BEAT THE DEVIL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000202320003-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 20, 2010
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: November 24, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STA T Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000202320003-1
'DT!!!I r ~P?AAttLf, ? NATION
24 November 1984
EAT THE DEVIL ALEXANDER COCKBURN
1 t be distinguished marginally from the or-
o
h
Long National Nightmare
The final, preposterous image of the election campaign
coverage was furnished by Newsweek's special "Election
Extra" issue. It turns out that all through those long months
a team of Newsweek political reporters had an agreement
with their sources that they would be given access to certain
material on condition it was not published until after the
election. One reporter actually had two notebooks, one
(presumably labeled B for bullshit) in which he would duti-
fully record the assertions of Administration officials that no
secret plan to raise taxes was in the works, and the other (T
for truth) in which he wrote down things to be concealed-
Administration scenarios for raising taxes-until such time
as their publication made no difference. Time's Strobe
Talbott had a similar deal during the Nitze and Rowney
arms talks in Geneva last year.
The defense for this sort of arrangement is that without it,
the reporter would simply learn nothing-which is pernicious
nonsense. By partaking in these embargoes the reporter
becomes even more complicit in news management than is
regularly the case. The losers are the readers who trustingly
fork out their money each week for Time and Newsweek in
the hopes of finding out what's going on, little realizing that
bargains have been made to keep them in the dark as long as
it counts.
The Phantom Planes
George Shultz should become the second member of
Reagan's Cabinet to be on the receiving end of a criminal in-
dictment. On November 10, discussing the leaked election
night reports of the possible arrival of MIG-21 fighter planes
in Nicaragua, he remarked, "Whoever leaked that material
engaged in a criminal act in my opinion." But back at the
start of October, in exchanges with people not in govern-
ment, Shultz was alluding to the fact that a Soviet freighter
bound for Nicaragua might be carrying MIG-21s.
In late September, U.S. satellite
photographs of the Bakuriani receiving
cargo at its Black Sea port showed that
on an adjacent quay sat crates of a type
that had been known in the past to con-
tain MIG-21s. After an interval of cloud cover, photographs
showed that the Bakuriani had departed and the crates were
gone. Intelligence analysts inferred that the latter might
have been loaded onto the former, and the news was cir-
culated throughout the Administration.
As the Bakuriani plowed its way across the Atlantic,
round Cape Horn and up toward Corinto, advocates of es-
calation against Nicaragua began to see the uses to which
ship and cargo could be put.
STAT
e u tras-
T
dinary warmongering rabble-include Gen Paul Gorman,
head of the U.S. Southern Command based in Panama,
William Casey at the C I A Fred Ik1P and ,,tor Sanchez
at the Defense Department and Constantine Menges at the
National Security Council. Gorman and the others tried
zealously to promote the Bakuriani/MIG threat in the clos-
ing weeks of the campaign but couldn't get it off the
ground, since Reagan's top advisers were not keen on a
cliffhanging crisis disrupting the pre-election Presidential
image of sweet reason. Right at the end of October, in an
unusual session of the National Security Council, Reagan
rejected the idea of emergency action. The October surprise
was that there was no surprise. Had Reagan been slipping, it
might have been a different story.
On election night the ultras moved, in a pre-emptive coup
designed to seize the high ground during the crucial days of
policy formation immediately after the victory. News of the
imminent arrival of the Bakuriani was leaked to CBS from
the Pentagon, and to NBC from the Reagan party in Cali-
fornia. Given the origin of the NBC story, it's possible that
the ultras inhabit the highest levels of the Administration.
For the next three days the media handled the story exact-
ly as the ultras had hoped-on the front pages. The em-
phatic denials by the Soviet Union and Nicaragua that MIG-
21s had been or would be dispatched to Nicaragua were
duly recorded, along with the Administration's em-
phasis that no "conclusive proof" of the presence of the
MIGs aboard theBakuriani had been obtained. But by then
the MIGs had become purely symbolic.
To the extent that the coverage revolved around the issue
of what the Reagan Administration would do if the planes
had arrived at Corinto, it was irrelevant whether they had
arrived or not. The papers remembered to mention that it
was unlikely the MIGs were aboard and then went back to
their worst-case analysis. This is often true in war scares.
The Russians never deployed nuclear materiel in Cuba dur-
ing the missile crisis of 1962, contrary to popular memory.
Leading up to the crisis all that U.S. spy planes ever observed
were metal canisters that might or might not have contained
missiles (not warheads), just as the Bakuriani might or
might not have been carrying MIG-21s.
A New York Times editorial for Friday, November 9,
realized the fondest dreams of the ultras: "If American
surveillance has blundered, Nicaragua has an easy way to
prove it. Expose the cargo and expose the accusers. The
larger point-even if galling-that Nicaragua's arms.are a
hemisphere [sic] concern has already been granted."
Both Philip Taubman of The Times and Fred Hiatt of
The Washington Post managed to establish pretty clearly by
the weekend what was going on. Taubman cited "certain
national security aides" who "wanted to use the issue of the
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000202320003-1