'SECRET WARS' RARELY SUCCEED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403060012-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: March 8, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403060012-9
A. :N A771.00 CHICAGO TRIBUNE
8 March, 1985
`Secret wars' rarely succeed
S By Amoid R Isaacs
er
e certain that U.S. aims were the same as
those of the people receiving the clandestine sup-
port. Otherwise, the U.S. should use its power
directly and overtly, through the marines and not
through intelligence agencies.
That was sound advice, not often followed in later
years. Both of Roosevelt's points have particular
relevance to Nicaragua, where the Reagan adminis-
tration seems to be operating on highly suspect
assessments of both its friends and its enemies and
where there is a real question whether the American
government and its Nicaraguan clients have the
same agenda.
The administration clearly imagines a rebel vic-
tory would be a significant blow against communism'
in the region. In fact, such an outcome could.
,damage important U.S. interests. It would be seen
as, and to a large extent would be, a restoration of
the Somoza dictatorship, prominently labeled "Made
in the U.S.A." [Though-the exile political leadership
includes some anti-Somoza figures, the military
command leadership of the main Honduras-based
guerrilla force is dominated by Somocista officers.]
If that were to happen, there would be unfavorable
repercussions in a great many countries in the
hemisphere, while there would be no lasting end to
the cycle of violence and vengeance that is the real
threat to U.S. hopes for Central America's future.
U.S. support for the contras is ill-advised for many
other reasons. It endangers a fragile stability in
Honduras and heightens tensions in Costa Rica, the
region's only genuine democracy. And it relies on
violence rather than political wisdom, which is what
Central America desperately needs. It represents an
effort to impose a U.S. solution instead of one
involving and accommodating Latin American polit-
ical realities.
The "secret war" against the Sandinistas conflicts
with U.S. values and reflects the worst aspects of
U.S. foreign policy-a clumsy, belligerent anticom-
munism that is too ignorant to understand either the
political forces in Central America or the true
nature of U
S
interests there
If it denies f
th
.
.
.
ur
er
Arnold R. Isaacs was a correspondent in Latin funds, Congress will have done the Reagan adminis-
America and Asia. He is the author of "Without tration and the country a favor, rescuing them from
Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia." an effort that is not only dumb, but dangerous.
As Congress reopens debate on funding anti-
Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua, it might do well to
remember the outcome of similar Central Intelli-
gence Agency shenanigans in the past.
The list of CIA-sponsored "secret armies" over
the last quarter-century or so is a fairly long one. It
has included Sumatran dissidents opposing In-
donesia's left-leaning President Sukarno, Tibetan
Khamba tribesmen harassing the Chinese Com-
munists, the "Armee Clandestine" of Hmong and
other tribal minorities in Laos, the Kurdish rebels in
Iraq and of course the Bay of Pigs brigade.
Without exception, those ventures ended in defeat,
in varying degrees of embarrassment for the United
States and in the abandonment and betrayal of men
and women who accepted CIA arms but discovered,
too late, that the American stakes and agenda were
different from their own.
Among the various lessons of those episodes, one
is that clandestine warfare, once started, is not so
easy to keep under control.
Often the reason lies with the very operators who
find their way onto intelligence agency payrolls.
Anyone even passingly acquainted with the milieu
will recognize author Thomas Powers' description of
the type. "Aggressive, enth usiastic and too often
morally careless," Powers wrote about the CIA's
"adventurers" in his excellent 1979 book, "The Man
Who Kept the Secrets."
American policies, when carried out in secrecy by
such men, can too easily become mortgaged to their
adventurism.
Another lesson can be derived from a success.'
Kermit Roosevelt, who ran the CIA operation
ousting Mohammed Mossadegh and restoring the
pro-American Shah of Iran in 1953, pointed out to his
superiors afterward that the plan worked' only
because the CIA was correct about the political and
military forces at work in Iran at the time.
"If our analysis had been wrong, we'd have fallen
for similar operations in the future, he added, it had
bett
b
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403060012-9