NICARAGUA/CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000706950031-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 26, 2010
• Sequence Number: 31
• Publication Date: October 28, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ABC THIS WEEK WITH DAVID BRINKL
28 October 1984
NICARAGUA/CIA>BRINKLEY: It may seem that none o
>MANUAL>Central America on either side, any side, need any
instruction on how to commit murder. They have, after
all, been committing murder in more or less wholesale
numbers for years. Nevertheless, the law says that the
CIA or any other agency of the U.S. government may not
commit, encourage or support assassination for any reason,
even among fighters who, whatever we do or say, are going
to assassinate their enemies anyway. Before we question
oday's guests about this, here's some background on a
essy, ugly scene from John Martin. John?
ARTIN: This is the cover of the psychological warfare
raining manual, David. When it surfaced here in
Washington 13 days ago, it raised the possibility that the
CIA had been training rebels to assassinate Sandinista
officials in Nicaragua. If so, it would violate the
president's own executive order, but it would reopen some
of the deepest wounds suffered by American intelligence
agencies nearly 10 years ago. At the Nicaraguan embassy
here in Washington this past week, the Sandinista
government announced a formal protest. The ranking
diplomat, Manuel Cordero accused the United States of
complicity in some 1,200 kidnappings and 854
assassinations in Nicaragua in the last three years.
MARTIN: What evidence do you have that they were killed
by Contras or by the CIA or by anybody outside their own
circle? MANUEL CORDERO (Nicaraguan minister-counselor):
Because of witnesses that have testified because of the
situation and the report by the army when these things
have taken place, people have witnessed that, and the
Contras themselves have announced that through the radio
station.
MARTIN: The Sandinistas say they took these pictures of
children shot to death in March in an area called Rio San
Juan and of farm families murdered in May in a cooperative
called *Palo de Archo. But there are no death
certificates and no witnesses available to ABC News. Some
civilians die in combat. That is how the embassy said
these Sandinista youths were killed 18 months ago.
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Scholars and journalists studying Nicaragua say they are
skeptical of the assassination figures. The State
Department called them ridiculous. Even so, the Contras
claim responsibility for some assassinations. A Jesuit
economist says he knew this couple, government officials,
who were kidnapped and killed by a Contra, who later
confessed. REV. XABIER GOROSTIAGA (former government
planner): And he says, 'Yes, I killed them, I killed them
because they were Sandinistas, because they were
irreductable (sic) persons. I was trained by the CIA.'
And he gives us the name of the CIA trainer.
MARTIN: A former CIA analyst says he visited Nicaragua
last month and examined records that he said documented
about 65 murders of Sandinista election officials, one, a
peasant on a local voting board. DAVID MacMICHAEL (former
CIA analyst): The door of his house was broken down, a
group of Contras came in, dragged him outside in front of
his eight-month pregnant wife, six children, castrated
him, cut off his ears and then shot him to death.
MARTIN: American CIA officials declined requests for
interviews. But Edgar *Chormoro of the Nicaraguan
Democratic Force said the American who helped him draft
the training manual emphasized the need to control the
minds of potential supporters. The document does not use
the word 'assassination,' but calls for kidnappings in
efforts to neutralize Sandinista officials.
SEN. MALCOLM WALLOP (R-Wyo., Senate Intelligence
Committee): What neutralize means to me is basically to
reduce the effectiveness of it. There's all kinds of ways
of eliminating effectiveness without eliminating life.
MARTIN: This week, the Senate Intelligence Committee got
a closed briefing from CIA officials, who could not say
who ordered or reviewed the training manual.
SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D-Vt. Senate Intelligence Committee):
Why is everybody scrambling around saying, 'Well, gee, I
don't know who authorized it. Did you authorize it?
Well, I didn't, maybe it's the guy down the hall. Check
with the guy down the hall and he says, 'No, I was gone
that day, it must have been somebody else that did it.'
After awhile you wonder who's running the show.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN (Oct. 21, Kansas City, Missouri):
We're not in the habit of assigning guilt before there has
been proper evidence produced and proof of that guilt.
But if guilt is established, whoever is guilty, we will
treat with that situation then, and they will be removed.
MARTIN: A Senate committee reported in 1975 that CIA
officials ordered agents to kill African Premier Patrice
*Lamumbo of the of the Congo in 1960, but that his rivals
murdered him a year later, that CIA officials tried but
failed to have Cuban Premier Fidel Castro killed by
2.
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gangsters in exiles between 1960 and 1965. Later, in
Vietnam, the CIA participated in a program with other
intelligence and military units which killed some 20,000
Viet Cong officials and agents, mostly in combat,
according to William Colby, who helped run the program and
later became CIA director. Mr. Colby was a witness before
the Senate committee which spent 15 months investigating
CIA operations. Both presidents Ford and Reagan issued
rules prohibiting anyone working for the United States
from carrying out or planning assassinations. The Reagan
administration has denounced murder as a tool in Nicaragua
or elsewhere. But the episode of the training manual has
shaken bipartisan support and raised questions in
Congress. SEN. SAM NUNN (D-Ga., Senate Intelligence
Committee): I remember very well the discussion in the
1970's about the intelligence agency being like a rogue
elephant. And, later, it turns out, after thorough
review, the agencies properly or, in some cases,
improperly were acting with the knowledge of presidents of
the United States.
MARTIN: Late this week, the Senate's select committee on
intelligence meets again in secret here at the Capitol.
It will call more witnesses to try to find out whether the
manual was or was not an invitation to murder. And, if it
was, whether the blame lies with the men in the field, the
managers at headquarters or somebody else. David?
AB06>NICARAGUA/CIA>BRINKLEY: Adm. Turner, Mr. Colby, thanks very much for <
>MANUAL 2>coming in. Here with us are George Will of ABC News, and
Sam Donaldson, ABC News White House correspondent. As you
both know, as we all know in the middle 70's the CIA got
into all sorts of difficulties. It was called a rogue
elephant and this sort of thing, and, as a result, it was,
if not almost destroyed, it certainly was diminished and
damaged. Is that about to happen again? We seem to have
one CIA difficulty now after another. Admiral?
ADM. STANSFIELD TURNER (former CIA director): I think
it's almost inevitable it will happen if they don't call
off this covert activity in Nicaragua because what's
happening is they've been asked to do some things almost
impossible to do by this technique. Therefore, the CIA
people on the spot are frustrated, and they keep reaching
for some new technique or device to get their job done
well. What's happened? It's increasingly questionable
types of activities they've turned to. The mining of the
harbors: the public rejected that; they stopped. Now a
manual that advocates assassination; that's against the
president's own executive order; they have to stop that.
If they keep going, they're going to stretch and stretch.
BRINKLEY: Does it advocate it or simply say how to do it,
if you have decided on your own to do it?
WILLAIM E. COLBY (former CIA director): Neither. In
yVi~4i7~:G~
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fact, what it says, uses, is a single word 'neutralize,'
which has all sorts of connotations to Americans, but in
the context of the particular manual does not refer to
assassination, and it does not mean assassination.
SAM DONALDSON: What would you think neutralize might
mean? COLBY: Neutralize is a general word which means
take the person out of action. In Vietnam, it was used to
either capturing them, getting them to accept an amnesty
or in a fight having them killed.
SAM DONALDSON: Why not use those words then? Why not
say... COLBY: They did in Vietnam, but in this context,
this was a direction as to how you handle a town after a
guerrilla group has taken it over. And one of the items
says you have to neutralize the other leadership for the
time being. It doesn't say to kill them. TURNER: I'd
like to quote from the manual right here. Section 5, this
is the heading for the section, 'Selective Use of Violence
for Propagandistic Effects.' First sentence: 'It is
possible to neutralize carefully selected, planned
targets, such as judges.' I don't believe there's any way
you can neutralize with violence without risking murder.
GEORGE WILL: But, Admiral, isn't there a kind of
artificial clarity here to the distinctions we're trying
to draw? That is, we're against, everyone says and the
law says, at least an executive order says, we're against
assassinations, yet the Contras are described frequently,
and I suppose accurately, as freedom fighters resisting a
tyranny. Freedom fighters resisting a tyranny are apt to
kill the tyrant and the tyrant's agents. Now, where does
this become a legitimate fight for freedom and where does
it become an illegitimate use of assassination and is it
possible to draw that line? TURNER: Yes, I think it's
quite possible. We have warfare in which you kill
combatants, and we have assassination in which you kill
civilians and officials and others. And this clearly, in
inciting violence against these people, talks about judges
and other such officials.
WILL: But that is exactly the kind of line that guerrilla
warfare blurs. Are you saying that guerrilla warfare is
going to be exercised by our adversaries in the world, but
we will not engage in or support guerrilla warfare?
TURNER: I think it is very clear from the people of the
United States and from the Congress of the United States
since 1976, when the revelations were brought out that
David referred to earlier, that this country has a level
of ethical procedure that it won't stoop below. We don't
want to go to all the procedures that the communists use.
COLBY: I'm the first guy who wrote a directive against
assassination. It was later picked up by the presidential
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directives. So, I'm against it, that's clear, but if
you'll look at this pamphlet in total context, what it's
doing is instructing a guerrilla movement that the
important aspect of the guerrilla movement is to capture
the loyalty of the population. And it specifically says
that one of the things that you say when you're talking to
the population is that you will not mistreat the enemies
of the people, the Sandinistas. That you will, even
though they may have committed crimes, you will not
mistreat them. Now, it's trying to give a guidance as to
how a guerrilla movement should conduct itself so that it
keeps its main focus where it should be, on the political
aspect, and the violence has a secondary part. In a war
you're going to have violence, but it's secondary to the
political objective.
WILL: Before you wrote the memo forbidding
assassinations, you ran the Phoenix program in Vietnam.
COLBY: Right.
WILL: Durirg which they neutralized, according to our own
figures, by 1969, 19,000 Viet Cong agents, including
killing 6,000 of them. COLBY: No, the figures are wrong.
We captured 28,000. Seventeen thousand took amnesty,
which was offered to them, and 20,000 were killed, mostly
in military action.
DONALDSON: I want to know how the CIA agency works when
it comes to the distribution and the printing of such a
handbook as the one that we've been talking about.
Someone had to pay for it--I guess that was agency funds--
and someone had to authorize it. Just where, is the
question. From your experience, where would this be
authorized? Would it go to the director? COLBY: It
might or might not. If it was clearly identified as an
assassination program, it would have gone to the director.
Since it was not, since the context of the brochure was
clearly a general directive on how to politicize a
guerrilla movement, then it might not have gone to him.
And the single word 'neutralize' in that sense and the
violence could have slipped by. The agency now says it
wishes it hadn't happened, but the military wishes they
hadn't spent $15,000 for a coffeemaker, too. It's the
supervisory work of the Congress that will keep the agency
in line.
DONALDSON: Well, it did go to Langley. It did go to CIA
headquarters. It went to some level beyond their first
suggestion, it was a mere contract employee somewhere.
Admiral, where do you think it went? TURNER: I don't
think it went very high because, Sam, this is one
paragraph in a 42-page document. I doubt that it would
have gone all the way up to the director himself. But the
real question is, what instructions did the director and
Cori :::ad
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the White House give to the CIA for this whole operation?
And I would suggest to you that it's probably against the
law.
DONALDSON: If I may, you know that officially, on the
record, the administration has to deny that there is any
such operation because you mentioned the law, the Boland
Amendment, clearly it is against the law. TURNER: Well,
it's a question of whether this manual advocates the
overthrow of the government.
DONALDSON: I'm talking about the secret war to topple the
Sandinistas. COLBY: I think the manual preceded the
Congressional action that cut off the aid, so in that
sense...
WILL: Let me come back a minute to this distinction. I
gather we are aiding the freedom fighters in Afghanistan.
It would be shocking if the freedom fighters in
Afghanistan were not trying to kill Afghanis who are
collaborating with the Russian occupiers or Russian-
occupying officials. Isn't that assassination, and should
we be horrified? COLBY: I happen to support the idea of
helping brave men fight for their country, and if that
means guerrillas fighting an occupier or a hostile force,
then I think we are proper...(everybody starts talking at
once)
DONALDSON: ...brave men fighting for their country if
they're on our side. You don't see the Nicaraguans and
Sandinistas fighting for their country. COLBY: Whichever
side, there are brave men on the other side fighting. A
fight is usually brave men on both sides fighting.
DONALDSON: Then why do we call one freedom fighters and
the other guerrillas?
WILL: Because one side's fighting for freedom.
BRINKLEY: I want to raise an ethical point. Admiral
Turner was saying a minute ago that we have a level of
ethics and decency below which we will not fall. OK,
fine. We give weapons to fighters, guerrillas, Contras,
whatever you care to call them, whose cause we sympathize
with, in the full knowledge they're going to be used for
killing. They have no other purpose. No one complains
about that as an ethical matter, but then we write a
little book telling them how to use these weapons and how
to kill a few people and win their war, and suddenly
that's a terrible scandal. Can you explain that to me?
TURNER: Sure. The reason this particular covert activity
in Nicaragua is in such deep trouble was predicted by the
Church committee report in 1976. It said this kind of
covert activity has never in the past been successful,
6,
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unless it was in support of an agreed national policy.
This nation today is not agreed on what we should do about
Nicaragua. It is agreed, George, on what we should do
about Afghanistan, and therein lies the difference. That
we are willing as a nation to support this kind of
unethical activity in an Afghanistan because we know where
the country should go there. We don't know where we want
to go in Nicaragua, and we don't support it.
BRINKLEY: Is it ethical, therefore, to give them guns?
TURNER: In Afghanistan?
BRINKLEY: No, in Nicaragua. TURNER: Yes, I believe it's
ethical to give them guns, but I think it's against the
law of this country to be supporting the overthrow of the
government of Nicaragua, and that's the way I read this
manual. And if you don't read the manual that way and are
more generous towards it, you have to at least admit that
people to whom we are giving it are certainly going to use
it to overthrow the government in Nicaragua, and that's at
least against the spirit of what the Congress has said it
wants the CIA to do. COLBY: If we give them guns, it
seems to me that it's quite logical to give them direction
as to how to conduct a guerrilla war most effectively, and
that means putting the major focus on the political
aspect. I happen to be very ambivalent about the aid to
the Contra program because I think that the main focus of
our effort in Central America should be to build the
strength in El Salvador, Honduras and the democratization
process in Guatamala, and that the Contra action probably
debilitates our overall support of that particular program
and that strategy. But, nonetheless, it has been approved
in the past. The House of Representatives has now
objected to it. Pur aid to the Contras has stopped until,
unless the House removes that authorization next spring.
BRINKLEY: Well, thank you very much. Thank you Admiral
Turner, Mr. Colby. Thank you for coming. We enjoyed
hearing your views.
AB07>NICARAGUA/CIA>BRINKLEY: We're back, and Sam is trying to get a question
>MANUAL 3>in. Sam?
DONALDSON: Sen. Goldwater, should we have assassination
as part of a CIA plan under any circumstances? GOLDWATER:
No, I don't believe so. That's specifically prohibited,
uh, not just by laws that have been passed recently but
old laws that prohibit the CIA or any other member of our
intelligence family from attempting assassination.
DONALDSON: Would you agree then that the CIA ought not to
persuade others to engage in assassination? GOLDWATER:
I, I don't believe that under the operation of the United
States or any part of the operation of the United States
CQ ,:ad
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that we should, under law, advocate anybody attempting
assassination. That's up to the individuals who are
trying to fight their way to freedom. If they want to
assassinate, that's their business.
DONALDSON: Then why not use a word other than neutralize?
Why not say capture if that's what you mean? Why use a
word that's open to the ambiguities of that word to an
interpretation that's contrary to what you just expressed?
GOLDWATER: Well, I didn't write the book. If I wrote the
book I might have used some other word. Neutralize is a
very, very broad word. I've checked with all of my
Spanish-speaking friends out here. I speak Spanish
myself, and it has no different meaning in Spanish than it
has in English. Uh, if it was going to raise all that
kind of fuss, use another word.
DONALDSON: Sen. Moynihan, when they wrote the word,
neutralize, whether it was copies or whether it was
original, do you think the author meant to imply that
perhaps assassination was all right, or do you think the
uthor meant to say that the United States forbids it?
~esson plans that use the word removed, it speaks ^of~
aving the populists gather and take part in the act
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ow
look, there's a rule that organizations in conflict become
like one another, but I don't want us to become like the
communists in what they will do. There are things
Americans won't do, and I can't think that this has helped
us one bit in advancing democratic principles in Central
America. And Barry, I don't think you think so either.
And in either event it is specifically prohibited by
presidential executive order.
BRINKLEY: Well on this point, whoever was going on about
this Socratic dialectic view, we might have expected to be
able to choose his words carefully, wouldn't we?
MOYNIHAN: They chose the words carefully, they meant,
they were talking about a practice technique, specific,
formal technique of the Chinese Communists, when they were
taking over China. Every time they came to a village they
identified somebody as a landowner, an oppressor. They
got everybody together in the town, village, and they
formally shot him. That's what they're talking about.
DONALDSON: Sen. Moynihan, if I may change the subject
slightly, President Reagan this past week endorsed the
idea that Americans could go down and join in the Contras
and fight with them, endorsed it to the extent of saying
that he would not interfere with it, and as a matter of
fact he thought there was a long tradition in this country
of doing that type of thing. Do you agree? MOYNIHAN:
Well, they better not bring arms with them, or they're in
violation of American law. But if they do, I hope they
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know what is awaiting them because it's a very casual
thing to tell Americans to go down into those jungles.
They are full of snakes and AK-47s.
WILL: Sen. Moynihan, I want to come to a minute ago. You
said there's some things American's won't do. Now this
country two generations ago dropped an atomic weapon on
civilian populations, created a firestorm deliberately,
using incendiary bombs in Dresden and Hamburg. Now,
having killed in the interest of getting rid of a tyranny
and establishing democracy in Germany, which we did by
doing this sort of thing. (sic) Now, why is it, I don't
understand, why is it that it is suddenly us becoming like
the other side, when we do kill our Sandinista officials
one at a time instead of in job lots of 80,000 as we did
killing innocent civilians during the second world war.
MOYNIHAN: George, we are describing here a technique of
communist terror. It's called explicit and implicit
terror, and no thanks. I think we can do our work in the
open and be Americans and be democrats and don't have to
apologize. Do you think w? have helped democracy,
whatever chance it has, of coming back to Nicaragua? I
don't.
BRINKLEY: Let me ask a question on a slightly different
but nevertheless related subject. Secretary of State
Shultz this past week made a speech discussing the,
discussing American retaliation against terrorists, those
who blow up our embassies and so on. And he said the
American people must understand there will be, when we do
this, some loss of life among our servicemen and of
innocent people. And he has, more or less I think,
depending on what's happened in the last 10 minutes, been
disowned by the Reagan administration, yes on one day and
no on the next. I don't know where they stand. What do
you think about the Shultz's speech? Sen. Goldwater, what
do you think? GOLDWATER: Well, I think Secretary of
State Shultz was absolutely right. If you're going to
stamp our terrorism around this world and in this country,
and we're only beginning to see it, we have to stamp out
the people who practice this. Now, this is nothing new in
this world. *Klauswitz wrote about terrorism and war a
long, long time ago. We never dreamed we'd see terrorism
in peace, but we're seeing it. And the only thing they
understand is what they're practicing. If they want to
stamp us out, we'd better stamp them out first. And if we
lose somebody here and there, that's a lot better than
losing tens of thousands of people.
BRINKLEY: Sen. Moynihan? MOYNIHAN: George Shultz is a
deeply responsible man and not a casual one to call for
killing even innocent persons. But you know if you're
going to kill them, you'd better know who them is, and
it's a very hard thing to do. And I would trust George
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/ o.
Shultz to make the judgment. I wouldn't trust the people
who put this manual out about Nicaragua to make that
judgment.
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