BOETTCHER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301530012-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 8, 2010
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: January 10, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/01/08: CIA-RDP88-01070R000301530012-5
NBC NIGHTLY NEWS
10 January 1985
BOETTCHER: Five years after Daniel Ortega and his
Sandinista guerrillas fought their way into Managua,
Ortega was.sworn in as Nicaragua's president. Before
today, Daniel Ortega was Nicaragua's revolutionary leader
who had directed Nicaragua on a Marxist course. Indeed,
the leaders of much of the communist world, including
Fidel Castro, came to watch his inauguration.' If Daniel
Ortega keeps his communist friends like Fidel Castro,
Ronald Reagan has promised to keep opposing him with a
policy that will make Ortega spend most of his time as
president fighting a war, a war that is bankrupting his
country. This is Ortega's army. Its jubilant new
soldiers fired their Soviet-made rifles in the air. Their
hometown, *Leon, was seeing them off to their first
battles against the U.S.-backed rebels called contras".
They said their last goodbyes to their families. :Their
enemy, the contras, have received no money from the CIA in
recent months, but they continue to fight a tough
hit-and-run guerrilla war, and many of these men probably
will not return home. Along Nicaragua's northern
frontier, there is hardly a town that has not felt the
war. In *Huehueli, a woman cried over the wedding dress
.of her daughter who was killed in a contra.ambush two days
after her wedding. Down the road, a contra commander
insisted his men do not kill innocent civilians. He said
he was fighting Nicaraguan communists and atheists. He
wore a crucifix o his hat and was watched over by a squad
of contras equipped with U.S.-supplied weapons. At an
army training camp, instructors-for the Cuban-backed
Sandinista army are teaching boys and their grandfathers
how to shoot. Nicaraguans are being told on this
inauguration day to prepare for more war against the
contras and perhaps against the American Army itself.
Nicaraguans believe the inauguration day warning of?more
war, and they are certain of the hardships that it will
bring, continued shortages of everything needed to live
and little money to buy what.is available. The
inauguration of Ortega marks new tough times for him and
the-Nicaraguan people. Mike Boettcher, NBC News, Managua.
Approved For Release 2010/01/08: CIA-RDP88-01070R000301530012-5