MINORITY REPORT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402890002-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 27, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
s, Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402890002-0
FvT1'. y pppEARED NATION
27 April 1985
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
\1INOI U "I' Y HEP()1 ~r[
J n Isabel Allende's impressive new novel, The House
of the Spirits, which is set in a barely fictional Chile,
one of the best-drawn characters is a certain Esteban
I rueba. Trueba is a grandee-a brawling, egotistical
landowner and an almost likable prisoner of his own appe-
tites. He devotes prodigious energy to rallying his class
against the mob and to the struggle against Marxism. He is a
Senator when the workers' parties come legally to power,
and he insists from the start that only violence will remove
the danger to order and property. He smuggles guns into the
country, solicits covert aid from the gringos and addresses
subversive meetings of young officers. On the glorious day
of the military coup, he gets into his car and drives out to
congratulate the soldiery:
The officer received me with his boots up on the desk, chew-
ing a greasy sandwich, badly shaven, with his jacket unbut-
toned. He didn't give me a chance to ask about my son Jaime
or to congratulate him for the valiant actions of the soldiers
who had saved the nation; instead he asked for the keys to
my car, on the ground that Congress had been shut down
and that all Congressional perquisites had therefore been
suspended. I was amazed. It was clear then that they didn't
have the slightest intention of reopening the doors of Con-
gress, as we all expected. He asked me-no, he ordered
me-to show up at the Cathedral at eleven the next morning
to attend the Te Deum with which the nation would express
its gratitude to God for the victory over Communism.
Trueba's veins contain real blood, not an insipid mixture
of milk and holy water stiffened with liquid dollars. But as I
read of his awakening to reality, I found I could clearly see
the puffy, shifty, unctuous features of Arturo Cruz.
Cruz is, at one and the same time, the darling of the
Reaganites and the icon of the liberals (one wishes he was
the only such coincidence). It is he, and not the loutish En-
rique Bermudez or the sadistic Ricardo Lau, who is brought
before the cameras like a performing seal. The face of the
contras as seen by the villagers of Nicaragua is that of the
snarling, crop-burning fascist. The same face as seen by the
U.S. news media and public is that of a sheep with a secret
sorrow. Here comes Arturo again, with his nagging worries
about the revolution betrayed. Naturally, we are drawn to
sympathize with this troubled Everyman. But why are we
not introduced to Bermudez, the man at the cutting edge of
our military aid? Next question.
Cruz doesn't have the pretext of innocence. He was on
hand when Edgar Chamorro, spokesman of the so-called
Nicaraguan Democratic Force, gave his testimony about
widespread contra atrocities and admitted that the aim of
the mercenaries was the overthrow of the government. He
knows that for speaking those unwelcome truths, Chamorro
was banished from the F.D.N. ranks. Does he honestly
think he would be treated differently? Does he dream of the
day when "the boys" install him in the Presidency of a
liberal, democratic Nicaragua? Or would just plain "Presi-
dent" be enough?
Not long ago I attended a breakfast meeting in Washing-
ton that featured both Cruz and Eden Pastora. Cruz was
reason itself, talking of the need to separate party from state
and stressing the values of pluralism. He was skeptical about
the Sandinista commitment to democracy and scornful of
their election. Pastora was his usual "colorful" self, still
battered from the bomb that had gone off at his jungle press
conference. Both men could at least claim that they had
once been Sandinistas, though the returns on this claim are
diminishing with time and Bermudez.
I admit to an animus against the heroic Pastora, for when
that bomb exploded, he seized the only available rapid
transport and fled, leaving a woman friend of mine (who
had absorbed much of the blast meant for him) horribly
wounded on a river bank. Still, I listened politely while he
denounced Jesse Jackson for going to Cuba, describing him
as one of Lenin's "useful idiots." The next question con-
cerned Roberto d'Aubuisson, who had just paid a visit to
Washington. What did Commander Zero think of him?
Pastora preferred not to give an opinion because that would
be "interfering in the internal affairs of El Salvador." At
that point I interjected to ask why, in that case, did he feel
so free to be personal about Jesse Jackson? He asked to
have the question translated, and did not reply. Unimpres-
sive. So, when you reflect on it, is the evolution of Arturo
Cruz. He would not take part in an election that he felt to be
insufficiently democratic, but he will take part in a war of
sabotage and attrition that has no democratic pretenses
at all.
This is the old "salami tactic," operating from the right.
The Christian Democrats of Chile joined gleefully and
mindlessly in the destruction of Salvador Allende because
they believed that they would be the beneficiaries. And cer-
tain labor types helped in the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz
in Guatemala, hoping thereby to preserve "free trade
unions." The alliance with fascists, murderers and oligarchs
was, of course, only temporary. Twelve years later in Chile
and thirty years later in Guatemala, we can see who was
using whom.
With Nicaragua, however, we don't have the excuse of
hindsight. William Casey and his crew have picked Enrique
Bermudez and his crew, and have discarded the waverers.
The installations and the infrastructure of a small
underdeveloped country are being -ruined and destroyed.
The population is being subjected, after earthquake, war
and revolution, to a calculated campaign of demoralization,
a modern attempt to create a Vendee. One can feel sym-
pathy for the youths who leave the country to avoid the
draft and the rationing, but it's asking a lot to expect us to
regard the mercenaries, or their two-faced spokesmen, as
brave democrats. The proper historical analogy for these
people is not the Founding Fathers but Benedict Arnold.
It is, finally, Cruz and Pastora who are the dupes and the
"useful idiots." Their time could come only under condi-
tions that would consign them to the well-known dustbin of
history. Counterrevolutions can also be betrayed. This one
will devour its parents as well as its children.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402890002-0