INTERVIEW WITH DAVID MACMICHAEL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000201240003-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 18, 2008
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: June 12, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO IV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
PROGRAM The Today Show STATION W R C- T V
NBC Network
DATE June 12, 1984 7:00 AM
Washington, DC
JOHN PALMER: Is U.S. policy in Central America based on
outdated intelligence information?
That's the question being asked after a former CIA man
broke his silence and went public this week.
David MacMichael spent two years inside the CIA analyz-
ing political and military developments in Central America, and
he now accuses his former employee, the CIA, of bending the truth
to support Reagan Administration policy. Mr. MacMichael is with
us this morning in our Washington studios.
Good morning.
DAVID MacMICHAEL: Good morning.
PALMER: How do you feel that the CIA is bending the
truth or not telling the truth?
MacMICHAEL: I think you'll recall the report, the
evaluation of intelligence reports by the Subcommittee of the
House Select Committee on Intelligence in September of 1982 in
which these accusations, if you will, were made, that much of the
intelligence presented to the Committee appeared to have been
designed to support the policy rather than to look to a unique
situation, and I agree with that.
PALMER: Specifically, what are we talking about here?
What charges?
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MacMICHAEL: Well, basically, the charges I'm concerned
with are those within Administration rhetoric are -- are of a
massive and continuing flow of arms from Nicaragua to support the
insurgency in El Salvador, and while there's abundant evidence --
and this is admitted by the Nicaraguan government that --Nica-
raguan territory and some Nicaraguan government personnel are
indeed involved in the transfer and transshipment of arms into El
Salvador in a period, roughly, from the fall of 1980 to the early
spring of 1981. Since that date there has been, in my opinion,
no -- no verifiable evidence to support these charges.
PALMER: How do you know that, that there's been no
transfer of weapons and arms to El Salvador through Nicaragua?
MacMICHAEL: One relies here chiefly on negative
evidence. The -- as I say, the evidence was abundant up until
the spring of 1981, and yet since that time there's not been one
single interception of one of these alleged shipments.
PALMER: Mr. MacMichael, some of your former associates
in the CIA -- those still there -- say that you really weren't
privy to a lot of high intelligence information, that you were
not high enough on the scale at the Agency to really know about
such things.
MacMICHAEL: Well, I -- I really rather reject that. I
believe that I have seen at least a broad, deep sample of the
evidence on -- on which the Agency relies and which has been
presented to the Congress.
PALMER: As recently as a month-and-a-half ago, Presi-
dent Reagan said that the Soviets are flooding the area with
weapons. Does he have bad information?
MacMICHAEL: Ah -- ah, the President, I think, often
uses rather imprecise rhetoric and this, of course, is one of the
things that makes the -- the evidence suspect when one hears
these terms of massive flooding, and so forth, without reference
to specific amounts.
PALMER: Why did you decide to go public with is? Why
didn't you work within the CIA and stay with the CIA?
MacMICHAEL: Well, in response to your last question,
when my two-year contract ended in April of 1983, I left the
Agency. I was -- the contract was not extended. I think I would
have preferred to stay within in the Agency and -- and work on
this, because I made my -- my position very clear while I was
there.
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Since I've left, as you know, I've traveled several
times to Nicaragua to get a feel for the situation on the ground
there or exactly the nature of the regime as one can find by
visiting a country, talking with its people, and I've become
convinced that -- that pursuit of the Administration's policy is
fraught with very great dangers not only for the Central American
region but for the United States itself.
PALMER: What do you think the Administration wants to
do in Nicaragua? Are we trying to overthrow the regime there, in
your view?
MacMICHAEL: In my view, I do believe that is the
ultimate purpose of the -- of the policy, yes.
PALMER: And what do you hope to accomplish by going
public now and talking about these things?
MacMICHAEL: Well, what I would like to do is to have
this issue fully debated. I would like to see the evidence on
which the Administration relies put forward in a visible manner
so that -- so that this -- this policy can be reconsidered, and
this is especially important, I believe, in an election year.
PALMER: Thank you very much, David MacMichael, former
analyst with the CIA, for talking about this situation in Central
America. Thanks for being with us.
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