FALKLANDS CRISIS REVEALS STRANGE DEADFELLOWS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100150096-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 29, 2012
• Sequence Number: 96
• Publication Date: May 31, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100150096-3
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE
THE WASHINGTON POST
31 May 1982
Falklands Crisis
Reveals Strange
Deadf ellows
less, than the number who were op-
erating there before the Falklands
eruption.
Nor did the Argentine military
advisers slip off to Honduras behind
the backs of the ruling junta. The
clandestine operation in Central
America has the blessing of the jun-
The Falklands crisis has produced ta. Sources told my associates Bob
some strange criss-crossing of dip- Sherman and Dale Van Atta that
lomatic wires. Consider this the Argentine advisers appear to
Machiavellian mix-up: have settled in for the long haul.
? Argentina supports the clandes- The roots of the Argentine enmity
tine U.S. effort to undermine the for the Sandinistas run deep. They
Sandinista government in Nicara ua feed on the bad blood between the
? But the United States is backing military leaders and the leftist guer-
Britain in the Falklands dispute. rillas. Their vendetta has turned Ar-
? Yet Nicaragua has come out on gentina into a land of assassinations
the side of Argentina against Britain. and kidnapings and fear, in the
? Still, the right-wing Argentine night
junta is dedicated to the proposition One of the principal reasons for
that the Sandinista government is a the junta's coup in 1976 was the de-
nest of communists that must be termination to seek out and destroy
destroyed, by military means if nec- the underground Montonero move-
essary ment and People's Revolutionary
The incredible fact is that the Ar- Army (ERP). The excesses of this
well-
gentine government, for all its new dn~y war" have been well-
public embrace by Nicaragua, has chronicled: thousands of innocent
done nothing to halt or even cut civilians tortured and killed in the
frenzied search for communists and
back its anti-Sandinista military Sympathizers.
plotting. The bloody campaign For the past 18 months a small y p~ largely
heir
but important ceeded. The Montoneros and their
group of Argentine ERP allies were either killed or driv-
soldiers has been conspiring and col- en into exile. Some took refuge in
laborating with anti-Sandinista ex- Nicaragua
iles in the southern province of Hon- -One Montonero leader, who was
duras. The latest count of Argentine implicated in an assassination plot,
military officers in the Honduras subsequently became a Nicaraguan
hinterland is 50. That's more, not government official at Managua's
Sandino Airport. (The assassination
attempt, incidentally, missed .'tlV
high Argentine official who had been
marked for death and killed his 14
nocent daughter, instead) The Argentine military consider
the leftist exiles "still dangerous.
They point to the clandestine radio
station the Montoneros set up in
Costa Rica in 1979, for example: It
beamed anti junta messages
throughout Central America . and
could be heard in Buenos Aires,
"Finally," one source explained,
'the 'Argentines believe the Mon-
toneras and the ERPS will be corning
back to Argentina some day, *is
time with logistical support front, t12e
Cubans and the Sandinistas."
Footnote: An Argentine Embaes
spokesman flatly denied to my re-
porter Jon Lee Anderson that Ar-
genone mercenaries are operating in
Central America.
Headlines and Footnotes: Arh-
bassador Max Kampelman, U.S. del-
egate to the suspended Madrid talks
on the 1975 Helsinki human rights
accord, predicts a new headache'
when the talks resume: Rev., Billy
Graham's naive statements about
religious freedom in the Smet
Union. Graham's gaffe could be "a
gift to the Soviet system and a major
blow to the cause of human ,rights
and religious liberty," Kampeh}}an
wrote, in a memo to his staff, addi .
"We will have our hands full in:Ma.
drid as the Soviets quote his -state-
ments back to us."
t Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100150096-3