SANDINISTA DEFECTION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000100500003-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 13, 2007
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: December 30, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO N REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
All Things Considered....
WETA FM Radio
NPR Network
December 22, 1982 5:00 PM
Washington, DC
SANFORD UNGAR: For several months now, former
supporters of General Anastasio Somoza have attacked Nicaragua
from bases in Honduras, reportedly with political and financial
support from the United States and Argentina. These groups
oppose the revolution and still hope to bring down the Sandinista
government.
But there's also a group of political opponents to the
government who fought in the revolution against Somoza. They
became part of the government, but now are disenchanted and
believe that the goals of the revolution have been betrayed.
The Nicaraguan Ambassador to the United States recently
resigned for just that reason.
SUSAN STAMBERG: The recognized leader of former Sandin-
ista supporters who oppose the government is Aden Pastora. He's a
hero of the revolution and the leader of one of the most daring
exploits in the battle against Smomoza.
NPR's Bill Busenberg and Peter Breslow visited Pastorals
mountaintop headquarters near San Jose, Costa Rica and filed this
report on the man who has become an important wild card in
Central American politics.
BILL BUSENBERG: Pastora's headquarters is in a seven
acre compound overlooking San Jose. As our jeep twisted and
swerved along the narrow road to the compound's guarded gates,
I thought of the international image of Aden Pastora, better
known as Commander Zero. That image, in main, stemmed from a
successful assault on Nicaragua's National Palace in 1978. Two
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dozen commandos took over the building then and held 1,000
hostages, including most members of Congress. Negotiations led
to an exchange, the hostages for a ransom, some Sandinista
prisoners and a free flight to Havana.
At the time, no one knew who the commandos were. They
wore masks and called each other by numbers instead of names.
Their leader was known only as Commandante Zero, Commander Zero.
That was until just before boarding the plane to Cuba. Then
Pastora turned to photographers, raised his rifle over his head
and tore away his mask. That gesture of triumph marked him as
the most famous Sandinista leader.
The compound itself rests on a quiet hillside. Within
its fenced perimeter, the mood is fairly relaxed, despite well-
armed soldiers visible at the entrance and elsewhere. Grassy
grounds and gravel walks give it more the air of a political
retreat than a military command center. That's also in keeping
with requirements made by the Costa Rican government allowing
Pastora to stay in the country.
The compound was loaned to him by a friend. So were
numerous jeeps. The main house is an old two story villa. It
stands next to an unused, half-empty swimming pool.
Inside the house live six of Pastora's eight children,
his wife and several other relatives and aides. Styrofoam
Christmas decorations hang from the walls. Pastora comes down
the stairs to greet us wearing an open shirt and slacks. He has
a well-built, stocky frame, strong looking face, dark hair parted
down the middle, slightly graying on the sides.
Aden Pastora is 46 now, having spent half his life as
a guerrilla leader. He was an early friend of Che Guevara's.
Following the successful Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua in
1979, Pastora worked in the new government for two years as Deputy
Minister of Defense. But then last year, disillusioned with what
he perceived was the overly dogmatic course of the Sandinista
revolution, Pastora quit, went into exile, first living in
Panama, then here in Costa Rica. He doesn't talk much about that
celebrated palace takeover now. His only comment when we spoke
was that others have since tried to copy his commando action in
Colombia and in Spain, but they didn't succeed. "Let's see," he
joked, "how long will I hold the record."
Pastora invited us to join him for lunch at the family
table: Costa Rican Kentucky fried chicken from a red and white
box, Coca-Cola, French fries, figs and coffee. During the meal,
he spoke about his own political views, favoring a third way for
Nicaragua -- revolutionary; that is vaguely socialist, but truly
non-aligned.
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"I'm a leftist, but I don't like extremists. I don't
believe extremists serve the national interest, like true
Sandinistas would, right? That's why some say I'm a communist.
Others say I'm a rightist, because I'm a true Sandinista.
"First, I'm a nationalist. Second, third and always,
a Nicaraguan. I'm against the CIA, the KGB, against even my
companarios in Cuba, though I appreciated their help. But first,
I support the national interest."
After Pastora left Nicaragua and announced his opposi-
tion to the government, his former colleagues in the National
Directorate made it a crime to mention or publish his name, and
they sought to discredit him in other ways, calling Pastora an
egocentric adventurer and saying he wasn't competent as a govern-
ment official.
When I asked Pastora what kind of following he thought
he still had in Nicaragua, he replied instantly "Two million
people," almost the entire population. When I questioned him
further, he said I'd be convinced of his popularity and the
regime's unpopularity if I went to Nicaragua. Others who have
travelled there recently say it's hard to tell how much support
Pastora still has, though he does have some. There are reports
of signs on walls saying "Plcden, your militia is waiting for you."
Yet there are also reports that many Nicaraguans have adopted the
government's position, that Pastora is a traitor to the revolu-
tion. I asked him about that charge.
"The people of Nicaragua, who are infallible and who
don't make mistakes and who have a great judge in whom I put my
trust, they know I'm not a traitor, that the traitors are the
National Directorate. The people of Nicaragua know that I
continue to defend the same principles as always -- freedom of
the press, free elections, mixed economies, ideological pluralism.
They know who's betrayed the country and the revolution by the
way the Directorate has aligned itself with the Soviets. Call-
ing me a traitor is just propaganda that hasn't caught on in
Nicaragua."
Pastora's greatest complaint against the National
Directorate is that they've destroyed the popular Sandinista
revolution. It's his view that they've overturned the demo-
cratic goals of the revolution by delaying free elections and
that they've handed over Nicaraguan support to the Soviet Union
for nothing, except arms.
Meanwhile, he says, most of the country's economic aid
has come from Western countries. Those countries are beginning
to withdraw their support now, and the Directorate has few
lasting investments to show for that aid. Unemployment is
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rising, wages are falling sharply, and the Directorate, Pastora
says, has no solution but to blame others and to fall back on
their ideology, which is leading to a more rigid totalitarian
state.
Pastora also has a moral critique. He charges that
unlike Cuba's leaders, the Nicaraguan Directorate has chosen to
live like kings amid growing scarcity, isolating themselves even
more from ordinary Nicaraguans.
"All the nine members of the National Director grab
mansions and live like super-bourgeoisie. They've made them-
selves a political oligarchy. They want Mercedes Benz, Jaguars,
BMWs, all of them. Their freezers are full of food, lobsters,
shrimp, Grade-A beef, imported wines and whiskey. They live from
one day to the next, adopting the conduct of Somoza's generals,
who exploited us. I've never seen in such a short time corruption
like that of these revolutionary leaders."
Outside the house, during a break in our interview, we
went on a tour of Pastora's compound. There were fields for
growing fruits and vegetables, chicken coops where chicks were
being hatched; two new barracks where some 40 soldiers ate, slept
and played games like ping-pong to pass the time.
In one of the barracks, Pastora showed us some of his
weapons, old bolt action Belgian rifles, as well as new Soviet
made AK-47s, said to be the best assault weapons in the world.
There was some military training taking place in the compound,
but it seemed to be mostly in line with guard duty, an important
function. Pastora has been in this compound only three months,
but in that time his aides say there have been two infiltrators
sent to assassinate him.
Arturo Cruz, a former official of the Sandinista govern-
ment who is now working with Pastora and finishing an American
doctorate, says Pastora has a special way of treating infil-
trators, a method that says something about his much remarked
charisma.
ARTURO CRUZ: He lets them see him. And after a while
he tells them, "Well, if you want to kill me, kill me, or do
whatever you want to. But first, look at me. And if you think
I'm honest, stay with me." That's the way he handles them.
BUSENBERG: And what happened to the two infiltrators?
CRUZ: They have remained. It's amazing. And you know,
they call them FBI, CIA infiltrators, you know, whatever, you
know. They kid around with them, you know. And one of them
started crying about a week and a half ago when he said "I didn't
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know what I was doing, you know, until I came here and I saw you.
And after two months of being here, and I had the intention to
kill you, now it's a different situation." It's incredible. I
mean clearly, of course, sometimes I wonder what will happen to
him. And I think that most likely he'll be killed. But perhaps
that's the way history goes. Perhaps that's his destiny. Very
tragic.
But I hope that that's not the case, clearly, [that] he
takes care of himself.
BUSENBERG: The soldiers in the compound are mostly
former Sandinistas, many of whom fought before under Pastora.
In separate interviews, the men told my colleague, Peter Breslow,
why they were there. These hardline responses were typical.
MAN [Translated]: My profession is in the military. I
deserted the army and came here because I didn't like the orders
the Directorate gave. They tell you to kill peasants, to burn
their houses and destroy them. I think there's a horrendous
crime taking place there. Thousands of my companeros are in the
army there. And if they haven't come here already, they're pre-
pared to hear the call of our commander.
MAN [Translated]: I belonged to the 9013 Battalion. I
saw that the steps of the Sandinista Front were not toward
freedom, but rather oppression. We fought during the time of
Somoza because it was a dictatorship. Before there was one
dictator, now there're nine.
I was in the mountains in 1980 and '81, fighting without
any real direction. No one knew who our commander, Eden Pastora,
was or what he was going to do. Now I find myself here with him,
ready to fight until the last moment, offering my life to my
people, but carrying a gun in my hands, because there will not be
Marxist communism in Nicaragua.
MAN [Translated]: I think that I will reach Nicaragua
and liberate it so that there will be democracy and that there
will be free elections and so we'll become free, that there'll
be no oppression, and that it will be a sovereign, democratic
country.
BUSENBERG: The men around him may be ready to go to war
against the National Directorate, but Pastora says he is not. A
physical war, no; a political war, yes.
Inside his panelled office, Pastora sits at a desk with
five telephones, one of which is always interrupting. Communi-
cations, Pastora says, are very important. He also operates a
radio station from here to broadcast into Nicaragua.
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On the wall around him are detailed maps of the Nicara-
guan border, along with stacks of walkie-talkies and batteries.
For the immediate future, Pastora's strategy seems to be to
launch some kind of vague diplomatic offensive against the
Nicaraguan Directorate. He wants to travel soon to the United
States and talk with supporters in Congress and go to the United
Nations, and then go on to Western Europe, where he believes he
has considerable Social Democratic support for this third way,
non-aligned views.
Through such travels, Pastora hopes to exert outside
pressure on the Directorate to purge its more hardline leaders,
possibly through direct negotiations with him and his allies.
Again, military actions, Pastora says, are not yet part of his
plans.
"We haven't taken a single military action that's
resulted in bloodshed. If we were guerrillas, as they've por-
trayed us, lovers of war, we would have already had battles along
the borders or inside the country. And we would have killed
peasants and committed other stupid acts. But not us. We don't
want war. We don't want it because we know what it is, and we're
doing everything humanly possible and exhausting all our political
options in order not to arrive at that extreme."
BUSENBERG: However, many consider Pastora's outside
political strategy futile, because it isn't matched by any
activity inside the country. Pastora says he's going to set up
operations soon somewhere closer to Nicaragua, possibly inside
the country. Such a move will be difficult. Costa Rica won't
allow him to base a more active operation in their territory, and
the fighting taking place along the Honduras border complicates a
move there. Pastora has twice gone to Honduras in the last few
months to talk to officials, but apparently they won't allow him
to operate with only his forces, and Pastora won't join forces
with the former National Guardsmen operating in Honduras. That
would be impossible, he says. "Guardar" (?) is a dirty word.
"Look, for me to work with the counterrevolution would
be like thinking God can make a square circle. Why? Because
it's against my nature. In the first place, those guards assas-
sinated the Nicaraguan people. They committed the most shocking
genocide in all of Latin America barely three years ago. And I
fought against them for 23 years. These guards are the same ones
who assassinated my father when I was seven."
It appears it will never happen. But the United States
and the former guardsmen would welcome Pastora's leadership.
There are reports they've been seeking just that, since Pastorals
support would lend their effort legitimacy and credibility it now
lacks. However, Pastora sees the American supported attacks by
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the former Guard as totally counterproductive. He says they're
the only reasons the National Directorate is still in power.
"I've said that if it weren't for the guards in Hon-
duras, a fly in the ear of a monkey would last longer than the
Directorate in power. The day they remove the guards is the
day we overthrow the Directorate in less time than anyone can
imagine."
Pastora says there's a kind of symbiotic relationship
between the Reagan administration and the Nicaraguan Directorate.
The United States, he says, can point to the excesses of the
Sandinista Directorate to discredit other revolutionary move-
ments and justify American support for the governments of El
Salvador and Guatemala. On the other hand, the Sandinista
Directorate can take advantage of American supported actions by
the National Guard to justify their internal limitations on basic
political freedoms.
"The Reagan administration has to thank the National
Directorate for this, and the National Directorate has to thank
Reagan for his constantly menacing posture. And so they're
exchanging favors. It's the dialectic of extremes: the error
of one justifies the error of the other. They complement each
other."
Whether or not he has analyzed the situation correctly,
it's clear there is a cross-fire between the Reagan administra-
tion and the National Directorate, and Pastora and other critics
are caught in it, unable so far to exert change within the
country or halt the attacks from outside of it. When you ask
Pastors if he's being naive to keep trying, he laughs. There
was a time, he says, when nobody thought the Sandinistas had a
chance. They won. But now the Directorate has given their
revolution a bad name.
What Pastora is trying to do, he says, is simply rescue
that popular Sandinista revolution and return it to its politi-
cally pluralist path. The Nicaraguan people are with him in
that, he says, and they're much more politically conscious now of
their own interests.
As we were leaving the compound, Arturo Cruz explained
why he thinks Pastora has at least a chance to succeed. Cruz
says Pastora's more Nicaraguan than the National Directorate.
CRUZ: He's a feeling. He's a sentiment. I think he's
very, very Nicaraguan. And that's his great asset, and perhaps
his great liability too. Sometimes people say he's not very
coherent, and he may not be, because he is a sentiment, he's a
feeling. He expresses something that you have -- you cannot
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conceptualize; you can only sense it. He is the last Sandinista,
you know, in the true sense of the word, in the Sandino of the
'30s, you know. Sometimes he reminds me of Zapata, very close
to the land, without much sophistication, you know. And that
may be unacceptable to intellectuals of the West who are from
leftist preferences. But that, in fact, is, I think, his prin-
cipal asset.
BUSENBERG: With Peter Breslow, I'm Bill Busenberg
reporting.
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