trigger mass protest in the United States
like nothing this country has seen since the civil rights and Vietnam War-era peace
movements. About two thousand people were arrested in Pledge of Resistance
protests following the imposition of the U.S. embargo on Nicaragua in May 1985.
Colleges and universities have experienced rising protest against U.S. intervention
in Central America and CIA recruiting on campus. An estimated 100,000 people
demonstrated in Washington in the April 1987 National Mobilization for Peace and
Justice in Central America and Southern Africa. In a related action, more than 500
people were arrested while attempting to block the gates at CIA headquarters.
Tens of thousands of Americans demonstrated across the country in response
to the March 1988 deployment of U.S. troops to Honduras, providing only a glim¬
mer of the protest that would meet a direct invasion of Nicaragua. Would the Reagan
administration or its successor resort to the authoritarian plans discussed earlier, in¬
cluding mass detention? How much democracy would be sacrificed at home in the
false name of democracy in Nicaragua?
New Contra Fronts
As the Iran-contra scandal deepened in 1987, the political feasibility of rapid

escalation lessened. Still, the war intensified.
Washington escalated the war on Nicaragua’s military and economic infrastruc¬
ture. It provided the contras with portable Redeye ground-to-air missiles to neutral¬
ize Nicaragua’s counterinsurgency helicopters. In addition to information on defense
facilities such as radar, antiaircraft weapons and helicopters, the CIA provided the
contras with detailed descriptions of dams, bridges, port facilities, electrical substa¬
tions, oil facilities, telephone relay stations and other targets. Because many of these
facilities were built by the Army Corps of Engineers during the U.S. military occupa¬
tion of the 1920s and under the Somoza regime, the CIA was able to give the con¬
tras copies of blueprints as well as maps and other data.'®
As the Boston Globe editorialized, “Those in Congress who have trouble decid¬
ing where they stand on the contra war might consider the message being sent to
all developing countries; If you let US officials into your country to help with
development projects and then someday change your government in ways of which
they disapprove, they may return and blow them up.” The editorial continued: “If
ever a case was being constructed, bridge after dynamited bridge, for eventual US
war-reparations payments, it is being made this season in Nicaragua.
The sabotage missions are the specialty of contra commandos—^who may in¬
clude mercenaries and CIA Unilaterally Controlled Latin Assets (UCLAs)—
parachuted into Nicaragua from aircraft reportedly piloted by Americans,
Nicaraguans, Belgians and expatriates of white-ruled Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
working under contract for the CIA. Because congressional legislation prohibited
U.S. military and intelligence personnel from operating inside Nicaragua, the CIA
hired a private contractor (perhaps a CIA proprietary or someone like Colonel Robert
Dutton or British specialist David Walker) to handle the airdrops. Congressional
oversight committees were informed.^°
The infrastructure assault was part of a new spring offensive. It was designed
to test the equipment and training provided under the $100 million and impress
Congress into voting more dollars for the supposedly improved contra forces.
General John Galvin, head of the Southern Command, assured Congress that
the contras had a better chance of winning than they did just a few months earlier.
The reason for his optimism? “Lots of victories. They’re going after soft targets.
They’re not trying to duke it out with the Sandinistas directly. Soft targets are
generally civilian targets.
Continued contra terrorism was evident in a headline in the Washington Post,
which has supported contra aid editorially: “The Contras Have Learned to Hit Where
It Hurts—^Village health clinics increasingly have become victims of the rebels’ strug¬
gle.” The article described an attack—the contras called it one of the month’s “most
important operations”—in which a Baptist Church-sponsored health clinic, “the
pride of the community,” was burned down.^^
In April, Washington replaced UNO with a new contra front, the “Nicaraguan
Resistance.” Its directors included Adolfo Calero, Alfonso Robelo, Pedro Joaquin
Chamorro Jr., Aristides Sanchez, Alfredo Cesar (representing the Costa Rica-based
Southern Opposition Bloc) and Maria Azucena Ferrey, a Christian Democrat (former¬
ly vice president of the Social Christian Party). Robelo has since resigned.
The CIA allowed selected reporters to accompany contra forces inside
Nicaragua as part of their new “public diplomacy” campaign. One in-depth account
was not what the CIA intended. After nearly a month with contra forces in Jinotega,
Northern Zelaya and Matagalpa provinces, Newsweek reporter Rod Norland and
photographer Bill Gentile produced a piece titled “The New Contras? Back in bat¬
tle, but losing the war for the people’s hearts and minds.”
The 150-man taskforce accompanied by Norland and Gentile was led by At-
tila, who boasted of victory in 1987. Along the way they ran into Toho. “His prog¬
nosis was more reserved. Tf we can do our best this year, we can win the war in
Washington for more aid.. .If aid is renewed, we can win by next year/ ” They met
Crosscurrents 373
a contra with the nom deguerre, “Ronald Reagan.” He chose it after hearing Reagan
declare himself “a contra, too.” An unhappy fourteen-year old “contra” gave him¬
self the name “Lonesome.” He had been abducted along with twenty other cam-
pesinos picking coffee in Matagalpa three months earlier.
Norland said the contras’ technology and intelligence data was impressive: a
portable Datotek computer to decode radio messages, U.S. aerial reconnaissance
maps showing Nicaraguan military “positions in such detail that the location of every
latrine was noted.” They received supplies by helicopter, disguised illegally with a
red cross.
Norland was not impressed with the contras’ performance: “We were more
like rabble on the loose than a guerrilla army in enemy country.” Contra discipline
quickly eroded. “The quest for food outweighed any hunger for combat. Every cam-
pesino hut became a target.” Peasants were often cleaned out before Norland’s unit
arrived. The contras “made a show of paying” for food, but that didn’t help peasants
when the nearest road was many miles away. As the contras grew hungrier, “fewer
bothered with the nicety of payment—especially after they lost wads of their food
money gambling. ‘Why not make me a gift of this chicken?’ one would ask. No one
ever refused.”
“Frightened peasants become instant, if temporary, ‘collaborators’ when scores
of heavily armed, hungry men drop in for breakfast,” wrote Norland. “There is no
overt coercion; the physical appearance of the contras is usually sufficient. Many of
the men have skulls and crossbones tattooed on their arms or painted on their shirts,
or boast names like ‘Exterminator’ and ‘Dragon.’ ”
Norland described another form of “collaboration.” Campesinos were made
to scout for the contras “and, worse, to walk on their point (the first man in the
column) to make sure we weren’t falling into a trap. They bragged that these men
were their collaborators, but when we talked to them privately it was clear they felt
more like human mine detectors.” One of those forced to walk point was a 60-year
old peasant limping from arthritis in his knee. The contras’ so-called human rights
delegate dubbed him a volunteer “in the service of liberty and democracy.”
After leaving the contra taskforce. Norland and Gentile followed Sandinista
soldiers in a successful counteroffensive in the Bocay region. “The two fire fights
we experienced in all our time with the contras were both defensive maneuvers.
By contrast, the Sandinista unit we accompanied, the Simon Bolivar Battalion, found
contras and fought after only two days,” Norland recounted. “The conduct of the
Sandinistas made a striking contrast with the contras. Their discipline held firm after
many months in the Isabelia Mountains—even though the Simon Bolivar Battalion
was made up mostly of draftees on two-year tours of duty. Many told us they hadn’t
seen a paved road or had a cold drink in 15 months of steady action.”
“We never saw the Sandinistas impress campesinos as guides or make them
walk in front of the troops,” wrote Norland. “Peasants we talked to from both sides
all agreed that only contras do that.” Norland concluded, “In the battle for hearts
and minds, the contras are still the losers.
On July 17, the Neiv York Times reported from Washington that the contras
had “claimed their biggest victory in the six-year war against the Sandinista govern-
ment.” They supposedly overran the Nicaraguan military garrison and airfield at San
Jose de Bocay, 25 miles south of the border with Honduras Two days later, Stephen
Kinzer reported from San Jose de Bocay that “United States backed Nicaraguan guer¬
rillas killed nine Sandinista soldiers, three children and a pregnant woman but failed
to capture their target here Thursday.” Eighteen civilians were wounded and most
of the 50 homes in a nearby grain cooperative were destroyed. There was no
evidence, Kinzer reported, of damage to either the dirt airstrip or “the small collec¬
tion of shacks that serves as local headquarters for the Nicaraguan Army.”
Elvira Arauz was among those whose home was burned to the ground. She
“was especially distraught at the loss of the cow she said provided milk for her seven
children. ‘We came down here from the mountains to escape the contras,’ she said
as she examined charred food sacks to see if they could be made into clothing. ‘We
can’t go back because they’ll kill us.’
In a rare juxtaposition, the Kinzer article was followed by a short piece titled
“President Says Support For Contras Is on Rise.” “Some tell me that the people in
this country just don’t care about the freedom fighters,” said Reagan in his weekly
radio address. “But I don’t think that’s true. The more people know about the San¬
dinista Communists, the more they support the freedom fighters. That’s why the
closer you get to Nicaragua, the stronger the support grows.”
The Closer You Get: Peace Summit

Just as the White House was repairing Iran-contra quake damage in
Washington, an aftershock rolled through Central America. What began early in 1987
as a U.S.-Costa Rican initiative to supplant Contadora and isolate Nicaragua became
a Central American peace plan that isolated the Reagan administration. Working on
the assumption that the contra cause was doomed in Central America, if not in
Washington, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias pressed his neighbors to write their
own ending to the region’s conflicts.
Washington’s original plan was simple enough. The presidents of Costa Rica,
Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala would meet in San Jose on February 14-15
and sign an accord focused on Nicaraguan negotiations with the contras and the
restoration of “democracy,” code for the establishment of a pro-U.S. government,
Nicaragua would have fifteen days to take it or leave it. Then, in the words of Sal¬
vadoran Foreign Minister Acevedo, the other governments would recommend politi¬
cal and diplomatic sanctions against Nicaragua for “rejecting the peace plan, not
complying with the Contadora document” and showing it is a regime “with which
one cannot exist.
As it turned out, it was El Salvador and Honduras (and the Reagan administra¬
tion) who would not accept the modified Arias plan which demanded concessions
of all sides, including the United States, in all the regional conflicts. At the San Jose
Summit, the Central American presidents issued a joint declaration, “A Time for
Peace.” There was no consensus, however, over the Arias proposal that stipulated
Crosscurrents 375
amnesty and cease-fires in all countries with armed struggles, a cutoff of outside aid
to insurgent forces, political dialogue with peaceful internal opposition forces and
free elections according to existing natiorial timetables, a provision recognizing the
legitimacy of current governments including Nicaragua.
After initial anger at being excluded from the meeting, Nicaragua agreed to
participate in a follow-up summit in Guatemala. The Contadora and Support Group
countries gave the Arias plan their blessing as a complement to the Contadora ef¬
fort.
The Reagan administration sought to hammer the pentagonal peg of contra
war into the round peace proposal—in a repetition of its Contadora sabotage. Spe¬
cial Envoy Philip Habib toured the region (excluding Nicaragua) and urged Arias to
drop the notion of simultaneity and, instead, require Nicaragua to make political
concessions before a cease-fire and suspension of aid to the contras. The meeting
“went badly,” a Costa Rican official said. “We could face a terrible moment when
we find Costa Rica and Guatemala in greater agreement with Nicaragua than with
Honduras and El Salvador,” a U.S. official commented.^^ Responding to U.S. pres¬
sure, President Duarte urged postponement of the summit then scheduled for June
25.
The full-court press came on June 17. Arias went to meet Reagan at the White
House and found him flanked by Vice President Bush, National Security Adviser
Frank Carlucci, Chief of Staff Howard Baker, Deputy Secretary of State John
Whitehead, Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams and Special Envoy Philip
Habib.
“It was very scary stuff,” recalled Arias adviser John Biehl. “The Oval Office
was filled with all the big boys, and Oscar appeared like Spaitacus going before the
Roman generals.”^®
A White House statement quoted Reagan as telling Arias, “The greatest con¬
cern is the need for the Sandinistas to act on genuine democratization before pres¬
sure on the regime is removed in any way.”^^
Arias reiterated his position: “I don’t think the contras are the answer. I think
the contras are the main excuse by the Sandinistas to abolish individual liberties. I
propose to get rid of the contras so they have no excuses. It is true they cannot be¬
come a pluralistic society if there is a war.”^°
Appearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on July 9, Habib was
asked what the administration would do if the Central Americans approved the Arias
proposal without the (pro-contra) changes wanted by the United States. “It can’t
happen,” Habib responded. But it was happening.
Having failed to sabotage the peace plan with de facto killer amendments, the
administration tried to preempt it with the so-called Reagan-Wright plan presented
with House Speaker Jim Wright on August 5. It rejected simultaneity and called for
a cease-fire to precede the suspension of military aid to the contras; “humanitarian”
aid could continue beyond a cease-fire. As interpreted by the White House in an
addendum, the plan mandated a gradual reduction of contra aid “as the resistance
forces are integrated into Nicaraguan society” and required Nicaragua to hold new"
elections “well in advance of the currently scheduled 1990 national elections.”
“If the White House had thought the plan was acceptable” to Nicaragua, said
one administration official, “they would have changed it.”^^
Like earlier ploys, the Reagan-Wright plan had a negotiations deadline timed
for war, not peace: September 30, the end of fiscal 1987 contra funding. Assuming
the plan failed, the administration would then ask Congress for a major increase in
contra support. The contras weren’t informed of the peace ploy until just before it
was announced. Though relieved to find out the Reagan administration wasn’t
seriously proposing to abandon them, they were angry at not being consulted. As
one contra source put it, “They treated us worse than puppets.
On August 7, the Central Americans sidestepped the Reagan ploy and signed
a historic peace accord based on the Arias proposal and rooted in the sovereign
spirit of Contadora. As Arias explained later, “We had a chance to choose between
rationality and madness.
The Central American peace accord requires simultaneous steps to halt out¬
side assistance to insurgent forces (except for repatriation or relocation aid), prohibit
the use of one’s territory for aggression against other states and implement cease¬
fires, amnesty, dialogue with “all unarmed political groups of internal opposition
and with those who have availed themselves of the amnesty” and democratization,
meaning not only concrete steps such as lifting state of emergency restrictions, but
“an authentic democratic, pluralist and participatory process that includes the promo¬
tion of social justice, respect for human rights, Istate] sovereignty, the territorial in¬
tegrity of states and the right of all nations to freely determine, without outside
interference of any kind, its economic, political, and social model.” A verification
commission was composed of the foreign ministers of Central America, the Con¬
tadora and Support Groups, and the secretaries general of the United Nations and
Organization of American States. The Central American presidents agreed to meet
in five months to evaluate the progress of the accord they signed in Esquipulas,
Guatemala. (See appendix B.)
Peace Panic
House Speaker Jim Wright made a quick escape from the trap the administra¬
tion was springing and embraced the Central American peace plan, much to the
relief of congressional contra aid opponents.
Reagan officials went into a peace panic before settling on a new gimmick:
contra aid was “an insurance policy” to see that Nicaragua carried out all the
provisions of the peace plan—as defined and imagined by the administration. Con¬
tra aid would be an insurance policy of sorts: the kind of insurance policy some¬
one takes out before they torch their property or murder their spouse. More contra
aid would insure the demise of the peace plan; the administration would reap the
benefits.
The administration floated a contra aid figure of $270 million to last the
eighteen months through the end of Reagan’s term. Philip Habib resigned as spe-
Crosscurrents 377
cial envoy on August 14, when it became clear that the administration would not
pursue negotiations with Nicaragua. He was replaced by a relatively unknown of¬
ficial named Morris Busby, who told the House Subcommittee on Western Hemi¬
sphere Affairs that he would talk with all the Central American governments but
Nicaragua. Reagan called the peace plan “fatally flawed” and said there “should be
no uncertainty of our unsweiving commitment to the contras.
In the United States, the plan was widely interpreted to conform to the inter¬
ventionist agenda. The plan described the cessation of aid to irregular forces as “an
indispensable element for achieving a stable and lasting peace.” In the United States,
however, the requirement to cut off U.S. aid to the contras and close contra base
camps in Honduras was ignored or treated as sometliing optional. Nicaragua,
meanwhile, was seen through special bifocals. Whatever it did to comply with the
plan appeared small and fuzzy. Whatever was left incomplete, pending the required
simultaneous halt to contra assistance, overshadowed everything else.
In the dissenting words of a Boston Globe editorial: “The Reagan plan is
premised on an Alice-in-Wonderland fiction: the US attack on Nicaragua does not
exist; yet, for peace to arrive, the contra pressure must continue. As Managua moves
to comply with the Arias plan, the White House steadily escalates its demands. This
creates, in the words of Sen. Christopher Dodd, a ‘self-fulfilling process of noncom¬
pliance.’
On August 25, Nicaragua became the first country to establish the national
reconciliation commission stipulated by the peace plan. To head the commission,
the government appointed a staunch critic. Cardinal Obando y Bravo. The other
three members are Vice President Sergio Ramirez, Popular Social Christian Party
leader Mauricio Diaz and Dr. Gustavo Parajon, a physician who heads the Evangeli¬
cal (Protestant) Committee for Development Aid (CEPAD). Washington immediate¬
ly accused Nicaragua of stacking the commission in its favor, playing down the
significance of Cardinal Obando’s appointment and erroneously portraying Diaz and
Parajon as “unlikely to deviate from the Sandinista line.”^
In contrast, El Salvador’s commission was headed by Alvaro Magana, a con¬
servative banker endorsed by the military as president of El Salvador in 1982. Other
members include Salvadoran Vice President Rodolfo Castillo; Marco Rene Revelo,
the conservative Bishop of Santa Ana; and Alfredo Cristiani, head of the ultra-right
Arena party. “They’re all sympathizers of the right and the military,” a Latin American
ambassador observed. “With this panel Duarte has closed the political spaces for
dialogue.The Reagan administration made no such complaints.
In September, Nicaragua rescinded a law permitting the government to con¬
fiscate the property of absentee landlords residing outside the country for six con¬
secutive months. It began pardoning contra prisoners and agreed to the reopening
of La Prensa without censorship. “We are not encouraged,” said State Department
spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley, “by what appear to be cosmetic gestures of com¬
pliance.”^
Nicaragua moved forward on amnesty by setting up peace commissions
throughout the war zones under the auspices of the regional and national recon¬
ciliation commissions and with the cooperation of the Red Cross and the Church. It
has had an Atlantic Coast amnesty in effect since 1983 and a general amnesty since
1985, as described in earlier chapters. According to the Interior Ministry, from
December 1983 through July 1987, 3,494 contras laid down their arms under the
amnesty provisions predating the Central American peace accord. An additional
6,120 refugees, primarily Miskito and Sumu Indians, were repatriated in that period.
After the signing of the accord, the number of amnestied contras and refugees return¬
ing each month doubled—from about 329 per month for the first seven months of
1987 to 656 per month from August to November 1987. Among the over 600 con¬
tras receiving amnesty following the signing were southern front commander Fer¬
nando “El Negro” Chamorro, who has rejoined the Conservative Party; Denis
Loaisiga, second-in-command of the Jorge Salazar command; former ARDE director
Carlos Colonel; and former FDN intelligence officer Lester Ponce. Former FDN
spokesman Edgar Chamorro also accepted amnesty.
The peace and reconciliation process has progressed most on the Atlantic
Coast, where autonomy is now law. In April 1987, over 200 elected delegates from
communities on the Atlantic Coast, meeting in Puerto Cabezas, debated and ap¬
proved the Autonomy Statute; on September 2, it was ratified by the Nicaraguan Na¬
tional Assembly. The Autonomy Statute guarantees the election of regional councils
to govern coastal affairs and specifies political, economic, social and cultural rights,
including the right to traditional forms of communal land ownership.
Washington continued to obstruct the Atlantic Coast peace and autonomy
process. In June, the administration attempted to fashion a more viable Indian front.
For the last five years, said top Indian leaders and diplomats in Honduras, “the C.I.A.
has relied on bribes, threats and the exile of selected Indian officials to prevent the
Indians from choosing their own leaders, because it feared losing control of the Mis-
kitos and also feared they might choose not to fight.
Yatama, the new group, supposedly under more Indian and less CIA direc¬
tion, quickly splintered. At a meeting following the signing of the Central American
peace accord, a U.S. official based in Tegucigalpa, Richard Chidester, offered to pay
fourteen Miskito leaders $3,000 a month to join the Nicaraguan Resistance front.
Four reportedly accepted the payments which came from the CIA’s general account
for political projects."*^ Modesto Watson, one of the ten who rejected the offer, said
he proposed an Indian assembly to decide if Yatama should join. “He said Chidester
responded that there was no time ‘for this bullshit’ because we need to take you all
to Washington to talk with Congress and have your photos taken with Reagan in
order to win new contra aid.’
Despite U.S. efforts to disrupt it, the peace and autonomy process moved for¬
ward. In October, Yatama lost a major portion of its troops when Miskito commander
Uriel Vanegas led his 400-strong force in a peace accord with the government.
Vanegas is bitter about those Indian leaders who “have sold the Indian cause ‘for a
few dollars, a few guns.. .They talk Miskito but they don’t think like Miskitos.. .They
live in the cities. They go from Tegucigalpa to the United States. From San Jose to
the United States.”'*^
On November 3, as Brooklyn Rivera, a Yatama leader, was moving toward
peace talks with the Nicaraguan government, seven of his field commanders quit
Crosscurrents 379
and joined the Nicaraguan Resistance after being encouraged to do so by Charles

Harrington, a U.S. Embassy political officer in Costa Rica. The commanders were
apparently promised $3,000.
Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan reported that “according to several Indian
sources, a plot was hatched [in Novemberl to kidnap, in San Jose, the 3-year-old
daughter of John Paul Lederach, a U.S. missionary [with the Menonite Central Com¬
mittee] who has been one of the two main Moravian Church mediators shuttling be¬
tween Sandinista and Yatama officials. The plot, which involved a Cuban-American
C.I.A. contract operative and several contrasdXignQd with the Nicaraguan Resistance,
was aimed at getting Lederach...out of the process. But Lederach was tipped off
about the plot and his child and pregnant wife quickly moved out of Costa Rica.
He decided to continue to act, along with Andy Shogreen, the superintendent of
the Moravian Church in Nicaragua, as the main intermediary in the peace talks.
“In early December, rebel sources say, they uncovered a second plot, this
one to assassinate Lederach, Lutheran Pastor Ulrich Epperlein and Moravian Pas¬
tor Higgins Miller, all of whom were working with Atlantic Coast exiles in Costa
Rica. These sources say the assassin was to be paid $50,000 for the three murders.
A source familiar with both plots says the aim was ‘to get Lthe mediators] out of
the process.’ In late January 1988, Brooklyn Rivera led a nine-member Indian
delegation to Nicaragua to conduct peace talks, the first since Washington scuttled
negotiations in 1985.
Contratortions
On September 21, 1987, President Reagan addressed the United Nations
General Assembly and declared: “To the Sandinista delegation here today I say: your
people know the true nature of your regime.. .Understand this: we will not, and the
world community will not, accept phony ‘democratization’ designed to mask the
perpetuation of dictatorship.”'*^
The next day, in an address to the U.S. Congress, President Arias appealed to
the United States to “restore faith in dialogue and give peace a chance.” And in his
address to the United Nations on September 23, Arias called “on any powers inter¬
vening in the region to suspend military aid.” He declared, “We want to take the
fate of our region into our own hands.
Reagan made clear that the United States would not let go. He told the OAS
on October 7: “I make a solemn vow: as long as there is breath in this body, I will
speak and work, strive and struggle for the cause of the Nicaraguan freedom
fighters.”
Reagan reiterated the “insurance policy” pretext: renewed assistance to the
contras, which the administration planned to seek in Congress, “will continue until
the Sandinistas, negotiating with the freedom fighters, conclude an agreement for a
cease-fire and full democracy is established in Nicaragua. Once a cease-fire is fully
in effect, only that support necessary to maintain the freedom fighters as a viable
force will be delivered. Then we—and they—will be watching to see how genuine
tlie democratic reforms in Nicaragua are.
“The best indicator will be when the freedom fighters are allowed to contest
power politically witliout retribution, rather than through force of arms. As that hap¬
pens our support levels to the resistance forces will decrease proportionately. And
the assistance money will then be redirected to strengthening the democratic process
underway in Nicaragua.
The next day, President Ortega addressed the United Nations. As he was
criticizing the United States for violating the Central American peace accord and
continuing its efforts to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, the six-member U.S.
delegation, led by Ambassador Vernon Walters, walked out. “Some people find their
ears hurt when the truth is spoken,” Ortega commented. “They have committed ag¬
gression against us and they have killed our people, but now they are upset when
the truth is told to them.” He called on the United States to agree to “an uncondi¬
tional bilateral dialogue with a view to signing agreements providing security for
both States and making possible the normalization” of relations.
“I hope the President of the United States will not act as his delegation acted
today,” said Ortega. “When President Reagan addressed the Assembly, the delega¬
tion of Nicaragua listened to him. We are not afraid of words; we are not afraid of
political and ideological debate. A year ago I myself sat in this Hall and listened to
President Reagan...President Reagan should not hasten to say no. Before consult¬
ing those who give him hot-headed ideas, such as military options, including out¬
right invasion, let him remember that Rambo exists only in the movies.
Ambassador Walters dismissed Ortega’s speech as “typical revolutionary bab¬
ble” and declared, “I find it intolerable to see the platform of the U.R used to hurl
invective against my country and our President.
The United States, meanwhile, continued using Honduras as a platform from
which to hurl the contras against Nicaragua. According to the Nicaraguan Defense
Ministry’s monthly summary, September 5-October 5, the armed forces engaged in
481 confrontations with the contras—150 more than the previous period. The report
cited 55 contra actions against the civilian population, including eleven attacks on
cooperatives, communities or resettlements, ten ambushes of civilian vehicles and
sixteen sabotage actions against electric or telephone lines, leaving a total of 22
civilians dead, 40 wounded and 34 kidnapped. During the same period, U.S. aircraft
flew at least 14 surveillance flights over Nicaraguan territory and more than 58 flights,
most originating in Honduras, dropped supplies to the contras, including in the four
zones where the Nicaraguan government had declared a unilateral cease-fire in the
hope of advancing the amnesty process and a general cease-fire.^
Nicaragua continued its open-door policy for U.S. citizens and officials, even
those most supportive of the contras. Jeane Kirkpatrick, whose name was adopted
by the contras for one of their military task forces, gave a pro-contra speech in
Managua on October 11 to hundreds of Nicaraguans invited by the U.S. Embassy.
The United States has no such open-door policy for Nicaraguans. Noting that the
United States refused a visa to Nicaraguan Interior Minister Tomas Borge, a
Crosscurrents 381
Democratic senatorial aide remarked, “Which country is supposed to be the

democracy?”^^
U.S. assistance to the contras violated the peace accord every day. Administra¬
tion officials acknowledged they were only paying the accord lip service so Con¬
gress would shell out more aid, sharing in the pretense that the peace plan and
contra aid were compatible. The U.S. media, which had already stuffed most of the
Iran-contra scandal down the memory hole, followed the lead of the self-fulfilling
prophets of failure in the White House. The dominant theme in mainstream com¬
mentary was “Can Nicaragua be trusted?” Though the Reagan administration had
recently showed it could not be trusted to tell the truth to Congress, much less ad¬
here to the Boland amendment, few asked whether the administration could be
trusted to comply with the Central American accord.
Trust, though, is not the coin of the diplomatic realm, as Reagan finally real¬
ized in negotiations with the Soviet Union. “In diplomacy,” observed former Am¬
bassador to El Salvador Robert White, “only amateurs rely on trust when dealing
with adversaries. Yet lack of trust does not justify refusal to negotiate. Our goal
should be to achieve agreements that work to the advantage of each party and that
hold signatories accountable for violations.
“Why has such an approach not worked with Nicaragua? Because it has never
been tried. The Reagan doctrine asserts the right to overthrow the Sandinista Govern¬
ment or, at a minimum, to dictate its overall restructuring. Diplomacy can find no
common ground when the aim of one side is to eliminate the other side; that con¬
dition is called war.”^^
In October, President Arias was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in the hope
that the seeds of peace would bear fruit. November 5 was the original 90-day dead¬
line for simultaneous compliance with the accord. It became instead a checkpoint
since the United States was in complete noncompliance. In the words of a report
by the Center for International Policy, “The continued [contra] aid flow from the
United States not only violated the text of the plan, but defeated its central purpose:
to encourage fighters to make the transition to peaceful political competition.””
Despite the rhetoric about the peace plan ending any chance for congressional ap¬
proval of more contra aid, November 5 was also the date the House approved $3.2
million more in contra funding through mid December.
Nicaragua announced on November 5 that it would agree to negotiate a cease¬
fire with contra leaders through an intermediary, dropping its long-standing demand
that cease-fire talks should be part of negotiations with the United States, the top
adversary. Nicaragua also announced that it would shortly release over 980 politi¬
cal prisoners and reiterated that it would release all those jailed for violating security
laws during the contra war and lift the state of emergency when other countries
complied with the provisions requiring an end to support for the contras. The fif¬
teen-member Verification Commission accepted Nicaragua’s adherence to the prin¬
ciple of simultaneity.
Later that month, Nicaragua freed 985 prisoners, most of them contras and
contra collaborators. The Reagan administration dismissed the release as insig¬
nificant, insisting there were up to 10,000 political prisoners in Nicaraguan jails. As
Americas Watch reported, the State Department’s “figures are so high that they would
include the entire prison population of Nicaragua within the category of ‘political
prisoners.’ ” Americas Watch determined that as of May 1986 (before the prison
releases beginning in the fall), there was a total of 8,000 prisoners in the peniten¬
tiary system of whom 3,700—including 2,200 former National Guardsmen and 1,500
people accused of security-related crimes—could be considered “political prisoners”
in the broad Latin American sense of the term, which encompasses captured com¬
batants. In addition, there were about 3,700 common-crime offenders and about
600 members of the army or police serving sentences (a reflection of Nicaragua’s
commitment to hold uniformed personnel accountable to law).^
El Salvador used the peace plan amnesty provision not only to release the few
hundred political prisoners still alive in Salvadoran jails, but as an excuse to legal¬
ize the de facto immunity from prosecution enjoyed by military and paramilitary
killers and torturers, including those responsible for wholesale massacres of civilians.
As for Guatemala, it also drafted an amnesty law, but, as even the New York Times
pointed out, “it will have little practical effect since the Guatemalan Army killed vir¬
tually every suspected rebel it captured in the last eight years. Not to mention tens
of thousands of alleged civilian rebel sympathizers. As in El Salvador, the
Guatemalan military has enjoyed immunity from prosecution.
On November 13, Nicaragua presented a detailed cease-fire plan to serve as
its opening proposal in negotiations to be mediated by Cardinal Obando. The plan
called for the contras to assemble in cease-fire zones where the Nicaraguan Army
would suspend operations and, at the end of one month, to surrender their weapons,
accept amnesty and participate freely in the national dialogue and political process.^
The contras announced a counter-proposal on December 1 that claimed con¬
tra control over more than half Nicaragua’s national territory. It proposed the right
to keep arms after a cease-fire took effect, pending full “democratization,” includ¬
ing such measures as the abolition of collective farms.In reality, the contras con¬
trolled no territory—^whether in the sense of a liberated zone (such as the FMLN
controlled in El Salvador) or a zone where the Nicaraguan Army could not operate.
The Nicaraguan proposal reflected the peace plan’s provision for cease-fire,
amnesty and “a dialogue with all unarmed internal political opposition groups and
with those who have availed themselves of the amnesty.” The contra plan reflected
the Reagan administration’s effort to transform the cease-fire talks into a Nicaraguan
surrender, or sabotage them. Not surprisingly, the first round of talks taking place
in the Dominican Republic on December 3 broke up in failure.
On December 12, the Democratic-controlled Senate voted about $l6 million
in ostensibly non-military aid to take the contras through February 1988. The aid “is
clearly not acceptable,” declared House Speaker Jim Wright.^ It was time for the
administration to play its ace: Nicaraguan defector Roger Miranda.
Crosscurrents 383
Mirandized
The Miranda affair gave a convenient name to a rule long employed by the
administration in its dealings with Congress: You have the right to vote for contra
aid. If npt, everything we say the Nicaraguans do can and will be used against you.
Congress generally pleaded guilty and bargained for a lower contra aid sentence,
which the Nicaraguans had to serve.
Miranda’s carefully-timed charges served, as did Ortega’s “Moscow” trip in
1985, to cover a congressional retreat that was already underway. The Central
Americans had led the Democrats safely through the Reagan ambush to the higher
ground of peace. The Democrats began retreating even before the administration
regrouped, and kept running after it became clear the administration was firing
blanks.
Major Roger Miranda was a top aide to Nicaraguan Defense Minister Humber¬
to Ortega. When he left Nicaragua on October 25, he was, reported Alfonso Char-
dy, apparently “a CIA mole.” According to administration sources, “Miranda was not
a walk-in defector, but was already known to the CIA because he had sporadically
passed information to the United States as far back as a year ago.” According to the
Nicaraguan government, Miranda fled because Defense Ministry auditors were clos¬
ing in on his financial irregularities.^^
The Miranda affair was handled by Congress and the major media as if the
Iran-contra scandal had never happened, though Miranda was shepherded around
Washington by confirmed liar Elliott Abrams and psywar specialist Robert Kagen of
the Office of Public Diplomacy. Following the usual disinformation pattern,
Miranda’s charges were trumpeted in headline stories and then rebutted piecemeal
on the less attention-grabbing inside pages. The revelations began on December 13
with a Washington Post story by William Branigin, misrepresenting a speech given
by Defense Minister Humberto Ortega in anticipation of disclosures from Miranda’s
then-secret debut with journalists. Branigin’s lead was misleading: “The Sandinista
government is engaged in a massive, long-term military buildup aimed at putting
up to 600,000 Nicaraguans under arms by 1995 and equipping the Sandinista armed
forces with advanced Soviet-made MiG fighter planes, missiles and artillery. Defense
Minister Humberto Ortega confirmed today.
The first and lasting impression was that Nicaragua was building a standing
army of up to 600,000 and engaging in an offensive, pro-Soviet military buildup
violating the spirit, if not the letter, of the Central American peace accord. Miranda’s
contention that Nicaragua’s reserves and civilian militias would grow to 500,000
while the regular army shrinks from 80,000 to 70,000 was buried in the seventeenth
paragraph of Branigin’s article. The ominous-sounding missiles in Branigin’s lead
don’t refer to nuclear missiles or conventional offensive missiles, but defensive an¬
tiaircraft missiles. The MIGs remained on the wish list.
Branigin cited a Nicaraguan government document stolen by Miranda, titled
“Preliminary Guidelines for 1991-95.” It assumed that contra forces would be
defeated during 1988-90, so the longer-term objective is to consolidate the armed
forces “to avert the possibility of a direct invasion by American troops and assure
their defeat, should the invasion occur.” As Defense Minister Ortega put it in his
speech, the Nicaraguans wanted to “let the gringos know that this is not Grenada.”
Going unreported was Humberto Ortega’s affirmation of Contadora and Nicaragua’s
willingness to negotiate limits on weapons.
Stephen Kinzer’s front-page December 14 article in the New York Times led
with the claim that “the Soviet Union is preparing to send large quantities of new
weapons to Nicaragua, despite provisions of the new regional peace accord that
called for limiting the size of national armies in Central America.” As the New York
Times acknowledged days later in its corrections box, “There is no explicit state¬
ment in the accord calling for nations to limit their armies.The Times did not ex¬
plain that the accord calls for negotiations in this area under the Contadora process,
nor that Nicaragua had previously accepted limits on weapons and personnel when
it agreed to sign the Contadora treaty in 1984—a treaty scuttled by the United States.
Midway through Kinzer’s article, off the front page, readers were told Miranda’s
explanation for an arms buildup lasting into 1995. Soviet aid to Nicaragua was based
upon five-year plans: “At the beginning of this year, Mr. Miranda said, the Nicaraguan
conflict had become so intense that the Sandinistas consumed their entire 1985-1990
allotment of Soviet-bloc weapons and ammunition. Tn three years, they used up
everything that was supposed to last for five years’...It was this crisis, Mr. Miranda
said, that led to the recent approval of new secret agreements committing the Soviet
bloc to continue arming the Sandinistas until 1995.”
James LeMoyne’s front-page December l6 article reported President Ortega’s
explanation that Nicaragua would maintain a Swiss-like reserve system because it
was “not defended by any military pact” and could not rely on trust in U.S. inten¬
tions, along with his statement that “we are willing to discuss limits on weapons
and men in the armed forces” if the United States “stops its aggression” against
Nicaragua. Yet the article was titled “Nicaragua to Keep Big Military Force, Its Leader
Declares.
Newsday’s]im Mulvaney got right to the point about the military proposal: the
document “calls for the arming of massive numbers of relatively unsupervised
civilians—the same people the Reagan administration has repeatedly claimed would
rise up against the Marxist regime [sid[ if only they had rifles.”^ It was a point that
generally escaped the mainstream press.
Richard Halloran’s December 20 New York Times article deflating the
Nicaraguan document that supposedly provided the basis for Miranda’s charges was
relegated to page 20: “A Nicaraguan military plan made public by the Defense
Department here portrays a haphazardly organized and equipped Sandinista armed
force that is short of not only weapons and ammunition but also basics like food,
clothing and medicine.” It indicated, wrote Halloran, “that the Russians have been
erratic and unreliable suppliers.”
According to Halloran, the plan (translated by the U.S. government as “Primary
Guidelines for Functionally Improving, Strengthening and Equipping the Sandinis¬
ta People’s Army for the Period 1988-1990 and Preliminary Guidelines for the Five-
Year Period 1991-1995”) contradicts the administration assessment of “the Sandinista
Crosscurrents 385
Government as bent on offensive military operations intended to expand Nicaraguan

power over neighbors.” The weapons mentioned in the plan are mainly defensive
and the reserve units, a major portion of the expanded forces, “would be armed al¬
most solely with rifles.” The plan calls for gradually converting the armed forces,
after the expected defeat of the contras by 1990, into “a more conventional force
intended to deter or defeat an invader.” The military supplies requested of the Soviet
Union would replace losses in operations against the contras and provide “the neces¬
sary quantity of munitions units in the event of a possible invasion and prior block¬
ade” of Nicaragua.^^ Since Washington has repeatedly considered the option of
blockading Nicaragua, with or without a direct U.S. invasion, it is only logical that
Nicaragua would plan its defensive needs accordingly.
The same day as Halloran’s buried piece, the New York Times ran a front page
story headlined “Arias Criticizes Nicaraguan Plan For More Troops.” The article could
also have been titled “Arias Criticizes US Plan To Aid Contras.” Arias is quoted saying:
“External aid to all rebel forces must be discontinued. Irregular forces are an obstacle
in the road to democracy. They cannot be regarded as vultures of war, remaining
intact, while they wait for peace efforts to fail.” Those blunt words appear near the
end of the article jump on page 20.^^
Miranda’s credibility was doubted even within the administration. As Newsweek
put it, “One intelligence source said the results of an early polygraph exam were
not entirely convincing, and there were gaps in his knowledge of the inside work¬
ings of the Sandinista front.
The increasingly transparent disinformation campaign still served its purpose.
The Big Lie of Nicaragua as a conniving Soviet military proxy was reinforced yet
again in the headlines. And Jim Wright pinned the Democratic retreat on the
Nicaraguans: “The Sandinistas have had a history of snatching defeat from the jaws
of victory.”^
On December 20, Congress agreed with the White House on a 1988 catch-all
appropriations measure that included $8.1 million in funding for the contras and
quiet provisions worth up to $8.8 million more. Reagan had threatened to veto the
budget resolution if contra aid was absent. The supposedly non-military package
included $3.6 million for contra food, clothing, shelter and medical supplies and
$4.5 million for transportation; the transportation money could be used for mixed
deliveries of previously purchased arms and ammunition. There was more: the
Defense Department would provide the CIA with sophisticated electronic equip¬
ment free of charge for contra supply planes to jam Nicaraguan radar and combat
antiaircraft missiles, an estimated value of $3 to $6 million. Pentagon insurance of
about $2.8 million would cover contra supply planes against loss or damage
The day before the congressional deal, it was reported that television stations
in El Salvador and Honduras had aired a CIA-produced videotape of Miranda
embracing the contra cause.^° Later, it was revealed that Miranda was rewarded about
$800,000 for his timely defection—^twice the usual CIA rate for high-ranking defec¬
tors.^’
When Miranda first briefed selected reporters, Ortega wasn’t in Moscow, but
Gorbachev was in Washington. According to the Soviets, Gorbachev had suggested
a reciprocal agreement whereby the Soviets would curtail arms shipments to

Nicaragua and the United States cut off aid to the contras in the context of the
regional peace plan. Reagan neither pursued that idea nor discussed Miranda’s char¬
ges of a peace-plan-busting military buildup.
As the New York Times reported three days before Congress approved new
contra aid, when asked why Reagan had not confronted Gorbachev with the al¬
leged Nicaraguan buildup, a State Department official replied, “You don’t under¬
stand. Miranda was for the press and Congress, not for Gorbachev.
Airborne Diplomacy
The year 1988 opened with fresh reports that President Reagan had told his
top advisers he wanted the Sandinistas out by the time he left office.The contras
were directed to step up military attacks (e.g. a late December 1987 assault on the
Atlantic Coast mining towns of Bonanza, Siuna and Rosita killed l6 civilians and
wounded 75) while seeking political legitimacy through cease-fire charades.
Washington increased the pressure on the fragile Central American presidents.
January 15 was the date of the Central American Presidents’ Summit to follow up
the peace accord. Elliott Abrams and National Security Adviser Colin Powell were
dispatched to the region to threaten dependent Central American governments that
U.S. aid would be jeopardized if they dared judge Nicaragua fairly and hold the
United States accountable to the accord. The effect of U.S. blackmail was evident
when, over Ortega’s objections, the other presidents decided to abolish the Inter¬
national Verification and Follow-Up Commission. Charged with monitoring com¬
pliance with the accord, the Verification Commission angered Washington by finding
too much fault with El Salvador and Honduras and too little fault with Nicaragua.
The Verification Commission noted that “in spite of the wartime suffering
[Nicaragua] has made concrete steps” toward democratization. It explicitly faulted
the United States: “In spite of the exhortation of the Central American presidents the
government of the United States of America maintains its policy and practice of
providing assistance, military in particular, to the irregular forces operating against
the government of Nicaragua. The definitive cessation of this assistance continues
to be an indispensable requirement for the success of the peace efforts and of this
Procedure as a whole.
Washington reacted to the judgement of the Verification Commission as it had
to the World Court, accusing it of bias. Given that the commission was composed
of Central and South American governments representing over 90 percent of the
people of Latin America, as well as the OAS and UN secretaries general, the accusa¬
tion of favoritism toward Nicaragua was an implicit indictment of U.S. policy.
Nicaragua prevented a collapse of the peace process by making two dramatic
unilateral concessions: lifting the state of emergency and agreeing to direct cease¬
fire talks with the contras. Honduras, meanwhile, continued to host the contra base
camps and the resupply operation on Swan Island. On January 15, during the Central
Crosscurrents 387
American summit, the northern regional director for the Committee to Defend
Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH) was machinegunned to death along with a
teachers’ union official. The two were witnesses in CODEH’s unprecedented suit
against Honduras—^for carrying out disappearances—^before the Inter-American
Court on Human Rights of the OAS. A third witness, a member of the Honduran
secret police, had been assassinated ten days earlier.^^
The administration asked Congress for over $36 million in contra assistance,
including $32.65 million in so-called nonlethal aid which, by Washington’s elastic
definition, included jeeps and helicopters; $3.6 million in military aid was to be held
in “escrow” until the end of March, at which time it would be released if the presi¬
dent certified that Nicaragua was to blame for failed cease-fire negotiations. It was
insurance that the contras would avoid a truce. There was more to the package: up
to $7 million in air defense equipment for contra supply planes and $20 million in
indemnity funds to replace lost contra aircraft.^^ The real total then was about $60
million to cover four months, March 1 through June 30, equivalent to the
administration’s initial aid proposal of $270 million for eighteen months.
On February 3, the House of Representatives narrowly voted down the aid re¬
quest (219 to 211). The next day, the Senate approved it (51 to 48) in a vote that
was symbolic because under the rules governing this particular legislation, the aid
was killed if voted down in the House.
The House Democratic leadership had won swing votes against the package
among so-called moderate Democrats by promising to develop a “non-military” aid
package. History began repeating itself. On March 3, the House unexpectedly
defeated the Democrats’ moderately lethal aid. Posing as aid in compliance with the
peace accord, it would have sustained the contras as a fighting force and provided
incentive for them to avoid a truce. The package provided nearly $31 million in aid,
including $14.56 million in food, shelter, medical aid and clothing for the contras
over four months, to be delivered by the Department of Defense (a supposed ad¬
vance over the CIA); $1.44 million in aid to the Miskitos; and $14.56 million for child
victims of the war to be distributed by the Red Cross, half of it within Nicaragua.
The booby trap was that at the end of four months there would be an expedited
vote on military aid if failure in the cease-fire talks was pinned on Nicaragua.
This “compromise” in state-sponsored terrorism was narrowly defeated be¬
cause most Republicans held out for explicit military aid and a handful of principled
Democrats, such as Reps. Ron Dellums, Barbara Boxer and Pat Schroeder, refused
to endorse the “lesser evil” approach embraced by many of their liberal colleagues.
As in 1985, the congressional cutoff was not expected to last. As in 1986, a
Nicaraguan “invasion” of Honduras (an operation to drive the contras out of
Nicaragua’s Bocay region in Jinotega province) was the ready cover for an expected
congressional cave-in to some form of contra aid. This time the administration upped
the ante by deploying 3,500 U.S. troops (82nd Airborne and 7th Infantry) to Hon¬
duras.
Airborne Diplomacy was designed to swing votes in Congress; short-circuit
Nicaragua’s counteroffensive against the contras; keep Honduras in line behind
Washington and in violation l)f the Central American peace plan; divert military sup-
plies to the contras; and compete in the headlines with the March l6 Independent
Counsel indictments of fall-guys North, Poindexter, Secord and Hakim. The deploy¬
ment prompted immediate protest as tens of thousands of Americans demonstrated
in towns and cities across the country. Then events took a dramatic turn.
Cease-Fire?
Close to midnight on March 23, the Nicaraguan government and the contras
signed a cease-fire accord. The agreement, hammered out in three days of talks in
Sapoa, a small town near the Costa Rican border, stipulated a 60-day truce, phased
amnesty, and press and electoral freedom. It was witnessed and would be verified
by Cardinal Obando and OAS Secretary General Joao Clemente Baena Soares. The
first round of negotiations for a permanent cease-fire began in Managua on April
l6. The contra proposals were designed to transform the cease-fire into a Trojan
Horse for the counterrevolution.
The Sapoa accord was the unexpected product of uncertainty in Washington,
contra discouragement, mounting casualties on both sides, Nicaraguan economic
crisis, Sandinista military momentum and regional peace initiatives. U.S. officials had
urged the contras to hold out for new military aid and invoke the “invasion” as an
excuse to cancel the Sapoa talks. But contra leaders were angry over the Republicans’
refusal to support the lesser-evil democratic alternative in Februaiy and distrusted
the administration’s ability to deliver the aid that fueled the war. “We did not like
the Democrats’ package,” said one contra leader. “But if we had to pick between
that and zero, we take the package. The Republicans put their own partisan inter¬
ests over ours. That was a bitter lesson.”^
With a military solution appearing more hopeless, many contras feared they
would have even less to bring to the negotiating table if they waited for an ad¬
ministration green light which might never come. Administration officials were taken
aback at the contras’ unusual self-initiative. Rhetoric about pressuring the Sandinis-
tas to negotiate came back to haunt. “Our cover story has become reality,” said a
top U.S. official with bitterness. “We talked about wanting peace. Well, here it is.”^®
There was no guarantee the cease-fire would lead to a lasting military peace,
rather than serve as an intermission before renewed fighting. As contra leader Alfredo
Cesar put it, “Our troops get a two-month rest with supplies while we test the
Sandinistas’ willingness to comply.
Supplies flowed again, thanks to the 82nd Airborne express and the U.S. Con¬
gress, which passed bipartisan aid bills on March 30 and 31. The Senate followed
the House in approving a $48 million-plus package including: $17.7 million over six
months for contra food, clothing, shelter and medical supplies, $2.19 million for
Yatama and $1.5 million in communications equipment; $2.5 million to cover ad¬
ministrative expenses for AID which was to arrange delivery to the contras through
a “neutral” third-party; unspecified transportation costs; $10 million for the Sapoa
Verification Commission headed by Cardinal Obando and OAS Secretary General
Crosscurrents 389
Baena Soares; and $17.7 million for a children’s survival fund to be administered
through neutral private voluntary organizations, at least half in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua received the 1982 World Health Organization award for the greatest
achievement in health by a Third World nation. The $17.7 million was small repara¬
tion for the war wrought on Nicaragua’s children since then. And it carried the taxing
and politically loaded stipulation that the aid could not be delivered through the
national health care system or any goverpment-sponsored programs.
Republicans agreed to the package when House Speaker Jim Wright promised
prompt action on a White House request for military aid if the cease-fire talks broke
down. While less of a booby trap than an expedited procedure, the promise relieved
some of the pressure on the contras to forge a negotiated settlement. The administra¬
tion could take some comfort from the fact that the Democratic floor leader for the
aid bill, liberal Rep. David Bonior of Michigan, referred to the contras as the
“democratic resistance.”
The contra war survived sustained public opposition, battlefield failure. World
Court condemnation and explosive scandals. It survived the Iran-contra morass. The
administration wants to ensure that it survives any cease-fire. At this writing, the ad¬
ministration is pursuing two basic strategies: sabotaging peace negotiations and min¬
ing the political battleground inside Nicaragua.
The United States has delivered aid to the contras in Honduras in violation of
the cease-fire and the Central American peace accord which allow only humanitarian
aid to be delivered through neutral parties to ceasefire zones or for resettlement. In
addition, the rightwing auxiliaries of Singlaub, Moon, Channell and company remain
in the contra aid business. The administration is working to secure continuing con¬
tra aid from Congress.
Contra fighters and supporters are divided over the prospect of a true accord
with the Nicaraguan government. There is jockeying for power among those who
envision returning to Nicaragua under a peace settlement and among those who
want the war to continue. Under heavy administration pressure, the conti*as broke
up negotiations in early June and momentum shifted again toward the forces of war.
But what if the White House was forced into a fail-back position of claiming
that contra “pressure” worked and sanctioning a negotiated settlement. Under a
peace facade, Washington could carry out a retooled destabilization campaign in¬
volving terrorism, sabotage and diverse forms of economic, psychological and politi¬
cal warfare in which the contra-infused internal opposition becomes the main
counterrevolutionary vehicle. The objective could be to provoke a Nicaraguan
government crackdown that could be used to justify rejuvenation of the contra war,
further economic and diplomatic sanctions and/or a direct U.S. invasion. Or the aim
could be Sandinista electoral defeat in the national elections scheduled for 1990.
Come Back to Jamaica
Unlike in Chile, Washington cannot count on a military coup in Nicaragua be¬

cause the Sandinistas control the army. The contras and their political allies are trying
to change this under the guise of depolitici2ing the armed forces. But the Sandinis¬
tas know that without control over the army, the United States could invade
Nicaragua from outside and inside. There is another important difference between
Nicaragua and Chile: the Nicaraguan population is armed. Washington may try in¬
stead for an “electoral coup.”
The model for an “electoral coup” strategy is the Nixon-Ford-Carter destabiliza¬
tion of the social democratic Manley government in Jamaica. There a combination
of economic boycott, decapitalization, austerity (in which the International Monetary
Fund played a critical role), media manipulation, sabotage, murder, bombings and
other violence rolled back the Manley government’s social programs, eroded its
credibility and popular support and resulted in its 1980 electoral loss to the U.S.-
backed party of Edward Seaga.
In his book, Jamaica: Struggle in the Periphery, Michael Manley reflected on
the events leading up to electoral defeat: “The economic crisis and the IMF
programme created the conditions in which the credibility of the government began
to erode. The opposition accelerated the process by collaborating in the tactics of
destabilisation. In the end the communist bogey wearing Cuban robes became the
focus of a hysteria.” The impact of world economic crisis “placed unprecedented
strain on Jamaican management” of the economy, management already strained by
the demands of new government programs. “Not for one instant did the JLP [Seaga’s
party] and the Gleaner [Jamaica’s largest daily] ever relax in the charge that our
economic difficulties were solely and exclusively the fault of our bad management.
The level of crime and violence seemed to suggest that we were unable to manage
security either.”
“Jamaicans were psychologically exhausted by violence by the time the elec¬
tion came,” writes Manley. “It was as if the collective, psychological landscape had
been laid waste. People were tired, scared, distrustful and uncertain.
Manley cites a section from The Field Manual of the Department of the [U.SJ
Army, Psychological Operations, as reading “like a description of Jamaica between
January 1976 and October 1980”:
Psychological activities [s/c] are those carried out in peace time or in places other than
war theaters, planned and carried out to influence the feelings, attitudes, behavior of
foreign groups in a manner favorable to the achievement of the policies of the United
States. The climate for psychological warfare can only be developed successfully if the
daily life of the nation is kept in a state of commotion...
STRATEGY
i) Create discouragement, demoralization, apathy;
ii) Discredit the ideology of the popular movement;
iii) Promote disorganized and confused behavior;
Crosscurrents 391
iv) Encourage divisive and anti-social actions to undermine the political structure
of the country;
v) Promote and support movements of resistance against the authorities.
“The local exponents of these techniques,” writes Manley, “had been good
students. It is not altogether surprising that we were no longer a credible choice for
so many people.”
Manley outlined similarities in the destabilization of Jamaica and Chile, citing
this description of Chile on the eve of the 1973 military coup: “Consequently what
developed was a rampant crisis, insidious, intangible and invisible, responsibility
for which could never be laid at the proper door. The enemy advanced in disguise.
From without it took the form of processions of ‘housewives,’ and from within it
wore the mask of ‘natural catastrophe’—of inflation, poverty, the transport strike,
locked petrol pumps, and rationing. Anonymous and faceless, parliamentary
obstruction, by preventing tax reform and refusing to finance the social sector of
the economy, forced more and more currency to be issued; omnipresent but fleet¬
ing; generalised and consequently depersonalised, there was stockpiling by shops,
hoarding by customers, smuggling of goods out of the country, and a black market
among the well-to-do; ramifying and secret, strike funds were supplied to the
owners’ associations by the CIA. Nowhere were there any identifiable enemies or
targets.”®^
Mining the Internal Front

Rampant crisis may be the future Washington has in store for Nicaragua—
under Republicans or Democrats claiming support of “democracy.” Rampant crisis
nurtured by open and covert financing of opposition institutions and politicians,
using the so-called National Endowment for Democracy and secret CIA political
funds, and by constant disinformation through La Prensa (following the examples
of El Mercurio in Chile and The Daily Gleanerinjdimdiicdf) and other pro-U.S. media.
Rampant crisis to keep the economy screaming. Rampant crisis to deny the
Nicaraguan government the benefits of peace and allow the U.S.-backed opposition
to say, “See, it wasn’t the war, it’s Sandinista mismanagement that’s responsible for
the mess.” Rampant crisis in the form of continued decapitalization; CIA-orchestrated
strikes; sabotage of energy, food, health care, transport, communication and military
facilities by Pentagon and CIA operatives such as those known as Unilaterally Con¬
trolled Latin Assets; increased robbery and other crimes fueled by high unemploy¬
ment; assassinations and terrorist violence.
In fostering rampant crisis, Washington would exploit the release and repatria¬
tion of thousands of former National Guardsmen and contras trained in the skills of
the CIA manuals. On top of this, there may be continued cross-border raids by con¬
tra factions relying on support from rightwing donors, if not from the U.S. govern¬
ment.
392 WASHINGTON’S WAR ON NTCARAGUA
Destabilization sealed by electoral defeat would be far more difficult to or¬

chestrate in Nicaragua where more people recognize the tactics of counterrevolu¬
tion. The Manley government and its supporters were not defending a revolution
(indeed, Manley, seen as more moderate now, may be reelected in Jamaica without
a repeat destabilization). In Nicaragua the opposition is more divided and the San-
dinistas more united. Under a peace accord, contra chiefs—already competing
among themselves—^would return to Nicaragua expecting to be crowned leaders of
a unified internal opposition. They will find an array of parties and leaders with
vested interests and varying politics and personal loyalties. Even the contras’
ideological allies may not be willing to abdicate.
The CIA has not been able to create a unified internal front to date. It will
have difficulty creating unity in the future, much less majority support.
Nicaraguans have learned from the experiences of Chile and Jamaica, as they
have learned from Cuba, Vietnam and Grenada. In surviving a new wave of de-
stabilization, however, Nicaraguans will be forced to sacrifice more lives, more
resources, more progress. It’s a price they should not have to pay.
17
Openings
Central America is Fantasy Isthmus, a region of the American mind,

peopled by our own political demons, where too often expediency rules,
and rhetoric substitutes for reality.
Frank McNeil, retired deputy assistant secretary of state for intelligence,
Washington Post, March 1, 1987.
We hope that the United States...will come to see that the world is not
over because they will have to begin to treat Latin American nations with
the respect that all sovereign nations are entitled to have.
Miguel D’Escoto, author’s interview. May 9, 1986.
In July 1987, the Santa Elena airfield once used for the contras became part of
Costa Rica’s Guanacaste National Park. Hundreds of school children planted trees
in the dirt of the airstrip. It was a gesture of peace in a region withered by war.
Nicaraguans have been held hostage, tortured and murdered for the ultimate
ransom: the surrender of their national sovereignty. Between the start of the contra
war and June 1987, over 43,000 Nicaraguans were killed, wounded or kidnapped.
There were nearly 22,500 dead on both sides of the war. Civilian casualties totaled
10,473 including 3,218 dead, 1,579 wounded and 5,676 kidnapped. Among the dead
were at least 331 children under age fifteen. By March 1988, the death toll was above
25,500 and still rising.^
The war’s toll may be clearer to Americans in comparative terms. If the
Nicaraguan population (3.4 million) were the size of the United States (242 million),
the total killed would be over 1.8 million—more than the populations of Houston,
Philadelphia or Nebraska.
Nicaraguan deaths are proportionately higher than total U.S. deaths, on and
off the battlefield, in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, World
War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Civilian deaths in
393
equivalent terms would be over 229,000 (as of June 1987), more than twice the U.S.
death toll in Korea and Vietnam. What about the 331 known children killed as of
June 1987? The U.S. equivalent would be 23,559.
Imagine more than one out of three names on the Vietnam War memorial rep¬
resenting children. That’s the reality behind words like “pressure” and “freedom
fighting” and “low intensity conflict,” all euphemisms for war fought in a smaller
nation’s territory to recast its government in a U.S.-approved mold. All such
euphemisms should be exposed and rejected.*
Self-Righteous Intervention
The United States has long maintained the right to define Latin American des¬
tiny, to make and un-make governments according to prevailing U.S. interests. Presi¬
dent Reagan told his aides in 1987 that “when I leave office the Sandinistas will be
gone.”^ The only way that could happen is with a direct U.S. invasion, and then the
Sandinistas would be gone from office, but not Nicaragua. Invasion will remain a
real prospect even after Reagan leaves office, however remote it appears at any par¬
ticular moment, because invasion is considered by virtually all U.S. policy and
opinion makers to be a legitimate tool of “defense” against supposed threats to U.S.
security.
Liberals and conservatives alike claim for the United States the unilateral, self-
ordained right to intervene. During the Iran-contra hearings. Rep. Lee Hamilton
coauthored a revealing op ed., “A Strategy for Handling Nicaragua,” with Viron Vaky,
former assistant secretary of state for Inter-American affairs in the Carter administra¬
tion. They wrote, “If our interests require the overthrow of the Sandinistas, then we
should overthrow them; if they do not, then we need a better policy to advance our
interests.”
“In our view,” they opined, “only United States military force can remove the
Sandinistas from power. But there is no convincing evidence that the threat they
pose to American interests is so serious as to warrant the costs and consequences
of such intervention.
“Rather, the Sandinista threat can be contained by a negotiated settlement en¬
forced by United States power, including diplomatic and economic pressure. This
is a more sustainable approach than a strategy that relies on the contras.”^
As I wrote earlier, the fundamental policy problem we face is not flawed over¬
sight, but faulty vision.
* For my views on so-called low intensity conflict, a euphemism for counterinsurgency, counterrevolu¬
tion and state terrorism, whose increasingly common usage contributes to Pentagon disinformation and
furthers the goal of lulling the American people into accepting undeclared war as a state of peace, see
“Born-Again War: The Low-Intensity Mystique,” NACLA Report on the Americas, March-April 1987. Also
see William LeoGrande’s article in the January-Febmary issue.
openings 395
Self-Determination
We must have the wisdom to see that self-righteous intervention is not a shield,
but a threat—a threat to democracy at home and a threat to self-determination
abroad. The only safeguard for national security for all countries, large and small,
is mutual security under the rule of international law, with strengthened mechanisms
for peaceful conflict-resolution and negotiated settlements to armed conflicts. That
is the promise of the Central American peace plan and Contadora; mutual security
and self-determination.
In the words of economist Xabier Gorostiaga, “Historically,” the Central
American and Caribbean “region has always been considered ‘America’s
backyard’.. .any threat to the status quo has always triggered an immediate response.
US military intervention in the region has been more frequent than in any other part
of the world.. .The underlying assumption of US policy towards the region appears
to be that its own geopolitical interests are incompatible with the emergence of
genuinely independent nation states...Today, as the nationalist struggle acquires
wider economic and social dimensions, any process of transformation must neces¬
sarily call this ‘informal empire’ into question, implying a decisive break with a neo¬
colonial mode of domination first challenged in the 19th century by the rise of
Central American liberalism and later, in the inter-war period, by nationalist leaders
such as Augusto Sandino and Farabundo Marti.
“It is precisely because of the incompatibility between Caribbean Basin aspira¬
tions for genuine independence and the US perception of its own security interests
that the Reagan Administration must depict the Central American conflict as an ex¬
tension of the Cold War. The real question is what scope for defining new foreign
policy alternatives exists in the United States itself.. .Liberal critics may disagree with
the Reagan Administration over tactics and rhetoric but appear unwilling to chal¬
lenge the underlying geopolitical concept of ‘informal empire.’ Few politicians in
the US appear willing to support the view that the goal of regional political stability
will best be served in the long term by recognising the sovereignty of the region, a
sovereignty which must include the region’s right to determine its own foreign
policy.”
Gorostiaga notes that “regional instability is not the result of US ‘weakness’; if
anything, it is the extension of US power in the region which gives rise to instability.
The National Security Doctrine is, today, a recipe for national insecurity, and it is
increasingly clear that the majority of the region’s population is unwilling to accept
politically authoritarian and economically exploitative regimes in the name of per¬
ceived North American geopolitical interests. In this sense, economic and social
change in the Caribbean Basin must entail a revolution in the geopolitics of the
area.””*
In November 1987, the presidents of the Contadora and Support Group
countries (Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru and Argen¬
tina) met in Acapulco, Mexico for their second annual political and economic sum¬
mit. The “Group of Eight” identified their principal challenges as “Maintaining peace
and security in the region; Consolidating democracy and respect for human rights;
Recovering our societies’ capacity to generate sustained, autonomous development;
Solving the foreign-debt problem; Establishing a fair, open international trade sys¬
tem free from protectionism; Encouraging the process of integration among our
countries and with the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean; Ensuring more
effective participation by our countries in. the international economy; Promoting the
autonomous and rapid development of science and technology; Strengthening the
capacity for negotiation of the eight governments and of the region as a whole; and
Reaffirming the region’s cultural identity and promoting exchanges of educational
experiences.”
The presidents noted that “peace in our region is closely linked to respect for
the principles of self-determination of peoples, nonintervention in the internal af¬
fairs of States, peaceful settlement of controversies, a ban on the threat or actual use
of force, equality of States before the law and international cooperation for develop¬
ment.”^
In a shock to Washington, an Uruguayan proposal that Cuba be reintegrated
into regional organizations (such as the OAS and Inter-American Development
Bank) was endorsed by the summit. “There is a consensus among the presidents,”
said conservative President Jose Samey of Brazil, “that we ought to struggle for the
total integration of Cuba into the inter-American system.”^
With Cuba, as with Nicaragua, the Latin Americans realize that opening doors,
not closing them, is the way to invite mutually beneficial relations in the region.
Latin America is saying, in essence, that it cannot become a peaceful and prosperous
neighborhood and remain Uncle Sam’s “backyard.”
Building Bridges
We can have a decent, lawful and viable alternative policy toward Nicaragua
and Central America generally that rejects self-righteous intervention and respects
self-determination. It can be summarized as follows:
1. Stop all military, economic, political and “psychological warfare” efforts to

manipulate, destabilize or overthrow the Nicaraguan government.
2. Comply with the World Court judgement, including the provision for repara¬
tions, and lift all economic sanctions against Nicaragua, including the trade embar¬
go and the blockade of loans to Nicaragua from international financial institutions.
3. Reopen bilateral talks between the United States and Nicaragua, sign a non¬
aggression pact and normalize relations.
4. Comply with Central American peace agreements and support the Contadora
process, including the objective of removing Central America as an arena of East-
West conflict.
5. Halt military maneuvers in the region; cease efforts to militarize Costa Rica;
cut off all war-related aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala; and support
openings 397
negotiated solutions to the wars in El Salvador and Guatemala. Grant extended

voluntary departure status to Central American refugees.
6. Tie U.S. aid to compliance with internationally-recognized standards of
human, political, labor and economic rights (as recognized in the United Nations’
Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and respect for indigenous culture. Restore
the meaning of humanitarian aid, directing such aid thi'ough programs run by
reputable nonpartisan private and international organizations.
7. Target development assistance to programs that increase self-sufficiency in
food and other basic needs; encourage economic diversity and environmental
protection; raise the living standards of the majority through agrarian reform and
expanded health care, literacy, education, housing, public works, employment, etc.;
and demonstrate grassroots participation and empowerment. Support a rejuvenated
Central American Common Market enhancing regional cooperation and self-
reliance.
8. Encourage people-to-people contact between the United States and Central
America through cultural and educational interchanges, “sister city” arrangements
and other programs designed to exchange skills and promote mutual understanding.
End the political censorship manifest in U.S. visa denials and eliminate U.S. govern¬
ment restrictions on travel by Amierican citizens.
9. End surveillance and harassment of individuals and groups trying to change
U.S. policy toward Central Aanerica; fully respect civil liberties; and encourage politi¬
cal pluralism in the United States.
10. Outlaw covert action as a tool of U.S. policy which is incompatible with
democracy at home or abroad; eliminate the government’s ability to wage un¬
declared war; and strengthen U.S. compliance with and support for international
law.^
Around the world millions of people are struggling to improve their lives and
control their own destinies. We should not see that as a threat, but as a common
bond. Surely American farmers facing foreclosure can understand the Central
American struggle for agrarian reform. Surely American workers can identify with
Central Americans who want to be able to organize for better wages and working
conditions without threat of imprisonment or death. One out of five American
children now lives in poverty; surely we can understand the desire of Central
Americans to see that their children survive and prosper.
Self-determination is a two-way street. The same propaganda system that keeps
us from seeing the realities of Central America keeps us from seeing the realities of
our own inequities, and our own need for democratization.
In 1984, Dora Maria Tellez, the medical student turned guerrilla leader who
became Nicaragua’s minister of health, was asked how she compared the revolu¬
tionary struggle with running the government. “It’s an absolute difference,” she
replied. “If they gave you the task of demolishing this house, you would knock
down the walls and then the windows, etc. But if later they tell you ‘now build the
house,’ you must first become a stonemason, then learn the proportions of cement
to stone, and so on. You must take out the old foundation, put down the new foun-
dation, and when you’ve put up columns, walls and a roof, you still have to fix up
the interior of the house, put in furniture. It’s the same difference.”
She was then asked to describe the impact of U.S. intervention: “First, we
knocked down the house. We ripped out the foundation and began to set a new
foundation, to install the pilings and erect the walls. While we’re erecting one wall,
Reagan comes along and knocks down the one we put up on the other side. So,
we leave this one to go rebuild the fallen wall.. .Meanwhile, he knocks down a dif¬
ferent one. What would we do if they weren’t doing this to us? We would get the
walls up and even put the roof on!”*
We cannot know what the new house of Nicaragua would look like today if
the United States had not tried to destroy it. When the United States stops laying
siege to Nicaragua it may take years for Nicaraguans to take down the physical and
emotional barricades no longer necessary for survival, reverse the war-hardened
political polarization, reconstruct the economy, raise living standards and renew
progress in social programs.
Americans won’t all have the same opinion of the new Nicaragua. We don’t
all agree now. When we view the new house of Nicaragua, however, we should
do so as neighbors, not landlords.
APPENDIX A
The CIA’s Blueprint

for Nicaragua
Philip Agee, October 1979
Destabilization Revisited
During the months ahead the CIA will have to prepare contingency plans for clandes¬
tine intervention for consideration by the National Security Council. If the revolutionary
leadership in Nicaragua embarks on radical programs deemed inconsistent with perceived
U.S. interests, the options are likely to include elements of the destabilization programs al¬
ready applied in the 1970’s in Chile, Angola, Portugal and Jamaica.
The immediate political goal would be to split the Sandinista leadership, create an
emotive international “cause,” and isolate leading radicals, falsely painting them as allied
with Cuban and Soviet interests while against traditional Western, liberal values. Money and
propaganda support for “moderates” and others responsive to American wishes would serve
to enhance the local and international stature of leaders opposed to radical policies.
Propaganda through local and international media, falsified documents and other provoca¬
tions, and exploitation of historical differences within the Sandinista movement can con¬
tribute to splitting the political leadership. The goal would be to weaken the revolution by
fomenting new disagreements or a return to the divisions of the past. With a sharp line drawn
between radicals, communists, etc., and “moderates,” efforts can be made to align interna¬
tional groups and other countries against the one and in favor of the other.
Strikes in key unions promoted through CIA-backed local and international unions
can impede reconstruction and create a climate of tension. Tensions and disagreements can
also be fostered between the Nicaraguan government and those that supported the revolu¬
tion against Somoza.
As the “cause” is established, mainly through propaganda promoting simplistic, black-
and-white impressions, efforts can be made to foment popular disillusion with the revolu¬
tion and radical policies. One obvious lever is restriction of relief and reconstruction aid, but
conservative elements in the Catholic Church have been effective political weapons in other
countries. Here also, association of radicals with Cuba and the Soviet Union through media
operations can contribute.
Possible key issues in the “cause” would be an international clamoring for “free” elec¬
tions and opposition political organizing. “Return to barracks” is another, as is “betrayal of
the revolution” through the “substitution of one dictatorship for another.” The neighborhood
defense committees would be denounced as a political apparatus. In any election campaign,
the CIA could make huge sums available to its favored candidates and parties.
A climate of tension, fear and uncertainty can also contribute to capital flight, wor¬
sened economic conditions, and an exodus of professionals and others of a frightened mid¬
dle class. Operations can be undertaken to induce defectors and create refugees who can
then be exploited through international media operations. Acts of violence such as bomb¬
ings and assassinations would also contribute to the desired psychological climate. Perhaps
the military forces of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala—probably the CIA’s closest al¬
lies in the region—could be strengthened in order to provoke border incidents and addition¬
al tension.
Eventually, if the scenario continued, the CIA could seek to provoke “moderates” in
the political and military leadership to oust radicals from positions of power. If this were un¬
realistic, impossible or failed, U.S. diplomatic efforts could seek joint intervention through
reviving the Inter-American Peace Force proposal rejected by the Organization of American
States on the eve of the Sandinista victory in July.
A Team Effort
The CIA would not be the only U.S. government agency involved in intervention in
Nicaragua, and participation by non-govemmental organizations would be needed. U.S. rep¬
resentatives on international and commercial lending institutions, as well as the Export-Im¬
port Bank, would have instructions to impede credits. U.S. diplomats and military officers,
in addition to the CIA, would try to influence leaders of other countries. U.S. businessmen
engaged in Nicaragua would delay investments and other job-producing operations. And
American media organizations would be important participants in propaganda campaigns...
From a distance, one cannot know whether the CIA could find or create the “moderate”
opposition that will serve the U.S. government’s interests. But the CIA surely knows that in
its pursuit of American ploicy goals, it has many potential allies in Nicaragua besides sup¬
porters of the old regime. As traditional, non-Somoza interests are affected by revolutionary
programs, the CIA may discover a fertile field in which to plant the seeds of counter-revolu¬
tion.
Source: Excerpted from (former CIA agent) Philip Agee, “The CIA’s Blueprint for Nicaragua,” Covert-
Action Information Bulletin, October 1979.
APPENDIX B
Central America Peace Accord
NATIONAL RECONCILIATION
Dialogue
To urgently carry out, in those cases where deep divisions have resulted within society,
steps for national Teconciliation which would allow for popular participation with full guaran¬
tees in authentic political processes of a democratic nature based on justice, freedom and
democracy...For this purpose, the corresponding Governments will initiate a dialogue with
all unarmed internal political opposition groups and with those who have availed themsel¬
ves of the amnesty.
Amnesty
In each Central American country, except those where the International Commission
of Verification and Follow-Up determined that such a measure is not necessary, an Amnes¬
ty decree will be issued containing all the provisions for the guarantee of the inviolability of
life; as well as freedom in all its forms, property and the security of the persons to whom
these decrees apply. Simultaneous with the issuing of the amnesty decree by the Govern¬
ment, the irregular forces of the respective country will place in freedom all persons in their
power.
National Reconciliation Commission

In order to verify the compliance with the commitments.. .concerning amnesty, cease¬
fire, democratization and free elections, a National Reconciliation Commission will be estab¬
lished whose duties will be to verify the actual carrying out in practice of the national
reconciliation process, as well as the full exercise of all civil and political rights of Central
American citizens guaranteed in this document. The National Reconciliation Commission will
be comprised of a delegate and an alternate delegate from the executive branch; a bishop
delegate and an alternate bishop delegate recommended by the Episcopal Conference, and
chosen by the Government from a list of three candidates.. .The same procedure will be used
to select a delegate and alternate delegate from the legally registered political opposition
parties...
In addition, each Central American Government will choose an outstanding citizen,

outside of public office and not pertaining to the party in power, and his respective alter¬
nate, to be part of this commission...
Exhortation for the Cessation of Hostilities

.. .The Government of [those states currently fighting irregular or insurgent groups]
commit themselves to undertake all the necessary steps for achieving an effective cease-fire
within the constitutional framework.
Democratization
The Governments commit themselves to promote an authentic democratic, pluralist
and participatory process that includes the promotion of social justice, respect for human
rights, [state] sovereignty, the territorial integrity of states and the right of all nations to free¬
ly determine, without outside interference of any kind, its economic, political, and social
model; and to carry out in a verifiable manner those measures leading to the establishment,
or in their instances, the improvement of representative and pluralist democratic systems
which would provide guarantees for the organization of political parties, effective popular
participation in the decision making process, and to ensure free access to different currents
of opinion, to honest electoral processes and newspapers based on the full exercise of
citizens’ rights...
Complete political pluralism should be manifest. In this regard, political groupings
shall have broad access to communications media, full exercise of the right of association
and the right to manifest publicly the exercise of their right to free speech, be it oral, writ¬
ten or televised, as well as freedom of movement by members of political parties in order
to proseltyze. Likewise, those Governments.. .which have in effect a state of exception, siege,
or emergency [law], sha]l terminate that state and re-establish the full exercise of all constitu¬
tional guarantees.
Free Elections
Once the conditions inherent to every democracy are established, free, pluralist and
honest elections shall be held as a joint expression of the Central American states to seek
reconciliation and lasting peace for its peoples. Elections will be held for a Central American
parliament, whose founding was proposed in the Esquipulas Declaration of May 25, 1986...
These elections will take place simultaneously in all the countries throughout Central
America in the first half of 1988, on a date mutually agreed to by the Presidents of the Central
American states...
After the elections for the Central American parliament have been held, equally free
and democratic elections shall be held with international observers and the same guarantees
in each country, to name popular representatives to municipalities, congresses and legisla¬
tive assemblies and the presidencies of the republics. These elections will be held accord¬
ing to the proposed calendars and within the period established in the current political
Constitutions.
Central America Peace Accord 403
Cessation of Assistance to Irregular Forces

or Insurrectionist Movements
The Governments of the five Central American states shall request the Governments
of the region, and the extra-regional governments which openly or covertly provide military,
logistical, financial, propagandistic aid in [the form of] manpower, armaments, munitions and
equipment to irregular forces or insurrectionist movements to cease this aid, as an indispen¬
sable element for achieving a stable and lasting peace in the region.
The above does not include assistance for repatriation, or in lieu thereof, the reassign¬
ing of assistance necessary for those persons having belonged to these groups or forces to
become reintegrated into normal life. Likewise, the irregular forces or insurgent groups who
operate in Central America will be asked to abstain, in yearnings for a true Latin American
spirit, from receiving such assistance...
The Non-Use of Territory to Invade Other States

The five countries.. .reaffirm their commitment to prevent the use of their own territory
and neither render or permit military or logistical support to persons, organizations, or groups
attempting to destabilize the governments of the Central American countries.
Negotiations on Matters Relating to Security, Verification,

Control and Limitation of Armaments
The Governments of the Central American states, with the participation of the Con-
tadora group in exercise of its role as mediator, will continue negotiations on the points still
pending in the Contadora Treaty Proposal for Peace and Cooperation in Central America
concerning security, verification and control.
In addition, these negotiations will entail measures for the disarmament of the irregular
forces who are willing to accept the amnesty decrees.
Refugees and Displaced Persons

The Governments...commit themselves to give urgent attention to the groups of
refugees and displaced persons brought about through the regional crisis, through protec¬
tion and assistance, particularly in areas of education, health, work and security, and when¬
ever voluntary and individually expressed, to facilitate in the repatriation, resettlement and
relocation [of these persons]. They also commit themselves to request assistance for Central
American refugees and displaced persons from the international community...
Cooperation, Democracy and Freedom

for Peace and Development
In the climate of freedom guaranteed by democracy, the Central American countries
will adopt agreements permitting for the intensification of development in order to achieve
more egalitarian and poverty-free societies. Consolidation of democracy presupposes the
creation of a system of economic and social justice and well-being. To achieve these objec¬
tives the Governments will jointly seek special economic support from the international com¬
munity.
INTERNATIONAL VERIFICATION AND FOLLOW-UP
International Verification and Follow-Up Commission

An international verification and follow-up commission will be established comprised
of the Secretary Generals of the Organization of American States and the United Nations or
their representatives, as well as the Foreign Ministers of Central America, of the Contadora
Group and the Support Group...
Calendar for the Implementation of Agreements

Within a period of 15 days from the signing of this document, the Foreign Ministers
of Central America will meet as the Executive Committee to regulate, promote and make
feasible compliance with the agreements contained herein...Ninety days from the signing of
this document, the commitments pertaining to Amnesty, Cease-Fire, Democratization, Ces¬
sation of Assistance to Irregular Forces or Insurrectionist Movements, and the Non-Use of
Territory to Invade Other States, will enter into force simultaneously and publicly as defined
herein.
One-hundred-twenty days from the signing of this document, the International Com¬
mission for Verification and Follow-Up will analyze the progress [made] in the compliance
with the agreements provided for herein.
After 150 days, the five Central American Presidents will meet and receive a report
from the International Commission of Verification and Follow-Up and they will make the
pertinent decisions.
Final Provisions
The points included in this document form part of a harmonious and indivisible whole.
The signing of [the document] incurs an obligation, accepted in good faith, to simultaneous¬
ly comply with the agreement in the established periods...
Source: translation provided by the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry, August 1987.

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_. Review of the Presidential Certification of Nicaragua’s Connection to Terrorism. Hearing before
the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs. September 1980.
_. U.S. Intelligence PeTformance on Central America: Achievements and Selected Instances of Con¬
cern. Staff report of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Subcommittee on
Oversight and Evaluation. September 1982.
_. U.S. Support for the Contras. Hearing before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcom¬
mittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs. April 1985.
_. Review of the President’s Report on Assistance to the Nicaraguan Opposition. Hearing before the
House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs. December
1985.
_. Adverse Report on the Joint Resolution Relating to the Additional Authority and Assistance for the
Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance Requested by the President. House Permanent Select Committee
on Intelligence. March 1986.
_. Investigation of United States Assistance to the Nicaraguan Contras. Vol. 1. Hearings and Markup
before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs.
March 1986.
_. Investigation of United States Assistance to the Nicaraguan Contras. Vol. 2. Hearings and Markup
before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs.
April-June 1986.
_. The Downing of a United States Plane in Nicaragua and United States Involvement in the Contra
War. Hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere
Affairs. October 1986.
_. Report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. December 31, 1986.
_. United States Policy Options with Respect to Nicaragua and Aid to the Contras. Hearings before
the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, January-February 1987.
_. Preliminary Inquiry into the Sale of Arms to Iran and Possible Diversion of Funds to the
Nicaraguan Resistance. Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. February 1987.
_. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, With Supplemental,
Minority, and Additional Views. U.S. Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran
and the Nicaraguan Opposition and U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate
Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. November 1987.
_. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Source
Documents. Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Op¬
position and House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. 1988.
_. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix B, Deposi¬
tions. Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition
and House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran. 1988.
_. Testimony of Richard V. Secord. Joint Hearings before the House Select Committee to Investigate
Covert Arms Transactions with Iran and Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to
Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition. May 1987.
_. Testimony of Robert C. McFarlane, Gaston J. Sigur, Jr., and Robert W. Owen. Joint Hearings
before the House Select Committee to Investigate Covert Arms Transactions with Iran and Senate
Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition. May 1987.*
U.S. Congress Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus. Who Are the Contras? An Analysis of the
Makeup of the Military Leadership of the Rebel Forces and of the Nature of the Private American
Groups Providing Them Financial and Material Support. April 1985.
_. The Contra High Command: An Independent Analysis of the Military Leadership of the FDN.
March 1986.
U.S. General Accounting Office. Central America: Problems in Controlling Funds for the Nicaraguan
Democratic Resistance. December 1986.
* No other volumes of testimony were published at the time this bibliography was compiled.
Notes
Introduction
1. Jules Archer, The Plot To Seize The White House (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973), p. 209.
2. Major General Smedley D. Butler, “America’s Armed Forces,” Part 1, “Military Boondoggling,” Com¬
mon Sense, October 1935, pp. 6, 7, 10.
3. Butler, Part 2, “ ‘In Time of Peace’; The Army,” p. 8.
4. See Karl Bermann, Under the Big Stick: Nicaragua and the United States Since (Boston: South
End Press, 1986).
5. Ibid., pp. 145-49.
6. Butler, Part 3, “‘Happy Days Are Here Again’; The Navy,” pp. 13-14. Also see Bermann, Under the Big
Stick, p. 149.
7. Bermann, Utider the Big Stick, pp. 163-64.
8. A.C. Sandino, Manifesto a lospueblos de la tierra y en especial al de Nicaragua (Managua: Tipografia
La Prensa, 1933), cited in Gregorio Selser, Sandino OSqw York: Monthly Review Press, 1981), p. 206.
9. William Howard Taft, Message to Congress, December 3, 1912, excerpted in The Annals of America:
1905-1915: The Progressive Era, Vol. 13 (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968), pp. 371-72. Also
see Bermann, Under the Big Stick, p. 153.
10. Archer, The Plot To Seize The White House, pp. 57-58.
11. Quoted in Bermann, Under the Big Stick, pp. 187-88.
12. Ibid., pp. 188-90.
13. Butler, Part 1, pp. 7-8.
14. Butler, Part 2, pp. 10, 12.
15. See Bermann, Under the Big Stick, pp. 219-26.
16. Alejandro Bendana, “Crisis in Nicaragua,” NACLA Report on the Americas, November-December 1978,
p. 2, citing Time, October 8, 1956.
17. Selser, Sandino, pp. 170-79; Bermann, Under the Big Slick, p. 217.
18. John Booth, The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1985, 2nd ed.), p. 72, citing Pedro Joaquin Chamorro C., LosSomoza: Una estirpe sangrienta (Buenos
Aires; El Cid Editores, 1979), p. 77.
Chapter 1: Carter Strikes Out

1. Quoted in Booth, The End and the Beginning, p. l62.
2. Anastasio Somoza as told to Jack Cox, Nicaragua Betrayed (Boston: Western Islands, 1980), p. 262.
3. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser 1977-1981 (New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983), p. 49.
4. See Holly Sklar, Reagan, Trilateralism and the Neoliberals: Containment and Intervention in the 1980s
(Boston: South End Press, 1986) and Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for
World Management (Mosion: South End Press, 1980).
5. New York Times, November 1, 1979.
6. A Second Report by the Commission on United States-Latin American Relations, The United States and
Latin America: Next Steps York: Center for Inter-American Relations, December 20, 1976).
7. Richard Cooper, Karl Kaiser and Masataka Kosaka, Towards a Renovated International System (New
York: Trilateral Commission, Triangle Paper #14, 1977), p. 10.
8. Robert A. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition: The United States and Nicaragua (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1987), p. 37, citing Bernard Diederich, Somoza and the Legacy ofU.S. Involvement
in Central America QSe^ York: E.P. Dutton, 1981), p. 24.
9. John Huey, Wall Streetfoumal, February 23, 1978.
10. Walter LeFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New York: W.W. Nor¬
ton & Co., 1984), p. 226, citing Diederich, Somoza, pp. 88-89.
11. See Jim Hougan, Spooks QSevj^ York: William Morrow, 1978), pp. 383-88.
12. Author’s interview with Sister Mary Hartman, Managua, April 15, 1986.
13. Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People (Now York: Doubleday, 1980), p. 81.
14. Cited by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fas¬
cism (Boston: South End Press, 1979), pp. 283-84.
15. Dianna Melrose, Nicaragua: The Threat of a Good Example? {Osiord: Oxfam, 1985), p. 11; Tom Barry
and Deb Preusch, The Central America Fact Book (Now York: Grove Press, 1986), pp. ix, 129; World
Bank Atlas, 1978.
16. Lemoux, Cry of the People, p. 85.
17. Interview with Humberto Ortega by Marta Hamecker, “Nicaragua: The Strategy of Victory,” in Tomas
Borge et al., Sandinistas Speak (Now York: Pathfinder Press, 1982), p. 57.
18. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, p. 54.
19. Ibid., p. 56.
20. Shirley Christian, Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family {New York: Vintage Books, 1986), p. 52.
21. George Black, Triumph of the People: The Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua (London: Zed Press,
1981), p. 103.
22. Central American Historical Institute (hereafter CAHI), “The Group of Twelve Then and Now,” Up date
4:24, August 1, 1985.
23. Quoted in Christian, Nicaragua, p. 49.
24. Ibid., p. 51.
25. For a critique of Christian’s book and her earlier reporting on Nicaragua, see George Black, “Chris¬
tian: Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family,” The Nation, September 7, 1985.
26. Dan Morgan, Washington Post, April 21, 1987.
27. Christian, Nicaragua, p. 57.
28. John M. Goshko, Washington Post, February 17,1978; Bermann, Under the Big Stick, pp. 264-65, citing
Hearings Before the House Subcommittee on International Organizations, Foreign Assistance Legisla¬
tion for Fiscal Year 1979 (i91P>), pp. 126-27.
29. Black, Triumph of the People, p. 114.
30. H. Ortega, “Nicaragua,” p. 64.
31. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, p, 66. Also see John M. Goshko, Washington Post, May I6, 1978.
Notes 413
32. Carl Jacobsen, Soviet Attitudes Towards, Aid To, and Contacts With Central American Revolutionaries
(hereafter Jacobsen Report), U.S. State Department, June 1984, p. 6.
33. MPU Program reprinted in NACLA Report on the Americas, November-December 1978, pp. 36-37.
34. John M. Goshko, Washington Post, August 1, 1978.
35. Somoza, Nicaragua Betrayed, pp. 136, 143-44, 147.
36. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, pp. 70, 76-81.
37. Ward Churchill, “Soldier of Fortune’s Robert K. Brown,” CovertAction Information Bulletin, Fall 1984,
p. 13.
39. Ibid., p. 69; Booth, The End and the Beginning, p. l65.
40. Bendaha, “Crisis,” p. 2.
41. Philip Wheaton and Yvonne Dilling, Nicaragua: A People’s Revolution (Washington, DC: EPICA Task
Force, 1980), pp. 42-43, citing OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Report on the
Situation of Human Rights in Nicaragua,” October 1978. Refugee quoted in Bendana, “Crisis,” p. 26.
42. “Nicaragua: Executions and Disappearances,” Amnesty International Newsletter, November 1978 and
Newsweek, cited in Lemoux, Cry of the People, p. 99.
44. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, pp. 79, 82-86, 97-98.
45. Quoted in Somoza, Nicaragua Betrayed, pp. 313-24. Somoza incorrectly dated the Jorden transcript
November. I have not reproduced Somoza’s use of italics.
46. Bermann, Under the Big Stick, p. 268, citing Diederich, Somoza, p. 207.
48. Author’s interview with Sergio Ramirez, Managua, April 26, 1986.
49. Marlise Simons, Washington Post, November 3, 1978.
50. Anonymous source quoted by Robert B. Cullen, Miami Herald, November 18, 1978.
51. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, pp. 106-07.
52. Alan Riding, New York Times, December 17, 1978.
53. Quoted in Somoza, Nicaragua Betrayed, pp. 324-33.
55. See, for example, Cynthia Arnson, “Arms Race in Central America,” The Nation, March 10, 1979.
56. Bermann, Under the Big Stick, p. 269.
57. Christian, Nicaragua, pp. 99-100; Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, p. 126.
59. Peter Maas, Manhunt (New York: Jove/Random House, 1987), pp. 138, 231-32.
60. James Ridgeway, “The Ex-Spy and the Old Boys,” Village Voice, February 24, 1987.
61. Peter Cary with Miguel Acoca, “The old boys’ role in the Iran-Contra affair,” U.S. News & World Report,
August 10, 1987.
62. Ben Bradlee Jr., Boston Globe, January 25, 1987.
63. Affidavit of Daniel P. Sheehan, General Counsel, From Plaintiffs’ “Opposition to Motions to Dismiss
RICO Claims,” Christie Institute, Washington, DC, pp. 39-40. Also see Declaration of Plaintiffs’ Coun¬
sel, Christie Institute, 1988, pp. 62-66.
64. Philip Taubman, New York Times, December 9, 1981.
65. Helga Silva and Richard Morin, Miami Herald, June 25, 1979.
66. “Nicaragua: The Beginning of the End” and “Mike the Merc: Soldier of Misfortune,” Latin America
Political Report, September 22, 1978, cited in Lernoux, Cry of the People, pp. 100-101.
68. Wheaton and Dilling, Nicaragua, pp. 45-46.
69. See Black, Triumph of the People, p. 147.
70. Author’s interview with Sergio Ramirez, April 26, 1986.
72. Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President York-. Bantam Books, 1982), pp. 155, 181.
73. Graham Hovey, New York Times, January 24, 1979-
74. Christopher Dickey, With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1985), p. 45.
75. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, pp. 332-33, fn. 10.
76. Carter, Keeping Faith, pp. 182-83.
77. John M. Goshko, Washington Post, June 13, 1979. According to Pastor, Carter refused Panama Canal-
Nicaragua linkage; see Condemned to Repetition, pp. 114-15 and p. 341, fn. 19.
78. H. Ortega, “Nicaragua,” pp. 71, 74.
80. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, pp. 130, 132.
81. Ibid., pp. 132-33.
82. Ibid., p. 135.
83. Ibid., p. 137.
86. Pastor, Ibid., pp. 142-45, 190.
87. “Excerpts From Vance’s Speech to O.A.S. Ministers,” New York Times, June 22, 1979; Jack Anderson,
Miami Herald, July 25, 1979; Richard Burt, New York Times, ]ur\e 23, 1979; Testimony of Viron Vaky,
United States Policy Toward Nicaragua, Hearings before the House Subcommittee on Inter-American
Affairs, 96th Congress, 1979, pp. 33-34, cited by Bermann, Under the Big Stick, pp. 270-71.
88. Quoted in Bermann, Under the Big Stick, p. 270, citing New York Times, June 22, 1979; John M. Gosh¬
ko, Washington Post, ]\xne 23, 1979.
89. LeFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, p. 234.
90. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, pp. 147-48, citing Brzezinski’s diary.
91. Ibid., p. 148.
92. Ibid., p. 149.
93. Brzezinski, Power and Principle, pp. 139, 503.
94. Richard Burt, New York Times, March 4, 1980.
95. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (New York: Viking,
1970), pp. 279, 288-89.
96. Brzezinski, Power and Principle, p. 49.
99. Somoza, Nicaragua Betrayed, pp. 240-41.
102. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, p. 155, citing a declassified cable from Secretary of State to the
U.S. Embassy, Managua, June 29, 1979.
104. Peter Kornbluh, The Price of Intervention: Reagan’s War Against the Sandinistas (NIdLshmgLon, DC:
Institute for Policy Studies, 1987), p. l6, citing Pezzullo cable.
105. Author’s interview with Miguel D’Escoto, Managua, May 9, 1986.
106. Alan Riding, New York Times, 30, 1979. Also see Warren Hoge, New York Times, ]\\nQ 30, 1979.
107. Vaky cable, June 30, 1979, cited in Kornbluh, Price of Intervention, p. l6.
109. Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, ]\Ay 7, 1979.
110. Pezzullo cable, July 6, 1979, cited in Kornbluh, Price of Intervention, p. l6.
111. Alan Riding, New York Times, ]u\y 10, 1979.
Notes 415
112. Pezzullo cable, July 6, 1979, cited in Kornbluh, Price of Intervention, pp. 17-18.
113- Author’s interview with Sergio Ramirez, April 26, 1986.
114. Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, ]u\y 10, 1979, cited in Bermann, Under the Big Stick, p. 272.
116. Quoted in Washington Post, ]u\y 18, 1979.
120. Alan Riding, New York Times, July 18, 1979.
122. Los Angeles Times, ]u\y 17, 1979.
123. Dickey, With the Contras, pp. 51, 55.
Chapter 2: Fleeting Coexistence

2. Bayardo Arce, Sandinismoypolitica imperialista(}A2Ln2iga3.: Editorial Nueva Nicaragua, 1985), pp. 15-
16.
3. Michael E. Conroy, “Economic Legacy and Policies,” in Thomas Walker, ed., Nicaragua: The First Five
Fears (New YorL Praeger, 1985), p. 233.
4. Wayne King, New York Times, July 22, 1979.
5. ECLA, The Crisis in Central America: Its Origins, Scope and (Santiago, Chile: CEPAL,
September 15, 1983), p. 13, cited in Conroy, “Economic Legacy,” p. 229.
6. Melrose, Nicaragua, p. 11.
7. World Bank, Nicaragua: The Challenge of Reconstruction (Washington, DC: October 9, 1981), p. 11,
cited in Conroy, “Economic Legacy,” pp. 232-33.
8. Quoted in Roger Burbach and Tim Draimin, “Nicaragua’s Revolution,” NACLA Report on the Americas,
May-June 1980, p. 13.
9. MADRE delegation interview in which the author participated with Dora Maria Tellez, Managua, March
1984.
10. Alan Riding, “Nicaragua: A Delicate Balance,” New York Times Magazine, December 2, 1979, p. 80.
12. Quoted in Riding, “Nicaragua,” p. 90.
13. Arce, Sandinismo, p. 39.
14. Sergio Ramirez, “Our Promises Were Made to the Poorest of Our Country,” July 14, 1983 speech, in
Bruce Marcus, ed., Nicaragua: The Sandinista People’s Revolution {Nqw York: Pathfinder Press, 1985),
p. 189.
15. Author’s interview with a U.S. ambassador in Central America, April 29, 1986.
16. MADRE delegation interview in which the author participated, Santa Maria, Nicaragua, March 1984.
17. Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 585. Also see Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, pp. 192-95.
18. Author’s interview with Miguel D’Escoto, May 9, 1986.
19. Quoted in Karen Elliott House and Beth Nissen, Wall Street Journal, April 29, 1980.
20. Testimony of Lawrence Pezzullo, in Central America at the Crossroads, Hearings before the Subcom¬
mittee on Inter-American Affairs of the House Committee on Foreign Relations, 96th Congress, 1st
Session, September 11, 1979, pp. 29-30.
21. William M. LeoGrande, et al., “Grappling with Central America: From Carter to Reagan,” in Morris J.
Blachman, William M. LeoGrande, Kenneth Sharpe, eds.. Confronting Revolution: Security Through
Diplomacy in Central America (New York: Pantheon, 1986), p. 301.
4l6 WASHINGTON’S WAR ON NICARAGUA
22. John M. Goshko, Washington Post, ]\Ay 25, 1979.

23. Leslie Gelb, op ed., New York Times, August 29, 1979.
24. See Americas Watph, On Human Rights in Nicaragua (New York: May 1982), pp. 28-30.
25. Testimony of Viron Vaky, September 11, 1979, Central America at the Crossroads, pp. 3-4.
26. Charles A. Kraus'e, Washington Post, July 30, 1979.
27. Terri Shaw, Washington Post, August 12, 1979.
28. Richard J. Meislin, New York Times, August 13, .1979.
29. Charles A. Krause, Washington Post, September 1, 1979.
30. State Department and Pentagon, Congressional Presentation Document, Security Assistance Programs
FY1981, p. 419, cited in Robert Matthews, “The Limits of Friendship: Nicaragua and the West,” NACLA
Report on the Americas, May-June 1985, p. 25.
31. Miami Herald, August 17, 1979.
32. Matthews, “Limits of Friendship,” p. 26.
33. Graham Hovey, New York Times, August 30, 1979.
35. Bermann, Under the Big Stick, p. 276.
36. Congressional Quarterly, Congress and the Nation Vol. V, 7P77-iL>S6> (Washington, DC: 1981), p. 87.
37. William M. LeoGrande, “The United States and Nicaragua,” in Walker, ed., Nicaragua, p. 427, citing
Newsweek, ]u\y 20, 1980.
38. See Review of the Presidential Certification of Nicaragua’s Connection to Terrorism, Hearing before
the House Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs, 96th Congress, 2nd Session, September 30,1980.
39. Sheryl Hirshon with Judy Butler, And Also Teach Them to Read (NFQsiporl, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1983),
p. l6l, citing Valerie Miller, “The Nicaraguan Literacy Campaign,” in Thomas W. Walker, Nicaragua
in Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1982).
40. Deborah Barndt, “Popular Education,” in Walker, ed., Nicaragua, p. 335.
41. Cited in ibid., p. 323.
42. Author’s interview with Carlos Fernando Chamorro, Managua, April 1, 1986.
44. Hirshon, Teach Them to Read, p. 118.
46. Richard L. Harris, “The Economic Transformation and Industrial Development of Nicaragua,” in Richard
L. Harris and Carlos M. Vilas, eds., Nicaragua: A Revolution Under Siege {lôndon-. Zed Books, 1985),
pp. 46-48.
47. William I. Robinson and Kent Norsworthy, Dai/idand Goliath: The U.S. War Against Nicaragua (New
York: Monthly Review, 1987), p. 201.
48. Author’s interview with Lucio Jimenez, Managua, May 6, 1986.
49. For trade union and mass organization statistics see CAHI, “Nicaragua’s Trade Unions,” Update 5:50,
September 6,1984 and Luis Hector Serra, “The Grass-Roots Organizations,” in Walker, ed., Nicaragua,
pp. 66-67.
50. Christian, Nicaragua, pp. 184-86.
51. Quoted in Black, Triumph of the People, p. 343.
52. Ministerio de Planificacion, Plan de Reactivacion Economica enBeneficio del Pueblo (M^Lmgox. 1980),
p. 31.
53. Joseph Collins, Nicaragua: What Difference Could a Revolution Make? (San Francisco: Food
First/In stitute for Food and Development Policy, 1985), pp. 38, 42, 48.
54. Quoted in Alan Riding, New York Times, August I6, 1981.
55. See Michael Dodson and Laura Nizzi O’Shaughnessy, “Religion and Politics,” in Walker, ed.,
Nicaragua, pp. 132-33.
56. MADRE delegation interview in which the author participated with Sister Luz Beatriz Arellano,
Managua, March 1984.
Notes 417
57. NACLA delegation interview in which the author participated with Moises Hassan, Managua, Decem¬
ber 25, 1980.
58. Stephen M. Gorman and Thomas W. Walker, “The Armed Forces,” in Walker, ed., Nicaragua, p. 104.
59. Dickey, With the Contras, p. 78.
60. Ellen Ray, William Schaap and Louis Wolf, “The CIA Chooses a New Contra Leader,” CovertAction
Information Bulletin, Summer 1986, pp. 25-26.
61. Christian, Nicaragua, pp. 203-206.
64. Ray et al., “The CIA Chooses a New Contra Leader,” pp. 25-26.
65. Tomas Borge, El Axioma De La Esperanza (Bilbao, Spain: Desclee de Brouwer, 1984), p. 93.
66. Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador (JAex/York-. Times Books, 1984),
p. 24.
67. Quoted in Charles Clements, Witness to Wi3r(New York; Bantam Books, 1984), pp. 259-60.
68. Quoted in Bonner, Weakness and Deceit, p. 23.
69. Jeane Kirkpatrick, “The Hobbes Problem,” American Enterprise Institute Public Policy Papers 1981,
pp. 133-36, excerpted in Robert S. Leiken and Barry Rubin, eds.. The Central American Crisis Reader
(New York: Summit Books, 1987), p. 506. The passage also appears in her revised version of “U.S.
Security and Latin America,” in Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Dictatorships and Double Standards (Ne'N York:
American Enterprise Institute/Simon and Schuster, 1982), p. 82.
70. Sergio Ramirez, “Our Promises Were Made,” pp. 185-86.
71. New York Times, October 2, 1979. For Brzezinski’s perspective on the brigade issue, see Power and
Principle, pp. 346-52.
72. Bonner, Weakness and Deceit, p. 16O.
73. Ibid., pp. 168, 174.
74. Ibid., p. 176.
75. Robert Armstrong and Janet Shenk, El Salvador: The Eace of Revolution (Boston: South End Press,
1982), p. 139.
76. James LeMoyne, New York Times, November 24, 1987 and December 2, 1987.
78. Don Oberdorfer, Washington Post, and Joel Brinkley, New York Times, March 22, 1985.
79. Bonner, Weakness and Deceit, p. 214.
80. Allan Nairn, “Behind the Death Squads,” The Progressive, May 1984. Also see Kai Bird and Max Hol¬
land, “CIA Police Training,” The Nation, June 7, 1986.
81. Bob Woodward, Vet'/(New York; Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 262, citing Philip Taubman, New York
Times, March 22, 1984.
82. James LeMoyne, New York Times, December 2, 1987.
83. Bonner, Weakness and Deceit, p. 2l6.
84. Carter, Keeping Paith, p. 586.
85. Bonner, Weakness and Deceit, p. 221.
86. Ibid., p. 222.
87. Ibid., pp. 225-26.
88. Ibid., p. 227.
89. Ibid., p. 228.
90. Pastor, Condemned to Repetition, pp. 210-11, 218-19.
91. International Court of Justice, Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities In and Against
Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America), June 27, 1986, p. 75, par. I60. Also see Djuka
Julius, interview with Daniel Ortega, Excelsior(M^ySco City), June 24, 1987; quoted in the U.S. press
by Philip Bennett, Boston Globe, June 25, 1987 and Miami Herald, June 26, 1987.
92. For Pastor’s account of arms supply evidence and the decision to suspend aid, see Condemned to
Repetition, pp. 225-28.
93. Paul E. Sigmund, “Latin America: Change or Continuity?” Foreign Affairs: America and the World
1981, p. 638; Juan de Onis, New York rzm^5, January 23, 1981; Miami Herald, February 17, 1981.
94. Philip Geyelin, Washington Post, October 13, 1980, citing NBC White Paper, “The Castro Connec¬
tion.”
95. Newsweek, November 8, 1982, p. 44.
97. Viron P. Vaky, “Hemispheric Relations: ‘Everything is Part of Everything Else,”’ Foreign Affairs: America
and the World 1980, p. 622.
chapter 3: Reagan Strikes Back

1. Quoted in Alexander Cockburn, The Nation, November 10, 1984.
2. Ronnie Dugger, On Reagan: The Man and His Presidency York-. McGraw-Hill, 1983), p. 518.
3. Committee of Santa Fe, A New Inter-American Policy for the Eighties (Washington, DC: Council for
Inter-American Security, 1980), pp. ii, 1-2.
4. Ibid., pp. 20, 45, 53.
5. “Soviet Geopolitical Momentum: Myth or Menace?” The Defense Monitor XV:5,1986, Center for Defense
Information, Washington, DC.
6. Quoted in ibid., p. 8.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 31.
10. Alexander Cockburn, The Nation, February 15, 1986, citing John Simpson and Jane Bennett, The Dis¬
appeared.
11. Jeane Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Commentary, November 1979, p. 34. Also
see “U.S. Security and Latin America,” Commentary, ]2inu2ivy 1981.
12. Tom Farer, “Reagan’s Latin America,” New York Review of Books, March 19, 1981, p. 10.
13- Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” p. 44.
14. Dugger, On Reagan, p. 521.
15. Reagan quote and Amnesty International statistics cited in ibid., p. 383.
16. “Nicaragua,” Latin American Forecasting Study, Business International Corporation, August 1980.
17. Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House QAqw York-. Summit Books,
1983), pp. 274, 294-95 on Chile.
18. C. DiGiovanniJr., “U.S. Policy and the Marxist Threat to Central America,” Heritage Foundation Back¬
grounder, October 15, 1980.
19. Alan Riding, New York Times, November 14, 1980.
20. Alexander Haig, Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy {Ne'w York: Macmillan, 1984), pp. 99-
100.
21. Author’s interview with Rita Delia Casco, Managua, May 9, 1986.
22. Haig, Caveat, pp. 108-09, 145.
23. Steven Emerson, Secret WarriorsQSevj York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1988), p. 122.
24. Alan Riding, New York Times, February 12,1981; quoting Cruz; UPI, March 25,1981, quoting Bush nell.
25. Tom Barry, The Destabilization of Nicaragua {Albuquerque, NM: The Resource Center, 1986), p. 11;
Don Oberdorfer, Washington Post, August 4, 1982.
26. Jeff McConnell, “Counterrevolution in Nicaragua: the US Connection,” in Peter Rosset and John Vander-
meer, eds.. The Nicaragua Reader: Documents of a Revolution Under Fire (New York: Grove Press,
revised ed. 1983), p. 183.
Notes 419
27. George Black and Judy Butler, “Target Nicaragua,” NACLA Report on January-February
1982, p. 21.
29. Edward Walsh, Washington Post, April 2, 1981.
30. Juan de Onis, New York Times, February 20, 1981.
31. Boston Globe, February 23, 1981; Juan de Onis, New York Times, FeJ^ruary 23, 1981.
32. Dan Hallin, “The Media Go to War—From Vietnam to Central America,” NACLA Report on the Americas,
July-August, 1983, pp. 3-4.
33. Juan de Onis, New York Times, February 24, 1981.
34. Mark Hertsgaard, “How Reagan Seduced Us,” Village Voice, September 18, 1984, p. 17.
35. Quoted in New York Times, October 19, 1984.
36. For an unveiled look at Henry Kissinger, see Hersh, The Price of Power.
37. Quoted in Noam Chomsky, “Introduction” to Morris Morley and James Petras, The Reagan Administra¬
tion and Nicaragua: How Washington Constructs Its Case for Counterrevolution in Central America
(New York: Institute for Media Analysis/Monograph Series No. 1, 1987), pp. 3-4.
38. James Petras, “White Paper on the White Paper,” The Nation, March 28, 1981.
39. Jonathan Kwitny, Wall Street Journal, June 8, 1981. Also see John Dinges, Los Angeles Times, March
17, 1981 and In These Times, April 1-7, 1981; Ralph McGehee, The Nation, April 11, 1981; Robert
Kaiser, Washington Post, ]une: 9, 1981.
40. Juan de Onis, New York Times, June 10, 1981.
41. Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World (New York: Penguin, 1984),
p. 369.
42. Warner Poelchau, ed.. White Paper Whitewash: Interviews with Philip Agee on the CIA and El Salvador
(New York: Deep Cover Books, 1981), p. 101.
43. Bonner, Weakness and Deceit, p. 258, citing journalists Craig Pyes and Laurie Becklund on the
D Aubuisson connection.
44. Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League (New York: Dodd, Meade & Company,
1986), p. 307, fn. 20, quoting Craig Pyes.
45. Haig, Caveat, pp. 138-39.
46. Ibid, p. 19.
47. Tomas Borge, “The Second Anniversary of the Nicaraguan Revolution,” in Sandinistas Speak, p. 132.
48. “Did Nicaragua Say What the U.S. Says It Said?” New York Times, March 30, 1985.
49. Eldon Kenworthy, “Selling the Policy,” in Thomas W. Walker, ed., Reagan versus the Sandinistas
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987), galleys, p. 154, citing Washington Post, October 4, 1983.
50. Don Oberdorfer and Patrick E. Tyler, Washington Post, May 8, 1983. A censored copy of the signed
finding appears in Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, Ap¬
pendix A, Vol. 2 (Source Documents), p. 1156.
51. Bernard Gwertzman, New York Times, March 19, 1981.
53. Richard Halloran, New York Times, March 15, 1981.
55. Joanne Omang, Washington Post, ]2in\jL2iry 1, 1987.
56. Newsweek, November 8, 1982, p. 44.
57. Quoted in Allan Nairn, “Endgame: A Special Report on U.S. Military Strategy in Central America,”
NACLA Report on the Americas, May-June 1984, p. 29.
Chapter 4: The Avengers

1. NACLA delegation interview in which the author participated with Moises Hassan, December 25, 1980.
2. Martha Honey, “Contra coverage—Paid for by the CIA,” Columbia Journalism Review, March-April
1987, p. 32.
3. Eddie Adams, “Exiles Rehearse For The Day They Hope Will Come,” Parade, March 15, 1981.
4. Jo Thomas, New York Times, March 17, 1981.
5. National Security Archive, The Chronology York: Warner Books, 1987), p. 8., citing Wall Street
Journal, ]2eo\x2sy 15, 1987.
6. Peter Cary, “The Old boys’ role in the Iran-Contra affair,” U.S. News and World Report, August 10, 1987.
7. Art Harris, Washington Post, August 16, 1981.
8. Dickey, With the Contras, p. 82. Also see Congressional Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, The
Contra High Command, March 1986, p. 7.
11. Allan Nairn, “The Guatemalan Connection,” Central America Update Specisd Report, December 1980,
p. 28.
12. Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, frontpiece.
13. Ibid., p. 35.
14. Ibid., p. 24.
15. Quoted in Joe Conason and Murray Waas, “The Old Right’s New Crusade,” Village Voice, October
22, 1985.
16. Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, pp. 48-49, 54-58.
17. Ibid., pp. 75, 111.
18. Lemoux, Cry of the People, pp. 75-76, 143-44.
19. See ibid., pp. 463-670.
20. Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, p. 93.
21. Ibid., p. 101.
22. Ibid., pp. 92-93.
23. Ibid., p. 65.
24. Ibid., p. 60; Fred Clarksqn, “Moon’s Law: ‘God Is Phasing Out Democracy,”’ Covert Action Lnforma-
tion Bulletin, Spring 1987, p. 36.
25. Anderson and Anderson, pp. 125-29, 279.
26. Clarkson, “Moon’s Law,” p. 44; CAUSA USA brochure.
27. Frank Greve, Philadelphia Inquirer, December 20, 1987.
28. Eric Alterman, “In Moon’s Orbit,” The New Republic, October 27, 1986, p. 13.
29. Quoted in Mark Jenkins, “Rebels Outside of CAUSA,” Washington), December 11-17,1987.
Also see James Ridgeway, “Moonrise over Washington,” Village Vb/ce, January 19, 1988.
31. Ibid., p. 152.
32. Diana Johnstone, “Contriving support for contra forces,” In These Times, November 12-18, 1986.
33. See Ramsey Clark, et al. Report of a U.S.-Philippine Fact-Finding Mission, May 20-30, 1987.
34. Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Laurel/Dell,
1980), p. 207.
35. Anderson and Anderson, p. 150.
36. Conversation with Chip Berlet, Political Research Associates, Cambridge, MA, April 13, 1988.
37. Chip Berlet, “The Hunt for Red Menace: Covert McCarthyism, the FBI and the Political Right,” un¬
published mss., March 1988; Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, pp. 155-56.
38. Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, The New Right and the Reagan Administration (Cambridge, MA: Political
Research Associates, forthcoming 1988) and Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance (New York:
Vintage Books, 1981), pp. 417, 422-24.
39. Allan Nairn, “Reagan Administration Links With Guatemala’s Terrorist Government,” CovertAction
In formation Bulletin, April 1981, pp. 19, 21.
Notes 421
40. Cited in Americas Watch, Guatemala Revised: How the Reagan Administration Finds “Improvements”
in Human Rights in Guatemala (New York: September 1985), p. 6.
41. Naim, “Reagan Administration Links,” p. 21.
42. Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, p. I4l.
43. Ibid., p. 148.
44. Ibid., pp. 254-61; Letter from Reagan to WACL, August 31, 1984.
46. Ibid., p. 270.
47. Conason and Waas, “The Old Right’s New Cmsade,” p. 19.
48. Author’s interview with Edgar Chamorro, Boston, November 24, 1986.
49. Cited by Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, p. 120.
50. See The Report of the Argentine National Commission, Nunca Mas [Never Again] (New York: Farrar
Straus Giroux, 1986).
51. For U.S. military course descriptions see Lernoux, Cry of the People, pp. 180-81.
52. See Aldo C. Vacs, “From Hostility to Partnership: The New Character of Argentine-Soviet Relations,”
in Augusto Varas, ed., Soviet-Latin American Relations in the 1980s (Boulder, CO: Westview Press,
1987) and Marc Edelman, “The Other Superpower: The USSR and Latin America: 1917-1987,” NACLA
Report on January-February 1987.
53. Anderson and Anderson, p. 143.
54. Henrik Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, and International Fascism (Boston: South
End Press, 1980), p. 217, fn. 19.
55. Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, p. 147; Kai Hermann, “Klaus Barbie: A Killer’s Career,”
CovertAction Information Bulletin, Winter 1986. Also see Erhard Dabringhaus, Klaus Barbie
(Washington, DC: Acropolis Books, 1984), pp. 179-80.
56. Hermann, “Klaus Barbie.” On Bolivia’s cocaine coup, see Gregorio Selser, Bolivia: El Cuartelazo de
Los Cocadolares iCoyo2iC2in, Mexico: MEX-SUR, 1982).
57. Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, pp. 148, 224.
58. Transcript of Hector Frances’ videotaped testimony, December 1, 1982, Mexico City. Also see Chris¬
topher Dickey, Washington Post, December 2, 1982.
59. Bermudez is cited by John Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars (New York: William Morrow, 1986), p. 381.
60. Transcript of Hector Frances.
61. Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, pp. lAlAS.
62. Ellen Ray and William Schaap, “Vernon Walters: Crypto-diplomat and Terrorist,” CovertAction Infor¬
mation Bulletin, Summer 1986.
63. See Paul Horowitz and Holly Sklar, “South Atlantic Triangle,” NACLA Report on the Americas, May-
June 1982, pp. 3-5.
64. Affidavit of Edgar Chamorro, Washington, DC, September 5, 1985, for the International Court of Jus¬
tice, Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities In and Against Nicaragua.
66. National Security Archive, The Chronology, p. 9.
68. Christopher Dickey, “The Proconsuls,” Rolling Stone, August 18, 1983.
69. William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Pock et
Books, 1979), pp. 268-69.
70. Ibid., pp. 270-72.
71. Dickey, “The Proconsuls.”
72. Shawcross, Sideshow, p. 269.
74. Roy Gutman, “Nicaragua: America’s Diplomatic Charade,” Foreign Policy, Fall 1984, p. 5. Also see
Dial Torgerson, Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1981.
75. Gutman, “Nicaragua,” pp. 4-5.

76. Quoted in Joanne Omang, Washington Post, ]2inu2iVf 1, 1987.
78. See New York Times, ]\me 11, 1984.
80. Gutman, “Nicaragua,” pp. 7-8.
81. Bernard Gwertzman, New York Times, August 29, 1981.
82. Gutman, “Nicaragua,” p. 9. Also see Don Oberdorfer, New York Times, December 10, 1981.
83. Gutman, “Nicaragua,” p. 10.
84. Dickey, With the Contras, p. Ill; see pp. 109-11 for Enders’ account of the talks.
85. Alan Riding, New York Times, August 24, 1981.
86. Emerson, Secret Warriors, p. 122.
87. Jackson Diehl, Washington Post, November 6, 1981.
88. Leslie H. Gelb, New York Times, November 5, 1981; Hedrick Smith, New York Times, November 6,
1981.
89. UPI, New York Times, November 16, 1981; Christian Science Monitor, November 24, 1981.
90. Dickey, With the Contras, pp. 104, 107.
91. Peter Goldman, et al., “Campaign ’84: The Inside Story,” Newsweek Election Extra, November-
De cem ber, 1984, p. 32.
92. James McCartney, Miami Herald, November 13, 1981; John M. Goshko, Washington Post, November
13, 1981.
Chapter 5: Semi-Secret War

1. Quoted in Robert Matthews, “Sowing Dragon’s Teeth; The U.S. War Against Nicaragua,” NACLA Report
on the Americas, July-August 1986, p. 23.
2. Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) Update, February 1982.
3. Cited in William LeoGrande, “The United States and Nicaragua,” in Walker, ed., Nicaragua, p. 435.
4. See Craig Nelson, “Why Reagan Likes the Leaks,” In These Times, May 5-11, 1982.
5. Don Oberdorfer and Patrick E. Tyler, Washington Post, February 14, 1982.
6. Patrick E. Tyler and Bob Woodward, Washington Post, March 10, 1982.
7. Leslie H. Gelb, New York Times, March 14, 1982.
8. Saul Landau and Craig Nelson, “The C.I.A. Rides Again,” The Nation, March 6, 1982.
9. Testimony of David MacMichael, International Court of Justice, Verbatim Record, September 13, 1985,
pp. 42-44.
10. James LeMoyne, “Can the Contras Go On?” New York Times Magazine, October 4, 1987, p. 66.
11. See Louis Wolf, “The ‘Cyclone’ Moves in at Langley,” CovertAction Information Bulletin, April 1981.
12. Murray Waas and Jeff Chester, The Nation, August 8-15, 1981.
13. U.S. News& World Report, November 5, 1984.
14. Don Oberdorfer and Patrick E. Tyler, Washington Post, May 8, 1983.
15. Joanne Omang, Washington Post, ]2imx2iry 1, 1987.
16. Oberdorfer and Tyler, Washington Post, May 8, 1983; Presidential finding, December 1, 1981, Iran-
Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 2, p. 1024.
17. Ibid.
18. Juan O. Tamayo, Miami Herald, December 19, 1982.
19. “The Fire Next Door,” Newsweek, March 1, 1982, p. 20.
20. See Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars, pp. 261-96.
Notes 423
21. See Christopher Robbins, Air America (New York; Avon Books, 1979) and The Ravens (New York:
Crown Publishers, 1987).
22. Robbins, Air America, pp. 127-28; 225-43.
23. Jim Naureckas and Richard Ryan, “The Lessons of Laos,” In These Times, April 15-21, 1987.
24. Robbins, Air America, pp. 100-101, 111.
25. Quoted in Philippe Bourgois, “Ethnic Minorities,” in Walker, ed., Nicaragua, p. 211.
26. Ibid., pp. 203-04.
27. Americas Watch, TheMiskitos in Nicaragua 1981-1984, November 1984.
28. Reed Brody, Contra Terror in Nicaragua (ôsion: South End Press, 1985), pp. 121-23.
29. Transcript of “D’Escoto/Kirkpatrick,” The MacNeil-Lehrer Report, WNET/Thirteen, February 4, 1982,
p. 5.
30. Americas Watch, Miskitos in Nicaragua, p. 17.
31. Cynthia Brown, ed.. With Friends Like These: The Americas Watch Report on Human Rights and U.S.
Policy in Latin America OAew York: Pantheon Books, 1985), galleys, p. 146.
32. Bourgois, “Ethnic Minorities,” p. 205.
33. Senate floor debate, April 20, 1988.
34. Americas Watch, Miskitos in Nicaragua, pp. 19-23.
35. Brown, ed.. With Friends Like These, galleys, pp. 145-53.
36. Americas Watch, Guatemala Revised, pp. 10-13-
37. Alan Riding, New York Times, December 13, 1981; New York Times, December 5, 1981.
38. Jo Thomas, New York Times, December 23, 1981.
39. Frank J. Prial, New York Times, January 9, 1982.
40. New York Times, January 8, 1982; Judith Miller, New York Times, January 9, 1982.
42. Washington Post, ]\Ay 10, 1982.
AA. Jacobsen Report, p. 19.
45. Robinson and Norsworthy, David and Goliath, pp. 48-49; Black and Butler, “Target Nicaragua,” p.
35.
46. Black and Butler, “Target Nicaragua,” p. 27.
47. Jim Morrell and William Jesse Biddle, “Central America: The Financial War,” International Policy
Report, March 1983; World Bank News Release No. 82/41, January 14, 1982.
48. Quoted in Bernard Gwertzman, New York Times, February 3, 1982.
49. Alan Riding, New York Times, February 5, 1982.
50. Bonner, Weakness and Deceit, pp. 262-64.
51. Quoted in New York Times, February 8, 1982.
52. Alan Riding, New York Times, February 22, 1982.
53. Alan Riding, New York Times, March 12, 1982.
54. LeoGrande, “The United States and Nicaragua,” p. 438.
56. LeoGrande, “The United States and Nicaragua,” p. 439. Also see John Goshko, Washington Post, ]\}\y
8, 1982.
57. Philip Taubman, New York Times, March 10, 1982.
58. Warren Hoge, New York Times, March 10, 1982.
59. Black and Butler, “Target Nicaragua,” p. 41. Also see Don Oberdorfer, Washington Post, March 11,
1982.
60. Testimony of Lt. Col. John H. Buchanan, USMC (ret.), before the Subcommittee on Inter-American
Affairs of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, September 21, 1982, reprinted in NACLA Report
on the Americas, September-October, 1982.
61. Nairn, “Endgame,” p. 49.

62. Buchanan testimony.
63. Marc Edelman, “Lifelines: Nicaragua and the Socialist Countries,” NACLA Report on the Americas, May-
June 1985, pp. 49-50; Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1985.
64. U.S. Intelligence Performance on Central America: Achievements and Selected Instances of Concern,
Staff report, Subcommittee on Oversight and Evaluation, House Permanent Select Committee on In¬
telligence, September 22, 1982, p. 21.
65. Naim, “Endgame,” p. 49, citing Miami Herald, September 24, 1982.
66. Philip Taubman, New York Times, March 13 and March 14, 1982.
67. “Taking Aim at Nicaragua,” Newsweek, March 22, 1982.
68. Robinson and Norsworthy, David and Goliath, p. 48.
69. New York Times, March 17, 1982.
70. Oberdorfer and Tyler, Washington Post, May 8, 1983.
71. New York Times, March 26, 1982.
72. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Statement in the UN Security Council on the complaint by Nicaragua, March 25,
1982, in The Reagan Phenomenory—and Other Speeches on Foreign Policy (Nff2iS\inôn, DC: American
Enterprise Institute, 1983), pp. 184-85.
73. National Security Council, “U.S. Policy in Central America and Cuba Through F.Y. ‘84, Summary Paper,”
April 1982, excerpted in New York Times, April 7, 1983. Also see Raymond Bonner, New York Times,
April 7, 1983.
74. Robert H. Holden, “Corporate Officials Embrace Latin Dictators at Private Chamber of Commerce Ses¬
sion,” Multinational Monitor, June 1982.
75. Defense Intelligence Agency, Weekly Intelligence Summary, July I6, 1S>82, released by CounterSpy,
July 28, 1983. Also see Robert Parry, Associated Press wireservice, August 19, 1983.
76. Affidavit of Edgar Chamorro.
77. Author’s interview with Edgar Chamorro, November 24, 1986.
78. Honduran Federation of Unemployed, Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), May 23, 1985,
cited in Kombluh, Price of Intervention, p. 229, fn. 95.
79. Horowitz and Sklar, “South Atlantic Triangle,” p. 35.
80. Ibid., p. 37.
81. Alan Riding, New York Times, May I6, 1982.
82. Charles Roberts, “ ‘Commander Zero’ Resurfaces,” in Rosset and Vandermeer, eds., Nicaragua Reader,
pp. 220-23.
83. Christopher Dickey, Washington Post, April 16, 1982.
84. FSLN Communique to the Heroic People of Nicaragua and to the World, April I6, 1982.
85. Alan Riding, New York Times, July 2, 1982.
86. Bourgois, “Ethnic Minorities,” pp. 204, 206.
87. Remarks made to Jon Lee Anderson, quoted in Jack Anderson, Washington Post, September 30, 1984,
cited in Americas Watch, Human Rights in Nicaragua: Reagan, Rhetoric and Reality, ]n\y 1985, p. 71.
88. Bourgois, “Ethnic Minorities,” p. 206.
89. Dickey, With the Contras, pp. 148-49.
90. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, November 1987
(hereafter Iran-Contra Report) p. 32; Memorandum from Donald Gregg to William Clark, July 12,
1982, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 2, pp. 1019-22.
Chapter 6: Fire, Smoke and Mirrors

1. Kornbluh, Price of Intervention, pp. 174, 259, fn. 63, citing Boston Globe, April 20, 1982.
Notes 425
2. Quoted in Dickey, With the Contras, p. 115.

3. Teofilo Cabestrero, Blood of the Innocent QA^Lryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1985), galleys, pp. 93-
94.
4. Brody, Contra Terror, p. 63.
5. Quoted in Marlise Simons, New York Times, December 14, 1982.
6. Brody, Contra Terror, pp. 51-52; Alexander Cockbum and James Ridgeway, “Eyewitness to Terror,”
Village Voice, July 12, 1983.
7. Brody, Contra Terror, pp. 52-53.
8. New York Times, April 2, 1982.
9. CAHI, From Banana Cases to Contra Bases: A Chronology of US.-Honduran Relations January 1977
to July 1986, Washington, DC, 1986, p. 19.
10. Philip Taubman, New York Times, December 4, 1982.
11. Boston Glohe, August 12, 1982.
12. CAHI, Banana Cases to Contra Bases, p. 13.
13. Philip Taubman and Raymond Bonner, New York Times, April 3, 1983.
14. “America’s Secret War,” Newsweek, November 8, 1982, pp. 42-55.
15. Kevin Danaher, Phillip Berryman and Medea Benjamin, Help or Hindrance? United States Economic
Aid in Central America iSdin Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1987), p. 86.
16. Karl Grossman, Nicaragua: America’s New Vietnam?(S3.g Harbor, New York: The Permanent Press,
1984), pp. 12-13.
17. Anderson and Anderson, Inside the league, pp. 224-27.
18. Grossman, Nicaragua, pp. 8, 15.
20. Edgar Chamorro with Jefferson Morley, “Confessions of a ‘Contra,’ ” New Republic, August 5, 1985,
pp. 18-21.
21. Edgar Chamorro, Packaging the Contras: A Case of CIA Disinformation (New York: Institute for Media
Analysis, Monograph Series No. 2, 1987) p. 13.
22. Chamorro, “Confessions of a ‘Contra,’ ” pp. 18-21.
23. Ibid., pp. 20-21.
25. Chamorro, Packaging the Contras, p. 14.
27. Quoted in Omang, Washington Post, ]2in\i2iry 1, 1987.
29. Omang, Washington Post, ]-3inu2iVy 1, 1987.
30. Quoted in CAHI, US.-Nicaraguan Relations: Chronology of Policy and Impact January 1981-January
f9S4 (Expanded Edition), p. 12.
31. Matthews, “Sowing Dragon’s Teeth,” p. 23, citing Washington Post, February 24, 1985.
32. Letter from William H. Taft IV, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, to Henry R. Wray,
As sistant General Counsel of the U.S. General Accounting Office, February 2, 1984.
33- Affidavit of Edgar Chamorro.
34. Robinson and Norsworthy, David and Goliath, p. 6l.
35. Taubman and Bonner, New York Times, April 3, 1983.
37. Martha Honey, “Contra coverage—paid for by the CIA,” Columbia Journalism Review, March-April
1987.
39. Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald, April 17, 1983.
41. Brody, Contra Terror, pp. I6O-6I, 163.
42. Cabestrero, Blood of the Innocent, galleys, pp. 94-97.

43. CAHI, U.S.-Nicaraguan Relations, p. 14.
44. Leslie H. Gelb, New York Times, April 7, 1983.
45. James LeMoyne, “The Secret War Boils Over,” Newsweek, April 11, 1983, p. 50.
46. CAHI, Update 2-J, April 21, 1983-
47. “The Contras—Chronicle of a Defeat Foretold,” Envio, February 1987, pp. 22-25.
48. Author’s interview with Flor de Maria Monterrey, Managua, April 28, 1986.
49. Gorman and Walker, “The Armed Forces,” p. 112.
50. See Maxine Molyneux, “Women,” in Walker, ed., Nicaragua, pp. 149-50.
52. Nicaraguan Memorial, International Court of Justice, pp. 86-87.
53. Business editorial. May 23, 1983, p. 212.
54. “Central America: Why the Crisis Will Deepen,” Business Week, May 23, 1983, pp. 62-70.
55. Americas Watch, Human Rights in Nicaragua, April 1984, pp. 20-21, 23, 40-41, 44-47; Brown, ed..
With Friends Like These, galleys, p. 115.
56. CAHI, Update 2:11, August 3, 1983 and 3:16, May 24, 1984.
57. Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald, April 20, 1983.
58. Business Week, May 23, 1983.
59. Robert J. McCartney, Washington Post, jxAy 1, 1983.
60. Direccion General de Divulgacion y Prensa de la JGRN, Conspiracion dela C.IA. en Nicaragua, ]une
1983.
61. Latin America Weekly Report, June 17, 1983.
64. Philip Taubman, New York Times, May 23, 1983.
65. David Rogers and David Ignatius, Wall Street Journal, March 6, 1985.
66. New York Times, May 24, 1983.
67. Frank McNeil, “Stuck on the Contras,” Washington Post, March 1, 1987; John M. Goshko, Washington
Post, February 11, 1987; Frontline, “War on Nicaragua,” WGBH/Boston, April 21, 1987.
68. Nicaraguan Memorial, International Court of Justice, p. 29.
69. Sojourners, March 1983, p. 19.
70. Interview with David MacMichael by John Lamperti, November 22, 1985. See Lamperti, What Are We
Afraid O/? (Boston: South End Press, 1988).
71. Juan O. Tamayo, Miami Herald, June 5, 1983.
72. Bernard Gwertzman, New York Times, May 29, 1983.
73. Time, August 8, 1983, p. 20.
74. Leslie H. Gelb, New York Times, June 14, 1983; Rogers and Ignatius, Wall Street Journal, March 6,
1985.
75. National Security Council, “Strategy for Central America,” July 6, 1983.
76. Philip Taubman, New York Times, July 17, 1983.
77. Philip Taubman, New York Times, July 23, 1983.
78. “Pressure in Paramaribo,” CoveiiAction Information Bulletin, Winter 1984, p. 6.
79. Marlise Simons, New York Times, July 24, 1983.
80. Steven V. Roberts, New York Times, July 29, 1983.
81. Fred Kaplan, Boston Globe, January 3, 1987. Also see National Security Archive, The Chronology, pp.
45-46, citing Kaplan’s article and CBS News, December 8, 1986.
82. “Into the Fray: Facts on the US Military in Central America,” The Defense Monitor 1984,
83. Newsweek, August 1, 1983; Time, August 8, 1983.
84. Charles Mohr, New York Times, July 31, 1983.
Notes 427
85. Atlanta Constitution, August 4, 1983.
Chapter 7: Shockwaves
1. El Nuevo Diario, September 9, 1983.
2. Jeff Gerth, New York Tunes, October 6, 1983.
3. Report of the President’s Special Review Board (hereafter Tower Board Report), February 26, 1987, p.
C-1; Presidential finding, September 19, 1983, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 1, pp. 252-54.
5. Alexander Cockbum and James Ridgeway, “Reaganism Unchallenged,” Village Voice, October 25,1983.
Also see Woodward, Veil, pp. 230-31, on Doty.
6. Chamorro, “Confessions of a Contra,” p. 22.
8. Cited in Brody, Contra Terror, p. l68.
11. Kombluh, Price of Intervention, p. 47.
12. Embassy of Nicaragua, Washington, DC, Press Release, October 12, 1983.
13. Woodward, Veil, p. 281.
14. Transcript, New York Times, October 20, 1983.
15. Kombluh, Price of Intervention, pp. 144-45, citing New York Times, June 8, 1984.
16. Seymour M. Hersh, “Who’s in Charge Here?” New York Times Magazine, November 22, 1987, pp. 35,
62.
17. Emerson, Secret Warriors, pp. 45-47, 235.
18. Hersh, “Who’s in Charge,” p. 67.
19. Emerson, Secret Warriors, pp. 92-93.
20. Hersh, “Who’s in Charge,” pp. 69, 71.
21. Frank Greve and Ellen Warren, Miami Herald, December l6, 1984; another version appeared in the
Philadelphia Inquirer, December l6, 1984. Also see “Fort Huachuca Buildup: War Technology in the
Desert,” CovertAction Information Bulletin, Winter 1984, pp. 31-33.
22. Richard Gabriel, Military Incompetence: Why the American Military Doesn’t Win (New York: Hill and
Wang, 1985), pp. 150, 182-83.
23. Washington Post, December 18 and 20, 1984.
24. Jay Peterzell, Reagan’s Secret Wars (Washington, DC: Center for National Security Studies, 1984), p.
77.
25. Clarence Lusane, “Reagan’s Big Lie,” CovertAction Information Bulletin, Spring-Summer 1983, p. 31.
26. W. Frick Curry, “Grenada: Force as First Resort,” International Policy Report, January 1984, p. 2.
27. Ibid.
28. Quoted in Seymour Hersh, “Operation Urgent Fury,” Frontline, WGBH/Boston, Febmary 2, 1988.
29. Ellen Ray and Bill Schaap, “U.S. Cmshes Caribbean Jewel,” CovertAction Information Bulletin, Winter
1984, p. 4.
30. Ibid., p. 5.
32. Ray and Schaap, “U.S. Cmshes Caribbean Jewel,” p. 13, citing Cleveland Plain-Dealer, November 3,
1983.
33. Fitzroy Ambursley and James Dunkerley, Grenada Whose Freedom) (London: Latin America Bureau,
1984), pp. 85-86, citing Los Angeles Times, November 6, 1983.
34. New York Times, October 28, 1983.
35. Ray and Schaap, “U.S. Crushes Caribbean Jewel,” p. 19, citing Washington Post, November 21, 1983.
36. Gabriel, Military Incompetence, pp. 182-85.
37. Newsweek, }\Ay 27, 1987, p. 38.
38. Quoted in Philip Taubman, New York Times, February 8, 1984.
39. Joseph B. Treaster, New York Times, July 25, 1984.
41. Tom Wicker, New York Times, January 25, 1985.
42. Martin Burcharth, The Nation, March 1, 1986.
43. Gerald M. Boyd, New York Times, February 21, 1986.
44. Gabriel, Military Incompetence, p. 150.
45. Bernard Gwertzman, New York Times, October 30, 1983.
46. Gabriel, Military Incompetence, p. 177.
47. Linda Drucker, Christian Science Monitor, November 1, 1983; Jeff Gerth, New York Times, November
11, 1983; Patrick E. Tyler, Washington Post, November 12, 1983.
48. Jack Anderson, Washington Post, November l6, 1983.
49. Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Washington, DC, Press Release, November 18,1983, cited in Norswor-
thy and Robinson, David and Goliath, p. 77.
50. Dickey, With the Contras, pp. 259-60.
51. Nicaragua Memorial, International Court of Justice, pp. 41-42, citing Congressional Record Yi 8394,
October 20, 1983.
52. Edward Cody, Washington Post, 31, 1984.
53. CAHI, Update 2-3\, December 15, 1983.
54. Hedrick Smith, New York Times, December 1, 1983.
55. Iran-Contra Report, p. 36.
56. Ibid.
57. Nicaragua Memorial, International Court of Justice, pp. 47-48; Time, April 23, 1984, p. 24; David
Ig natius and David Rogers, Wall Street Journal, March 5, 1985.
58. Washington Post, ]2inn2iry 29, 1984.
59. Kombluh, Price of Intervention, p. 252, fn. 68, citing Pacific New Service, March 29, 1984.
60. Ellen Ray and Bill Schaap, “The War Widens,” Covert Action Information Bulletin, Spring 1984, pp. 4-
5. Also see Joel Brinkley, New York Times, April 22, 1984.
61. National Security Archive, Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contras: A Chronology of Events
and Individuals, (hereafter Chronology II) (Washington, DC: 1987), pp. 62, 70-71, citing Newsday,
May 24, 1987.
62. David Rogers and David Ignatius, Wall Street Journal, March 6, 1985.
63. Iran-Contra Report, p. 36; Memorandum from Oliver North and Constantine Menges to McFarlane,
November 4, 1983 and Memorandum from McFarlane to Reagan, November 7, 1983, in Iran-Contra
Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 1, pp. 197-98.
65. Time, April 23, 1984, p. 20.
66. CAHI, Update April 5, 1984.
67. Peter Kornbluh, “The Covert War,” in Walker, ed., Reagan vs. the Sandinistas, galleys, p. 26.
68. Stephen Kinzer, New York Times, March 14, 1984.
69. Philip Taubman, New York Times, April 9, 1984.
70. “Explosion Over Nicaragua,” Time, April 23, 1984, p. 20.
71. MADRE delegation interview in which the author participated with Tomas Borge, Managua, March
1984.
72. New York Times, April 11, 1984.
73. Time, April 23, 1984, pp. 22-23.
74. Martin Tolchin, New York Times, April 11, 1984.
Notes 429
75. New York TYmes editorial, April 11, 1984.

76. Nicaragua Memorial, International Court of Justice, p. 44; New York Times, May 9, 1984.
78. CAHI, Update ^-.21, September 10, 1985.
79. Stuart Taylor Jr., New York Times, April 13, 1984.
80. Time, April 23, 1984, p. 18.
81. John Vincour, New York Times, May 11, 1984.
82. New York Times, January 19, 1985.
83. NicaraguaInformacion, “Nicaragua’s Case at the Hague,” 1986.
84. Peter W. Rodino, “International Law,” Christian Science Monitor, February 27, 1985.
85. Bernard Gwertzman, New York Times, July 19, 1983.
86. The Report of the President’s National Bipartisan Commission on Central America (New York: Mac Mil-
lan Publishing Company, 1984), pp. Ill, 135, 138, 153-55.
87. Robert J. McCartney, Washington Post, October l6, 1983.
88. MADRE delegation interview in which the author participated with Nora Astorga, Managua, March
1984.
89. New York Times, December 31, 1983.
90. MADRE delegation interview in which the author participated with Ambassador Anthony Quainton,
91. Eugene Stockwell, Christianity and Crisis, ]2inu2.rf 23, 1984.
92. Carlos Puentes, “Force Won’t Work in Nicaragua,” New York Times, July 24, 1983; also see Puentes,
“Are You Listening, Henry Kissinger,” January 1984.
93. Interview with William Casey, U.S. News& World Report, April 23, 1984.
94. NARMIC, Invasion: A Guide to the U.S. Military Presence in Central America (Philadelphia: American
Friends Service Committee, 1985), p. 13.
95. Richard Halloran, New York Times, April 8, 1984; Hedrick Smith, New York Times, April 23, 1984.
97. Transcript, New York Times, May 10, 1984.
98. Gordon Mott, New York Times Magazine, October 14, 1984, p. 86.
99. James Ridgeway, Village Voice, ]\xnQ 19, 1984, p. 25.
100. Brody, Contra Terror, pp. 55-58, 175-
101. Nicaragua Memorial, International Court of Justice, p. 58, citing Congressional Record S 12865,
Oc tober 3, 1984.
Chapter 8: Terrorist Manuals

2. National Security Archive, Chronology II, p. 93.
3. See Philip Taubman, New York Times, October 29, 1984.
4. Quoted in Kornbluh, Price of Intervention, p. ^3.
5. Tayacan, Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, English translation by Library of Congress
Congressional Research Service, Languages Service, October 15, 1984, pp. 14-15.
6. Ibid., p. 10.
7. Ibid., pp. 11-12.
8. Ibid., pp 14-15.
9. Ibid., p. 24.
10. Ibid., pp. 26-28.
\
11. Ibid., pp. 31-32.

12. Ibid., p. 33.
13. Ibid., pp. 33-35.
16. Freedom Fighter’s Manual, translated and distributed by the Central American Historical Institute,
Washington, DC.
17. Robert Parry, Associated Press, The Hartford Courant, June 30, 1984.
18. Reporter Brian Barger analyzed it as early as July 26, 1984 for Pacific News Service.
19. See Joel Brinkley, New York Times, October 20 and 23, 1984.
20. Transcript, New York Times, October 22, 1984.
21. Transcript, November 3, 1984, cited in Nicaragua Memorial, International Court of Justice, p. 32; also
see New York Times, November 4, 1984.
22. Joel Brinkley, New York Times, October 22 and December 6, 1984.
24. Cited in Judgement, Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua,
International Court of Justice, June 27, 1986, pp. 56-57; also see Brinkley, New York Times, Decem¬
ber 6, 1984.
26. Ibid., p. 262; National Security Archive, Chronology II, p. 99; Bob Woodward, et al, “Players in the
Game,” Washington Post Weekly, December 22, 1986; Alfonso Chardy, Sam Dillon and Tim Golden,
Miami Herald, March 1, 1987.
27. Judgement, International Court of Justice, pp. 120, 139.
28. Americas Watch, Violations of the Laws of War by Both Sides in Nicaragua 1981-1985 (New York:
March 1985), pp. 4, 6.
29. Violations of the Laws of War by Both Sides in Nicaragua 1981-1985: First Supplement (New York:
June 1985), p. 4.
30. William Greider, “U.S.-Sponsored Terrorism: The CIA has its own Good Book for Christian soldiers,”
Rolling Stone, December 6, 1984.
Chapter 9: Ballots, Bullets and MIGs

1. Quoted in Hersh, Price of Power, p. 265.
2. NewsweekYXQCiion Extra, November-December 1984, p. 88.
3. Ibid., p. 4.
4. Ibid., p. 36.
5. Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, Rules of the Game: American Politics and the Central America Move¬
ment iY>osion-. South End Press, 1986), p. 24.
6. Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), p. 29. Also see Wal¬
ter Dean Burnham, “The 1980 Earthquake: Realignment, Reaction or What?” in Thomas Ferguson and
Joel Rogers, The Hidden Election OSevj York-. Pantheon, 1981).
7. Ferguson and Rogers, Right Turn, pp. 24-26.
8. See, for example, ibid., pp. 12-24.
9. William LeoGrande, Central America and Po//s (Washington Office on Latin America, May 1984),
p. 40.
10. Ibid., Appendix, Table 26.
11. Ibid., pp. 18-19.
12. Ibid., pp. 36-37.
Notes 431
13. Ibid., p. 23 and Appendix, Table 21.

14. David K. Shipler, New York Times, April 15, 1986. Also see Louis Harris, Inside America (New York:
Vintage Books, 1987), pp. 316-21.
15. Reagan interview of February 11, New York Times, February 12, 1985.
17. Roy Gutman, “How the 1984 Vote was Sabotaged,” The Nation, May 7, 1988.
18. Mark Cook, “The Reluctant Candidate,” The Nation, October 13, 1984.
19. Philip Taubman, New York Times, October 21, 1984.
20. Arturo J. Cruz, “Nicaragua’s Imperiled Revolution,” Foreign Affairs, Summer 1983, p. 1033.
22. Jose Luis Coraggio, Nicaragua: Revolution and Democracy {Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986), p. 88.
23. Tony Jenkins, “Nicaragua’s Disloyal Opposition,” The Nation, August 12, 1986.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Karl Bermann and Glenn Fiscella, “Nicaragua Votes,” A Special Report by the Tidewater Nicaragua
Project Foundation (Hampton, VA: 1984).
27. MAD RE delegation interview in which the author participated with Coordinadora President Luis Rivas
Leiva (who later joined the contras) and Enrique Meneses of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party,
28. See, for example, Fred Landis, “CIA Media Operations in Chile, Jamaica, and Nicaragua,” CovertAction
Information Bulletin, March 1982. Also see Centro de Comunicacion Intemacional, The Closing of La
Prensa: A Case of Freedom of the Press or of National Defense, Managua, July 1986.
29. Jacqueline Sharkey, Common Cause Magazine, September-October 1986, p. 36; Newsday, Miami
Herald, October 13, 1987.
30. Report of the Latin American Studies Association Delegation to Observe the Nicaraguan General Elec¬
tion of November 4, 1984, The Electoral Process in Nicaragua: Domestic and International Influen¬
ces, November 19, 1984, p. 19. Hereafter referred to as LASA Report.
31. Brody, Contra Terror, p. 178,
32. Robert J. McCartney, Washington Post, jnXy 30, 1984.
33. CAHI, Update 3:27, August 13, 1984.
35. LASA Report, p. 14.
36. Cook, “The Reluctant Candidate.”
37. McCartney, Washington Post, July 30, 1984.
39. Ibid., p. 30.
40. John B. Oakes, New York Times, November 15, 1984; LASA Report, p. 31. Also see Alexander Cock-
burn, The Nation, March 15 and May 10, 1986, for an account of U.S. bribery by PCD Youth Presi¬
dent Marvin Jose Corrales, and related New York Review of Booksletiots exchange on May 8, 1986.
41. LASA Report, pp. 8-9, 31.
42. Ibid., pp. 30-31.
43. Background paper for NSC meeting on Central America, October 30, 1984. See Alma Guillermoprieto
and David Hoffman, Washington Post, November 6, 1984, for a contemporaneous news report.
44. John Oakes, op ed.. New York Times, November 15, 1984.
45. Robinson and Norsworthy, David and Goliath, p. 172.
47. LASA Report, p. 26, fn. 41.
48. Ibid., pp. 65, 79, 182.
49. Coraggio, Nicaragua, p. 86; Brody, Contra Terror, p. 182.
51. Author’s interview with Jaime Benguechea, COSEP board member and president of the Chamber of
Industry, Managua, April 23, 1986.
53. Ibid., pp. 15, 23.
54. See Howard H. Frederick, “Electronic Penetration,” in Walker, ed., Reagan versus the Sandinistas.
55. LASA Report, pp. 14-15, 18.
56. CAHI, Update AAi, May 10, 1985.
57. LASA Report, pp. 22-27.
58. Ibid., p. 23.
59. Ibid., p. 32.
60. Ibid.
61. Lord Chitnis, The Election in Nicaragua: 4 November 1984, pp. 20-21.
62. Americas Watch, The Continuing Terror: Seventh Supplement to the Report on Human Rights in El
(New York, September 1985), pp. 151-52.
63. Cited in FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), Extra!, October/November 1987, p. 6.
64. ’’Double-standard reporting; Nicaragua and the networks,” Columbia Journalism Review, January-
February 1985, p. 17.
65. See, for example, Edward S. Herman, “The New York Times on the 1984 Salvadoran and Nicaraguan
Elections,” CovertAction Information Bulletin, Spring 1984; Jack Spence, “Second time around: how
to cover an election,” Columbia Journalism Review, March-April, 1984. Also see Edward S. Herman
and Frank Brodhead, Demonstration Elections (Boston: South End Press, 1984).
66. Stephen Kinzer, New York Times, November 5, 1984.
67. Philip Taubman, New York Times, November 5, 1984.
68. Author’s interview with Mauricio Diaz, Managua, May 7, 1986.
69. Author’s interview with Rafael Cordova Rivas, April 30, 1986.
70. CAHI, Update 6:34, October 28, 1987; 6:43, December 30, 1987. Also see Excelsior, December 30,
1986.
71. Author’s interview with Eduardo Coronado, Managua, May 7, 1986.
72. “Ortega Speaks Out,” Newsweek, October 15, 1984.
I'i. Jacobsen Report, p. 15.
75. Charlie Cole, “Our Spy on High: The Air Force’s SR-71 shows an eye for detail,” New York Times
Magazine, May 10, 1987. Also see James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security
Agen cjfNew York: Penguin Books, 1983), pp. 241-42.
76. Marc Cooper, “Nicaragua: Waiting for Uncle Sam,” Village Voice, November 27, 1984, p. 25.
77. Center for Defense Information Fact Sheet, November 9, 1984.
78. New York Times, November 9, 1984.
79. Cooper, “Nicaragua,” p. 25.
80. Wall Street Journal, April 3, 1985; Richard Halloran, New York Times, November 10, 1984.
82. Departments of State and Defense, Background Paper: Nicaragua’s Military Build-up and Support
for Central American Subversion (Nff2ishmgton, DC: July 18, 1984), p. 10.
83. Departments of State and Defense, The Soviet-Cuban Connection in Central America and the Carib¬
bean (Washington, DC: March 1985), p. 25.
84. Danaher, et al.. Help or Hindrance, pp. 86-87.
85. Caribbean Basin Information Project Press Kit, On a Short Fuse: Militarization in Central America,
Washington, DC, 1985.
86. Joshua Cohen and Joel Rogers, Inequity and Intervention: The Federal Budget and Central America
(Boston: South End Press, 1986), pp. 42-48.
87. Caribbean Basin Information Project, On a Short Fuse.
Notes 433
88. See, for example, Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald, November 9, 1987, on U.S. contingency planning
for hypothetical Soviet bases in Nicaragua.
89. Author’s interview with a U.S. ambassador, April 29, 1986.
90. Wayne S. Smith, “Bringing Diplomacy Back In: A Critique of U.S. Policy in Central America,” in Bruce
M. Bagley, ed., Contadora and the Diplomacy of Peace in Central America, Vol. 1 (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press/Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Papers in Latin
American Studies, 1987), p. 71.
91. McGeorge Bundy, op ed.. New York Bwes, January 6, 1984.
92. Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, “Nicaragua: Arms are Defensive,” Miami Herald, December 2, 1984.
93. Joel Brinkley, New York Times, March 30, 1985.
94. D’Escoto, “Nicaragua: Arms are Defensive.”
95. Smith, “Bringing Diplomacy Back In,” p. 73.
97. Richard Halloran, New York Times, November 29, 1984.
98. Hearings on the Nomination of Caspar W. Weinberger to be Secretary of Defense, Senate Committee
on Armed Services, January 6, 1981, pp. 38-39.
Chapter 10: I’m A Contra Too!

1. Miami Herald, November 20, 1985, cited in Kornbluh, Price of Intervention, p. l66.
2. Reggie Norton, “Introduction” to Brody, Contra Terror, p. 15.
3. Cruz, “Nicaragua’s Imperiled Revolution,” p. 1044.
4. Memorandum from North to McFarlane, November 7, 1984, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix,
pp. 463-65.
5. “Statement by Arturo Cruz at a Press Conference,” International Club, Washington, DC, January 3,1985.
Also see Joanne Omang, Washington Post, ]2inu3.rY 4, 1985.
6. Wall Street Journal, April 23, 1985.
7. Associated Press, Washington Post, April 25, 1985.
8. Deposition of Roy Godson, September 10, 1987, Iran-Contra Affair, AppendixB, Vol. 12, pp. 301-05.
A portion of the deposition regarding Cruz and the NSIC is classified.
9. Memorandum from Owen to North, August 25, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, p. 809.
10. “United Nicaraguan Opposition: Democratic Reforms and Support for a Peaceful Solution to the Con¬
flict in Nicaragua,” U.S. Department of State, June 1986, p. 2. Also see Congressional Arms Control
and Foreign Policy Caucus, “Contra ‘Reforms’: Are the Miami Agreements Significant?” June 18, 1986.
11. See, for example, Secord’s financial notes listing Cruz’s salary in Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 1, Ap¬
pendix, pp. 454-58. Also see Robert Parry and David L. Gonzalez, Newsweek, May 4, 1987, p. 25.
12. Arturo Cruz, address sponsored by CAUSA USA, Embassy Suites Hotel, Boston, February 21, 1987.
13. See James LeMoyne, New York Times, March 10, 1987; Lloyd Grove, Washington Post, February 19,
1987; Betsy Cohn, Charles Roberts and Jim Lobe, CAHI, Update, “Arguments and Evidence: Ten Talk¬
ing Points Against Contra Aid,” October 1987, citing Christian Science Monitor, March 11, 1987.
15. Congressional Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, The Contra High Command: An Indepen¬
dent Analysis of the Military Leadership of the FDN, March 1986 and Who are the Contras?, April 1985;
Nicaraguan Government, “The ‘Freedom Fighters’: The Return of Somoza’s National Guard,” 1986.
17. Memorandum From Owen to North, March 17, 1986, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, pp.
820-24.
18. Quoted in Joanne Omang, Washington Post, October 19, 1983.
19. The Testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North, Taking the Stand York: Pocket Books,
1987), p. 373; McFarlane Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, p. 21.
20. North, Taking the Stand, p. 275.
22. McFarlane Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, pp. 14-15.
23. Memorandum from Casey to McFarlane, March 27, 1984, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix,
pp. 456-57; for the South Africa reference see (Country 6) Iran-Contra Report, p. 38 and p. 54, fn.
120.
24. Stephen Engelberg, Neiv York Times, August 20 and 21, 1987.
26. Affidavit of Edgar Chamorro; Christopher Lehman is misidentified as Ronald Lehman ll, another U.S.
official.
27. Edward Cody, Washington Post, }une 5, 1984.
28. NBC News Transcript, April 23, 1984. Also see, for example, Philip Taubman, New York Times, July
21, 1983.
30. Jane Hunter, “Israel: The Contras’ Secret Benefactor,” NACLA Report on the Americas, March-April,
1987, pp. 22-23.
31. National Security Archive, The Chronology, p. 31, citing ABC World News Tonight, February 25, 1987.
32. Robert Parry, “From Pretoria to the Contras?” Newsweek, February 15, 1988, p. 36. Also see Stephen
Engelberg with Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, February 4, 1988.
34. See, for example, Michael Eiranish, Boston Globe, March 22, 1987; David Com, “South Africa Link,”
The Nation, September 12, 1987.
35. Steven V. Roberts, Stephen Engelberg and Jeff Gerth, New York Times, June 21, 1987.
36. See John Stockwell, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978) and
Cherri Waters, “Destabilizing Angola: South Africa’s War and U.S. Policy,” SpecialJoint Report oi the
Washington Office on Africa Educational Fund and the Center for International Policy, December
1986.
37. Woodward, Veil, pp. 394-98.
38. See, for example, Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott and Jane Hunter, Iran-Contra Connection, (Bos¬
ton, South End Press, 1987), p. 200; Robb Deigh, January 12, 1987.
40. McFarlane Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, pp. 17, 130; Woodward, Veil, p. 354.
41. Iran-Contra Report, pp. 39-40.
42. Woodward, Veil, p. 354-55; National Security Archive, Chronology II, p. 80.
43. McFarlane Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, pp. I6-I8, 131-32.
44. Letter from North (not Owen) to Calero, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, pp. 780-82.
45. Iran-Contm Report, p. 45 and p. 57, fn. 262; Tower Board Report, p. C-5.
46. Memorandum from North to McFarlane, April 11, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, pp.
520-25.
48. Nita M. Renfrew and Peter Blauner, “Ollie’s Army,” New York, December 7, 1987; James Ridgeway,
“L.I. Spy,” Village Voice, December 29, 1987.
49. Cable to FBI director, July 18, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, pp. 681-85.
50. Iran-Contra Report, pp. 90-91, 100-101.
51. Fox Butterfield, New York Times, May 1, 1987; David B. Ottaway and Walter Pincus, Boston Globe,
May 1, 1987.
52. Testimony of John Singlaub, Iran-Contra Hearings, May 21, 1987; Benjamin Weiser, Washington Post,
March 20, 1987.
Notes 435
53. Memorandum from North to McFarlane, February 6, 1985. Differently censored versions of this
memorandum are found in National Security Archive, Chronology II, following p. 125; Iran-Contra
Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, p. 479; and Tower Board Report, p. C-4.
54. Singlaub Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, May 20, 1987.
55. Testimony of Gaston Sigur Jr., Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, pp. 294-95.
56. North, Taking the Stand, pp. 117-19; also see Iran-Contra Report, p. 42.
57. Letter from Edie Fraser to North, December 28, 1984, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 1, p. 591;
Iran-Contra Report, p. 88.
58. Bernard Gwert2man, New York Times, January 23, 1987.
59. Testimony of Elliott Abrams, Iran-Contra Hearings, June 2, 1987, quoted in National Security Archive,
Chronology II, pp. 522-23.
60. See Iran-Contra Report, pp. 71, 352-53.
61. Testimony of Adolfo Calero, Iran-Contra Hearings, May 20, 1987. For North’s version, see North,
Taking the Stand, pp. 109-10.
62. Joel Brinkley, New York Times, February 15, 1987.
63. Iran-Contra Report, p. 42; Poindexter Testimony, July 15, 1987.
64. Robert Parry and Brian Barger, “Reagan’s Shadow CIA,” The New Republic, November 24, 1986.
65. North, Taking the Stand, pp. 342, 384.
66. “Lt. Col. Oliver North,” MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, Transcript, December 11, 1986.
67. Tom Brokaw, op ed., New York Times, July 7, 1987.
68. Hersh, Price of Power, p. 250, citing Haldeman’s memoirs.
69. Quoted in Ben Bradlee Jr., Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North (New York: Donald I.
Fine, Inc., 1988), p. 533.
70. Testimony of John Poindexter, Iran-Contra Hearings, July 15, 1987.
71. Art Harris, Washington Post Weekly, March 9, 1987.
72. Eric Alterman, “Inside Ollie’s Mind,” New Republic, February I6, 1987; 7xme, January 5, 1987; Keith
Schneider, New York Times, December 24, 1987; Bradlee, Guts and Glory, pp. 107-10.
73. Testimony of Robert Owen, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, pp. 325-26.
74. Letter from Owen to North, July 2, 1984, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, pp. 776-77.
75. Owen Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, p. 412; Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right and the
Reagan Administration, pp. 126-27.
76. Testimony of Joe Fernandez (Tomas Castillo), Iran-Contra Hearings, May 29, 1987, National Security
Archive, Chronology II, p. 230.
77. Letter from Hull to Owen, November 7, 1983, Iran-Contra Report, p. 36; Iran-Contra Affair, Appen¬
dix A, Vol. 1, p. 108.
78. “The Misadventures of el patron,” Time, November I6, 1987.
79. Frontline, “Murder on the Rio San Juan,” PBS/WGBH/Boston, April 19, 1988.
80. See Jonathan Kwitny, Wall Street Journal, May 21, 1987.
81. Martin Tolchin, New York Times, October 31, 1987; Stephen Kurkjian, Boston Globe, October ^8,1987.
82. Fred Hiatt, Washington Post Weekly, December 24, 1984.
83. Peter Stone, Boston Globe, December 30, 1984.
84. Singlaub Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, May 20-21, 1987.
85. Shirley Christian, New York Times, August 13, 1985.
86. Quoted in Common Cause Magazine, September-October 1985, p. 27.
88. “Singlaub,” CBS News 60 Minutes, Transcript, October 5, 1986, p. 3.
89. National Security Archive, Chronology II, pp. 293-95 and appended proposal; Iran-Contra Report, pp
269-70.
91. Ibid., May 21, 1987.
92. See, for example, Shirley Christian, New York Times, August 13, 1985; Peter H. Stone, Washington
Post, May 3, 1985.
93. John Loftus, Boston Globe, July 5, 1987; also see Loftus, The Belarus Secret (New York; Alfred A.
Knopf, 1982).
94. See Dugger, On Reagan, pp. 384-85.
95. Congressional Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, Who Are The Contras? An Analysis Of The
Makeup Of The Military Leadership Of The Rebel Forces And Of The Nature Of The Private American
Groups Providing Them Financial And Material Support, April 18, 1985, pp. 13-14.
96. Cited in Ken Lawrence, “Nazis and Klansmen: Soldier of Fortune’s Seamy Side,” CovertAction Infor¬
mation Bulletin, Fall 1984, p. 23.
97. Newsweek, September 17, 1984.
98. Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, September 7, 1984.
99. Quoted in Kornbluh, Price of Intervention, p. 82.
100. For North’s version of these events see memorandum from North to McFarlane, September 2, 1984,
Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, pp. 461-62.
101. James Ridgeway, Village Voice, September l6, 1986.
102. John Dillon and John Lee Anderson, “Who’s Behind Aid to the Contras,” The Nation, October 6,
1984.
103. John Dinges and Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row (New York: Pantheon, 1980); Mar¬
shall, et al., Iran-Contra Connection, pp. 43-49.
104. Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, pp. 248-49.
105. Martin A. Lee, “Their Will Be Done,” Mother Jones, ]\Ay 1983.
106. Ibid.; also see Martin A. Lee, National Catholic Reporter, October 14, 1983.
107. ABC News Closeup, “Escape from Justice: Nazi War Criminals in America,” January l6, 1980, cited
in Francoise Hervet, “The Sovereign Military Order of Malta,” CovertAction Information Bulletin,
Winter 1986, p. 28; Charles Higham, American Swastika (New York: Doubleday, 1985), p. 203. On
the slur against Puerto Ricans see, for example, Joseph B. Treaster, New York Times, May 29, 1982
and Ann Hughey, Wall Street Journal, June. 1, 1982.
108. On Cardinal O’Connor, see Wayne Barrett, Village Voice, December 25, 1984.
109. Quoted in Washington Report on the Hemisphere, December 10, 1986.
110. Frank Greve, Philadelphia Inquirer, December 20,1987; Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League,
pp. 233-34.
111. CAUSA USA brochure; Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, June 4, 1987.
112. Ross Gelbspan, Boston Gohe, April 20, 1988.
113. Kornbluh, Price of Intervention, p. 239, fn. 242.
114. “Text of Remarks by the President at the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund Dinner,” Office of the Press
Secretary, The White House, April 15, 1985.
115. Kornbluh, Price of Intervention, pp. 66-68.
116. Philip Taubman, New York Times, September 9, 1984.
117. Robert Parry, Associated Press, Washington Post, September 3, 1985.
121. Kornbluh, Price of Intervention, pp. 35-37.
122. Chamorro, Packaging the Contras, pp. 14-15; Kepner contract, pp. 70-71.
123. Ibid., pp. 51-52.
124. See, for example, Jane Hunter, Israeli Foreign Policy iY>osion\ South End Press, 1987), pp. 169-78;
Franz Schneiderman, “Bending Swords Into Plowshares; An Investigation of the Tensions Between
Israel and Nicaragua,” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, November 26, 1985.
125. Jeff McConnell, Boston Globe, January 18, 1987.
Notes 437
126. Peter Kombluh, “The Selling of the F.D.N.,” 37?^ Nhih'ow, January 17, 1987; Kombluh, Price of Inter¬
vention, pp. 228-29, fn. 91.
127. Francis X. Clines, New York Times, ]une 15, 1984. Also see Lou Cannon, Washington Post, ]\me 17,
1983; Christopher Hitchens, “The Selling of Military Intervention,” The Nation, August 20-27, 1983.
128. Memorandum from Raymond to Clark, May 20, 1983, Iran-Contra Hearings, Exhibit OLN-219.
129. Memorandum from Raymond to Clark, August 9, 1983, Iran-Contra Hearings.
130. James Ridgeway, “The Professor of Conspire,” Village Voice, August 4, 1987; Tower Board Report,
p. C-17.
131. Iran-Contra Report, pp. 97-98; also see Godson deposition.
132. Diana Johnstone, “A U.S. ambassador’s crusade for the contras,” In These Times, April 8-14, 1987.
Also see Joe Conason and Murray Waas, “Meese’s Swiss Miss,” Village Voice, January 27, 1987.
133. Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald, ]u\y 19, 1987; also see Chardy, Miami Herald, October 13, 1986.
134. Memorandum from Reich to Raymond, March 1, 1986, Iran-Contra Report, p. 34.
135. Richard Higgins, Boston Globe, May 13, 1986.
136. Kombluh, Price of Intervention, p. l64, citing speech by Bill Buzenberg, September 9, 1985, Seat¬
tle, Washington.
137. Iran-Contra Report, p. 52, fn. 42.
138. Ibid., p. 34.
139. Michael Kranish, Boston Globe, March 19, 1987.
140. Iran-Contra Report, p. 87. Also see Peter Kombluh, “The Contra Lobby,” Village Voice, October 13,
1987.
141. State Department-IBC Contract, October 1, 1984-December 31, 1984, Iran-Contra Hearings, Exhibit
OLN-223.
143. Memorandum from Miller to Buchanan, March 13, 1985, attached to the Letter from the Comptroller
General of the United States to Representatives Jack Brooks and Dante Fascell, September 30, 1987.
144. Memorandum for Casey prepared by Walter Raymond, August 1986, Iran-Contra Hearings.
145. Letter from the Comptroller General of September 30, 1987.
147. Ibid., p. 92.
148. Ibid., pp. 92, 96-97.
149. Ibid., p. 92.
150. Ibid., p. 94.
153. PROF Note from North to Poindexter, May 19, 1986, Iran-Contra Report, p. 96.
154. Poindexter Deposition, May 2, 1987, Iran-Contra Report, p. 96.
156. Ibid., p. 98.
157. North Notebook, November 19, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings.
Chapter 11: The Enterprise and Other Fronts

1. Secord Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 1, pp. 343-44.
2. McFarlane Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, p. 270.
3. North, Taking the Stand, pp. 174, 442-43, 479.
5. Ibid., p. 333.
6. Deposition of William T. Golden, May 6, 1987, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix B, Vol. 12, pp, 402-25;
Emerson, Secret Warriors, pp. 151-52, 155-56, 217; National Security Archive, Chronology 11, pp. Ill,
904.
7. North, Taking the Stand, pp. l62, l67.
8. Peter Maas, Manhunt: The Incredible Pursuit of a C.IA. Agent Turned Terrorist York: Random
House/Jove Books, 1986), pp. 25-26; 54.
9. Ibid., p. 59; Philip Taubman and Jeff Gerth, New York Times, October 13, 1981.
11. Secord Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 1, p. 47.
12. Marshall, et al., Iran-Contra Connection, pp. 165-66.
13. Maas, Manhunt, pp. 65-66.
14. Ibid., pp. 108, 138, 276.
15. Ibid., pp. 138-39.
16. Ibid., pp. 140-41, 222.
17. Ibid., p. 247.
18. Ibid., pp. 253, 267.
19. “Ollie North’s Secret Network,” Newsweek, March 9, 1987, p. 33.
20. Mass, Manhunt, p. 279.
23. Washington Post, December 22, 1986.
24. U.S. News and World Report, December 15, 1986, cited in Marshall, et al. Iran-Contra Connection, p.
14. Also see Emerson, Secret Warriors, p. 123.
25. National Security Archive, Chronology II, pp. 64-65, citing Miami Herald, March 8, 1987.
30. Hersh, “Who’s In Charge Here?”, p. 68; Emerson, Secret Warriors, pp. 144-45.
31. Murray Waas and Joe Conason, with John Kelly, “The Gadd Factor,” Village Voice, May 5, 1987; Na -
tional Security Archive, Chronology II, p. 60; Thomas Palmer, Boston Globe, April 5, 1987.
32. Robbins, Air America, p. 7.
33. Ibid., pp. 9-10.
34. Ibid., pp. 64-65. Also see, Marchetti and Marks, The Cult of Intelligence, pp. 126-28.
36. Ibid., pp. 62, 297.
37. Testimony of Joseph Coors, May 21, 1987, Iran-Contra Hearings.
38. Secord Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 1, p. 64; Testimony of Robert Dutton, Iran-Contra Hear¬
ings, May 27, 1987.
39. Dan Morgan and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, April 5, 1987. Wickham’s name appears in North’s
notebook, June 10, 1986, in Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 1, p. 449.
40. Memorandum from North to Poindexter, January 28, 1985, Iran-Contra Report, p. 46; Iran-Contra
Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 1, pp. 308-09.
41. Quoted in Bernard Weinraub, New York Times, February 17, 1985.
42. Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, March 8, 1985; Dana Priest, Washington Post, ]‘ainu2xy 20, 1985;
Jim Morrell, “Redlining Nicaragua: How the U.S. Politicized the Inter-American Bank,” International
Policy Report, December 1985 and “Nicaragua’s War Economy,” International Policy Report, Novem¬
ber 1985.
43. Quoted in New York Times, February 22, 1985.
44. Quoted in Alexander Cockburn, “Beat the DevU,” The Nation, March 9, 1985.
Notes 439
45. Business editorial, March 11, 1985, p. 128.

46. Bernard Gwertzman, New York Times, February 23, 1985.
47. Bill Keller, New York Times, February 28, 1985. Also see Iran-Contra Report, p. 49.
49. Memorandum from Nort'', and Fortier to McFarlane, March 22,1985, with Chronology, March 20,1985,
March 22, 1985, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 1, pp. 325-40. Also see “Public Relations Cam¬
paign for the Freedom Fighters,” February 19, 1985 and “Public Relations Paper #2 for the Freedom
Fighters,” March 11, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, pp. 783-95.
50. Bernard Weinraub and Gerald M. Boyd, New York Times, April 5, 1985.
51. Joel Brinkley, New York Times, April l6, 1985.
52. Memorandum from North to McFarlane, May 31, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, pp.
530-32.
53. Memorandum from North to McFarlane, March l6, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix,
pp. 511-13.
54. Memorandum for the Record prepared by John McMahon, March 22, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings,
Vol. 2, Appendix, p. 518.
55. Hedrick Smith, New York Times, April 17, 1985.
56. See Hedrick Smith, New York Times, April 18, 1985.
57. James LeMoyne, New York Times, April 19, 1985.
58. Gerald M. Boyd, New York Times, April 21, 1985.
59. William M. LeoGrande, “The Contras and Congress,” in Walker, ed., Reagan vs. the Sandinistas, p.
187.
60. Author’s interview with Ambassador Carlos Tunnermann, Washington, DC, September 10, 1986.
61. Author’s interview with Alejandro Martinez Cuenca, Managua, April 28, 1986. Also see Martinez C.,
“The Failed Policy of the U.S. in Nicaragua,” Speech to the World Affairs Council, Boston, March 10,
1986.
62. Bernard Gwertzman, New York Times, May 3, 1985.
63. Steven B. Roberts, New York Times, May 5, 1985.
64. Quoted in New York Times, May 24, 1985.
65. Bill Keller and Joel Brinkley, New York Times, June 4, 1985.
66. Joel Brinkley and Bill Keller, New York Times, June 5, 1985.
67. James McCartney, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 13, 1986.
68. Theodore Moran, “The Cost of Alternative U.S. Policies Toward El Salvador 1984-1989,” in Robert S.
Leiken, ed.. Central America: Anatomy of Conflict QAew York: Pergamon Press, 1984), pp. I66-68.
69. Stephen Engelberg, New York Times, May 3, 1987.
70. James McCartney, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 13, 1986.
71. Michael Lewin Ross, In These Times, jone 26-July 9, 1985.
72. Quoted by Christopher Hitchens, The Nation, 22, 1985.
73. “Execution in the Jungle,” Newsweek, April 29, 1985, p. 43.
74. Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. with William Novak, Man of the House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker
Tip O’Neill (New York; Random House, 1987).
75. ‘The View From Washington,” briefing paper for Chiefs of Mission Conference, September 8-10,1985,
p. 4.
76. Report by th6 House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, December 31, 1986, pp. 25, 29-30.
77. Congressional Quarterly, }une 15, 1985, pp. 1139-1140.
78. “A Statement on the Nature of Humanitarian Assistance by U.S. Private and Voluntary Organizations,”
Church World Service, Washington, DC; also see CAHI, UpdatelC, February 28, 1988.
79. Duemling note, September 24, 1985, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 1, p. 402.
80. Letter from Calero, Cruz and Robelo to Ambassador Duemling, October 3, 1985, Iran-Contra Hear¬
ings, Vol. 2, Appendix, p. 829; Owen Contract, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, p. 835.
81. Associated Press, New York Times, August 15, 1987.

82. Waas, et al., Village Voice, May 5, 1987.
83. Statement of Frank C. Conahan before the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, U.S.
General Accounting Office, June 11, 1986.
84. David K. Shipler, New York Times, ]\ine. 21, 1986. Also see Robert Parry, Associated Press, Washington
Post, ]une. 12, 1986.
85. U.S. General Accounting Office, Central America: Problems in Controlling Funds for the Nicaraguan
Democratic Resistance, December 1986, pp. 9-11,
86. Letter from Robert Duemling, NHAO, to contra liaison Salvador E. Stadthagen, March 18, 1986, ob¬
tained by Peter Kombluh, National Security Archive, Harpers, May 1988.
87. Memorandum from Owen to North, April 1/9, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, pp.
799-802.
89. Joe Conason and James Ridgeway, “Edwin Wilson Speaks,” Village Voice, June 23, 1987.
90. Joseph B. Treaster, New York Times, December 10, 1986.
91. Iran-Contra Report, pp. 109-10; Susan F. Rasky, New York Times, February 23, 1987; National Security
Archive, Chronology II, pp. 63, 95.
92. On Rodriguez, Gregg and the Pink Team strategy see Emerson, Secret Warriors, pp. 126-28. For
Gregg’s CIA background also see R. W. Apple Jr. New York Times, December 13, 1986.
93. Testimony of Felix Rodriguez, May 27, 1987, Iran-Contra Hearings.
94. Allan Naim, “The Bush Connection,” The Progressive, May 1987.
95. Memorandum from North to McFarlane, March 5, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2., Appendix, pp.
494-95; Tower Board Report, p. C-4.
96. Cable from Gorman to Pickering and Steele, Febmary 14, 1985 and cable from Gorman to Pickering,
February 8, 1985, Iran-Contra Affair, AppendixB, Vol. 12, pp. 941-42.
97. North, Taking the Stand, pp. 228-29; Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, July 9, 1987;
Deposition of Paul Gorman, Iran-Contra Affair, AppendixB, Vol. 12, pp. 871-73, 938, and back chan¬
nel cable from Pickering to Gorman, Motley and Johnstone, pp. 943-44.
99. Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald, August 26, 1987.
100. See John Dinges, “And Now, Posadagate,” The Nation, November 15, 1986; Julia Preston and Joe
Pichirallo, Washington Post, October 26, 1986.
101. Presidential Finding, January 9, 1986, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 2, pp. 1161-62; Iran-
Con tra Report, p. 64; National Security Archive, Chronology II, pp. 359-60.
102. Robert Parry and Brian Barger, Associated Press, Boston Globe, April 14, 1986.
103. Reuters, Boston Globe, August 9, 1986.
104. Fernandez (Castillo) Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, May 29, 1987 in National Security Archive,
Chronology II, p. 478.
105. Ibid., pp. 336-37.
106. Tower Board Report, p. III-23.
108. Ibid., p. 67.
109. Rodriguez Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, May 28, 1987.
111. See National Security Archive, Chronology II, pp. 459, 501; Erik Calonius with Tom Morganthau,
“The Secret Warriors Tell Their Story,” Newsweek, Febmary 9, 1987; Emerson, Secret Warriors, p. 145.
113. Ibid. Also see Dan Morgan and Walter Pincus, Boston Globe, May 17, 1987.
115. Memorandum from North to McFarlane, December 4, 1984, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appen¬
dix, p. 470.
Notes 441
116. Memorandum from North to McFarlane, April 11, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, pp.
520-21.
117. Testimony of Lewis Tambs, Iran-Contra Hearings, May 28, 1987.
118. Fernandez (Castillo) Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, May 29, 1987, in National Security Archive,
Chronology II, p. 204.
119. Memorandum from Owen to North, August 25, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, p.
8O6. Also see Owen Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, pp. 349-51.
120. PROF Note from North to Poindexter, December 5, 1985 and Memorandum from North to Poindex¬
ter, December 10, 1985, Iran-Contra Report, p. 64, and Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 1, pp.
403-07.
122. Memorandum from Owen to North, March 28, 1986, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, p.
825.
124. Alfonso Chardy, Sam Dillon and Tim Golden, Miami Herald, March 1, 1987.
Chapter 12: Hits, Guns and Drugs

1. Quoted in Frontline, “Murder on the Rio San Juan,” WGBH/Boston, April 19, 1988.
2. Deposition of Paul Gorman, July 22, 1987, Iran-Contra Affair, AppendixB, Vol. 12, pp. 10-12.
3. Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan, La Penca: Report of an Investigation (Washington, DC: Christie
In stitute), p. 3.
4. Ibid., pp. 6-8.
5. Frontline, “Murder on the Rio San Juan.”
6. Honey and Avirgan, La Penca, pp. 17-19.
7. Frontline, “Murder on the Rio San Juan.”
8. Owen Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, p. 402.
9. Leslie Cockbum, Out of Control Yotk: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987), pp. 19-20.
10. Ibid., p. 43.
11. Charles Mohr, New York Times, July 19, 1985.
12. Joel Brinkley, New York Times, ]u\y 24, 1985; Alfonso Chardy, Knight-Ridder News Service/Bergen,
New Jersey Record, ]\Ay 17, 1985; Owen Ullmann and James McCartney, Philadelphia Inquirer, ]\x\y
25, 1985.
13. Affidavit of Daniel Sheehan, pp. 26-27.
14. Author’s conversation with David MacMichael, December 4, 1987.
15. Cockbum, Out of Control, pp. 55-68; also see Murray Waas and Joe Conason, “Did Meese Stall a
Second Probe?” Village Voice, December 30, 1986.
16. Cockbum, Out of Control, p. 75; Honey and Avirgan, La Penca, p. 33.
17. Cockbum, Out of Control, p. 76.
18. Allan Naim, “The Contras’ Little List,” The Progressive, March 1987.
19. James Ridgeway, “Contra-gate?” Village Voice, May 20, 1986.
20. Memorandum from Owen to North, January 31, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, pp.
778-79.
21. Cockbum, Out of Control, pp. 71-72.
22. Memorandum from North to McFarlane, April 11, 1985, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, p.
521.
23. Testimony of William O’Boyle, Iran-Contra Hearings, May 21, 1987, in Congressional Quarterly, The
Iran-Contra Puzzle, p. C-38.
24. Tower Board Report, p. C-9.
25. Memorandum from Poindexter to Reagan, “Terrorist Threat: Terrell,” July 28,1986, Iran-Contra Affair,
Appendix A, Vol. 2, Source Documents, pp. 1323-1324.
26. FBI report, July 22, 1986, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 1, pp. 855-59; Iran-Contra Report, pp.
112-13.
27. Testimony of Glenn Robinette, Iran-Contra Hearings, June 23, 1987.
28. For an overview see Joel Millman, “Narco-terrorism: A Tale of two stories,” Columbia Journalism
Review, September-October 1986.
29. Address by President Reagan, March I6, 1986, White House Office of the Press Secretary.
30. Martin A. Lee, “How the Drug Czar Got Away,” The Nation, September 5, 1987.
31. Jonathan Kwitny, Wall Street Journal, April 22, 1987.
32. New York Times, May 14, 1987.
33. Joel Millman, “Who Killed Barry Seal?” Village Voice, July 1, 1986.
34. Millman, “Narco-terrorism,” p. 50.
35. Seth Rosenfeld, San Francisco Examiner, March I6, 1986. Also see Rosenfeld articles of March 17-19.
36. Rosenfeld, San Francisco Examiner, March 18, 1986.
37. Christie Institute, “The Contra-Drug Connection,” Washington, DC, November 1987, p. 4.
38. Kombluh, Price of Intervention, p. 203, citing Seth Rosenfeld, San Francisco Examiner, ]une 23, 1986.
39. Robert Parry, Associated Press, Washington Post, August 27, 1986.
41. Marshall, et al.. The Iran-Contra Connection, p. 45.
43. Thomas W. Walker, Nicaragua: The Land of Sandino (ôxAdiQT, Colorado: Westview Press, 1986), p.
120, fn. 2.
45. Ibid., p. 160. Also see Associated Press, New York Times, October 25, 1986.
46. Cockbum, Out of Control, p. I6I. Also see Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald, October 24, 1986.
47. “The Misadventures of el patron,” Time, November I6, 1987.
48. Memorandum from Owen to North, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, p. 8I6.
49. “Dmgs and Contras,” The Nation, June 13, 1987.
51. Ibid., pp. 172, 174.
52. Ibid., pp. 177-78.
53. Ibid., pp. 179-83.
54. Ibid., pp. 185-87; Knut Royce, Newsday, April 6,1987; James Ridgeway, “Inside Vortex,” Village Voice,
October 20, 1987, p. 20; Testimony of Michael Palmer, Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on
Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, April 6, 1988.
55. Stephen Kurkjian and Mark Hosenball, Boston Globe, April 26, 1987.
56. National Security Archive, Chronology II, p. 693, citing New York Times, January 20, 1987.
57. David E. Umhoefer, Milwaukee Journal, July 12, 1987.
58. On the question of substantiation, see, for example, Jonathan Kwimy, “Money, Dmgs and the Con¬
tras,” The Nation, August 29, 1987 and responses by Christie Institute counsel Daniel Sheehan and
journalist Leslie Cockbum in The Nation, September 19, 1987.
59. Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Febmary 13, 1988.
60. See Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper & Row, 1972); Kmger,
The Great Heroin Coup, Robbins, Air America-, Penny Lernoux, In Banks We Trust (New York:
Anchor/Doubleday, 1984); Marshall, et al., Iran-Contra Connection, William Vomberger, “Afghan
Rebels and Dmgs,” and other articles in CovertAction Information Bulletin, Summer 1987; Frontline,
Notes 443
“Guns, Drugs and the CIA,” produced by Leslie Cockburn and Andrew Cockburn, WGBH/Boston,
May 17, 1988.
61. Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA (New York:
W.W. Norton, 1987), p. 52.
62. Owen Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, p. 388.
Chapter 13: Contadora, Contradora

2. Hersh, Price of Power, p. 263.
5. Quoted in Carter, Keeping Faith, p. 184.
6. Barry and Preusch, Central America Fact Book, p. 302.
7. Interview with Guadalupe Gonzales by David Brooks for the author, Mexico City, November 4, 1986.
8. Information Bulletin, Contadora Island, Panama, January 9, 1983.
9. Presidential Documents 19:18, May 9, 1983 and No. 21, May 30, 1983, cited in CAHI, U.S.-Nicaragua
Relations, pp. 21-22.
10. Quoted in Washington Post, 15, 1983, cited in CAHI, U.S.-Nicaragua Relations, p. 24.
11. “Cancun Declaration of the Contadora Group of July 19, 1983,” in Bruce Michael Bagley, et al., eds.,
Contadora and the Central American Peace Process: Selected Documents, SAIS Papers in Internation¬
al Affairs, No. 8 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), p. 171.
12. Terry Karl, “Mexico, Venezuela, and the Contadora Initiative,” in Blachman, et. al. eds.. Confronting
Revolution, p. 278.
13. Ibid., p. 274.
14. CAHI, Update 2:lS,]u\y 22, 1983.
15. William LeoGrande, “Rollback or Containment? The United States, Nicaragua, and the Search for Peace
in Central America,” International Security, Fall 1986, p. 99.
16. Washington Post, ]\j\y 22 and July 25, 1983.
17. Fred Ikle, Speech to the Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs, September 12, 1983.
18. Carla Anne Robbins, Business Week, May 21, 1984.
20. Kombluh, Price of Intervention, pp. 246-47, fn. 65, citing Roy Gutman, Newsday, September 2, 1985.
21. Jim Morrell and William Goodfellow, “Contadora: Under the Gun,” International Policy Report, May
1986, p. 3.
22. Bruce M. Bagley, “The Failure of Diplomacy,” in Bagley, ed., Contadora, Vol. 1, pp. 191-92, citing
United Press International, Washington Post, October 3, 1984.
24. “Background Paper for NSC Meeting on Central America, October 30, 1984.” Also see Alma Guiller-
moprieto and David Hoffman, Washington Post, November 6, 1984.
25. “Contadora: A Text for Peace,” International Policy Report, November 1984, p. 7.
26. Quoted in Richard J. Meislin, New York Times, November l6, 1984.
27. New York Times, November 2, 1984, cited in Kornbluh, Price of Intervention, p. 183.
28. Morrell and Goodfellow, “Contadora: Under the Gun,” p. 5.
29. Jim Morrell, “Contadora: The Treaty on Balance,” International Policy Report, jone 1985.
30. Posicion del Gobiemo de Nicaragua, in EnvioA:5^, December 1985, p. 5a.
32. Morrell and Goodfellow, “Contadora: Under the Gun,” p. 6.

34. Envio, December 1985, p. 10a; New York Times, December 3, 1985.
35. Julia Preston, Boston Globe, December 15, 1985.
36. Tom Wicker, New York Times, February 11, 1986.
37. Bagley, “Failure of Diplomacy,” p. 195.
38. Quoted in Boston Globe, December 15, 1985.
39. Interview with Luis Herrera Lasso by David Brooks for the author, Mexico City, November 4, 1986.
40. Bagley, “Failure of Diplomacy,” p. 194, citing “The View from Washington,” quoted in Charles R. Bab¬
cock, Washington Post, Septembers, 1985.
41. OAS Document, January 14, 1986.
42. Envio 5:57, March 1986, p. 2.
43. “The Carabelleda Message for Peace, Security and Democracy in Central America,” January 12, 1986,
Document of the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, Washington, DC, January
14, 1986.
44. Eleanor Clift, Los Angeles Times, February 19, 1986.
45. Dennis Volman, Christian Science Monitor, March 20, 1986.
46. Nelson Valdes, Pacific News Service, March 28, 1986.
47. William R. Long, Los Angeles Times, March 21, 1986.
48. Patrick J. Buchanan, “The Contras Need Our Help,” op ed., Washington Post Weekly, March 17, 1986.
49. “I’m a Contra, Too,’ ” Newsweek, March 24, 1986.
50. See Lran-Contra Report, pp. 382-83.
51. See, for example, Adam Pertman, Boston Globe, March 26, 1986.
52. Sam Dillon and Tim Gplden, Miami Herald, April 3, 1986.
53. See Seymour M. Hersh, “Target Qaddafi,” New York Times Magazine, February 22, 1987.
55. Envio5.59, May 1986, p. 3.
56. Pacific News Service, March 19, 1986.
57. Envio, May 1986, p. 10.
59. Shirley Christian, New York Times, August 18, 1985.
60. Bagley, “Failure of Diplomacy,” citing Bernard Gwertzman, New York Times, July 17, 1986.
61. Author’s interview with a U.S. Ambassador in Central America, April 29, 1986.
62. Jose Melendez, Axce/s/or (Mexico City), April 8, 1987, Central America NewsPak.
63. E’nwo 5:60, June 1986, pp. 2-3.
64. Author’s interview with Carlos Tunnermann, September 10, 1986.
65. “Official Proposal Of The Government Of Nicaragua For A Prompt Conclusion Of The Process Of
Negotiations And The Signature Of The Contadora Agreement,” May 15, 1986, Unofficial Translation,
Embassy of Nicaragua, Washington, DC.
66. Excelsior, May 16-17, 1986,.
67. “Declaration of Esquipulas,” May 25, 1986, OAS Document, May 29, 1986.
68. Bagley, “Failure of Diplomacy,” pp. 200-201.
69. William M. LeoGrande, “The Contras and Congress,” in Walker, ed., Reagan versus the Sandinistas,
galleys, p. 195.
70. International Court of Justice, Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities In and Against
Nicaragua, June Tl, 1986, pp. 137-41.
71. “The Chicago Proposals for Peace,” Embassy of Nicaragua, Washington, DC, August 2, 1986.
72. Quoted in George D. Moffett III, Christian Science Monitor, August 7, 1986.
73. National Security Archive, Chronology II, p. 651, citing Miami Herald, March 27, 1987.
74. Jim Morrell, “Contadora Vows to Continue,” International Policy Report, August 1986.
Notes 445
75. Julia Preston, Washington Post, November 8, 1986.

76. Washington Report on the Hemisphere, December 10, 1986, p. 6.
77. Jim Morrell, “Contadora Eludes U.S.,” International Policy Report, January-February 1987, p. 1.
78. See, for example, Steven Donziger, Christian Science Monitor, December 10, 1986; Stephen Kinzer,
New York Times, December 9, 1986.
79. William Stockton, New York Times, January 22, 1987.
80. James LeMoyne, New York Times, February 11, 1987.
81. F’nt4’o4;54, December 1985, p. 4c.
82. Interview with Luis Herrera Lasso by David Brooks, November 4, 1986.
83. Quoted in Time, April 25, 1988, p. 35.
84. Tom Farer, “Contadora: The Hidden Agenda,” Foreign Policy, Summer 1985, p. 63.
85. George Black, “The Many Killers of Father Carney,” The Nation, }2inu2sy 23, 1988.
86. Clifford Krauss, Wall Street Journal, December 5, 1986.
87. Author’s interview with a U.S. Ambassador in Central America, April 29, 1986.
88. CAHI, Update 5-AA, December 12, 1986.
89. Pamela Constable, Boston Globe, April 1986.
90. Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, pp. 244, 249-50, 268.
91. Quoted in Boston Globe, November 23, 1986.
92. Farer, “Contadora,” p. 72.
93. Author’s interview with a U.S. ambassador in Central Aiherica, April 29, 1986.
94. Address by Mr. Jaime Lusinchi, President of Venezuela at the Opening of the Meeting of Foreign Af¬
fairs of Contadora, Carabelleda, January 11, 1986, OAS document, Washington, DC, January 14, 1986.
95. Rio de Janeiro Declaration, December 18, 1986, Embassy of Mexico press release, Washington, DC.
97. Author’s interview with Carlos Tunnermann, September 10, 1986.
Chapter 14: Under the Coverups

1. Quoted in David Ignatius, Washington Post, December 7, 1986.
2. PROF note from North to Poindexter, Iran-Contra Report, pp. 72-73.
3. North notebook entry, September 6, 1986, and Poindexter note, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol.
1, pp. 922-23; Iran-Contra Report, p. 142.
4. Iran-Contra Report, p. 143; Abrams Testimony, Iran-Contra Hearings, June 2, 1987.
5. James LeMoyne, New York Times, March 9, 1987.
6. PROF note from North to Poindexter, September 25, 1986, Iran-Contra Report, p. 76; also see pp. 143-
44.
8. Ibid., pp. 75-77.
9. Quoted in Bernard Gwertzman, New York Times, October 3, 1986.
10. Barricada Intemacional, October l6, 1986.
12. PROF note from Earl to Poindexter, October 6, 1986, Tower Board Report, p. B-166, fn. 93.
13. National Security Archive, Chronology II, pp. 625-26, citing Philadelphia Inquirer, January 18, 1987.
14. “Downed Plane in Nicaragua: Questions,” ABC News Nightline, October 7, 1986, transcript, p. Z.
15. CBS News 60 Minutes, October 5, 1986, transcript, pp. 2, 7.
16. James LeMoyne, New York Times, October 10, 1986.
17. Philip Bennett and Stephen Kurkjian, Boston Globe, October 18, 1986; David Ottaway, Washington
Post Weekly, January 5, 1987.
18. PROF note from North to McFarlane, October 12, 1986, Tower Board Report, p. B-166, fn. 93.
19. Iran-Contra Report, p.lA5.
20. Joel Brinkley, New York Times, October 14, 1986.
21. PROF note from Cannistraro to Poindexter, Iran-Contra Report, p. 144.
22. CBS News 60 Minutes, October 19, 1986, transcript, p. 7.
23. See, for example, Elliott Abrams’ testimony in The Downing Of A United States Plane In Nicaragua
And United States Involvement In The Contra War, Hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Subcom¬
mittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, October 15, 1986.
24. Quoted in Stephen Kinzer, New York Times, December 18, 1986.
25. Quoted in Christopher Hitchens, “Minority Report,” The Nation, April 1/8, 1987.
26. See McFarlane’s exchanges with Barnes, Hamilton, Durenberger and Leahy in Iran-Contra Hearings,
Vol. 2., Appendix, pp. 546-86.
27. See Iran-Contra Report, pp. 121-33.
28. David Com and Jefferson Morley, The Nation, December 12, 1987.
30. Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, p. 751.
32. Ibid., p. 287.
33. Ibid., pp. 287-88.
36. Murray Waas and Joe Conason, “Closing In On Meese,” Village Voice, April 21, 1987.
37. Iran-Contra Report, p. 114, fn. 2; also see Bernard Gwertzman, New York Times, April 30, 1986.
38. CBS Evening News, transcript, July 14, 1986.
40. On the Kelso affair, see “Additional Views” of Rodino, Fascell, Brooks and Stokes, Iran-Contra Report,
p. 648, as well as main report, p. IO6.
41. Ibid., pp. 648-49.
42. Murray Waas and Joe Conason, “Obstruction At Justice,” Village Voice, March 31, 1987.
43. Ibid.; Joe Pichirallo, Washington Post, April 7, 1987; Iran-Contra Report, p. 114, fn. 30.
44. Iran-Contra Report, p. 107; Stephen Kurkjian and Murray Waas, Boston Globe, Febmary 14, 1988.
46. Larry Martz and Robert Parry, Newsweek, April 20, 1987; Iran-Contra Pi^zzle, p. A-28.
47. Kurkjian and Waas, Boston Globe, Febmary 14, 1988.
48. Ibid.; North notebook entry, March 31, 1986, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 1, p. 732.
50. Murray Waas, Boston Globe, December 20, 1987.
51. Memorandum from Owen to North, April 7, 1986, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 2, Appendix, p. 827.
52. Joe Conason and Murray Waas, “Finally, Meese Under Oath,” Village Voice, July 28, 1987, citing a
memo from Rep. William Hughes to members of the Judiciary Crime Subcommittee; Waas and Con¬
ason, “Closing In On Meese”; Iran-Contra Report, p. 108.
53. Iran-Contra Report, p. 108; excerpt from Feldman memo, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 1, pp.
773-74.
54. Quoted in Murray Waas and Joe Conason, “Contra Cover-Up Confinned,” Village Voice, April 14,
1987. Also see Stephen J. Hedges, Miami Herald, April 23, 1987.
55. Kurkjian and Waas, Boston Globe, Febmary 14, 1988.
Notes 447

58. Dennis Bernstein and Vince Bielski, In These Times, April 15-21, 1987.
60. “Additional Views” of Rodino, et al., Iran-Contra Report, pp. 647-48.
Chapter 15; Diversions

1. Quoted in Dugger, On Reagan, p. 245.
2. Quoted in David E. Rosenbaum, New York Times, May 7, 1987.
3. See Christopher Hitchens, “Minority Report,” The Nation, June: 20 and July 4/11, 1987; Barbara Honeg¬
ger with Jim Naureckas, “Did Reagan Steal the 1980 Election?” In These Times, June 24-July 7, 1987.
4. See Iran-Contra Report, pp. 288-89.
5. Ibid., pp. 197, 270-71.
6. North, Taking the Stand, pp. 26-27.
7. Undated Memorandum, “Release of American Hostages in Beirut” and Attached Terms of Reference
dated April 4, 1986, Iran-Contra Hearings, Vol. 1, Appendbc, p. 537.
9. Carl Bernstein, “TV Anchormen Are Missing the Big Story of the Hearings,” New York Times, op ed.,
July 14, 1987.
10. House Resolution 111 submitted by Henry Gonzalez, March 5, 1987.
11. “Hearing Nothing, Saying Nothing: The Iran-Contra Investigation That Never Was,” Harpers, February
1988, p. 55.
12. North, Taking the Stand, pp. 207, 329, 337, 530-31.
14. Quoted in David S. Broder, Washington Post Weekly, August 3, 1987.
15. Gregg Deposition, May 18, 1987, pp. 110-11; Bush note to North, November 27, 1985, Iran-Contra
Affair, Appendix B, Vol. 12, p. 1143.
16. Hackel and Siegel, eds.. In Contempt of Congress, p. 28.
17. Iran-Contra Report, pp. 71-72; Watson Deposition, Iran-Contra Puzzle, pp. C-145-46; Memorandum
from Gregg to Bush, April 30, 1986, in Hackel and Siegel, eds.. In Contempt of Congress, p. 28.
18. Allan Naim, “The Bush Connection,” The Progressive, May 1987; Office of Vice President Bush, Chronol¬
ogy of Contacts with Felix Rodriguez, December 15, 1986, revised May 14, 1987.
19. Iran-Contra Report, p. 72; Office of Vice President, Chronology, December 15, 1986.
20. Gregg notes, August 8, 1986, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix B, Vol. 12, p. 1135; Iran-Contra Report,
p. 74.
21. National Security Archive, Chronology II, p. 650, citing Washington Post, December 14, 1986.
22. Gregg Deposition, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix B, Vol. 12, pp. 1076-77; Iran-Contra Report, p. 74.
23. Memorandum from North and Menges to McFarlane, November 4, 1983, Iran-Contra Affair, Appen¬
dix A, Vol. 1, p. 197.
24. Iran-Contra Report, p. 84, fn. l66.
25. David Hoffman, Washington Post, April 26, 1987.
26. Gregg Deposition, p. 1062.
27. Naim, “The Bush Connection.”
28. Allan Nairn, “George Bush’s Secret War,” The Progressive, March 1988.
29. Nairn, “The Bush Connection.”
30. Nairn, “George Bush’s Secret War” and “A Profile of Richard J. Brenneke,” The Progressive, March
1988.
31. Rober Parry, with Rod Norland, “Guns for Dmgs,” Newsweek, May 23, 1988.
32. Jim Naureckas and Richard Ryan, “Bush’s network,” In These Times, ]unQ 8-21, 1988; David Com,
“Black Money, the Pia Vesta and Bush,” In These Times, ]une. 22-July 5, 1988.
33. North notes, September 10, 1985, Iran-Contra Affair, Appendix A, Vol. 1, p. 390; Parry, “Guns for
Dmgs.”
34. The letter was reported in the Miami Herald, March 15, 1987.
35. Pamela Constable, Boston Globe, January 14. 1987.
36. Nairn, “The Bush Connection.”
37. Diane Sawyer interview with George Bush, CBS News 60 Minutes, March 15, 1987.
38. Loch K. Johnson, A Season (Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1985),
p. 232.
39. Ibid., p. 263, citing Newsweek, October 10, 1983.
40. Ibid., p. 47.
41. Ibid., p. 203.
42. National Public Radio, August 4, 1987.
43. See, for example, remarks to North by Senator George Mitchell in North, Taking the Stand, pp. 535-
36.
44. Randolph Ryan, Boston Globe, April 7 and December 20, 1986.
45. Lloyd Grove, Washington Post, September 8, 1987.
46. Johnson, Season of Inquiry, pp. 222-23.
47. “Testimony of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR),” before the House Committee on the
Judiciary, Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, Febmary 20, 1987, pp. 4-5. Hereafter CCR
Testimony.
48. Dormer, Age of Surveillance, p. xiv.
49. CCR Testimony, p. 4.
50. Johnson, Season of Inquiry, p. 82.
51. CCR Testimony, pp. 12-16. Also see Margaret E. Leahy, “The Harassment of Nicaraguanists and Fel¬
low Travelers,” in Walker, ed., Reagan versus the Sandinistas.
52. CCR Testimony, pp. 21-26; Movement Support Network, Center for Constitutional Rights, “Incidents
of Intelligence Gathering and Harassment,” Revised Monthly; Paul Hirshon, Boston Globe, May 4,1988.
53. Ross Gelbspan, Boston Globe, March 15 and April 20, 1988.
54. See CCR Testimony, p. 21; E. Bmce Berman Jr., “Project Terror,” The Phoenix (IBosion), March 3,1987;
Gelbspan, Boston Globe, March 15, 1988.
55. CCR Testimony, pp. 19-21; Diana R. Gordon, “Varelli: In from the Cold,” The Nation, March 7, 1987;
Gelbspan, Boston Globe, April 20, 1988.
56. Dr. Ann Mari Buitrago, “Report on CISPES Files Maintained by FBI Headquarters and Released Under
the Freedom of Information Act,” Center for Constitutional Rights/Fund for Open Information and
Accountability, January 1988.
57. Samuel T. Francis, editor, “The Intelligence Community” in Charles L. Heatherly, ed.. Mandate for
Leadership DC: Heritage Foundation, 1981), pp. 940-41.
58. Quoted in Ross Gelbspan, Boston Globe, January 27, 1988.
59. Ross Gelbspan, Boston Globe, June 18, 1988.
60. Quoted in Lloyd Grove, Washington Post, September 8, 1987.
61. Angus MacKenzie, “Conversion,” National Catholic Reporter, November 27, 1987; Stephen Kurkjian,
Boston Globe, September 21, 1987.
62. Garry Abrams, Los Angeles Times, September 20, 1987. Also see James Ridgeway, “Blood on the
Tracks,” Village Voice, September 15, 1987.
63. On the Secret Army Organization, see Donner, Age of Surveillance, pp. 440-46.
64. Dennis Bernstein and Connie Blitt, In These Times, July 22-August 4, 1987; Ross Gelbspan, Boston
Globe, ]\Ay 12, 1987 and November 7, 1987.
65. “Death Squads Invade California,” Time, August 3, 1987.
Notes 449
66. “Death Squad Activity and Right-Wing Threats,” Movement Support Network, Center for Constitu¬
tion al Rights, October 1987.
67. CAHI, Update 6:12, May 11, 1987.
68. Remarks by President Daniel Ortega during the funeral service for Benjamin Linder, Matagalpa,
Nicaragua, April 30, 1987, Envio, May 1987, pp. 34-36.
69. Daniel Lazare and Jim Naureckas, In These Times, May 27-June 9, 1987.
70. Ross Gelbspan, Boston Globe, jxanQ 18, 1988; Seth Rosenfeld, San Francisco Examiner, April 12, 1987.
71. North, Taking the Stand, pp. 643, 732-33.
72. Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald, July 5, 1987.
73. Affidavit of Daniel Sheehan, pp. 5-7.
74. Louis Dubose, “The Next Round-Up,” The Texas Observer, May 15, 1987.
75. Dormer, Age of Surveillance, pp. 162-67.
76. Dave Lindorff, “Oliver’s Martial Plan,” Village Voice, July 21, 1987.
77. Dugger, On Reagan, pp. 242-43.
78. Lindorff, “Oliver’s Martial Plan.”
79. Stephen Engelberg, New York Times, January 3, 1988.
80. Johnson, Season of Inquiry, p. 83.
83. Iran-Contra Report, pp. yi5-l6.
84. Senator Daniel Inouye, Taking the Stand, pp.752-53.
85. Jack Beatty, op ed., Boston Globe, January 15, 1988.
Chapter I6: Crosscurrents

1. General Paul Gorman, Symposium on “Inter-American Security Policy; Political-Economic Dimensions,”
sponsored by the National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, DC, November 14, 1986.
2. Quoted in Kate Doyle and Mark Statman, In These Times, September 30-October 6, 1987.
3. Quoted by Julia Preston, Washington Post, November 17, 1986.
4. Quoted in Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, December 14, 1986.
5. See Joanne Omang, Washington Post, February 6, 1987; Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, March 15,
1987; Molly Moore, Washington Post, Yehmeiry 25, 1987.
6. Gorman, Symposium on “Inter-American Security Policy.”
8. Author’s interview with U.S. ambassador, April 29, 1986.
9. Holly Sklar, “Scenarios for Escalation,” September 1986, revised version published in Pledge of Resis¬
tance Newsletter, Winter 1987, and The National Reporter, Spring 1987; Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald,
November 4, 1986; Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, December 14, 1986.
10. Jay Levin, “The U.S. Invasion of Nicaragua,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, December 10, 1986.
11. Richard Halloran, New York Times, November 3, 1986.
12. Richard Halloran, New York Times, March 22, 1987; James LeMoyne, New York Times, May 15, 1987.
13. Joanne Omang, Washington Post, April 7, 1987.
14. Center for Defense Information, “U.S. Invasion of Nicaragua: Appraising the Option,” The Defense
MonitorYNl: 5, 1987; author’s interview with retired Lt. Colonel John Buchanan, Center for Defense
Information, Washington, DC, November 20, 1986.
15. Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald, September 20, 1987.
16. See, for example, retired Lt. Colonel Edward L. King, “A U.S. Invasion of Nicaragua,” FA.S. Public
In terest Report of American Scientists), October 1985.
17. Carlos Fuentes, “The Hemisphere’s Best Hope is in Contadora, Not Contras,” Los Angeles Times, March
10, 1985.
19. Boston Globe editorial, March 24, 1987.
20. See Alfonso Chardy and Sam Dillon, Miami Herald, April 1, 1987.
21. Fred Kaplan, Boston Globe, May 20, 1987.
22. Julia Preston, Washington Post, March 23, 1987.
23. Rod Norland, “The New Contras?” Newsweek, June 1, 1987, pp. 32-38.
24. Bernard E. Trainor, New York Times, July 17, 1987.
25. Stephen Kinzer, New York Times, July 19, 1987.
26. “Fear of Signing: The Maneuvering Around the Arias Peace Plan,” International Policy Report, July
1987, p. 4, citing El Tiempo (Bogota), February 4, 1987. Also see CAHI, Update 6:9, March 13, 1987
and 6:22, July 31, 1987.
27. James LeMoyne, New York Times, June l6, 1987. Also see “Fear of Signing,” pp. 4-5.
28. Quoted in “Nobel Winner Oscar Arias Makes Costa Rica The Mouse That Roars For Peace In Costa
Rica,” People, November 9, 1987, pp. 57-58.
29. Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, June 18, 1987.
30. Roy Gutman, Newsday, june. 19, 1987.
31. Joel Brinkley, New York Times, August 6 and 15, 1987.
32. Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald, August 11, 1987.
33. James Chace, “The End of the Affair?” New York Review of Books, October 8, 1987, p. 26.
34. Neil A. Lewis, New York Times, September 13, 1987; Robert Healy, Boston Globe, September 24, 1987.
35. Boston editorial, October 13, 1987.
36. Reuters, New York Times, August 27, 1987.
37. Chris Norton, Christian Science Monitor, September 15, 1987.
38. Neil A. Lewis, New York Times, September 24, 1987.
39. See, for example, CAHI, Update 6:28, September 14, 1987 and “The Atlantic Coast: Testing Ground
for Peace,” Envio, November 1987.
40. James LeMoyne, New York Times, June 7, 1987.
41. “CIA Offered Nicaraguan Rebels Financing to Continue Struggle,” UPI, Excelsior (Mexico City), Oc¬
tober 22, 1987.
42. Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan, “The C.I.A.’s War,” The Nation, February 6, 1988.
43. Ana Carrigan, “Ending the Other War in Nicaragua,” The Nation, February 6,1988; “The Atlantic Coast:
Testing Ground for Peace,” p. 21.
44. Honey and Avirgan, “The C.I.A.’s War.” Also see, Menonite Central Committee, Washington Memo,
January-February 1988.
45. Address by President Reagan to the United Nations General Assembly, September 21, 1987, U.S. State
Department Bureau of Public Affairs, Current Policy No. 1001.
46. NeU A. Lewis, New York Times, September 23, 1987; Associated Press, Boston Globe, September 24,
1987.
47. “Central America at a Critical Juncture,” Address by President Reagan to the Organization of American
States, Washington, DC, October 7, 1987, U.S. State Department Bureau of Public Affairs, Current
Policy No. 1007.
48. Address of President Ortega to the General Assembly of the United Nations, New York, October 8,
1987, English translation, Nicaraguan Mission to the United Nations.
49. Paul Lewis, New York Times, October 9, 1987.
50. CAHI, Update 6:^6, October 30, 1987.
51. “The Nobel Difference,” Newsweek, October 26, 1987, p. 46. Also see Stephen Kinzer, New York Times,
October 13, 1987.
52. Robert E. White, op ed., New York Times, September 21, 1987.
Notes 451
53. Center for International Policy, “Compliance? The Central American Peace Accord,” International
Policy Report, November 5, 1987.
54. Americas Watch, Human Rights in Nicaragua 1986, February 1987, pp. 155-56, 166. Also see, CAHI,
Update November 25, 1987.
55. James LeMoyne, New York Times, November 5, 1987.
56. “Cease-Fire Proposal,” Barricada Intemacional, November 19, 1987, p. 3; Neil A. Lewis, New York
Times, November 14, 1987.
57. See George Volsky, New York Times, December 2, 1987.
58. Quoted in Jonathan Fuerbringer, New York Times, December 13, 1987.
59. Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald, November 4, 1987.
60. William Branigin, Washington Post, December 13, 1987.
61. Center for International Policy, “The Miranda Propaganda Coup,” January 1988, p. 3.
62. Stephen Kinzer, New York Times, December 14, 1987; New York Tunes, December 18, 1987.
64. Jim Mulvaney, Newsday, December 17, 1987.
65. Richard Halloran, New York Times, December 20, 1987.
66. David E. Pitt, New York Times, December 20, 1987.
67. Newsweek, December 21, 1987.
68. Quoted in Neil A. Lewis, New York Times, December 15, 1987.
69. Neil A. Lewis, New York Times, December 22, 1987; Jennifer Spevacek, Washington Times, Decem¬
ber 31, 1987.
70. Pamela Constable, Boston Globe, December 19, 1987.
71. Washington Post, Boston Globe, February 4, 1988.
72. R.W. Apple, New York Times, December 17, 1987. Also see Neil A. Lewis, New York Times, Decem¬
ber 22, 1987; Joel Brinkley, New York Times, December I6, 1987; Reuters, Boston Globe, December
17, 1987; Wire Services, Boston Globe, December 18, 1987.
73. Newsweek, ]2Lmi2Lvy 25, 1988.
74. International Commission on Verification and Follow-Up, “Agreement on Procedure to Achieve a Firm
and Lasting Peace in Central America; Report on Compliance,” Unofficial translation, January 14,1988.
75. See Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras, The Situation of Hiiman Rights in Hon¬
duras i957(Somerville, MA; Honduras Information Center).
76. See, for example, Joel Brinkley, New York January 27, 1988 and Neil A. Lewis, New York Times,
February 1, 1988.
77. Quoted in “Is Peace at Hand?” Time, April 4, 1988, p. 27.
78. Ibid., p. 28.
79. Quoted in James LeMoyne, Neiv York Times, March 26, 1988.
80. Michael , Jamaica: Struggle in the Periphery (Jondon: Third World Media Limited/Writers and
Readers Publishing Cooperative Society, 1982), pp. 208-09. Also see William Blum, The CIA: A For¬
gotten History (Adeintic Highlands, NJ: Zed Press, 1986), pp. 299-304; James Phillips, “Renovation of
the International Economic Order: Trilateralism, the IMF, and Jamaica,” in Sklar, ed., Trilateralism,
pp. 468-91.
81. Jamaica: Struggle in the Periphery, pp. 210-11.
Chapter 17: Openings

1. CAHI, Update 6:52, October 26, 1987 and Ambassador Carlos Tunnermann, March 22, 1988.
2. Alfonso Chardy, Miami Herald, September 20, 1987.
3. Viron Vaky and Lee H. Hamilton, op ed.. New York Times, July 31, 1987.
4. Xabier Gorostiaga, “Towards Alternative Policies for the Region,” in George Irvin and Xabier Goros-
tiaga, Towards an Alternative for Central America and the Caribbean (Boston: Allen and Unwin,
1985), pp. 17-18.
5. “Acapulco Commitment to Peace, Development and Democracy,” November 29, 1987, English trans¬
lation, pp. 10-11.
6. Larry Rohtep New York Times, November 29, 1987.
7. For related progressive policy programs see Richard Fagen, Forging Peace: The Challenge of Central
AmericaiYlQ'w York: A PACCA Book/Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 129-31 and Danaher et. al.. Help or
Hindrance?pp. 79-82.
8. MAD RE delegation interview with Dora Maria Tellez in which the author participated, Managua, March
1984.
Index
Aaron, David, l6, 18, 21, 24l Alvarez, Enrique, 51

ABC, 26, 113, 191, 282, 324-25 Alvarez Martinez, Gustavo, 89, 123, 125-27, 162,
Abrams, Elliott, 144, 219, 230-32, 241, 245, 247- 185, 272, 317
48, 268-69, 272, 289, 307, 311, 313-14, 316, Alvey, Donald, 154
322-23, 326, 363, 366, 375, 383, 386 Amalgamated Commercial Enterprises (ACE),
Accuracy in Media, 244 258
Adams, Joseph (Shooter), 286-87 Ambros, Otto, 240
Aderholt, Harry, 101, 234-35, 237-38 American Civil Liberties Union, 354
ADEX, 359 American Committee for Liberation, 237
ADREN (Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic American Conservative Foundation, 248
Alliance), 47 American Conservative Trust (ACT), 248
Afghanistan, 60, 81, 133, 226, 235, 241, 297 American Enterprise Institute (AEI), 49
Africa, 58, 72, 226, 252 American Federation of Teachers, 354
Agee, Philip, 63, 69, 159, 399-400 American Freedom Coalition, 80
Agriculture Department, U.S., 304 American Friends Service Committee (AFSC),
Aguacate Air Base, 147, 150, l64, 172, 275, 278, 268
292, 295, 325, 330 American National Management Corporation
AID (Agency for International Development), (ANMC), 257
34, 66, 101, 237, 243, 245-47, 258, 264, 322, American Security Council (ASC), 79, 81-83,
388 233, 237
AIELD (American Institute for Eree Labor American Society of International Law, l69
Development), 66, 194, 240-41 American Vigilantes, 5, 82
Air America, 101, 150, 251, 258, 275, 325 Americares, 240-41
Airborne, 82nd, 211, 267, 318, 367, 387-88 Americas Watch, 104-5, 139-40, 187, 203, 382
Air Commandos Association, 101, 237, 239 Amigos del Pais, 83
Air Force, U.S., 210, 254-56, 258-59, 284, 325, Amnesties, 104, l63, 377-78, 381-82
367-68 Amnesty International, 17, 52, 62, 83, 354
AIRMACH, 257, 269 AMNLAE (Nicaraguan Women’s Association-
Albon Values, 252 Luisa Amanda Espinoza), 38, 42, 136
Alejos, Roberto, 83, 240 Ampie, Rodolfo (Invisible), 221
Alexander, Bill, 265 AMPRONAC, 14
Alfonsin, Raul, 119, 310 Anderson, Jon Lee and Anderson, Scott, 77, 82,
Algeria, 112, 170 84-85
Aiiegro, Anselmo, 22 Andlno, Mario Antonio, 50
Allen, Richard, 232, 236, 338 Angleton, James, 361
Allende, Salvador, 40, 6l, 87, 195, 260 Angola, 60, 81, 225-26, 235, 254, 258-59, 325,
Almirante, Giorgio, 79 355, 399
Alpha 66, 76-77, 287 ANSESAL, 52
Al-Shiraa, 330 Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), 78
Anti-Communist League of Nicaragua, 9 ganizations and leaders

Anti-Semitism, 5, 78-79, 82, 243-44; see also Atlantic Coast Autonomy Statute, 378-
Nazis AuCoin, Les, 348
Anti-Terrorism American Committee, 248 Austin, Hudson, 155, 157-58
Appelbaum, Judy, 169 Aviation Tech Services, 153
Aquino, Cory, 37 Aviles, Francisco, 292-93
Arana, Frank, 357 Avirgan, Tony, 282-83, 285-86, 289-90, 331-32,
Arana, Raul, 47, 76 335, 379
Arbenz, Jacobo, 40, 77 • AWACS, 226, 232
Arce, Bayardo, 23, 35, 37, 63, 65 Ayau, Manuel, 83
ARDE (Democratic Revolutionary Alliance), 120, Azcona, Jose, 308-9, 3l6, 318, 365
134, 149, 164, 166, 225, 281-82, 293, 378 Azucena Ferrey, Maria, 372
Arellano, Luz Beatriz, 46
ARENA, 377; see also Roberto D’Aubuisson
Argentina, 21, 6l, 75, 79, 84-89, 94, 98, 100,
107, 118-19, 125-26, 139, 151, 170, 210, 242, BAC International Bank, 227
253, 272, 286, 300, 307, 310, 312, 315, 395; Baena Soares, Joao Clemente, 315, 388-89
see also death squads Bahamas, 34, 269, 295
Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance, 86 Baker, Howard, 375
Arguello, Carlos, l69 Baker, James, 72, 227, 329
Arguello Hurtado, Roberto, 12 Baltodano, William, 107
Arias, Oscar, 111, 308, 312, 322, 365, 374-76, Banco de America Central (BAC), 12
379, 381, 385 Bandar, Prince of Saudi Arabia, 226-27
Arias plan, 374-75 Bani-Sadr, Abolhassan, 339
Armed attacks and bombings in Nicaragua Banzer, Hugo, 78-79
since July 1979, 41, 43, 47, 97-98, 100, 102-4, Barbados, 156, 158, 239, 274
109, 113-14, 116-18, 123-26, 132, 134-36, Barbie, Klaus, 86
145, 150-54, 164, 173-75, 196, 199-200, 213, Barcella, Larry, 256
215, 238, 259, 284, 315-16, 372-74, 380, 386; Barger, Brian, 292
see also mining of Nicaraguan harbors Barnes, Michael, 90, 95, 130, 146, l63, 231, 235,
Armitage, Richard, 368 264, 327-28, 353
Arms interdiction, see FMLN and Nicaragua Barnett, Ana, 332, 334
Arms Supermarket, 346-47 Barricada, 43, 46
Army, U.S., 13, 149, 152-54, l64, 178, 211, 235, Basic Infantry Training School (EEBI), 13, 34,
252, 284, 297, 350, 359, 367-68 103
Army Engineers, 147, 172, 371 Bastian, James, 258
Army Institute for Military Assistance, 85 Bauman, Robert, 42
Army Rangers, 157-58, 367 Bay of Pigs invasion, 8, 83, 128, 239-40, 258,
Army School of tlie Americas, 41, 84-85, 245 271, 289, 294, 297, 345, 366
Army Special Warfare School, 177 Beatty, Jack, 363
Army War College, 59, 358 Becton, Julius, 359
Arnold, Benedict, 119 Bedell, Berkely, 135
Aitiano, Martin, 248 Belgium, 41, 81, 357, 372
Ajtime, Manuel, 294 Bell, Derek, 360
Aspin, Les, 313, 328, 348 Belli, Humberto, 243
Assassination, 51, 77, 81-82, 85-86, 116-18, I4l, Bendaha, Alejandro, 324-25
151, 178-79, 181-86, 203, 226, 238-39, 254- Ben-Or, Pesakh, 346
55, 272, 274, 281, 285-86, 291-92, 309, 330, Bentsen, Lloyd, 314
335, 350, 356, 368, 379, 391, 400; see also Bergold, Harry, 198, 285
death squads. La Penca bombing. Operation Berlet, Chip, 82
Pegasus, Phoenix operation Bermann, Karl, 19
Associated Press, 184, 292-93, 327 Bermudez, Enrique, 33, 38, 47, 77, 84, 86, 88-
Association of American Chambers of Com¬ 89, 121, 128-30, 133, 182-83, 220-22, 224,
merce in Latin America, 115 271, 273, 275, 286-87, 293, 370
Astorga, Nora, 171, 287 Bernstein, Carl, 341-42
Atlantic Coast, 2, 43, 66, 97, 100-5, 110-11, ll6, Betancur, Belisario, 197, 263
120, 143, 163-64, 218, 279, 284, 287-89, 378- Betzner, Gary, 294-95
79, 386; see also specific ethnic groups, or¬ Biehl, John, 375
Index 455
Bishop, Maurice, 155-57, I6O-6I Bueso, Jose, 272

Bitter Christmas, 132 Buitrago, Ann Marie, 354
Blackbird spy plane (SR-71), 210 Bulgarian National Front, 82
Blaize, Herbert, I6O-6I Bundy, McGeorge, 214
Blandon, Jose, 346 Burghardt, Raymond, 228, 344
Blandon, Marion (Gorrion), 269 Burma, 258, 366
Bodywashing, 154-55, 159-60, 164 Busby, Morris, 377
Bogran, Edmond, 318 Bush, George, 62, 68, 101, 227, 230, 239-40,
Bo Hi Pak, 80, 86, 241 255, 262, 272-73, 291, 297, 324, 375; Iran-
Boland, Edward, 130-31, 146, 167, 235, 348 contra Scandal, 343-47
Boland amendments, 130-31, 135, 144-46, 150, Bush, John Ellis O^b), 239, 347
152, 175, 185, 217, 223-24, 226-27, 230, 236, Bush, Prescott Jr., 240
252-53, 259-61, 268, 271, 304, 308, 327-28, Bushnell, John, 66-67
332, 344, 381 Business International Corporation, 62-63
Bolanos, Enrique, 193 Business Security International (BSI), 153, 252-
Bolivia, 26, 78-79, 86-87, 151, 271 53
Boltodano, Enrique, 11 Business Week, 138-39, 260
Bonior, David, 389 Bustillo, Juan Rafael, 274-75
Bonner, Raymond, 48, 50, 53-54, 69, 108-9 Butler Aviation (Miami), 295
Boone, Michael, 332 Butler, Smedley, 1-5, 82
Booth, John, 5 Buzenberg, Bill, 246
Boren, David, 348, 358 Byrne, Phyllis, 343
Borge, Tomas, I6, 23, 33, 40-41, 48, 70-71, 132,
141, 166-67, 199, 287, 291, 380
BOS (Opposition Bloc of the South), 218, 372
Bosch, Orlando, IO6, 274 Cabezias, Carlos, 292-93
Boston Globe, 97, 296, 310, 349, 372, 377 “Cagney and Lacey,” 356
Bouchey, L. Francis (Lynn), 58, 80, 82 CAL (Latin American Anti-Communist Con¬
Bourne, Geoffrey, 157-58 federation), 78-79, 84, 86, 127
Bourne, Peter, 157-58 Calderon, Walter (Tono), 221, 373
Bowdler, William, 19-21, 30, 32-33, 40 Calero, Adolfo, 26, 84, 129, 133, 151, 182-83,
Boxer, Barbara, 348-49, 387 194, 218-23, 227-28, 230, 233, 235-36, 241,
Bradley, Bill, 314 247, 249, 257, 263, 269-71, 273, 283, 286-87,
Brady, Nicholas, 344 290, 293-94, 317, 332, 346, 348-49, 370, 372
Brandt, Willy, 197 Calero, Mario, 222, 271, 295, 349
Branigin, William, 383 California Specialized Training Institute (CSTI),
Brazil, 21, 41, 66, 79, 87, 141, 145, 170, 197, 253- 359
54, 307, 319, 395-96 Callejas, Alfonso, 129, 218
Break-ins, see political spying Cambodia, 60, 68, 81, 90, 154, 233, 235, 317,
Brenneke, Richard, 346 325
Brigade 2506, 239, 284, 287, 292 Camp David accords, 255
Brinkerhoff, John, 358 Camper, Frank, 284
Brinkley, Joel, 184, 26l, 337 Canada, 155, 158, 257
British League of Rights, 79 Cannistraro, 186, 218, 326
British Parliamentary Human Rights Group, 200 Caputo, Dante, 315
Brokaw, Tom, 231 Carabelleda Message, 307, 3l6
Brooks, Jack, 331-32, 336, 348, 357-58 Carazo, Rodrigo, 33
Broomfield, William, 348 Carbaugh, John, 86
Brown, Harold, 21, 27-28 Cardenal, Ernesto, 11, 35, 45-46
Brown, Robert K., 237 Cardenal, Fernando, 11, 42, 46
Brown Brothers, 2 Cardenal, Jose Francisco, 44-45, 47, 87-88, 129
Brunei, 230 Caribbean, 4, 50, 57-58, 109, 155, 213-14, 258,
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 7-8, 15-16, 20, 25-29, 240- 272, 395-96
41, 262 Caribbean Common Market (CARICOM), 157
Buchanan, John, 111-12, 368 Carlucci, Frank, 256, 360, 375
Buchanan, Patrick, 246-48, 308 CARP, 241, 353
Buckley, James, 240 Carr, Steven, 284-86, 293-94, 332, 334-35
Buckley, William F., 240 Carranza, Nicolas, 52
Carrion, Luis, 23, 40
Carter, Hodding, 67 Chaffard, Claude, 284

Carter, Jimmy, 7-8, 15-16, 18, 20-21, 24-25, 27- Chamber of Commerce, Nicaragua, 47
28, 31, 38, 50-51, 53-54, 82, 190-91, 339 Chamorro, Carlos Fernando, 43, 46
Carter administration, 7-8, 10-34, 58-60, 62, 65, Chamorro, Claudia, 46
83, 85, 106, 155, 300, 390, 394; “peacekeep¬ Chamorro, Cristiana, 46
ing force” proposal, 18, 25, 27-28; El Sal¬ Chamorro, Edgar, 47-48, 75, 84, 87-89, 117-18,
vador and, 50-55; Nicaraguan revolutionary 124, 128-34, 150-51, 165, 177, 182-84, 219-
government and, 35, 38-42, 44-48, 54-56; 21, 224, 242-43, 283, 378
covert aid to anti-Sandinistas, 55, 193 •Chamorro, Emiliano, 2-4
Casanova, Vides, 50 Chamorro, Fernando (El Negro), 76, 120, 218,
Casey, William, 68, 71, 89, 94, 99-100, 126, 130, 270, 278-79, 283, 293, 378
135, 137, 143-44, 150, 152, 167-68, 172, 185, Chamorro, Jaime, 194-95
218, 223-24, 226-27, 231, 234-36, 239, 244, Chamorro, Pedro Joaquin, 5-6, 9, 12-13, 37
247, 251, 253, 256, 259, 264, 274, 303, 309, Chamorro, Pedro Joaquin Jr., 46, 194, 197, 218-
321, 327, 340, 342, 345, 36l 19, 241, 262, 372
Castaneda, Jorge, 27 Chamorro, Violeta Barrios de, 26, 43-46
Castejon, Mario, 347 Chamorro, Xavier, 46
Castillo, Ernesto, 11 Chanes, Francisco (Paco), 284, 290, 294-95
Castillo, Rodolfo, 377 Channell, Carl (Spitz), 82, 242, 247-49, 263, 314,
Castillo, Tomas, see Joseph Fernandez 337, 389
Castro, Fidel, 19, 39, 48, 59, 72, 95, 157, 181, Chapin, Frederick, 106
231, 239, 254, 297 Chardy, Alfonso, 327, 358, 383
Castro, Raul H., 52 Charles, Eugenia, 157
Casualty totals, Nicaraguan, during revolution, Chaves, Juan Ramon, 84
17, 35-36; during contra war, 41, 393; com¬ Chavez, Linda, 231, 246, 248
pared with U.S. war casualties, 393-94; see Chavez Mena, Fidel, 47^8
also invasion plans Chayes, Abram, 169
Catholic Church, 28, 40, 45-46, 50-53, 63, 66, 79, Cheney, Dick, 348
123, 125, 135-36, 139, 200, 203, 377, 399 Cheysson, Claude, 107, l66
CAUS (Federation of Trade Union Action and Chiang Kai-Shek, 78
Unity), 44 Chidester, Richard, 378
CAUSA, 80-81, 86, 219, 241 Chile, 21, 28, 40, 60-63, 68, 84-87, 139, 151, 207,
Cayman Islands, 12, 36, 227, 249, 269 239, 254, 283; compared with destabilization
CBS, 114, 159, 191-92, 235, 253, 283, 293-94, of Nicaragua, 189, 195, 260, 390-92, 399
296, 325, 327, 330, 347 China, 2, 58, 78, 81, 84, 229, 236, 258, 366
Cecilio Palacio, Ramon, 290 Chitnis, Lord, 202-3
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), 350-51, Christian, Shirley, 12, 29, 37
353-56 Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), 239
Center for Defense Information (CDI), 59-60, Christian Democrats, 50-51, 86, 127, 194, 198,
211, 359, 368-70 202, 299, 318, 372
Center for International Policy, 381 Christians and Sandinista revolution, 11, 23, 38,
Center for Investigative Reporting, 353 45-46, 136, 139
Central America Peace Accord, 374, 376, 395; Christie Institute, 289-90, 335
compliance, 377-82, 384-89, 396; text ex¬ Christopher, Warren, 10, l6, 18, 20, 26-27, 34
cerpts, 401-4 Chung, Connie, 260
Central America Solidarity Committee, 352 Church, Frank, 347
Central American Common Market, 397 Church Committee, 347-48, 350
Central American Historical Institute, 149, 184, Churchill, Winston, 308, 323
307, 312, 352 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 21-22, 25-26,
Central American Parliament, 313, 402 34, 47-48, 52, 55, 59-60, 63, 66, 68-69, 71, 75-
CEP AD (Evangelical Committee for Develop¬ 78, 81, 83, 87-91, 94-95, 98-101, 107-8, 120,
ment Aid), 377 124, 126, 128-35, 143-47, 150-54, 157, 159-
Cerezo, Marco Vinicio, 307, 312-13 62, 164-68, 175, 178, 185-86, 193, 209, 212,
Cesar, Alfredo, 218, 372, 388 215, 218, 222-29, 231, 233-34, 237-40, 242-
Cesar, Octaviano, 295 45, 247, 251-59, 264, 271-78, 281-86, 289,
CGTI (General Confederation of Labor-Indepen¬ 291, 294-97, 303, 309, 313, 318, 321-23, 333,
dent), 44 335, 341, 345-48, 350-51, 360-61, 366, 371-
Chad, 226 72, 378-79, 383, 385, 387, 391-92; blueprint
Index 457
for Nicaragua, 399-400; see also armed at¬ Conference of American Armies, 94
tacks and bombings, contra manuals, durg Congress, U.S., 4, 9, 13-14, 24-25, 35, 40, 42, 48,
trafficking. Intelligence findings, specific 66, 71, 76, 81, 87, 90, 94-95, 99-101, 106, 108-
operations 11, 113-14, 126, 128, 130-31, 135, 137-38,
CIDE (Mexican Center for Investigation and 140, 144, 146-47, 150, 153, l6l, 167-70, 177,
Training), 300 185-87, 193, 216, 220-24, 226, 228-31, 234-
Cisneros, Henry, 171 37, 239, 241-44, 251-52, 260-65, 267-68, 274-
CISPES, 353-56 75, 284, 287, 293-94, 296, 315, 325, 333-34,
Citizens for America (CFA), 241, 246, 263 337, 339, 346, 349, 353-54, 361, 363, 365-66,
Claggett, E. Thomas, 249 368, 372, 375-77, 379, 381; investigations of
Clark, William, 80, 137, 144-45, 232, 240, 244, NSC contra support before Iran-contra scan¬
256, 272 dal, 327-29, 336; contra funding, l63, 168,
Clark amendment, 226, 259 174-75, 264-65, 268, 274, 308-9, 313-14, 321,
Clarke, Maura, 53 382, 385, 387-89; see also Boland amend¬
Clarridge, Duane (Dewey), 89, 120, 150-51, 162, ments, Intelligence Committees, Intelligence
165, 177, 183, 186, 224-25, 231, 272, 345 Findings, Iran-contra hearings, Iran-Contra
Clay, Lucius, 237 Report, Miranda affair
Clergy and Laity Concerned, 354 Congressional Quarterly, 268
Cline, Ray, 78, 80 Conrad, Daniel, 248-49
Clines, Thomas, 22, 76, 101, 253-57, 259, 271- Consalvi, Alberto, 22
72, 290, 297, 344-45 Consensus of Cartagena, 319
CMA (Civilian Military/Materiel Assistance), 84, Conservative Alliance (CALL), 80
238-39, 284-88, 332, 334, 349 Conservative Caucus, 81
Coalition for a Democratic Majority, 24l Conservative Party, Nicaragua, 2, 26, 205
Coalition for Peace Through Strength, 82 Conservative Party of Nicaraguans in Exile, 292
Coard, Bernard, 155, 157-59 Constitutionalist Liberal Party (PLC), 194
Coast Guard, U.S., 368 Contadora, 149, 163, 209, 26l, 263-64, 300-8,
Coca Cola, 26, 83 310-19, 321, 374-75, 384, 395-96, 403
Cocaine, see drug trafficking Contras, l6, 40, 48, 65,70, 73, 82, 84, 86, 97-
Cockburn, Leslie, 283-84, 294, 335 101, 110, 142, 151, 154, 163, 167-69, 172,
Cohen, Joshua, 213 208, 215-19, 223-25, 227-30, 233-41, 245-49,
Cohen, William, 348 251-53, 257, 259-61, 263-71, 273-79, 284-85,
Cohn, Roy, 82 287-88, 292, 301, 306, 308-9, 311, 313-19,
COINTELPRO, 350 321-30, 332-35, 337, 339-41, 343-49, 352, 356-
Colby, William, 90 57, 362, 365-67, 369-74, 376, 380, 382, 385-
Coleman, Ron, 328, 330 92; training camps in U.S., 55, 75-77, 115;
Coleman Resolution of Inquiry into NSC sup¬ Nicaraguan elections, 194, 196, 199-201, 205;
port of contras, 328, 330 military/political leaders and National
Collins, Joseph, 45 Guard/Somoza, 34, 47, 51, 75-77, 87-89, 98,
Colombia, 26, 263, 296, 300-1, 306, 308, 312, 103, 116-17, 120-21, 128-30, 136, 179, 217-
371, 395 22, 235; see also firmed attacks and bomb¬
Colonel, Carlos, 270, 378 ings, assassination, contra manuals, drug
Colonel, Ricardo, 11 trafficking, FDN, human rights, Nicaraguan
Columbia Journalism Reineiv, 292 Resistance, UNO, specific leaders and opera¬
Comee, William Jr., 266 tions
Commerce Department, U.S., 9 Contra manuals, 189, 209, 238, 268, 314, 321,
Commission on U.S.-Latin American Relations, 8 351, 391; Psychological Operations in Guer¬
Commission to Promote a National Dialogue, rilla Warfare, 177-87; Freedom Fighters
12 Manual, 183-84
Committee for a Free World, 241 Contra supply and assault aircraft shootdowns
Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in and crashes, 150, 164-65, 238; see also
Honduras (CODEH), 127, 317, 387 Hasenfus shootdown
Committee of Santa Fe, 58-59, 11, 80 Coolidge administration, 4
Committee on the Present Danger, 60 Cooper, Marc, 210-11
Committee to Protect Journalists, 203 Cooper, William, 275, 323-26
Compagnie de Services Fiduciaries (CFS), 252 Coordinadora, 193-98, 200-2, 205, 207-8, 212,
CONDECA (Central Aanerican Defense Council), 217
9, 162, 267, 302 Coors, Joseph, 241-42, 259
Cordova Rivas, Rafael, 19, 45, 57, 207-8 Currier, Kevin, 333-35
Core Group, see RIG CUS (Council of Trade Union Unification), 44,
Corea, Yanira, 356 66, 194
Cornillot, Hector, 290 Custodio, Ramon, 127, 317-18
Coronado, Eduardo, 208 Customs Service, U.S., 100, 296, 328-31, 335,
Corporate Air Services, 326 347, 351
Corr, Edwin, 231, 344 Cuthbertson, R. Bmce, 115
Corsican mobsters, 254
CORU, 239, 274
Corvo, Rene, 283-86, 290, 334
COSEP (Superior Council of Private Enterprise),
Dada, Hector, 51
12, 19, 31, 39, 43-46, 48, 66, 129, 193-94,
197, 200
Daily Gleaner, 777c (Jamaica), 195, 390-91
COSIP, COSEP D’Amato, Alfonse, 158
Costa Gun Shop, 76 Daniels, Mitch, 248
Dash, Sam, 342
Costa Rica, 10-11, 24-25, 31-33, 39, 46, 49, 58,
64, 76, 86-87, 107-9, 119-20, 130, 132-33, D’Aubuisson, Roberto, 51-52, 69, 77-78, 86
164, 166, 186, 193, 199, 201, 207, 218, 225, Davies, John, 284
Davis, John, 244
231, 233-34, 239, 252-53, 266, 271, 275-77,
279, 281-86, 288-90, 292-95, 302, 304, 307-8, Davis, Steve, 128
Davis, Tme, 242
310-18, 322-23, 325, 331, 333-35, 366, 372,
374-75, 393, 396 Death squads, 77-79; Argentina, 84-86, 119, 127;
Costa Rica Libre, 86-87, 318 El Salvador, 49-53, 139, 202-5, 356;
Council for Inter-American Security (CIS), 58, Guatemala, 83-84, 105, 203; Honduras, 127,
77, 80, 82-83, 237, 241, 353 317-18, 387; Philippines, 325; Somoza, 9; in
Council of State, Nicaragua, 43-46, 102, 136, 195 United States, 355-56; see also assassination
Council of the Americas, 115 Deaver, Michael, 72, 83
Council on Foreign Relations, 60 Deaver and Hannaford, 83
Council on Hemispheric Affairs, l62 de Borchgrave, Amaud, 80
Courter, James, 348 DeConcini Condition, 300
Coutin, Jose, 285 Decter, Midge, 241
Covert action, U.S. government definitions, 361- Defense Department (DOD), Pentagon, 25, 41,
62 52, 72, 82, 87, 94, 114, 131, 135, 147-48, 152,
Crawford, Ian, 275 154-55, 157, 159-60, 175, 210, 212-16, 223,
Credit Suisse Bank, 230, 253, 259 231, 233, 236-38, 243, 245-47, 252-53, 255-
Creoles, 102, 120 57, 267, 297, 317, 334, 341, 359-60, 367, 369,
Cristiani, Alfredo, 377 384-85, 387, 391, 394; assessment of contra
Crusade for Freedom, 236-37 support inside Nicaragua, 145; “Prospects
Cruz, Alvaro, 290 for Containment of Nicaragua’s Communist
Cruz, Arturo, 11-12, 19, 30, 33, 45, 65-66, 90, 93, Government,” 311; see also invasion plans
120, 192-94, 199, 202-5, 212, 217-20, 222, and pretexts
245, 247, 263, 269, 370 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), 69, 94, 108,
Cruz, Arturo Jr., 246, 270, 282 110, 112, 116-17, 252, 284, 286
Cruz Torres, Nicolas, 317 Defex-Portugal, 257
CSF Investment Ltd., 330 de la Madrid, Miguel, 303
CTN (Nicaraguan Workers’ Federation), 44, 194 Delamico, Mario, 290, 346
Cuadra, Joaquin, 11 Delia Casco, Rita, 65
Cuba, “another Cuba,” 1, 27-28, 35, 38-39, 41, Delle Chiaie, Stefano, 86
48-50, 56-57, 59-60, 68, 72-73, 76, 91, 93-95, Dellums, Ronald, 235, 348, 387
97-98, 100, 107, 109-16, 119, 127, 138, 145, Delta Force, 154, 159, 258, 287, 368
148, 155-60, 163, 172-73, 191, 195, 208, 212- Demierre, Maurice, 357
14, 232, 239, 254, 26l, 271, 297, 300, 305-6, Democracy International, 241
325, 357, 367-68, 390, 392, 396, 399-400 Democratic Conservative Party (PCD), 45-46,
Cuban exiles, 22, 75-76, 85-86, 106, 141, 239, 57, 195, 198, 200, 203, 207-8, 383, 391
254, 270, 274, 283-85, 287-88, 294, 301 Democrats, Democratic Party, U.S., 24, l6l, l69,
Cuban missile crisis, 110, l4l, 212 192, 262, 265, 303, 308-9, 311, 313-14, 383,
Cuellar, Adolfo, 83 385; see also Congress, specific names
Cunningham, Mima, 103 Denmark, 318
Index 459
Denton, Jeremiah, 236, 240 Company), 255-56

Denton amendment, 236, 241 Echanis, Mike, 16, 22
Derian, Patricia, 10, 53 Echaverry, Emilio, 89
D’Escoto, Miguel, 7, 11, 13, 27, 30, 33, 38, 45, Economic warfare against Nicaragua since 1979,
55-56, 75, 90-92, 97, 103-4, 141-43, 149, 163, 55, 62-66, 107-8, 115-16, 125, 134, 141-42,
168-70, 211, 214-15, 287, 299-300, 303, 306, 146, 150-52, 165-66, 183-85, 212, 260-6l,
393 391, 396, 400; embargo, 265, 3l4, 371
Desmarets, Jose, 81 Economy, Nicaragua, 9-10, 36, 41, 45, 62-64,
Dessers, Paul, 357 139 '
DeWine, Michael, 348 Ecuador, 26, 89, 151, 271
DeYoung, Karen, 32 Edwards, Don, 353-54
Diaz, Adolfo, 2-4 Egyph 255
Diaz, Efrain, 127 Eisenhower administration, 190-91
Diaz, Mauricio, 198, 206-7, 377 Elections: Nicaragua, 4, 62-63, 140, l63, 192-
Diaz-Alejandro, Carlos F., 171 210, 212, 261, 351; U.S. ambassador’s assess¬
Dickey, Christopher, 34, 119, 151, 162 ment, 192-93; electoral coup scenario,
Di Giovanni, Cleto, 63 389-92, 399; El Salvador, 48, 201-6; Grenada,
DINA, 85 160, 174; United States, 184-85, 189-91, 195,
Dinges, John, 68 209, 224
Dodd, Christopher, 209, 302, 348, 353, 377 El Salvador, 9, 21, 28, 34, 47-55, 60, 62, 64, 67-
Doherty, William, 241 68, 71-73, 76, 82, 86, 91, 94-95, 107-9, 137,
Dolan, John (Terry), 80 145, 151, 155, 161-63, 172-73, 191, 201, 211-
Dole, Bob, l68 14, 231, 235, 237-38, 240, 266, 272-75, 277,
Dolmy Inc., 252 301-4, 311, 313, 316-17, 319, 324-25, 327,
Dominica, 157 353, 355, 370, 374-75, 377, 386, 396-97, 400;
Dominican Republic, 2, 11, 19, 27, 77, 254, 256, human rights, 83, 105, 108, 112, 126-27, 139,
258, 271, 382 382; press, 203; see also death squads, elec¬
Donner, Frank, 350 tions, FMLN, Ilopango Air Base, White
Donovan, Jean, 53 Paper
Donovan, William, 240 El Salvador/Nicaragua Defense Fund, 238
Doty, Raymond, 150, 177, 183, 186 Emerson, Steven, 253
Dowling, Thomas, 241 Enders, Rudy, 252, 272
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), 228, 291, Enders, Thomas, 73, 89-93, IO6, 108-9, 126, 137,
296, 325, 331 143-44
Drug trafficking, 86, 101, l65, 248, 262, 270, Energy Resources, 252
281, 284, 285-86, 290-97, 317, 325-26, 331, Enriques, Magda, 136
334, 341, 346 Enterprise, the, 154, 249, 251-52, 257, 259-60,
Duarte, Jose Napoleon, 48-49, 51, 53-54, 193, 263-64, 269-71, 273-79, 289, 295, 321-23,
204, 219, 303, 370, 375 344, 348
Duemling, Robert, 269 Epperlein, Ulrich, 379
Duncan, Dale, 153 Erria, 253
Duncan, David, 225, 346 Escobar, Pablo, 285, 290-91, 294
Duran, Alfredo, 22 Estrada, Juan, 2-3
Duran, Geraldo, 295 ETA, 282-83
Durenberger, David, 327 Ethiopia, 60, 81, 112-13, 235
Dutton, Robert, 259, 275, 279, 323, 329, 344, European Economic Community (EEC), 155,
372 316, 318
Dyer, Richard, 282 Evergreen Helicopters, 258
Dyess, William, 66 Executive Order 12333, II6, 242, 350
Export-Import Bank, 100, 400
Exxon, Esso, 139, 151-52
Eagle Aviation Services and Technology (EAST),

259
Earl, Robert, 324, 344-45 Fabian, Hector, IO6
Easley, Ralph, 5 Fadlallah, Sheikh, 226
East Germany (German Democratic Republic), Fagoth, Steadman, 102, 104, 120, 218, 241, 287,
60, 209 345
EATSCO (Egyptian American Transport Services Fahd, King of Saudi Arabia, 225, 227
Falklands, see Malvinas-Falklands War Fortier, Donald, 232, 262-63, 287

FAO (Broad Opposition Front), 13-14, 16, 19- France, 49, 80, 86, 101, 106-7, 112, 157, l66,
20, 26, 31 169-70, 201, 239, 254, 357
Farabundo Marti, Agustin, 49, 70, 395 Frances, Hector, 86
FARAC (Anti-Communist Armed Forces), 47 Fraser, Edie, 230, 248
Farer, Tom, 60, 317-18 Frazier, Linda, 282
FARN (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Freedom House, 244
Nicaragua), 66, 76, 120, 283, 293 Friends of the Americas (FOA), 239, 241, 264
Fascell, Dante, 264, 328, 331-32, 336, 348 Friends Peace Committee, 354
FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), 24, 76, Frigorificos de Puntarenas, 294-95
228-29, 241, 284, 289, 293, 329-30, 332-36, FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front), 9-
350-55, 357, 359-61 12, 14, 16-18, 20-21, 23, 25-34, 39, 42-45,
FDN (Nicaraguan Democratic Force), 88, 98, 102, 136, 181, 192, 197, 199-200, 206-8, 262-
102-3, 116-17, 120-21, 123-25, 128-30, 132- 63
34, 136, 140, 143, 150-52, 162-63, 165-66, Fuentes, Carlos, 6l, 172, 371
177, 182-83, 187, 194, 205, 217-19, 224-25, Fulbright, J. William, 57
228-30, 233, 242-44, 271, 273-78, 281-82, 287- Furmark, Roy, 340
88, 293, 295, 323, 327-28, 344, 346, 378;
FDN military high command, 220-21
FDR (Democratic Revolutionary Front), 51-52,
91, 137, 173, 203-5, 319 Gabriel, Richard, 159-62
FEDAL (Federation of Latin American Gadd, Richard, 257-59, 269, 271, 274-75, 278,
Democratic Entities), 84, 86 344
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), l65 Gairy, Eric, 155, l60
Federal Election Commission, U.S., 83 Galbraith, Evan, 157
Feldman, Jeffrey, 286, 332-35 Galil, Amac, 290; see also Per Anker Hansen
Feldman, Tony (Philip Mason), 128 Galtieri, Leopoldo, 94, 118
Felt, W. Mark, 350 Galvin, John, 231, 275, 315, 366
Feltz, James, 123-24, 134-35 GAO (General Accounting Office), 90, 131, 244,
FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agen¬ 247, 269-70
cy), U.S., 358-59 Garcia, Alan, 310
Ferch, John, 231 Garcia, Jesus, 285-86, 332-33
Ferguson, Thomas, 190-91 Garcia Meza, Luis, 86
Fernandez, Joseph, 128-29, l64, 186, 231, 234, Garifuna Indians, 102
274-79, 283, 322, 324, 329, 333-34 Garwood, Ellen, 84, 242, 249, 330
Fiers, Alan, 231, 234, 278, 323, 326, 344 Gehlen, Reinhard, 240
Fieux, Joel, 357 General Mills, 139
Fifth Columns, 180-81 Geneva Conventions, 186, 262, 268
Figaro, Le, 103 Gentile, Bill, 372-73
Finland, 201 GeoMilitech, 235
Fischer, David, 248-49 George, Clair, 231, 322
Fisher, John, 81 Georgetown University Center for Strategic and
Fitzgerald, Lisa, 125 International Studies (CSIS), 282
Fitzwater, Marlin, 337 Ghorbanifar, Manucher, 340
Fletes, Adan, 196-97 Giuffrida, Louis, 358-60
FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Glassman, Jon, 68-69
Front), 39, 49, 53, 153, 173, 203-5, 246, 306, Glibbery, Peter, 284-85, 335
319, 382; Nicaragua and, 48, 54-55, 66-72, 91- Godoy, Virgilio, 198, 208
95, 98, 108-9, 112-13, 117, 120, 130-31, 137, Godson, Roy, 244-45
144, 148, 163, 166, 175, 191, 195, 26l, 285 Golden, William, 252-53
Foley, Patrick, 295 Gold water, Barry, 167-68
Foley, Thomas, 348 Gomez, Frank, 246, 249, 262-63
Fonseca, Carlos, 10 Gomez, Juan, 221
Fontaine, Roger, 58, 80, 89, 232 Gomez, Max, see Felix Rodriguez
Ford administration, 9, 99, 255, 390 Gonzales, Guadalupe, 300
Ford, Ita, 53 Gonzales, Jorge, 76, 290
Foreign Affairs, 193, 218 Gonzales, Jose Esteban, 33, 107
Fort Huachuca, 154, 252 Gonzalez, Henry, 342, 359
Gonzalez, Sebastian (Wachan), 270
Index 46l
Goodfellow, William, 304, 306 Hannaford, Peter, 83

Gorbachev, Mikhail, 306, 385-86 Hansen, Per Anker, 282-83
Gorman, Paul, 89, 145, 162, 231, 26l, 272-73, Harari, Michael, 346
281, 343, 365-66 Harkin, Tom, 130-31
Gorostiaga, Xabier, 395 Harrington, Charles, 379
Gould, Joseph, 359 Hart, Gary, 343
Government Junta of National Reconstruction, Hartman, Mary, 9
26, 31, 33-34, 39, 43-45, 140, 208 Hasenfus, Eugene, 101, 275, 292, 323-27
Grace, J. Peter, 240-42 Hasenfus shootdown, 323-27, 329-30, 335-36,
Graham, Daniel O., 69, 80-83 340
Grande, Rutilio, 79 Haskell, William, 322
Gray & Company, 233 Hassan, Moises, 26, 46, 75
Great Britain, 49, 51, 78, 80, 101-2, 118-19, 156, Hatch, Orrin, 81, 283, 348
158, 166, 169-70, 202-3, 209-10, 300, 319 Hatfield, Mark, 268
Greaves, Elmore, 79 Hearst, William Randolph, 5
Greece, 89 Heflin, Howell, 348
Green Berets, 22, 114, 367 Helms, Jesse, 86
Gregg, Donald, 101, 120, 231, 271-73, 343-46 Henry, Patrick, 49, 143
Gregorie, Richard, 291, 335 Heritage Foundation, 63, 79, 245, 354
Greider, William, 187 Herman, Raymond, 79
Grenada, 50, 60, 68, 146, 154-62, 192, 211, 257, Hernandez Martinez, Maximiliano, 49; Maxi-
266-67, 302, 367, 369-70, 384, 392 miliano Hernandez Martinez Anti-Com¬
Gris, Ricardo, 290 munist Brigade, 52
Gris, William, 290 Herrera Campins, Luis, 21, 33
Grosjean, Pierre, 134, 357 Herrera Lassa, Luis, 307, 316-17
Group of Eight, Latin American summit, 319, Hersh, Seymour, 152-53
395-96 Heston, Charles, 241
Group of Twelve, 11-12, 15, 19, 23, 26, 193-94 High Frontier, 80
Guatemala, 9, 19, 21, 28, 34, 40, 62, 64, 72-73, Hines, Frank, 275
76-77, 82-84, 87, 105-6, 119, 139, 142, l62, Hizbollah, 226
220, 237, 239-40, 242, 253, 257, 273, 296, Hmong, 101, 237, 366
301-2, 304, 307, 310-11, 313, 346-47, 370, Holbrooke, Richard, 241
374-75, 382, 396-97, 400; contributions to Homestead Air Force Base, 291, 295-96
Reagan campaign, 83; see also death squads Honduran Association of Coffee Producers, 317
Guell, Linda, 82 Honduran Liberal Peoples Alliance (ALIPO),
Guevara, Che, 271, 273 127
Guido, Clemente, 195, 198 Honduras, 2, 9, 21, 28, 34, 40, 62, 64, 70-73, 76,
Guillen, Carlos (El Pajarito), 221 86-89, 91-93, 100, 102-3, 107-18, 120, 123-28,
Guinea Bissau, 258 138, 141, 144-48, 150-55, 162-65, 169, 172-
Gulf Marketing, 252 74, 185, 201, 211-15, 224-25, 231, 237, 240-
Gutierrez, Carlos, 11 41, 243, 253, 257, 262, 264, 266, 269, 271-72,
Gutierrez, Jaime, 47 274-75, 277-78, 283, 288-89, 296, 302-4, 307-
Gutman, Roy, 93 11, 313-18, 325, 330, 341, 345-46, 349, 365-
68, 370-71, 374-75, 377-78, 380, 386-87, 389,
396, 400; see also Aguacate Air Base, death
squads
Habib, Philip, 308, 310-11, 316, 322, 375-77 Honey, Martha, 282-83, 289-90, 331-32, 335, 379
Haig, Alexander, 65, 67, 69-73, 82, 90, 93-95, Hoover, J. Edgar, 354
103, 106, 109-10, 113, 118, 126, 144, 155, Hoover administration, 5
236, 240 Horton, John, 303
Haiti, 1, 107, 115-16, 127 Hostages, U.S.: in Iran, 254-55, 259, 337; in
Hakim, Albert, 251-52, 254-56, 259, 290, 323, Lebanon, 228, 257, 329, 339, 341
337, 388 House Un-American Activities Committee
Halevy, David, 232 (HUAC), 82
Hall, Fawn, 230 Howell, Tracee, 241
Hall, Sam, 284 Hoy, 194
Halloran, Richard, 384 Hughes, Howard, 9
Hamilton, Lee, 264, 327-30, 348, 361, 394 Hughes, John, (DIA) 110
Hammer, Michael, 53
Hughes, John, (State), 170 15, 17, 60, 104

Hughes, William, 296 Inter-American Court on Human Rights, 387
Hull, John, 164, 233-34, 239, 253, 281, 283-86, Inter-American Defense Board, 77
289-90, 294-95, 328, 331-35, 349 Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), 11,
Human Development Foundation, 242 19, 141, 193-94, 260, 396
“Humanitarian” aid, 101, 229-30, 237, 260, 263- Intercontinental Technology, 254
64, 267-70, 274, 330, 341, 347, 397 Intermountain Aviation, 150, 258-59
Human rights, 29, 53, 59, 6l, 67, 83, 104, 119, Internal front, 276, 389-92
159, 185, 238, 397; Somozas, 5-7, 9-10, 13- international Business Communications (IBC),
15, 17, 22, 24, 40-41, 57, 77; Sandinistas, 39, 228, 246, 248-49
103-5, 139-40, 187, 202, 220, 243, 381-82; International Center for Development Policy,
contras, 75, 103, 116-18, 120, 123-25, 129, 245, 340, 352
132, 134-35, 140, 177, 182-83, 187, 217-22, International Commission of Friendly Coopera¬
235, 243, 245-46, 268, 317, 321, 345, 363, tion and Conciliation, 18-19
372-74; see also, Americas Watch, Amnesty International Court of Justice, see World Court
International, Argentina, assassination, Chile, International Human Rights Law Group, 200
death squads, El Salvador, Guatemala, Hon¬ International Monetary Fund (IMF), 19, 24, 155-
duras, Inter-American Human Rights Com¬ 56, 306, 390
mission and Court, Japanese-American International Youth Year Commission, 245
internment, martial law and detention plans. Interpol, 79
United Nations Committee on Human Rights Invasion and blockade plans and pretexts, 65,
Hunt, Nelson Bunker, 241-42, 249 72-73, 94-95, 99, 102-3, 111, 124-26, 132,
Huston plan, 351 141, 143, 145-46, 148, I6I-62, 164-65, 173,
Hyde, Henry, 348 206, 210-12, 218, 222, 264, 266-67, 284-85,
Hynds, Patricia, 149 287-89, 309, 315, 358-59, 366-71, 385, 387-
88, 390, 394, 400
Investair Leasing Corporation, 150, 259
Iran, 50, 6O-6I, 87, I6I, I66, 169-70, 251, 254,
lacocca, Lee, 240 256, 259, 329, 339-40
I. C. Inc., 249 Iran-contra scandal: 22, 81, 153, 232, 256, 290,
LG. Farben Company, 240
327, 329-30, 363, 367, 371, 374, 381, 383,
Ikle, Fred, 234, 302 389; diversion memo, press conference and
Ilopango Air Base, 148, 225, 269, 273-75, 277- finances, 339-41, 345; fall-guy plan, 185,
78, 284, 292, 323, 325, 343 342; congressional hearings, 1, 217, 230-31,
Impeachment, see Ronald Reagan 234-36, 251-52, 259, 274, 283, 297, 328, 344,
India, 85, 89, 170 348-50, 357-58, 360-63, 394; allegations
Indonesia, 254, 258 regarding Iran arms sales, U.S. hostages and
Information Digest, 352-53 1980 election, 339-40; indictments, 337, 388
Inman, Bobby, 110, ll6 Iran-Contra Report, 246, 248, 254, 275, 278,
Inouye, Daniel, 342, 348, 357-58, 362
326, 331, 335, 343, 345, 36l
Institute for Democracy, Education and Assis¬ Iraq, 166
tance (IDEA), 269
Israel, 20-21, 26, 31, 133, 146-47, 223-25, 236,
Institute for Policy Studies, 239 242, 257, 272, 294, 339-41, 346
Institute for Regional and International Studies Italian Social Movement, 79
(IRIS), 235 Italy, 86, 170, 226, 240
Institute for Religion and Democracy, 241
Institute for the Study of Sandinismo, 136
Institute of Defense Analysis, 81
Institute on Terrorism and Subnational Conflict, Jackson, Jesse, 314
233 Jacobsen, David, 329
Intel Co-Operation Inc., 249 Jacobsen (Carl) report, 209-10
Intelligence Committees, 71, 98, 100, 112-14, Jamaica, 156, 158, 195; compared with
130, 135, 143-44, 150, 153, 155, 167-68, 175, Nicaragua destabilization, 390-92, 399
185-86, 227, 274, 327-30, 333, 347, 361, 372 Japan, 8, 58, 80, I66, 170
Intelligence Findings, 55, 71-72, 100, 120, 144, Japanese-American internment, 104, 360
150, 274, 340 Jenkins, Diane, 241-42
Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), 108, 152-54, Jenkins, Ed, 348
164, 231, 257 Jenkins, Louis (Woody), 241
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Jensen, Lowell, 231, 333
Index 463
Jimenez, Frank, 66 Knox, Philander C., 2

Jimenez, Lucio, 44 Kobersteyn, Bernhard Erick, 357
JM/WAVE, 254 Koppel, Ted, 324
John Birch Society, 18, 82, 238, 353 Kotula, Kirk, 334
John Paul II, Pope, 51 Kuomintang (KMT), 78
Johnson, Loch, 347, 350 Kuwait, 166, 171
Johnson administration, 52, 67, 190-91 Kwitny, Jonathan, 68-69, 291, 297
Johnson, Paul Douglas, 286
Johnstone, Diana, 245
Johnstone, L. Craig, 90, 93, 109, 273
Joint Chiefs of Staff, 21, 26, 89, 147, 228, 257, Lacayo, Donald, 270
266-67 Lake, Anthony, 17
Jones, Bruce, 285-86, 290, 318 Lake Resources, 230, 249, 252, 259
Jones, David, 26 Langton, William, 274
Jones, George, 277 Lansdale, Edward, 239
Jordan, David C., 58 Laos, 60, 81, 101, 150, 154, 226, 233, 237-38,
Jorden, William, 18-19, 21 241, 253-54, 258, 275, 317, 325, 366
Joyce, J. Michael, 198 La Penca bombing, 282-83
Jung, Harry, 5, 82 La Prensa, see Prensa, La
Junta, see Government Junta of National Larios, Bernardino, 33, 4l
Reconstruction Latchinian, Gerard, Til
Justice Department, 76, 223, 227, 231, 234, 256, Latin American Center for Strategic Studies, 307
262, 272, 293, 345, 353, 36O; Miami investiga¬ Latin American Studies Association (LASA), 23,
tion, 286, 293, 332-36 197-202
Lau, Ricardo, 51, 77, 89, 121, 221
Leahy, Patrick, 327
Lebanon, 133, 155, I6I, 224, 226, 257
Kagen, Robert, 231, 247, 383 Lebanonization, 365
Kattke, Kevin, 228 Ledeen, Michael, 256
Katz, David Marcus, 346 Lederach, John Paul, 379
Kazel, Dorothy, 53 LeFeber, Walter, 27
KCIA (South Korean Central Intelligence Agen¬ Lehman, John, 276
cy), 78-80 Lehman, Christopher, 224, 262
Kellner, Leon, 332-35 Lehrman, Lew, 241, 262
Kelso, Joseph, 331 Leighton, Bernardo, 86
Kemble, Penn, 241-42 Leiken, Robert, 282
Kennedy, Edward, 24, 281 LeMoyne, James, 384
Kennedy administration, 52, 190-91 Lent, John, 277
Kepner, Woody, 243 LeoGrande, William, 109, 191, 265, 313, 394
Kerry, John, 281, 296, 333, 335, 346, 348-49 Lemer, David, 355
Khashoggi, Adnan, 340 Lemoux, Penny, 78-79
Kim Sang In, 80 Letelier, Orlando, 85, 239
Kimche, David, 272 Levin, Jay, 367
King, Jerry, 153 Leyraz, Ivan Claude, 357
King, Martin Luther Jr., 354 Liberal Party, Honduras, 318
Kinzer, Stephen, 205-6, 374, 384 Liberal Party, Nicaragua, 3
Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 49, 52-53, 60-62, 67, 103-4, Liberation theology, 59, 78-79, 85; see also
115, 118, 137, 144, 169-70, 214, 241-43, 251, Catholic Church, Christians and Sandinista
380; Jeane Kirkpatrick Task Force, 269 Revolution, Vatican
Kirkpatrick, John, 177, 182, 185 Liberia, I66
Kisan, 274, 278, 294 Liberty Lobby, 79-80
Kissinger, Henry, 68, 89-90, 171-72, 189, 231, Libya, 60, 253-55, 309-10, 323, 348
299-300, 312 Liewant, David, 334
Kissinger Commission, 146, 171-73, 231, 241 Liman, Arthur, 259
Kiszynski, George, 332-34 Linder, Benjamin, 356-57
KL-43 encryption devices, 274, 278, 329, 345 Linder, David, 356
KMS, 276 Linowitz, Sol, 8
Knight-Ridder, 154 Liteky, Charles, 355
Knights of Malta (SMOM), 239-40 Literacy crusade, 11, 42-43, 64, 125
Livestock Federation of Nicaragua, 47 Manley, Micliael, 195, 390-92

Livingstone, Neil, 233 Mano Blanco, 52
Loaisiga, Denis, 378 Mantica, Felipe, 11
Loftus, John, 236-37 Manzanillo talks, 174, 303, 312
Longhofer, James, 152-54, 252 March for Peace in Central America, 318
Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols (LRPs), 273 Marcos, Ferdinand, 37, 6l
Lopez, Ana Maria, 356 Marines, U.S., 1-5, 40, 49, 89, 94, 97,* 148, 158,
Lopez, Armando (El Policia), 221 189, 222, 232, 285-86, 299, 325, 367-68
Lopez Perez, Rigoberto, 5 'Maritime Consulting, 254
Lopez Portillo, Jose, 24, 97, 109 Martial law and detention plans, U.S., 357-60;
Los Angeles Times, 68, 191 see Japanese-American internment
Los Angeles Weekly, Martin, David, 330
“Low Intensity Conflict,” 394 Martin, Ronald, 257, 290, 346-47
Lucas, Keith, 154 Martinez, Alejandro, 270
Lucas Garcia, Romeo, 83, 105 Martinez Cuenca, Alejandro, 265
Luce, Clare Booth, 240 Martinez, Gerardo (Chaco), 269
Lugar, Richard, 266 Martinez, Richard, 66
Lusinchi, Jaime, 307, 319 Marxist-Leninist Popular Action Movement
Lutheran World Relief, 268 (MAP-ML), 200, 203
Maryknoll Sisters, 354
Massagrande, Elio, 79
Matamoros, Bosco, 222, 244, 326
MacKenzie, Angus, 353 Matsunaga, Spark, 104
MacMichael, David, 91, 99, 144 Mattes, John, 286, 333, 335
MacNeil-Lehrer News Show, 103-4 Maule Aircraft Corporation, 330
McAda, Bill, 359 Mayorga, Ramon, 50
McAuliJFfe, Dennis, 20-21 MDN (Nicaraguan Democratic Movement), 13
McCarthy, Joe, 82 Media, U.S., 54, 67-70, 90, 109-11, 158, l60, 189-
McCarthyism, 144, 248, 308
91, 193, 195, 203-6, 212, 231-32, 236, 243-47,
McClure, James, 348
262-63, 265, 282, 290, 292, 323, 327, 340-43,
McColl, Alexander, 235, 238 348-49, 353, 356, 362, 377, 381; see also
McCollum, Bill, 348 Miranda affair, specific press and networks
McCone, John, 239 Medina, Ramon, see Luis Posada
McCormack, Richard, 316 Medrano, Jose Alberto (Chele), 52
McCoy, James, 25, 257, 290, 346-47
Meese, Edwin, 67, 72-73, 95, 113, 227, 231, 329-
McCurdy, Dave, 265, 267 30, 332-33, 339-40, 345, 348, 359-60
McDonald, Larry, 82 Mejia, Federico, 33-34
McFarlane, Robert, 94, 165, 185, 209, 218, 223, Mejia Victores, Humberto, 106, 273
226-29, 232, 234, 251, 257, 262-64, 267, 272- Mendieta, Guillermo, 270
73, 276-77, 287-88, 326-28, 332, 337, 339, Mendoza, Mariano, B8
344-45, 358-59 Meneses, Norwin, 293
McGrory, Mary, 348 Mengele, Joseph, 79
McLaughlin, Jane, 314
Menges, Constantine, 262, 344
McMahon, John, 224, 228
Menonite Central Committee, 379
McNeil, Francis (Frank), 143-44, 156, 393
Mercenaries, 2, l6, 21-22, 84, 101, 114, 237-38,
McRainey, John, 275 284-86, 372
Mercurio, E"/(Chile), 195, 391
Messing, Andy, 81, 238-39
Maas, Peter, 254 Mexico, 1, 5, 24, 27, 39, 41, 56, 70, 97-98, 109,
Macauley, Robert, 240 113, 115, 126, 138, 141, 151, 239, 265, 299-
MADRE, 352, 356 306, 308, 312, 314, 371, 395
Mailrigal, Rodrigo, 316 Meyer, Edward, 267
Madriz, Jose, 2-3 MiamiHerald, 151, 327, 332, 358
Mafia, 181, 254, 297 Mica, Dan, 146
Magana, Alvaro, 377 Middendorf, William, 262
Maitre, Joachim, 262 Middle East, 58, 226, 252
Mallett, John (George), 129, 133, 165, 231 MIGs, 141, 209-12, 215, 366, 383
Malvinas-Falklands War, 118-19, 300
Index 465
Military maneuvers, U.S., 126, 145-48, 157, l6l, Murphy, Duncan, 355
172-73, 211, 341, 349; Halcon Vista, 93; Murphy, John, 24-25, 29, 34, 38, 82
Ocean Venture, 93, 156, 173; Grenadero I, Muskie, Ed, 348
172; Big Pine, 135, 146, 301-2; Market
Square, 367-68; Solid Shield, 368
Military, Nicaragua, 7, 21, 40-41, 93, 98, 104,
106-7, 109-14, 125-26, 132, 136-37, 148, 150, Nagel, James, 334
162, 172, 209-15, 266, 276, 309, 312, 315, Nairn, Allan, 52, 82-84, 111, 287, 345, 347
323-24, 365, 368-71, 373-74, 383-85, 390; see Nation, The, 68, 98
also Contadora National Assembly, Nicaragua, 200, 207-8
Miller, Edward, 350 National Association of Women Religious, 354
Miller, George, 349 National City Bank, 1
Miller, Higgins, 379 National Committee for a Free Europe, 237
Miller, Jonathan, 246-47 National Conservative Political Action Commit¬
MUler, Richard, 228, 231, 246-49, 262-63, 337 tee (NCPAC), 80, 247
Milpas, 47 National Defense Council, 81, 238-39
Miner and Fraser, 230, 242 National Defense Universtiy, 365-66
Mineta, Norman, 347 National Endowment for Democracy (NED),
Mining of Nicaraguan harbors, 153, 165-69, 224, 195, 237, 240, 244, 391
303, 314 National Endowment for the Preservation of
Miranda, Roger; Miranda affair, 382-86 Liberty (NEPL), 248-49, 314
Miskito Indians, 43, 66, 101-5, 133, 143, 173, National Freedom Institute, 228
221, 237, 241, 262-64, 287-88, 378, 387 National Guard (Somoza), 5, 9, 11-21, 23-26, 29-
Mississippi Citizens’ Council, 79 34, 40-41, 103, 124, 127, 220, 306, 382, 391
MISURA, 102-3, 120, 140, 218, 287 National Guard, U.S., 2, 238, 359-60, 367
MISURASATA, 102, 120, 140 National Intelligence Study Center, 99
Mitchell, George, 348 National Liberation Army (ELN), 76
Mizo, George, 355 National Liberation Movement, Guatemala, 77,
Mobilization for Survival, 354 83
Mobutu dictatorship, 226 National Mobilization for Peace and Justice in
Moffitt, Ronni Karpen, 85, 239 Central America and Southern Africa, 371
Mogorron, Ambrosio, 357 National Party, Honduras, 317
Mondale, Walter, 184, 189 National Patriotic Front, 23
Monge, Luis, 284 National Public Radio (NPR), 245-46
Mongoose Gang, 155, 159 National Security Agency (NSA), 108, 153, 274,
Monroe Doctrine, 4, 28, 58-59, 306, 319, 365 350-51
Monterrey, Flor de Maria, 136 National Security Council (NSC) and staff, 10,
Montes, Oscar 222 16, 20, 58, 65, 89, 98, 101, 115, 120, 145,
Montoneros, 84 198, 200, 215, 218, 223, 228, 230-32, 237,
Moon, Sun Myung, 58, 79-81, 86, 241, 317, 389 243-44, 247, 256, 262-63, 272, 297, 303, 321,
Moorer, Thomas, 82 326-28, 331-36, 337, 344-45, 357-58, 361,
Morales, Carlos, 132-33 399; statutory members of council, 230-31
Morales, George, 294-95 National Security Council Directive, NSC 10/2,
Moravian Church, 66, 102, 379 361
Moreau, Arthur, 89, 231 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD)
Moreno, Luis (Mike Lima), 221 No. 17, 100
Morgenthau, Hans, 35 National Security Decision Directive No. 77,
Morocco, 226, 254 230, 243
Morrell, Jim, 304, 306 National Security Doctrine, 85-86, 395
Morrison-Phiudsen, 160 National Security League, 5
Moss, Ambler, 25 National Security Planning Group, l64, 227, 230
Mossad, 346 National Strategy Information Center (NSIC),
Motley, Langhome, 145, 163, 168, 232 218, 245
Moyers, Bill, 159 Nationalist Liberal Party, 19, 26, 29-31, 194, 205
Mozambique, 60, 81, 258 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 65,
MPU (United Peoples Movement), 14-16, 23, 26 214
Mulvaney, Jim, 384 Navarro, Alfonso, 79
Murdoch, Rupert, 244 Navy, U.S., 2, 22, 147, 212, 276, 284, 367-68
Navy Surface Weapons Center, l65
Nazario Sargen, Andres, 77 Noyes, Dan, 353

Nazis, Nazi Germany, 71, 78-79, 82, 86, 127, Nuevo Diario, El, 46, 136, 149
172, 174, 180, 195, 237, 239-40, 350, 355; see Nugan Hand Bank, 297
also Nuremberg Nunez, Carlos, 23
NBC, 191, 224, 231, 260 Nunez, Moises Dagoberto, 290, 294
Negroponte, John, 89-90, 126, 128, 231, 36l Nunn, Sam, 264, 314, 348
Nelson, Jack, 68 Nuremberg, 355, 362-63; see also Nazis
Netherlands, 107, 165, 244 Nutting, Wallace, 95, 112, 118, 145
Neutrality Act, 76-77, 92-93, 106-7, 128, 169,
288, 334, 347
New England Central America Network
(NECAN), 352 Oakes, John, 199
Newington, Barbara, 249 Oakley, Phyllis, 377
New International Economic Order, 319 OAS, see Organization of American States
New Jewel Movement, 155-56 Obando y Bravo, Miguel, 12, l6, 26, 30, 33,
New Jewish Agenda, 354 377, 382, 388
Newsday, 384 O’Boyle, William, 248-49, 288
Newsweek, 17, 90, 126-28, 148, l60, 189-90, 209, Ocean Hunter, 294
238, 256, 268, 327, 341, 372, 385 Ochoa, Jorge, 285, 290-92, 294
New York Times, 12, 20, 48, 52, 57, 67-69, 76, O’Connor, John J., 240
87, 97-98, 107, 109-10, 145, 159-60, l63, 168, Office of Naval Intelligence, 254
173, 184-85, 191-93, 195, 199, 204-6, 211-12, Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America
214, 229, 241-42, 246-47, 26l, 264, 266, 292- and the Caribbean (S/LPD), 231, 244-47, 262-
93, 306, 309, 311, 313, 334, 337, 366, 373, 63, 383
382, 384-86 Olds, Robert, 299
Nicaragua Lobby, 14, 24 O’Leary, Jeremiah, 80
Nicaraguan Center for Democratic Studies, 240 Olivares, Luis, 356
Nicaraguan Communist Party (PCdeN), 200 “OUiemania,” 341-42, 349
Nicaraguan Conservative Party (PCN), 194 Olmstead, Robert, see William Haskell
Nicaraguan Constitution, 208, 312 Omega 7, 356
Nicaraguan Development Council, 246 Omega Group, 237
Nicaraguan Freedom Fund, 241, 264 O’Neill, Thomas P. (Tip), l6l, 263, 268, 309
Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting
(NHAO), 269-70, 274, 277-78, 294-96, 324 Countries), 301
Nicaraguan military, see military, Nicaragua Operation Cable Splicer, 359
Nicaraguan Refugee Fund, 242, 246-48, 263, 345 Operation Clean-Up, 17
Nicaraguan Resistance, 372, 378-79 Operation Condor, 85
Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN), 14, 200 Operation Elephant Herd, 147, 223, 238, 341
Nietschmann, Bernard, 262 Operation Mongoose, 254
Nigeria, 170 Operation Night Train, 359
Nixon, Richard, 9, 190-91, 339, 342 Operation(s) Pegasus, l62, 286-87
Nixon administration, 9, 63, 65, 99, 106, 232, Operation PUSH, 314
299, 351, 359, 366, 390 Operations Sub Group/Terrorist Incident Work¬
Nonaligned Movement, 318-19 ing Group, 289, 329
Non-Intervention Citizens’ Committee, 4 OPIC (Overseas Private Investment Corpora¬
Noriega, Manuel, 346 tion), 234
Norland, Rod, 372-73 ORDEN, 52
North, Betsy, 341 Order of ’76, 5
North, Oliver, 1, 89, 101, 171, 186, 217-19, 223, Ordine Nuovo, 79
225-34, 241, 244-45, 247-49, 251, 253, 255, Orfila, Alejandro, 32
257, 259-60, 262-64, 269-79, 287-90, 294-96, Organization of American States (OAS), OAS
321-36, 337, 339-44, 347, 357-58, 361-63, 388 charter, 7-8, 18-19, 26-29, 32, 99, 106, 118-
North American Congress on Latin America 19, 137, 140-42, 169, 262, 300, 302, 305-6,
(NACLA), 352, 354 315-16, 318, 376, 379, 386-88, 396, 400
Norton, Reggie, 217 Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, 157
Norway, 201, 318 Ortega, Daniel, 9, 23, 26, 66, 90, 92-93, 109,
Novak, Michael, 241 114, 171, 199, 209, 213, 26l, 265, 267, 287,
Novedades, 16 301, 304, 308-10, 313-14, 327, 357, 380, 384-
85
Index 467
Ortega, Humberto, 10, 13, 17, 23, 25, 33, 291, Philippines, 37, 6l, 81, 202, 254, 319
383-84 Phillips, Howard, 81
Ortega, Pedro, 76 Phoenix operation, 81-82, 177-78, 237, 271, 318
OSS (Office of Strategic Services), 81, 99, 239-40 Pichardo, Harley (Venado), 221
Owen, Robert, 219, 221-22, 233-34, 269-70, 277- Pickering, Thomas, 231, 273, 343
78, 283-84, 286-90, 294-95, 297, 324, 328, Pike Committee, 350
331-34 Pink Teams, see Tactical Task Force
OxFam America, 268, 354 Pinochet, Augusto, 6l, 84, 207, 220, 239
Piza Carranza, Benjamin, 87, 277
Plan 81, 102
Plan C, 124-25
Pakistan, 226 Plan Marathon, 151
Pallais, Luis, l6, 21, 26, 29, 33, 77 Plan Siembra, 136
Pallais, Roger Lee, 290 Pledge of Resistance, l6l, 352, 355-56, 371
Palmer, Mike, 296 Plessey Company, 156
Palmerola Air Base, 148, 317, 325 PLl (Independent Liberal Party), 19, 23, 46, 198,
PAN (National Action Party), Mexico, 314 200, 208
Panama, l6, 20-21, 24, 27, 31, 39, 49, 151, 162, PLO, 224
166, 173, 199, 259, 270, 294, 296, 299-301, Plumbers unit, 294
306, 310, 312-13, 319, 322, 325, 330, 346, Podhoretz, Norman, 241
371, 395 Poindexter, John, 230-32, 247, 249, 260, 264,
Panama Canal, 4-5, 8, 24-25, 28, 60, 85, 108, 272, 274-75, 277, 288-90, 321-24, 327-29,
138, 214, 300-1 333, 337, 339-43, 348, 366, 388
Paraguay, 28, 34, 79, 84, 87, 294 Point Salines airport, 155-58, l60, 213
Parajon, Gustavo, 377 Point West, see Santa Elena airstrip
Parker, Dana, 238 Poland, 60, 170, 257
Parrales, Edgar, 12, 46 Policy alternative, 396-97
Parry, Robert, 184, 292, 327, 346 Political spying in U.S., 5, 82, 241, 246, 350-55,
Pastor, Robert, 10, 14, 16-18, 20-21, 25-28, 35, 359, 361, 397
47, 54 Polls: on Nicaragua, 191-92, 349; on Reagan,
Pastora, Eden, l6, 21, 26, 29, 32-33, 40-41, 48, 190-91
117, 119-121, 143, 149, 164, 193, 218, 225, Ponce, Lester, 378
234, 270, 279, 281-83, 286, 290, 293, 295, Portugal, 21, 257-59, 399
350 Posada, Luis, 239, 254, 274, 277, 294
Pastora, Indalacio, 270 Posey, Tom, 84, 238, 284-88, 290, 332-34, 349,
Peace Corps, 21 355
Peace initiatives, ploys and negotiations since Poveda, Leonel, 270
July 1979, 70, 90-94, 104-5, 109, 111, 114-15, Powell, Colin, 361, 386
126, 129, 137-38, l63, 173, 262-63, 314, 378- Powell, Jim, 238
79, 382, 387, 389, 396-97; see also Central PPSC (Popular Social Christian Party), 19, 23,
American peace accord, Contadora, Man¬ 198, 200, 206-7, 377
zanillo, Reagan-Wright plan, Sapoa accord Prado, Karol, l64
Peace Links, 354 Prensa, La, 5, 9, 12, 26, 46, 136, 139, 194-95,
Pearlman, Mark, 53 197, 202-3, 240, 243, 262, 327, 377, 391
Pearson, Roger, 79 President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board,
Pell, Claiborne, 353 99, 245
Pena-Cabrera, Renata, 293 PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), Mexico,
Perez, Carlos Andres, l6, 21, 300 301
Perez, Justiniano (Tino), 34, 38, ll6, 221 PRODEMCA, 240-41
Perez de Cuellar, Javier, 315-16 PROF message, introduced, 322
Permanent Commission on Human Rights Progressive Student Network, 354
(CPDH), 33, 107, 139 Project Censored, 353
Persian Gulf, 72, 87, 166 Project Democracy, 230, 237, 251, 290, 321-22,
Peru, 26, 70. 307, 310, 312, 395 325
Petras, James, 68 Project Paperclip, 240
Pezzullo, Lawrence, 26, 29-31, 33, 39-40, 42, 44, PROWL, 273
48, 66, 90, 93-94 PSC (Social Christian Party), 194, 196, 198, 200,
Pflaum, Albrecht, 134, 357 372
Psychological warfare, psychological operations coverup, 326; Iran-contra scandal, 337, 339-
(PSYOPS), 85, 160, 177-78, 210-12, 235, 245- 43, 347-49, 394; hostages in Iran and
47, 260, 276, 368-69, 383, 396, 399-400; U.S. Lebanon, 256-57, 339; pardons, 294, 337,
Army definition, 390-91; see also conir2. 350; martial law plans, 358-60; illegality and
manuals impeachment issues, 146, 169-70, 227, 231,
“Public Diplomacy,” propaganda, 99, 110-13, 314, 321, 332, 337, 339, 342, 363
115, 123, 128-33, 198-99, 216-17, 219-20, Reagan administration, 14, 19, 38, 48, 52, 54, 56
230, 242-47, 260, 262-64, 268, 274, 290, 303, (Carter chapters); see specific entries for
309-10, 323, 326-27, 372; £?/so Miranda af¬ references after page 56
fair Reagan Doctrine, 59, 365
Puebla Institute, 243 Reagan-Wright plan, 575-76
Puerto Rico, 319, 325 Rebozo, Bebe, 9
Punta Huete Air Base, 212-14, 368 Rector, James, 360
Red Christmas, 102-4, 377
Red Cross, 30, 103, 187, 264, 387
Reed, Thomas, 232
Qadaffi, Muammar, 226, 255, 283, 309, 344 Rees, John, 82, 352-53
Quainton, Anthony, 144, 171, 195, 243, 302 Rees, S. Louise, 352-53
Quaker Oats, 129 Refugee Relief International, 238-39
Quandt, William, 225-26 Reich, Otto, 231, 245-47, 262
Quasar Talent, 153 Reichler, Paul, 169
Quayle, Dan, 233 Reina, Arturo, 127
Queens Hunter, 153, 257 Reisinger, Thomas, 238
Quintero, Rafael (Chi Chi), 76, 239, 254-55, 257, Republicans, Republican party, U.S., 62, 131,
259, 271, 274, 277-79, 290, 295, 344 146, 189, 192, 233, 239, 333, 360, 388, 391;
see also Congress, specific names
Revell, Oliver (Buck), 231, 289, 329, 332-33, 353-
54
Racism, 6l, 79, 97, 101-6, 148, 240, 358-59
Rama Indians, 102 Revelo, Marcos Rene, 377
Ramirez, Sergio, 11, 19, 23, 26, 32, 37, 43, 49, Reyes, Ismael, 30, 33
66, no, 193-94, 202, 300, 311, 3l6, 377 REX 84, 359
Rand Corporation, 317 Rhodesians, mercenaries, 237, 372
Rappaccioli, Mario, 193-94 Rice, Donna, 343
Rappaccioli, Vicente, 292 Richard, Mark, 329, 333
Rauti, Pino, 79 Richardson, Warren, 80
Raymond, Walter Jr., 244-45, 262-63 Riding, Alan, 20, 37, 87
Reader’s Digest, 353 RIG (Restricted Interagency Group), 89-90, 94-
Reagan, Nancy, 84, 190, 230 95, 232, 247, 289, 326
Reagan, Ronald, 31, 58, 60, 68, 81, Il6, 145-46, Rios Montt, Efrain, 105-6
239-40, 242, 251; reelection and public Rio treaty, 93, 119, 141, 173
opinion ratings in comparative perspective, Riveiro, Osvaldo, 88-89
189-92; Panama Canal, 24; Cuba, 73, 95; Rivera, Brooklyn, 102, 120, 263, 378-79
Grenada, 156, 158-59; human rights, 61-62, Rivera, Noel, 196
78-79, 83, 105-6, 268; Somoza, 57; Sandinis- Rizo, Alvaro, 242
tas and Nicaraguan government, 46, 55, 62, R. M. Equipment, 257
92, 137, l6l, 172-74, 202, 206, 306, 366, 371; Robbins, Christopher, 258
embargo, 265; peace initiatives, 126, 139-40, Robelo, Alfonso, 12-13, 19, 26, 44-45, 120-21,
308, 314, 375, 379-80, 385-86; “freedom 129, 218-20, 222, 247, 263, 269, 281, 372
fighters,” 84, 138, 26l, 301, 365, 374; con¬ Robelo, Jose (Chepon), 270
tras, 97, 99-100, 217, 260, 269, 274, 276, 309, Robertson, Pat, 239, 242
383, 385; contra named after, 373; contra Robinette, Glenn, 256, 289-90
manuals, 184-85; mining and other Rodino, Peter, 170, 331-32, 336, 348
sabotage, 152, 164-65, 167-68; Operation Rodriguez, Felix, 76, 101, 239, 254, 259, 271-75,
Elephant Herd, 147; Bueso plot, 272; drugs, 294-95, 297, 324-25, 343-46
272, 290-91; NSC and private auxiliaray, 223- Rodriguez, Indalecio, 129, 133
24, 227-28, 230, 237, 242, 247-49, 259, 263- Rodriguez, Luis, 294
64, 277, 289, 322, 334, 337; Ronald Reagan Rodriguez, Ramon Milian, 294
Humanitarian Award, 242; Hasenfus Rogers, Joel, 190-91, 213
Index 469
Rojas Chinchilla, Carlos, 285 Schlafly, Phyllis, 81

Rollback, 58, 73, 99, 174, 215, 365 Schlaudeman, Harry, 174
Romero, Oscar, 50-51 Schroeder, Pat, 348, 387
Roosevelt, Franklin, 1, 104, 190 Schwab, Jeffrey, l64
Roosevelt, Theodore, 301 Scowcroft, Brent, 348
Rosales, Pablo, 357 Seaga, Edward, 390
Rosenblatt, William, 329-31 Seal, Adler Berriman (Barry), 291-92, 295, 325
Rosenfeld, Seth, 292 Sears World Trade, 256
Rosenthal, Jaime, 317 Seaspray, 153-54, 257, 275
Royo, Aristedes, 24 Secord, Richard, 22, 76, 101, 226, 230, 234, 249,
Rudman, Warren, 348, 360 251, 253-57, 259, 271, 274-75, 277-78, 290,
Ruiz, Henry, 23 297, 321-22, 330, 337, 340, 344-45, 388
Rural Workers’ Association (ATC), 42, 44 Secret Army Organization, 355
Ryan, John C., 355 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), 99-
Ryan, Randolph, 348-49 100
Ryoichi Sasakawa, 80 Senegal, 170
Sentinel, 248
September 15th Legion, 47, 77, 88-89, 102, ll6
Sevilla Sacasa, Guillermo, 242
Sacasa, Juan, 5 Shackley, Theodore, 101, 253-56, 271, 290
Saenz, Frederico, 290 Shakespeare, Frank, 240
Safair Freighters, 225 Shawcross, William, 90
SALADIN, 276 Sheepdipping, 258-59
Salazar, Jorge, 46-48 Shelton, Sally, 13, 156
Jorge Salazar Command, 378 Shelton, Turner, 8-9
Salazar, Lucia Cardenal de, 129 Shokyo Rengo, 80
SALT treaties, 27, 50 Shultz, George, 71, 150, 160, 174, 212, 224, 227-
Sanchez, Aristides, 88, 220, 222, 286, 372 28, 231, 243, 260-61, 265-66, 304, 306, 308,
Sanchez, Nestor, 231 323
Sanctuary, sanctuary churches, U.S., 6l, 352 Sigur, Gaston Jr, 229
Sanders, Chuck, 22 Silber, John, 241
Sandinismo, 37 Simon, William, 240-41
Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS), Civil “Simon and Simon,” 356
Defense Committees (CDC), 23, 42, 44, 137, Singapore, 230
162, 178, 181 Singlaub, John, 81-84, 101, 229, 232-39, 259,
Sandinista National Directorate, 23, 119; see also 290, 318, 325-26, 328, 330, 346, 389
FSLN Slattery, James, 311
Sandinista Workers’ Federation (CST), 44 Smith, William French, l69, 227, 332, 358
Sandinista Youth Organization, 42 Smith, Wayne, 214-15
Sandino, Augusto Cesar, 3-6, 9, 39-40, 49, 70, Socal, 139
299, 306 Socialist International, 120, 318
Sandoval, Mario, 77, 83-84 Solarz, Stephen, 265
SANE, 354 Solaun, Mauricio, 10-11, 13, 15, 21
San Francisco Examiner, 292 Soldier of Fortune, l6, 182, 235, 237-38
Sanguinetti, Julio, 310 Somarriba, Leonardo, 47-48, 129
San Jose Declaration, 218, 262-63 Somoza Debayle, Anastasio, 6-37, 55, 57, 60-6l,
Santa Elena airstrip, 277, 295, 322-23, 393 76-77, 98, 102, 111, 113, 172, 174, 194, 205-
Sapoa accord, 388-89 6, 213, 220, 242-43, 255, 257, 370-71, 399; as¬
Sarbanes, Paul, 348 sassination, 294
Samey, Jose, 396 Somoza Debayle, Luis, 6, 8, 10
Saudi Arabia, 223-28, 231-32, 236, 257, 263, 327, Somoza Garcia, Anastasio, 5, 10
330, 344 Somoza Portocarrero, Anastasio, 13, 86
“Saudi Prince,” 228, 249 Somoza family wealth, 36
Savage, Gus, 157 Somoza, Jose, l6
Savimbi, Jonas, 226, 241 Sotelo, Casimiro, 11
Sawyer, Diane, 347 South Africa, 21, 82, 87, 223-25, 265, 276, 284,
Sawyer, Wallace (Buzz), 275, 323-26 346
Scaife, Richard Mellon, 244 South Atlantic Treaty Organization (SATO), 87
Schlafly, Fred, 81
Southern Air Transport, 34, 101, 225, 258-59, Sullivan, Brendan, 357, 362
269, 274-75, 278, 292, 325, 329, 352 Sumairco, 257
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 354 Summit Aviation, 147, 295
Southern Command (Southcom), U.S. Army, 20, Sumner, Gordon, 58, 77, 83
89, 95, 112, 118, 145, 231, 26l, 266, 273, Sumu Indians, 43, 102-3, 378
275, 281, 315, 343, 366, 372 Support Group, introduced, 307
Southern front, 120, 143, 218, 234, 270-71, 276- Supreme Court, Nicaragua, 48
79, 286, 295 Supreme Electoral Council, Nicaragua, 197,
South Korea, 78, 80-82, 229, 294, 368 200-2
Soviet Union, 1, 5, 8, 14, 26, 28, 38-39, 42, 48, Suriname, 146
54, 57-60, 67, 71-72, 78, 80, 82, 85, 95, 98, Symms, Steve, 57
107, 109-12, 116, 130, 133, 138, I4l, 145, Syria, 60, 170
148, 151, 155, 159-60, 165-66, 170-73, 191- Systems Services International, 255-56
92, 195, 204, 208-10, 231-32, 235, 240, 248, Sweden, 201
251, 265, 267, 300, 305-6, 308, 365, 383-86, Swiss Bank Corporation, 230
399-400 Switzerland, 230, 244-45, 357, 384
Spain, 21, 41, 144, 357; Spanish Civil War com¬
parisons, 56, 371
Speakes, Larry, 308, 337
Special Air Services (SAS), British, 226-27, 276 Tactical Task Force (TTF), “Pink Teams,” 272-
Special Forces, U.S., 13, 150-52, 159-60, 237, 73
284 Taft administration, 2-4
Special Mobile Airborne Reaction Force Taft, William H. IV, 131
(SMARF), 256, see also Tactical Task Force Taiwan, 21, 78, 81, 229, 242, 254, 258
Special Operations Command, 257-58 Tambs, Lewis, 58, 231, 276-77, 279, 285-86, 322,
Special Operations Division, 152-54, 231, 252, 331, 333
257 Tardencillas, Orlando Jose, 112-13
Special Operations Group/Studies and Observa¬ Task Force 157, 254
tion Group (SOG), 81, 101, 232, 235, 237 Task Force l60, 153-55
Special Operations Policy Advisory Group Taubman, Philip, 193
(SOPAG), 256 TecNica, 356-57
Spellman, Francis Cardinal, 240 Tecos (Mexican), 78, 84
Spivey, Larry, 332 Teeley, Peter, 68
Sporkin, Stanley, 226-27 Tefel, Reinaldo Antonio, 12
St. George’s Medical School, 157-58 Tegucigalpa Bloc, 304
Standard Oil, 2 Tellez, Dora Maria, 16, 25, 36-37, 397-98
Stanford Technology Corporation, 254-55 Terpil, Frank, 254-55
Stanford Technology Trading Group Internation¬ Terrell, Jack, 285-89, 293
al, 256 Texaco, 139
State Department, 3-4, 14-16, 27, 29, 41-42, 52- Thailand, 101, 233, 237, 253, 325
54, 65, 67-68, 71, 76, 107, 118, 135, 156, 158, Theberge, James, 9
163, 170, 197-98, 209-10, 212-13, 215, 222- Thomas, Detlaf, 296
23, 228, 231, 236, 243, 245-47, 256, 261-63, Thomas-Altamirano, Leticia, 296
267, 273-74, 297, 303-5, 311, 333-34, 363, Thompson, Robert, 284, 286
377, 382 Tico Times, 282
Steele, James, 231, 273-75, 277-78, 324, 343, 346 Tijerino, Doris, l6
Stemwedel, Jerry, 275 Time, 145, 147, l68, 232
Stetsko, Yaroslav, 78 Tinoco, Victor Hugo, 93, 174, 315
Stewart, Bill, 26 Tirado, Victor, 23
Stilwell, Richard, 240 Todman, Terence, 13
Stockwell, Eugene, 172 Tokyo Tribunals, 363
Stokes, Louis, 331-32, 336, 348 Tolliver, Mike, 294-96
Stone, Richard, 142-43, 272 Torrealba, Renato, l64
Stroessner, Alfredo, 84, 294 Torres, Donald (El Toro), 221
Studds, Gerry, 95, 313, 348 Torricelli, Robert, 135
Studley, Barbara, 235, 346 Torries, 75
Suazo Cordova, Roberto, 126, 262, 272 Torrijos, Omar, l6, 21, 24-25, 33, 300
Suhr, Alberto, 269 Tower, John, 168, 348
Tower Board, 245, 326, 337, 348
Index 471
Toyco, 252 47-48, 66, 123, 129, 153, l6l, 198, 207, 326,
Toys Project, 249 380, 400
Trade unions, Nicaragua, 44, 63, 194, 391, 399 U.S. Global Strategy Council, 78, 80
Transworld Armament, 257 U.S. Information Agency (USIA), 12, 243-47
Treasury Department, U.S., 238, 329 U.S. military assistance to Central America, 213;
Trejos Salas, Gerardo, 312 see also specific countries
Trible, Paul, 348 U.S. News& World Report, 22, 100
Trilateral Commission, trilateralism, 8 U.S. Office of Public Safety, 52
Trott, Steven, 329-30, 333 U.S. Strategic Institute, 58
Trotter, John, 83 U.S. Youth Council, 245
Truman administration, 361, 366
Tunnermann, Carlos, 11-12, 33, 265, 312, 319
Turkey, 89, 255
Turner, Stansfield, 21-22, 26, 31, 177, 255 Vaky, Viron, 16-18, 20-21, 26-27, 31, 33, 35, 40,
56, 394
Valdes, Gabriel, 299-300
Valdivieso Center, 46
Udall Corporation, 252, 277, 322 Vance, Cyrus, 7, l6, 18, 20-21, 26-28, 31, 38
UDEL (Democratic Liberation Union), 9, 13-14, Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 2
19 Vanegas, Uriel, 378
UDN (Nicaraguan Democratic Union), 47, 66, Vang Pao, 101, 238
76, 87-88, 107, 120, 293 Varelli, Frank, 353
UNAG (Nicaraguan Union of Agricultural Vargas, Max, 76
Producers), 44, 135 Vatican, 51, 78, 239-40
UNESCO (United Nations Economic and Social Vaughan, Federico, 290-91
Council), 43 Vega, Pablo Antonio, 12
Ungo, Guillermo, 50-51, 203 Venezuela, l6, 21-22, 26, 31, 33, 39, 49, 70, 86,
Unification Church, 58, 79-81, 241, 353 126, 146, 155, 174, 199, 242, 247, 254, 274,
Uniform Code of Military Justice, 362 300-1, 306-7, 312, 319, 395
Unilaterally Controlled Latin Assets (UCLAs), Vessey, John, 228
151, 372, 391 Veterans Fast for Life, 352, 355
UNITA, 225-26, 241, 325 Veterans for Peace, 349
United Auto Workers, 354 Vidal, Felipe, 76, 239, 283, 286, 290, 334
United Fruit Company, 68 Viera, Jose Rodolfo, 53
United Lao National Liberation Front, 238 Vietnam, 58, 60, 81, 392
United Nations, UN charter, 93, 114, 126, 142, Vietnam War, 8, l6, 76, 81, 89-90, 94, 101, 159-
159, 167, 169, 264, 304, 306, 315-16, 318, 60, 216, 232-33, 235, 240, 253, 258, 271-72,
362, 376, 379-80, 386, 397 297, 323, 350, 355; comparisons with Central
United Nations Committee on Human Rights, America, 5, 57, 67, 72, 95, 114, 128, 144,
140 148, 177-78, 192, 237, 265-66, 303, 308, 313,
United Nations Economic Commission for Latin 317, 325-26, 367, 370-71, 393-94; Vietnamiza-
America (ECLA), 36 tion, 365
United Technologies Corporation, 65 Viguerie, Richard, 80
UNO (United Nicaraguan Opposition), 219, 221- Village Voice, 333
22, 269, 274, 278, 293, 326, 328, 372 Villaverde, Rafael, 255
UPANIC (National Union of Agricultural VUlaverde, Raoul, 255
Producers), 46 Villegas, Santiago, 88-89
UPI, 90 Villoldo, Gustavo, 345
Urban, Stanley, 115 Voice of America, 201
Urbana Pinto, Bernal, 86, 318 von Marbod, Erich, 255-56
Urcuyo, Francisco, 32-34 von Raab, William, 330
Urgent Fury, 158-159 Vortex, 296
Uruguay, 87, 307, 310, 312, 395-96
U.S. Catholic Conference, 354
U.S. Council for World Freedom (USCWF), 81,
235, 318, 330 Wagner, Robert, 51, 240
U.S. Embassies: in Costa Rica, 277, 282, 285-86, Walker, David, 227-28, 276, 372
322, 331, 333-35, 379; in El Salvador, 53; in Walker, Thomas, 294
Honduras, 126-127; in Nicaragua, 21, 25-26, Walker, William, 293, 344
Wallace, Mike, 325, 327 Wilson, Edwin, 22, 253-56, 271, 344-45
Wallop, Malcolm, 175 Winsor, Curtin Jr., 234, 282
Wall Street Journal, 8-9, 57, 68, 247, 291 Winters, Donald, 185
Walsh, Lawrence, 337 Witness for Peace, I6I, 349, 354
Walt, Lewis, 81-82 Woellner, E. David, 80
Walters, Vernon, 87-88, 90, 316, 380 Women, Nicaragua, 11, 14, I6, 25, 38, 42, 129,
Washington Office on Latin America, 217, 354 136-37, 370
Washington Post, 19, 32, 97-98, 109-10, 113, Wong Arevalo, Rodrigo, 318
149, 159, 191, 194-96, 204-5, 224, 247, 292, ‘ Woodward, Bob, 68
372, 393 Workers’ Front (FO), 44
Washington Times, 58, 80, 241, 264, 290 World Anti-Communist League (WACL), 77-84,
Watergate, 294, 340, 342 86, 127, 226, 229, 235-37, 241, 245, 318
Watson, Modesto, 378 World Bank, 36, 107, 141
Watson, Sam, 231, 324, 343-45 World Council of Churches, 172
Weather Underground, 350 World Court (International Court of Justice), 54-
Webster, William, 229, 231, 329, 354, 359, 36l 55, 87, 117, 124, 129, 150, 167-70, 182, 186,
Wehrell, Jake, 275 242, 303, 314-16, 321, 362, 389, 396
Weicker, Lowell, 347 World Health Organization award, 389
Weinberger, Caspar, 72, 94, 152, 214-16, 227-28, World Medical Relief, 237, 239
231, 243, 251, 256, 301 W.R. Grace & Company, 240
Weir, Benjamin, 341 Wright, Jim, 375-76, 382, 385, 389
Western Europe, 8, 58, 79, 107, 115, 120, 145,
200-1, 257, 265, 274
Western Goals, 82, 237, 241, 248, 353
West Germany, 41, 80, 357 Xerox Corporation, 8
West Point, 8, 24, 253
Wheeler, Burton, 4
Wheelock, Jaime, 23, 36, 111, 211
Yakuza, 80
White, Robert, 54, 68, 245, 353
Yatama, 378-79, 388
White House Office of Public Liaison, 231, 244,
YeUow Fruit, 152-54, 252-53, 257
246-48
Yoshio Kodama, 80
White House Outreach Group on Central
Young Americans for Freedom, 353
America, 244-45
Young Americas Foundation, 353
White House Press Office, 247
Yugoslavia, 312
White Paper (1981), 67-70, 108, 111
White Warriors’ Union, 79
Whitehead, John, 375
Whittlesey, Faith, 231, 244-46 Zablocki, Clement, 146
Wick, Charles, lAA Zavala, Julio, 292-93
Wickham, Ben Jr., 259 Zelaya, Jose Santos, 2
Wickham, John A. Jr., 149 Zeledon, Benjamin, 3
Wicker, Tom, I6O-6I, 306 Zeledon, Marcos, 129
Willkie, Wendell, 190 Zucker, Willard, 252
Willson, Brian, 355
Wilson, Charles, 14, 22, 24, 82
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Sale o1 this mierial Benefits the Library
Boston Public Librar
COPLEY S
GENERAL L
The Date Due Card in the pocket indi¬

cates the date on or before which this
book should be returned to the Library.
Please do not remove cards from this
pocket.
**Holly Sklar's book is a rich account of Washington's
war against Nicaragua, It should be required reading
for anyone concerned about U.S, policy toward
revolutionary change in the Third World,"
—^William M. LeoGrande, American University
We are no longer a banana republic, we are no longer

anyone’s backyard.”
—Sandinista leader Bayardo Arce
" We were going to knock off these little brown people on the cheap.”
—Anonymous U.S. government official
"The idea is to slowly demonize the Sandinista government (in) order

to turn It into a real enemy and threat In the minds of the American
people, thereby eroding their resistance to U.S. support for the contras
and, perhaps, to a future U.S. military intervention in the region.”
—Ânonymous U.S. government official
" If it were wit? ;5n my power people like (liberal Senators) Kennedy arid
Kerry would be ' ined up against a wail and shot tomorrow at sunri^.”
—^John Hull. CIA contra liaison in Costa Rica
” If they do It, it’s terrorism, If we do it, it’s fighting for freedom.”

—A U.S. Ambassador in Central America
“ Your work will make a great movie one day.

—Ronald Reagan to Oliver North
Holly iklar is the editor of Trilateralism: The Trilateral

Commission and Elite Planning for World Management and
coauthor of Poverty in the American Dream,
Cover by Lydia Sargent ISBN: 0‘-89508-295'4

$15.00 POLITICS/INTIPNATIONAL
South End Press

Holly Sklar, Washington's War On Nicaragua

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★ ★

South End Press Boston, MA

Any properly footnoted quotation of up to 500 sequential words may be

Typesetting, design and layout by the South End Press collective

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sklar, Holly, 1955-

South End Press, II6 St. Botolph St., Boston, MA 02115

1. Carter Strikes Out 7

3. Reagan Strikes Back 57

8. Terrorist Manuals 177

9. Ballots, Bullets and MIGs 189

10. Fm a Contra Too! 217

11. The Enterprise and Other Fronts 251

12. Hits, Guns and Drugs 281

13. Contadora, Contradora 299

15. Diversions 339

16. Crosscurrents 365

17. Openings 393

Chart: Central America: Economic and Social Comparisons 1979-1985 64

My special thanks to Fernando Menendez for translating and transcribing

President Taft portrayed the 1912 invasion in the rhetoric of “Dollar

The prior pretext for U.S. intervention—the “menace of foreign creditors”—

*Nicaraguans use the mother’s family name as a second surname.

Carter Strikes Out

Over a period of years, we sent over fourteen thousand men through

The administration, meanwhile, released $l60,000 in military credits to cover

The People United

Another Kind of Palace Coup

Somoza would not resign. Instead he proposed a plebiscite, the outcome of

Contrapreneurs at Somoza’s Service

Panama Canal Connection

The House approved an administration-Murphy compromise Canal treaty bill

“Let’s Do It With Grace”

As Sandinista forces closed in on Managua, the National Guard disintegrated.

We don’t want to be a second Cuba. We want to establish a first Nicaragua.

insurrection. That represented 2 percent of the Nicaraguan population, then num¬

Logic of the Majority

Washington wanted to limit the pace and scope of economic reform.

20 to 30 years. Clemency procedures established in October 1981 resulted in par¬

By the summer of 1980, Salazar was engaged in an armed plot to overthrow

Ambassador Pezzullo was one of those “less pessimistic” about Nicaragua. He

been used to delegitimize revolutions both in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and to

In a December 7, 1980 New York roundtable on Central America, Jeane

Four more bodies were found in El Salvador on December 4,1980—the bodies

Carter announced on January 17 that $5 million in emergency combat aid

Fonseca Gulf Incident

“I believe reports that a group of approximately 100 men landed from

Reagan Strikes Back

Stand By Your Dictator

According to Kirkpatrick, “Generally speaking, traditional autocrats tolerate

By the time of Reagan’s comments in 1979, tens of thousands of Chileans had

The Reagan-Bush team’s intent to demonize and destabilize the Nicaraguan

The Nicaraguan government had responded to news of Reagan’s election by

“Revolution Beyond Our Borders” Revisited

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