INTELLIGENCE FAILURE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100260007-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 21, 2010
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: March 19, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000100260007-7
WALL STREET JOURNAL
19 March 1986
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE 30 ..
Intelligence Failure
Tomorrow the House will vote on
President Reagan's request for mili-
tary aid to the contras in Nicaragua.
It will be a somber day whichever
way the vote goes. The past few
weeks' debate about Central America
has unearthed a vast amount of igno-
rance and arrogance about how the
world works and what Americans
must do to defend themselves and
their values.
A couple of weeks ago CIA Direc-
tor William Casey said that Nicara-
gua's Sandinista government was
waging a disinformation campaign
aimed at the congressmen who would
soon vote on contra aid. The White
House said it would release a declassi-
fied version of the details.
From the Hill came the roar of
congressmen outraged at the sugges-
tion that they could be duped by a for-
eign government. Then the Washing-
ton Post sprang forward with a scoop:
Mr. Casey's "disinformation cam-
paign" was actua v iust some consul-
tants to the Sandinistas proposing a
ublicit blitz with "language and tac-
tics Simi ar to those of many of er
legislative lobbying campaigns."
You get the clever message? The
Sandinista campaign is a legitimate
lobbying effort. It is the administra-
tion's attempt to discredit it that con-
stitutes the deception. The White
House decided not to release its infor-
mation after all.
After a while, you grow numb.
Last night, public television's docu-
mentary program "Frontline" sched-
uled a pre-vote film about the contras
titled "Who's Running This War?"
The production had so much political
spin on it that it almost achieved or-
bit. In the film, contra leaders were
Somocistas. The troops were blood-
thirsty and ineffectual. Their U.S. sup-
porters were bizarre right-wingers.
We have gotten used to this stuff,
but recently there has been a fresh
shock. As Michael Ledeen details
nearby, Alvaro Baldizon is a former
Sandinista official who defected and
came to this country eight months
ago. Before his defection he served as
chief investigator to the minister of
the interior, Tomas Borge. Mr. Baldi-
zon says he investigated, among other
things, international charges of hu-
man-rights abuse by the Sandinistas,
to help the government answer them.
He saw some of the innermost work-
ings of the regime.
In the U.S., Mr. Baldizon has been
telling his story. Each new question
asked of him elicits more tales of
murder, terror and deception. A cou-
ple of weeks ago Mr. Baldizon, an-
swering one question, mentioned that
he had direct knowledge of Sandinista
soldiers disguising themselves as con-
tras and committing atrocities in the
contras' name. They were specially
trained in East Germany. One group
of them, said Mr. Baldizon, posed as
counterrevolutionary peasants, killing
Sandinista collaborators to prove their
authenticity. They would join genuine
contra bands, and in camp at night
they would slit the throats of their
new comrades-in-arms. The literature
on communist military campaigns
since World War II alludes to similar
deceptions, but seldom has anyone
come forth claiming firsthand knowl-
edge of such events in progress. Yet
Mr. Baldizon's revelations have
hardly caused a ripple in the public
debate.
Mr. Baldizon's charges could of
course be spurious, even though some
of his other claims, as Mr. Ledeen re-
ports, have been checked against the
findings of human-rights groups. He
has named names, dates and places.
If his charges are true, the current
debate about Nicaragua has been just
a schoolchild's exercise, because the
"facts" that people think they know
have been manipulated with a deliber-
ateness that we literally cannot imag-
ine. No one has to believe Mr. Baldi-
zon, but it is a remarkable phenome-
non when, in the midst of a roaring
debate, his charges are treated as if
they were never made. This failing is
part of a bigger one. Americans are
truly innocent. There are some kinds
of evil that we simply cannot believe,
especially when disbelief is convenient
for us.
We are used to open political de-
bate. We hate clandestine manipula-
tion because it robs us of the reliable
information that makes open debate
possible. When we are told that such
manipulation exists, we desperately
try to avoid knowing it, so that we will
not have to face its complications.
It took a long time to convince peo-
ple of the reality of the Holocaust. It
took a long time for people to believe
the horror of the Khmer Rouge. So far
the U.S. has been lucky, and has
made up for such failures of intelli-
gence. But no one is lucky forever,
and persisting in this self-satisfied ig-
norance could sooner or later be fa-
tal.
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/21 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000100260007-7