THEY ARE LESS THAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504000005-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: March 2, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504000005-1
" -----fie
RF
ARTf^LE ARPE=A-
Gli Pd 4
ridman i'IcCarthy
They Are
Jess Than
` reect?r
~ters
3aw;ing out the Sandinistas hasn't
worked for the Reagan administration.
Rubbing them out is now its goal. The
erasers of the five-year-old Nicara-
guan government, which Ronald Rea-
gan demagogically calls "totalitarian
. . . br utai, cruel," are to be the
1.000 contras. These are a mix of
cn'd.ers of fortune. retie s and political
far ;;. a financed; by the CIA, the ex-'
.ruining harbors and writing:
e rcra* manuals.
Reagan abuses language by habitu-'
a'.',: ca.hog the contras "freedom fight--
er " The methods of their combat-;
^.c more than 800 civilians in the
past four years, including some .130.
children: destroying health clinics and'
schools kidnapping nurses and doctors
-have been so repulsive that three
times Congress voted against further
aid. The contras were seen as slaugh-
terers, not fighters. Occasionally some,
limits are reached in sanctioned gore.:
But not, it appears, for Reagan..
Snort of having them take a bow from
the balcony at a State of the Union
speech, the president has done everv-
thing else to beautify the contras.
They are "our brothers," he said-in
his Feb. 16 radio speech. He cord_
oared them with such historical "free-,
dam chters" as Lafayette, von Steu-
ben, Kosciuszko and Simon Bolivar.
Only the memory of John Wayne was
left uninvoked. Presumably the Duke
will have his day when the contras
enter downtown Managua for a final
shootout with the black-hat Sandinis-
tas.
A year ago, the contras were sancti-
fied because they were said to be
blocking the flow of guns into El Salva-
dor. Nov. says George Shultz, there is
a be;:er reason: the Nicaraguan gov-
er~:~ gent is "bad news.... We'd like
,.
.. .-: ,. ee the error of their w?avs.?
them to say "Uncle.:"
C ingress to the contras woufd
WASHINGTON POST
2 March 1985
help ensure that more health clinics
are bombed, more civilians killed and'
children mutilated. These lessons in
truth, beauty and democracy are-
meant to show President Daniel
Ortega all his errors as he has never
before seen them. -
With brothers and uncles on the.
scene, there is now a Reagan kissing-
cousin also calling for the destruction
of the Sandinistas, George F. Will, on'
".ABC World News" Feb. 19, said -an
overthrow is needed and "we should
try to do it openly." "The Soviet-style
regime" is beyond hope of reform, he
said. -
This call on national television for
the violent overthrow of a government
that Will doesn't like because, among
ohf r crimes, it allegedly "brags"
about its "Soviet style." was too much
for the placid Peter Jennings. He in,
terrupted to ask, "George, covert or.
overt, aren t you somewhat ignortag
international law?" Will replied: "Well,.
Peter, I wish we could run interna-
tional affairs the way the Warren
wanted to run the iudicial at all's
in this country. It's an untidy war d
out there. I think this country ought to
rcmem er that we hadn't a aid
from France and Spain and elsewhere
for reorQ as ington s contras we
wpuldn't have had this country."
This must have been an unprece-
dented moment in television joutnal'
ism. A major news organization was
providing air time to an employee to
advocate the violent overthrow of a
nation we aren't at war with. It let him
ridicule the uselessness of law because
the world is "untidy." He smeared 'an
elected government (what does
"Soviet style" mean?) and, in phony
scholarship, he rewrote history;
(George Washington's troops were not,
the contras in the American Revolu-
tion. the Hessians were.)
When asked about this, Peter Jeri-'
nings, an experienced journalist, con
fessed, "I was not too pleased." That's'
about all the public anger Jennings was
willing to display, except to add that
he was not satisfied with Will's evad-
ing of his question. Jennings asked
about international law, not the War-
ren Court or world untidiness.
Jennings said that Will was on the
show for commentary. It isn't doubt-
ed. There is no argument against that.
But a call for lawlessness and violence
is no more commentary than Reagan's
glamorizing the contras as freedom
fighters is a leveling with the public.
That is the raw misuse of power.at
the core of Reagan's assaults on-the
Nicaraguan government. He 'and
chums like Will have towering plat-
forms of authority from which to
flaunt a narrow political view, while,
those on the fringes with balanced and
compassionate perspective are nearly,
voiceless.
One of the latter is Dr. Paula Brave-
man, an assistant clinical professor in
the School of Medicine of the Univer-
sity of California. As a frequent visitor'
to Nicaragua and as a founder of the
Committee for Health Rights in Cen-
tral America, she reports that "30
health centers have been destroyed or
closed because of contra attacks." She
knows of "18 workers, including two
European doctors, [who] have been
killed, 13 wounded and 18 health
workers kidnapped, tortured or'
raped." This was before a late January
raid in eastern Nicaragua in which
three civilians were killed and four
medical workers abducted.
Braveman said that it makes her
wonder what kind of a human being,
let alone president, Reagan is "when
he chooses rapists, terrorists and as-
sassins as his brothers."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504000005-1