ETHIOPIAN SECURITY POLICE SEIZED, TORTURED CIA AGENT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870019-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 19, 2011
• Sequence Number: 19
• Publication Date: April 25, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870019-7
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25 April 1986
Ethiopian Security Police
Seized, Tortured CIA Agent
Captivity Ended After Envoy Intervened
By Patrick E. Tyler
and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
Two years ago, Ethiopian secu-
rity police abducted and tortured a
Central Intelligence Agency officer
involved in a CIA covert propagan-
da campaign against the Marxist
government in Addis Ababa, ac-
cording to informed sources.
The officer was held captive for
more than a month, sufferings frac-
tured skull, chipped vertebrae and
dislocated shoulders during his cap-
tivity. He was freed in February
1984 when then ambassador-at-
large Vernon A. Walters flew se-
cretly to Addis Ababa, confronted
Ethiopian leader Mengistu Haile-
Mariam and obtained the officer's
release, the sources said.
According to these sources, the
CIA officer was subjected to hours
of terror, including a form of "Rus-
sian roulette" played by his captors,
and was denied sleep for five days
until he signed a confession stating
he worked for the CIA. He was con-
stantly bound during this period and
was not allowed to shower for 35
days.
The administration never public-
Iv protested the incident, which
U.S. intelligence officials say is one
of the worst attacks by a foreign
government on a CIA officer work-
ing as an accredited diplomat. But
accounts of the episode have circu-
lated in the administration and Con-
gress, contributing to the general
deterioration of U.S. relations with
Ethiopia.
Since 1991, the CIA-under au-
thorization by President Reagan-
has provided about $500,000 a year
to support propaganda and resis-
tance tactics by an anticommunist
group of Ethiopian dissidents, ac-
cording to informed sources. In re-
cent months, senior administration
officials have begun preliminary
planning for covert paramilitary
training of armed guerrillas com-
mitted to overthrowing the current
Ethiopian regime, the sources
added, although no decision has
been made by the White House on
whether to provide munitions or
other lethal aid.
Since last fall, senior Reagan ad-
ministration officials have escalated
their rhetoric against the "Soviet-
style" government imposed by
Mengistu and his military col-
leagues on a nation that once was
among America's closest allies in
Africa.
In public statements, Reagan and
Secretary of State George P. Shultz
have begun including Ethiopian
"freedom fighters" among, the Third
World's anticommunist guerrilla
movements deemed worthy of U.S.
support as part of what conserva-
tives call the "Reagan Doctrine," a
concerted effort to roll back Soviet
gains in the Third World.
Conservatives in and outside the
administration are pressing for an
extension of that doctrine to Ethi-
opia, which for nine years has had
strong backing from the Soviet
Union and Cuba and now is realign-
ing Ethiopian government and so-
ciety along classic East bloc lines.
The. tortured CIA officer was
working in Addis Ababa under dip-
lomatic cover as a commercial at-
tache in the U.S. Embassy, where
he was deeply involved with small
antigovernment resistance cells,
sources said. The Washington Post
chose not to publish the officer's
name in this article because of con-
cern about the safety of his associ-
ates.
The officer and other CIA em-
ployes in Addis Ababa directed a
covert propaganda campaign in-
tended to stir up discontent with
Mengistu's regime. The CIA hoped
to build an anticommunist opposi-
tion that eventually could attract
broad political support and field an
armed guerrilla force, the sources
said.
In the weeks after he disap-
peared on Dec. 20, 1983, U.S. of-
ficials did not know who had seized
the CIA officer or where he was
being held. A worldwide alert was
issued to all CIA stations in a frantic
search for the missing officer,
sources said.
The Walters mission to Addis
Ababa was mounted after Israeli
intelligence officials informed the
CIA that the missing officer was
being held by Ethiopian security
police at an undisclosed location in
Ethiopia.
One source said that Walters
threatened the Ethiopian leader to
obtain the CIA officer's release dur-
ing a meeting with Mengistu on
Feb. 4, 1984. Walters said through
a spokesman yesterday, "I have
been involved in many discreet ne-
gotiations and I'm not going to com-
ment on my role in any of them." As
for his reported meeting with Men-
gistu, Walters said, "It is just not
my style to threaten anyone."
Following the release, Ethiopia
expelled three other Americans
without explanation. These diplo-
mats included the CIA station chief
at the embassy, the deputy station
chief and another CIA officer, all of
whom were operating under diplo-
matic cover, sources said. The
United States retaliated by expel-
ling two Ethiopian diplomats here.
The kidnaped officer, who re-
sides in the Washington area and
who is said by sources to have been
treated for "post-trauma syndrome"
as a result of his captivity, was not
available for comment yesterday.
Some of the sources who discussed
the case say they believe the United
States should escalate its effort to
topple the Marxist Ethiopian re-
gime.
These sources also have criti-
cized the CIA for what they contend
is a reluctance to support stronger
covert measures against the Men-
gistu's regime because of concern
that CIA officers engaged in normal
intelligence collection activities in
the region might be jeopardized.
A CIA spokeswoman said she
would neither confirm nor deny that
one of the agency's officers had
been kidnaped and tortured.
The current state of relations
between the United States and
Ethiopia, strategically located on
the Horn of Africa, is an example of
how the Reagan administration-
after five years of uneasy dialogue
with a number of Marxist African
states-appears to be moving to-
ward a more confrontational ap-
proach toward these regimes, with
the CIA taking the lead role.
STAT
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Last fall, Reagan approved a $15
million CIA covert paramilitary pro-
gram to assist rebel forces fighting
the Marxist regime in Angola. More
recently, the administration decided
to provide the guerrillas with so-
phisticated Stinger antiaircraft mis-
siles.
Some conservative groups are
calling on the administration to
make a similar commitment to the
anticommunist resistance in Mo-
zambique.
According to informed sources,
administration officials have en-
gaged in preliminary discussions in
recent months on how to escalate
CIA support for Ethiopian dissident
groups dedicated to overthrowing
the Mengistu regime.
One Ethiopian exile leader has
met with Reagan. This leader,
Yonas Deressa, said in an interview
that he has been told by sources
close to the White House that his
cause will receive priority attention
after Congress disposes with the
president's request for additional
aid to the contras fighting the Ni-
caraguan government.
One difficulty for U.S. strategists
has been trying to identify a resis-
tance group with a reasonable
chance of success that espouses
neither Marxism nor secessionism, '
since the administration strongly
opposes movements dedicated to
fracturing Ethiopian territory.
One group, the Ethiopian Peo-
ple's Democratic Alliance (EPDA)
based in London, has received co-
vert CIA support since 1981, ac-
cording to informed sources. But
this group has few guerrillas in the
field and scant popular support in-
side Ethiopia, according to U.S.
sources.
Among the strongest dissident
factions, the Eritrean People's Lib-
eration Front has been fighting for
years to split the northern province
of Eritrea away from Ethiopia. The
Tigrans, also a northern ethnic
group, have their own liberation
front which is partly Marxist.
In Congress, there also has been
a hardening of attitudes toward the
Ethiopian government parallel to
that of the White House. Legisla-
tion with bipartisan support has
been introduced in the House to
declare Ethiopia a communist state
and thus pave the way for the Rea-
gan administration to impose eco-
nomic sanctions against the Men-
gistu regime.
The U.S. Agency for Internation-
al Development, which has provided
hundreds of million of dollars in
emergency relief over the past two
years, is considering an end to this
aid at the end of this year, accord-
ing to AID sources. Senior AID of-
ficials, including Administrator M.
Peter McPherson, are convinced
that the Ethiopian government's
agricultural policies-particularly
the forced resettlment of 600,000
peasants and the start-up of a na-
tionwide program of Soviet-style
collective farming-are nowmore,
responsible than natural causes for
food shortages and famine-related
deaths.
Reagan, in 1981, signed a pres-
idential "finding" under the National
Security Act authorizing the CIA to
conduct a "nonlethal" campaign to
support the democratic resistance
to Mengistu's regime, informed
sources said. As a result, the CIA
earmarked an initial $500,000 to
help the EPDA conduct a small
propaganda war against the Marxist
government, a campaign hampered
from the start by squabbling and
divisions within the group.
The propaganda campaign includ-
ed a CIA contract with a Washing-
ton consultant, who wrote antigov-
ernment material criticizing Ethi-
opia's internal policies, according to
informed sources. Such written ma-
terial, along with audio and video
tapes of anti-Mengistu speeches by
leading exiles in the United States
and Europe, have been shipped to
Addis Ababa in diplomatic pouches,
where it is given to dissident "cells"
for distribution throughout the
country.
The CIA rejected a $546,000
request from an EPDA splinter
group, which in October 1982
presented the CIA with a plan for
military training in the Sudan for
300 guerrilla leaders who would
then infiltrate Ethiopia to organize a
resistance movement.
The CIA, according to informed
sources, limited itself to helping the
EPDA produce and distribute an-
tigovernment propaganda inside the
country. The captured agent was
caught inside the home of one
EPDA member, where he was hid-
ing inside a secret closet which was
part of a storage area for such ma-
terials, sources said.
The capture led to the breakup of
an EPDA network inside the capital
and the arrest of 18 of its members,
the sources added.
Despite five years of CIA involve-
ment with this Ethiopian opposition
group, the U.S. opposition to the
Mengistu regime has remained
comparatively low-level and has had
little visible impact on the regime.
The Reagan administration's po-
sition toward the Mengistu govern-
ment hardened last fall. In his
speech before the United Nations
Oct. 24, Reagan listed Ethiopia with
Afghanistan, Cambodia, Angola and
Nicaragua as the five countries
whose Marxist governments had
embraced "an ideology imposed
from without" and were "at war
with their own people."
On Nov. 13, Assistant Secretary
of State Chester A. Crocker dis-
closed for the first time that Wash-
ington made several efforts, the
latest starting in October 1984, to
improve relations with the Men-
gistu regime and was rebuffed.
"Each, originally promising,
ended in failure," he said in a
speech. "The Ethiopian leadership,
apparently fearful of its Soviet men-
tors, would not permit any real
progress in this direction [toward
better relations]."
Crocker's hard-hitting speech
marked a turning point, administra-
tion officials said. It reflected the
disillusionment throughout the ad-
ministration toward the lack of re-
sponse from the Mengistu govern-
ment either to the massive U.S.
emergency relief aid-432,000
tons of food worth $243 million in
fiscal year 1985-or U.S. efforts to
improve relations.
"At that point, people here said
the hell with it. Let's put the pres-
sure on," one administration official
said.
Much of the pressure has come
from Congress, where conservatives
last summer tied an amendment to
the 1985 foreign aid bill requiring
Reagan to determine whether the
Mengistu government was engaged
in a "deliberate policy of starvation of
its people" and denying fundmantal
human rights to its people. If so,
Congress would impose a trade em-
bargo on Ethiopia.
The determination was a subject
of a struggle within the administra-
tion, particularly between the State
Department, which opposed impos-
ing economic sanctions in principle,
and AID, which was much more
ready to take action, according to
congressional sources.
1.
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The outcome was a compromise.
The Sept. 9 determination de-
scribed the Ethiopian human rights
record as "deplorable" and said the
government's "political, economic
and military policies have no doubt
caused vast and unnecessary human
suffering, including starvation."
However, it also said the avail-
able evidence did not justify the
conclusion the government was "at
this time conducting a deliberate
policy of starvation" and thus no
trade embargo was urged.
In Congress, a bill sponsored by
Rep. Toby Roth (R-Wis.) and
amended by Rep. Stephen J. Solarz
(D-N.Y.), would formally classify
Ethiopia as "a communist country."
The measure has been supported
unanimously by the House Africa
subcommittee. This determination
would mean the loss of Export-Im-
port Bank loans and favorable trade
terms with the United States. The
bill would also urge a trade embar-
go if the Marxist government con-
tinues its resettlement program.
Staff writer Joe Pichirallo
contributed to this report.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706870019-7