IDEALISM DREW HIM INTO CONTRA STRUGGLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201080022-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 22
• Publication Date: June 8, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201080022-0
ON PAGE om " MIAMI HERALD
ON PI1 8 June 1986
FILE ONLY
Idealism drew him into
contra struggle
By ALFONSO CHARDY
Herald Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - Robert Owen is a 1980s
version of the all-American boy - adventurous,
athletic, bright and patriotic.
Those who know him say the 32-year-old, 6-foot,
4-inch Owen is a soft-spoken but tough-minded man
driven by intense idealism to improve the world,
defend the United States and fight communism.
Yet Owen's life also has been undergirded by
trauma and, recently, controversy and mystery.
In recent months, Owen's name has been
connected with one of President Reagan's most
controversial programs: aid to the Nicaraguan contra
rebels.
Officially, Owen was a paid consultant to the State
Department's Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance
Office (NHAO). His contract there expired May 28.
But unofficially, according to three administration
officials who monitor contra activities and a senior
contra official, Owen has been a secret operative
acting as liaison between the National Security
Council (NSC) and the contras to heippskirt a ban on
direct involvement in contra military affairs by U.S.
officials.
Named as defendant
Owen's name has come up in allegations of illegal
contra activities, including gunrunning and alleged
plots to murder dissident rebel leader Eden Pastors,
who recently announced he was giving up the armed
struggle. Owen is also one of 30 defendants named in
a $23.8 million lawsuit filed in Miami federal court
two weeks ago blaming the contras and their
supporters for the May 30, 1984, bombing of a
Pastore news conference in Nicaragua in which eight
people were killed and 25 were injured, including
Pastors.
Three U.S. officials and the contra consulted for
this article said neither Owen nor the rebels were
responsible for the bomb.
The four said Owen's main role was as
intermediary between a senior NSC official, Marine
Lt. Col. Oliver North, and the contras from late 1984
to mid-1985, precisely when Congress banned U.S.
involvement with the rebels.
Exposing the arrangement under which North
allegedly maintained contact with the rebels is one
objective of a congressional investigation expected to
begin after the vote later this month on Reagan's
request for an additional $100 million in contra aid.
"Ollie handled the contra account at NSC." one of
the U.S. officials said, referring to North. "But since
he couldn't deal with the contras directly because of
the [Congressional] restriction he needed an operative
to allow the administration to continue assisting the
contras after all other avenues had been exhausted.
That's what Rob Owen did."
North refused comment, but an administration
official authorized to speak for him said he "has not
been involved in illegal activities." Owen declined to
be interviewed.
For Owen, his involvement with the contras seems
to have been the culmination of a lifelong desire to
leave his mark on the world, to fight communism and
to be close to war.
Judi Buckelew, a former White House press aide
and Owen's former girlfriend, said, Owen was deeply
affected by the 1967 death of his older brother
Dwight in Vietnam. The event influenced Owen to
carry on his brother's ideals and avenge his death by
opposing communism, Buckalew said.
Love of country
"Whatever Rob did for the contras, he did out of a
sense of helping the country, like Dwight would have
done," Buckalew said.
Owen was 13 when his brother was killed in a fire
fight between Vietcong guerrillas and South Viet-
namese district officials. Dwight was then officially
working for the State Department's Agency for
International Development, but a source close to the
administration said he was actually a CIA agent.
His name is inscribed on a plaque in the State
Department lobby honoring government officials
killed under heroic circumstances.
Robert Owen's name first surfaced in print In a
September 1983 Esquire magazine article in which
author Christopher Buckley reviewed the traumas of
Americans who tried but failed to get drafted for
Vietnam. The segment on Owen said that he
"worshipped" his brother and that Dwight's death
"hit him very hard."
Six years later Owen was a freshman at Stanford,
watching television in his dormitory, when the news
showed the first freed prisoners of war, the article
said.
"When Jeremiah Denton, who'd been a prisoner of
the North Vietnamese for seven years, stepped to the
microphone and said 'God bless America; Owen
suddenly found tears running down his cheeks. Not
long afterward, the Marines happened to be on
campus recruiting," according to the article.
"Owen had not awakened with the idea of signing
up, but when he read an ad in that morning's student
newspaper saying 'Don't Be Good Little Nazis: Stop
the Marine Recruiting,' he went down for an
interview," the article said.
Owen flunked the physical because of a high-
school knee injury he sustained playing lacrosse.
Buckley said Owen decided then that "if and when
the test ever comes, I'm going to get my red badge of
courage, or the trying."
(,Of~ii~ u.?G
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201080022-0
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201080022-0
Owen was born Oct. 21, 1953, in Providence, R.L.
the youngest of three sons in a well-to-do family. He
attended the prestigious and private Moses Brown
School in Providence, then a Quaker school for boys,
graduating in 1971. Owen was captain of the football
team and co-captain of the lacrosse club.
Moses Brown headmaster David Burnham said
Owen had a strong commitment to service.
A desire to help
"He had this tremendous desire to make the world
better," Burnham said. "He had a very strong desire
to help, to clean up politics, clean up corruption and
whatever."
After Moses Brown, Owen went on to Stanford
University where he earned a degree in political
science.
In 1980, Owen put some of his ideals into practice
In the same part of the world where his brother had
served. He went to Thailand with the International
Rescue Committee to help Cambodian refugees.
But Owen cut short his tour when word came that
his father was dying. He returned to the United
States to take care of his father.
Back home, Owen once more tried to enlist in the
military, but the knee problem kept him out again.
Acquaintances say he also applied to the CIA, but
apparently was not successful. CIA spokeswoman
Kathy v KathyJMerson declined comment.
In 982,' Owen finally went to work for the
government. From March 15, 1982, to November of
the following year, he served as legislative aide to
Sen. Dan Quayle, R-Ind., handling Asian issues.
In 1983, Owen joined the Washington public
relations firm of Gray and Co., and began his
involvement with the contras.
According to a contra official. Owen contacted the
rebels in late 1983, offering to lobby Congress on
contra aid.
At first, the contras weren't impressed. Owen did
not speak Spanish and did not seem to know Central
America.
But Owen's involvement gradually grew. Bucka.
lew said Owen met occasionally with Americans who
were already involved with the contras. Others
involved with the contras, including two jailed
soldiers of fortune interviewed in Costa Rica last year
by Herald staff writer Juan Tamayo, said Owen had
been present in contra camps when weapons were
delivered.
Another U.S. mercenary who once helped the
contras, Jack Terrell, said he attended meetings with
Owen, other mercenaries and contra officials In
Houston and Miami in late 1984 in which combat
strategy, gunrunning and the assassination of
anti-Sandinista leader Pastore were discussed. Terrell
said Owen claimed links to North and the NSC.
Terrell's claims have not been independently
corroborated. The Justice Department said it has
found "no substantive evidence" that they are true.
Whatever Owen's activities, he eventually became
so valuable to the contras that when the State
Department's NHAO rejected his job application last
October, the contra leadership - Adolfo Calera
Arturo Cruz and Alfonso Robelo - wrote a letter
requesting his appointment. .
The NHAO then hired him as a consultant through.
a contract with a nonprofit group that Owen h
founded, Institute for Democracy, Education and
Assistance (IDEA). according to NHAO director
Robert Duemling.
Duemling told the House Foreign Relations
Committee's Western Hemisphere subcommittee
March 5 that Owen's tasks included helping the
contras with administrative chores and health care
services. John Flynn, a retired Air Force officer who
lives in Texas and is one of three IDEA directors, said
IDEA had been founded on Jan 9, 1985, to help the
contras. Flynn said he met Owen in Costa Rica
through John Hull, a U.S.-born farmer who owns a
ranch in northern Costa Rica and who is frequently
linked with contra activities.
Classified NHAO documents show that, as of Nov.
6, IDEA had received $50,675. Records on later
payments to IDEA have not been made public.
A contra rebel official said that after he joined the
NHAO. Owen stopped being a secret NSC cpnduit
and has been involved with the rebel movement's
Miskito Indian faction.
Herald special correspondent Karen Lowe contrib-
uted to this report
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201080022-0