SENATOR ASKS IF ADMINISTRATION CROSSED THE LINE INTO ILLEGAL ACTS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303560056-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 56
• Publication Date: October 12, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
V
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303560056-5
ASSOCIATED PRESS
12 October 1986
1SENATOR ASKS IF ADMINISTRATION CROSSED THE LINE INTO ILLEGAL At-La
BY HARRY F. ROSENTHAL
WASHINGTON
As long as the administration openly encourages gun running in Central
America, more Americans will become involved, killed and put on trial and the
distinction will be blurred between who's official and who isn't, the vice
chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said most members of Congress feel the U.S.
government has overstepped the bounds by giving a "wink and a shrug" to private
groups supporting Contra rebels seeking to overthrow the government of
Nicaragua.
"I don't think we've had adquate answers whether the administration was
involved with more than verbal encouragement of these people," Leahy said in a
telephone interview from his home in Vermont.
"The question that hasn't been answered fully to all the congressional
inquiries is whether they stepped over the line from political encouragement to
illegal cooperation."Congress barred military aid from the United States to the
Contras in 1984 but later authorized non-military aid.
The question of whether the U.S. government has gone beyond that has come
under intense scrutiny since Eugene Hasenfus, an ex-Marine who once flew for Air
America, a CIA -operated airline in Vietnam, was captured in Nicaragua after
his arms-loaded plane was brought down by a Nicaraguan missile.
Hasenfus told a news conference in Managua Thursday that a man named Max
Gomez and another Cuban-American "work for the CIA (and) did most of the
coordination" for the gun-running flights he took part in.
On Saturday, Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of state for Inter-American
affairs, categorically denied that Hasenfus worked for the CIA. But he said it
is possible Hasenfus thought there was some connection.
"This series of people who are, in fact, engaged and have been for the last
couple of years in helping the Contras, they came in when the Congress
abandoned the freedom fighters in Nicaragua and they've been keeping them alive
for two years," he said on Cable News Network's Evans and Novak program.
"They looked around and said, who's got some experience for this kind of
work. And they came up with some people who were in Air America, which had
connections with the CIA in Vietnam ... You'll find a close pattern of
relationships here. You'll find some old school ties. But you won't find any
current ties."Leahy said as long as people like Abrams openly encourage
Americans going to Nicaragua, "more and more Americans will become involved,
there will be some captured, some killed and some put on trial."And after a
while, he said, "not only in the eyes of the United States but the rest of the
world, nobody is going to see a distinction of whether they are there officially
working for the United States or only with the encouragement of the United
States.
"They are going to see U.S. citizens involved in the war in Nicaragua, now
being held in a public trial viewed worldwide."Nicaragua has said it will try
Hasenfus and might imprison him, if convicted, for 30 years.
Cc,,:'^aed
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303560056-5
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303560056-5
2
The senator added that he can't believe that "anyone in the administration
can justify a policy that leads to that kind of worldwide show with very little
to be gained."Abrams said the U.S. government does not attempt to learn the
identities of what heeacommuniststhousands
communistcregimeoineNpcaraguallas in
El Salvador or help th
"They have a right to do so as American," he said. "And we don't follow the
people who are trying to help U.S. policy and restore freedom to Nicaragua. I
don't know who they that he
send teeeaClAlybecausehwhenr one
favors or opposes Contra something goesces onof IA i g,the'sCgoingntoomeablimedtonrthe I'A. I'd rather see us
use the resou
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303560056-5