$14 MILLION IN MEDICAL AID FUNNELED TO CENTRAL AMERICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100590008-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2010
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: December 27, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-06806R000100590008-8
WASHINGTON POST
27 December 1984
Million in Medical Aid
luieled to Central America
? By Joanne Ornang
W,:=hingtoi Po,t t 1 Writer
A private humanitarian organi-
zation called the Americares Foun-
dation. working with the Order of
tie Knights of Malta, has channeled
more than $14 million in donated
medical aid to El Salvador, Hondu-
ras and Guatemala over the last two
years.
The bulk of the supplies, worth
about S10 million, has gone to hos-
~.itals and clinics in El Salvador, ac-
rr_iu:g to 41.m.ericares' founder and
Robert C. Macauley. But
part of 5550,000 in aid to Honduras
ire^t to 1M1;skito Indians linked to
U.E.-backed rebels fighting the left-
ist government of Nicaragua, ac-
cor,iir.g to a Knights of Malta offi-
cial in Honduras.
Much of the $3.4 million in
Americas es' medical aid to Guate-
mala has been distributed through
the aimed forces as part of its re-
settlement program of "model vil-
lages" aimed at defeating leftist in-
surgents, said the official, Guate-
malan businessman Roberto Alejos.
Prominent in the U.S. end of the
operation are businessman J. Peter
Grace, head of the V.R. Grace con-
glomerate and chairman of the
American division of the Knights of
Malta; attorney Prescott Bush Jr.,
brother of Vice President Bush;
former treasury secretary William
E. Simon, and Macauley, a New
Canaan, Conn., businessman.
Among .the 1,750 U.S. members
of the Knights are CIA Director
William asev. former secretary
of state Alexander M. Haig Jr. and
former secretary of health. educa-
tion and welfare Joseph A. Califano,
,,1rlAough they apparently are not
involved in the Americares effort.
Fr t_rner national secprity affairs
adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski is hon-
orary chairman of Americares'
board of directors.
The Knights, formally called the
"Sovereign Military Hospitaller Or-
der of St. John, of Jerusalem, of
Rhodes and of Malta," was founded
in 1099 to aid the wounded and to
battle Moslems during the Cru-
sades. Based in Rome, the devoutly
Roman Catholic order has 10,000
members in 42 nations and is rec-
ognized diplomatically as the
world's only sovereign nation with-
out territory. It has ambassadors in
40 countries. Medical aid thus can
be moved through diplomatic
"pouches" into needy countries
without going through customs,
Grace said in an interview.
The Americares program is
among the largest of dozens of pri-
vate relief efforts in Central Amer-
ica. Under the Reagan administra-
tion, the U.S. Agency for Interna-
tional Development-is trying to en-
courage private involvement in for-
eign aid worldwide, partly to bypass
bureaucratic tangles in the receiv-
ing nation and partly to avoid the
strings that Congress often ties to
federal programs.
Alejos, co-chairman of the
Knights of Malta in Honduras, said
in a recent interview with freelance
reporter Peter H. Stone that "some
of the [Americares] aid went to the
Miskito Indians" there. Congress
has banned U.S. aid to Nicaraguan
rebels, called "contras" and based in
Honduras. The Miskitos are divid-
ed, but several tribes have joined
the rebels.
Alejos said eight Honduran hos-
pitals have benefited, including one
in the Indian area called Mosquitia.
In Guatemala, Alejos told Stone,
the Guatemalan army delivers
Americares medicine to people in
the model villages, which are along
the Mexican border.
Al ejos, a major sugar and coffee
grower, lent his Guatemalan es-
eency m 1 6 to tram ubans for
the bay of Pigs invasion.
But all officials contacted insisted
that neither the Knights nor Ameri-
cares has any political involvement
in Central America. Both groups
have extensive- histories of chari-
table work, particularly with refu-
gees in Pakistan, Afghanistan and
Poland.
Grace said he started the medical
shipments to Central America in
1983 by calling Macauley and sug-
gesting that Americares and the
Knights of Malta work together
there. Bush and Simon, members of
the Americares advisory commit-
tee, help to raise funds and obtain
free medicine.
Grace, Bush and Macauley said
there is no link between their effort
and Reagan administration policy in
the region.
Instead, they said, they "beg"
free or nearly free medicines and
equipment donations from major
U.S. companies and wangle cut-rate
shipping to Central America. The
aid then is distributed to civilian
hospitals, clinics and medical cen-
ters by local Knights of Malta mem-
bers, who generally are well-to-do
businessmen, lawyers, doctors or
others with such facilities as ware-
houses, trucks or planes at their
disposal.
Such people do not tend to be
sympathetic to leftest guerrillas,
and critics charge that medical and
humanitarian aid helps the Salva-
dorans and the Guatemalan govern-
ment fight the rebels by freeing
other money to buy arms.
"On that basis you'd never be
able to help anybody anywhere,"
Macauley said.
Medical companies whose offi-
cials have praised Americares as a
low-overhead, efficient operation to
which they donated medical sup-
plies include the G.D. Searle & Co.
of Skokie, Ill.; Sterling Drug Inc. of
New York; Merck & Co. Inc. of
Rahway, NJ., and Richardson Vicks
Inc. of Westport, Conn.
Macauley said his foundation has
received donations from the top 40
or 50 U.S. medical companies,
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/24: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100590008-8