CONFESSIONS OF A CONTRA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000201100008-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: August 5, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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T'."1E APP RED 1 NEW PFPUBLIC
ON PAG 5 August 1985
How the CIA masterminds the Nicaraguan insurgency.
CONFESSIONS OF A 'CONTRA'
BY EDGAR CHAMORRO WITH JEFFERSON MORLEY
Miami
(-IN DECEMBER 7, 1982, 1 met with five Nicaraguans
v and two Americans in an executive suite at the Four
Ambassadors Hotel in downtown Miami to rehearse for a
press conference we would be holding the next day. The
Nicaraguans were prominent (and in my case not so prom-
inent) opponents of the Somoza and Sandinista regimes
who were to be introduced as directors of the Nicaraguan
Democratic Force (FDN), that is, the contras. The Ameri-
cans were CIA agents. The one in charge, known to us as
Tony Feldman, was accompanied by Thomas Castillo, one
of his several assistants. They wanted to make sure we
said the right things in our first joint public appearance.
Feldman introduced two lawyers from Washington who
briefed us on the Neutrality Act, the American law prohib-
iting private citizens from waging war on another country
Edgar Chamorro served as a director of the anti-Sandinista
rebel organization, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force,
from 1982 to 1984. He now lives in Key Biscayne, Florida.
from U.S. territory. Feldman was worried we were going
to tell the press that we were trying to overthrow the
Sandinistas, which, of course, is exactly what we wanted
to do. He emphasized that we should say instead that we
were trying to "create conditions for democracy." After
the briefing we asked each other the questions we were
likely to face in the morning.
"Where have you been getting money?" someone
asked.
"Say your sources want to remain confidential," Feld-
man advised-a truthful and very clever answer.
"Have you had any contact with U.S. government
officials?"
The CIA men agreed there was no way to finesse this
one. We simply had to lie and say, "No." We practiced like
this for three hours.
The press conference, held in Fort Lauderdale to avoid
the risk of demonstrations in Miami, was all very solemn
and pompous. We filed into the Hilton Conference Center
one at a time, as if we were a government taking power;
STAT
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OL
the only thing missing was the music. Then I read our
statement of principles and goals.
"We the Directorate of the Nicaraguan Democratic
Force," I declared, "commit ourselves to guide and sup-
port this effort of the Nicaraguan people to salvage our
sacred patriotic honor, offering for this purpose all-out
industry, dedication, and if necessary, our very lives." I
felt some remorse reciting these words. Our original text
had made no such offer, but the CIA men had thrown that
version out. A young man named George (I never learned
his last name) had been called in from Washington to
rewrite our statement, and it was he who bravely offered
up our lives.
The seven of us who later took questions from reporters
had never worked together. Previously, the contras had
been primarily a military movement, led by former Somoza
National Guardsmen, that skirmished with the Sandinista
army on the Nicaraguan-Honduran border. These forces
were trained and advised by Argentine military officers.
We civilians had been active in anti-Sandinista activities in
the U.S., but had no formal connection to the military com-
manders. The CIA had brought the groups together with
money and unequivocal promises of support.
I hadn't even met Enrique Bermudez, the former Na-
tional Guardsman who commanded the contra troops in
Honduras, until the rehearsal the day before. Alfonso
Callejas, a former vice president of Nicaragua who broke
with Somoza in 1972 and who lived in Texas, had only
arrived that morning. He came to the press conference
straight from the airport. We told him, "You weren't at the
rehearsal, so don't say anything." He spoke anyway, but
we managed to keep his answers short, and he didn't do
much damage.
There were some unavoidable contradictions in our an-
swers. On the one hand, we were careful to say that we
had great admiration for, but no formal connection with,
the freedom fighters battling the Sandinista army on the
Honduran border. On the other hand, we claimed that the
directorate would put the contra forces under civilian con-
trol. But overall we thought we made a good impression,
and when I met Thomas Castillo again that night, he said
he was pleased. We returned to Miami, and I began my
two years as a contra.
I CAME TO Nicaraguan politics late, especially consid-
ering my background. After Somoza, my family name
is perhaps the best known in Nicaragua; four Chamorros
served as president of Nicaragua in the 19th and early 20th
centuries. My family led the Conservative Party, for de-
cades the major opposition to Somoza's Liberal Party. My
father, like many of my relatives, was persecuted and
jailed several times by Somoza. I, however, preferred edu-
cation to politics, joining the Jesuits in 1950 at age 19. 1
went on to become a priest and a teacher, studying at
different times at the Catholic University in Ecuador, at St.
Louis University, and at Marquette, and later becoming a
full professor and dean of the School of Humanities at the
University of Central America. Even after leaving the
priesthood in 1969, 1 continued studying, earning a mas-
ter's degree from Harvard University in 1972.
For me the Sandinista revolution began with the earth-
quake that devastated Managua in 1972. We learned that
large buildings, thought to be indestructible, could be-
come rubble in minutes. Still, I was not very involved in
politics. In Managua [ founded my own advertising agen-
cy, Creative Publicity, and handled accounts for busi-
nesses owned by people in my family, including the local
General Motors and Toyota dealers, and Tona, Nicara-
gua's most popular beer. My only political venture was to
accept a one-year appointment in 1977 to the Nicaraguan
Mission to the United Nations. (Under Somoza, members
of the opposition Conservative Party, to which I nominally
belonged, were given non-essential government posts.)
The most political thing I did there was secretly pass a
message from Sandinista friends to U.S. Ambassador An-
drew Young in October 1977 asking him to denounce So-
moza. He never did.
As the insurrection against Somoza grew in 1978, I
helped out in other small ways. When my close friend
Sergio Ramirez, now Daniel Ortega's vice president, was
being hunted by the National Guard, I hid him in my-.
children's bedroom. But in 1979 the growing chaos in
Managua made me fear for my family's safety. Somoza's
planes were bombing the barrios near my house and des-
perate National Guardsmen were shooting innocent peo-
ple on the street. On June 17, a month before Somoza was
overthrown, my wife and I and our two children came to
Miami.
I returned in September 1979 to see if things had calmed
down enough for us to return. I traveled to the south to
visit an uncle and to attend a ceremony in which the
Sandinista national leadership turned over power to local
authorities. Many of the leaders of the revolution were
there: Daniel Ortega, Ramirez, Violeta Chamorro, the
widow of my distant cousin Pedro Joacquin Chamorro,
the anti-Somoza editor of La Prensa who was assassinated
in 1978. Talking with people at the big picnic held after the
ceremony, I could see that Castro was in control of the
revolution-not as a manipulator but as the only available
role model. Even the less fanatic people like Violeta were
outspoken that day. "On to El Salvador!" she cried. I
didn't want to oppose them. I believed the spirit behind
the revolution was authentic and true. But I knew if I
joined them my life would would be in the hands of the
culture of the revolution. I wished them well. Perhaps if I
had been younger and single, I would have joined their
cause.
B ACK IN MIAMI, I continued meeting informally
every two weeks or so with other Nicaraguan exiles.
Most of them, like me, were from the Conservative Party,
and favored social change without going so far as the
revolutionary transformation favored by the Sandinistas.
Our group became more formal in late 1980 when Fran-
cisco Cardenal, an engineer who had been a high-ranking
Sandinista, left Nicaragua and joined us in Miami. We
ftnallm
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named ourselves the Union Democratica Nicaraguense, but
we limited ourselves to activities such as writing letters to
members of Congress urging them to cut off aid to the
Sandinistas. By this time Cardenal was receiving money
from the CIA. He often traveled to Washington to meet
with people from the Agency and the State Department,
and to Honduras to establish contact with the former
National Guardsmen.
A THE SANDINISTAS grew more repressive in 1980,
many of us became convinced that they had to be
replaced, and that only armed opposition could do it. The
Sandinistas had gone too far in imitating Cuba, in chant-
ing slogans that had no bearing on the situation in Nicara-
gua. Finally, the assassination of Jorge Salazar in Novem-
ber 1980 made it clear that the Sandinistas would not
tolerate any serious political opposition. Salazar had been
a popular spokesman and a brave leader, organizing cof-
fee and cattle producers into independent cooperatives.
We had not wanted to believe they would be so dictatorial
as to kill him.
In August 1981 our group sent a representative to an
important meeting in Guatemala with U.S. officials, the
National Guardsmen, and their Argentine military advis-
ers. Did we want to merge our efforts? The question
sparked long debates in the exile community in Miami. I
remember arguing long into the night that we should
accept this alliance. I said-mistakenly, it turned out-
that the Somoza National Guardsmen were professional
soldiers and not necessarily bad guys. Besides, I pointed
out, we didn't have the capacity to train a fighting force,
and we had to work with people who did. The others
responded by telling stories of being unfairly arrested,
beaten, or robbed by the National Guard. They insisted
that anyone associated with the National Guard had done
so much damage to Nicaragua that we should never, nev-
er work with them. Despite these objections, we joined
our efforts with those of the contras in Honduras.
Cardenal, along with another civilian and Enrique Ber-
mudez, became the directorate of the contras. Cardenal
immediately clashed with the military commanders. He
was very nationalistic, very strong-minded, and he had a
tremendous dislike for the National Guard. He expected
civilians to be in charge, and he prematurely tried to con-
trol the military leadership. For his efforts, he was ex-
pelled from Honduras by Bermudez in September 1982.
Plotting against the Sandinistas was not a full-time job
for me. In November 19821 was working as a commodities
broker for Cargill when I received a totally unexpected
phone call from an American who called himself Steve
Davis. "I am speaking in the name of the government of
the United States," he said in a voice accustomed to giving
orders. He asked to see me that day. Over lunch at a
restaurant near my house in Key Biscayne, Davis told me
that Cardenal had been fighting too much with National
Guardsmen, and that the United States wanted to increase
the size of the contras' political leadership.
I told him that I favored creating something like a contra
congress, composed of perhaps 21 leading Nicaraguans.
This would have several advantages, I explained. First, it
could create more debate, allow more participation by
civilians, and possibly open avenues to the Sandinistas.
Second, it could include representatives from the other
rebel groups such as the one led by former Sandinista hero
Eden Pastora, who shunned any contact with National
Guardsmen. Third, one military commander could not
defy or challenge 20 other important people. Fourth, and
most important, I wanted to establish the supremacy of
laws, not leaders, within the Nicaraguan opposition. I
wanted to have a written constitution and formal proce-
dures that would prevent us from succumbing to the pe-
rennial Latin American weakness for the caudillo.
Davis liked my proposal. But even at this first meeting I
noticed a distinctive trait of CIA agents: they immediately
reinforce what you have to say. "Well, yes," they re-
spond, "we completely agree." Davis knew my views,
and knew he had to sound liberal. "We don't want any-
body in the directorate who is Somocista, who has robbed
money from Nicaragua, who has committed crimes,"'he
claimed. He was overdoing it.
As Davis said good-bye, he told me that I wouldn't,
always see him, that sometimes others would call or visit'
me on his behalf. And in the days that followed other men
did come. Their activities were somewhat mysterious. All
of them were getting ready for the arrival of someone from
Washington who wanted me to be a part of something and
to share in the administration's plans with respect to
Nicaragua.
F INALLY, in late November 1982, Davis asked me to
have dinner in his suite at the Holiday Inn in down-
town Miami. There I met the man who came from Wash-
ington-Tony Feldman. He was about 40 years old, alert
and good-looking. He had thinning hair, a long face, an
easy smile, and a gentleman's manner. He would have
made a superb car salesman. He asked me to serve on a
seven-member directorate of the FDN (anything larger
would be unmanageable, they had decided). He promised
this directorate would have the full backing of the United
States government and that we would march into Mana-
gua by July 1983. When I said that struck me as very little
time, he conceded that the victory might take until the end
of the year.
I was glad to see that the Americans were committed
enough to our cause to be taking such an active role, and I
was flattered as well. I said yes. Over the next several days
Feldman took control of the operation and moved the
headquarters two blocks down to the less fancy Four Am-
bassadors, where we met constantly. The men from
Washington wanted at all costs to have a woman on the
directorate. What did I think of Lucia Salazar, Jorge Sala-
zar's widow? I agreed that appointing her would be a good
idea. They ran down the general qualities required for all
the directors: must have been anti-Somocista; must have a
reputation for honesty and not too much fondness for
money; must be willing to move to Honduras and devote
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all their time to politics. They suggested names quickly, as
if spontaneously. But I sensed that they had already decid-
ed whom they wanted. It was clear they didn't want Car-
denal because he didn't get along with Bermudez. When
Cardenal was not named to the new directorate, he quit
politics altogether. He now sells life insurance in Miami.
Along the way my friends and I tried to raise the sub-
stantive issues that had concerned us all along. Knowing
that Bermudez had forced Cardenal out of Honduras, we
wanted assurances that we civilians would have authority
over the military officers. Feldman and his assistants told
me they wanted to dilute Bermudez's power with a larger
directorate, to kick him upstairs. I also wanted Nicara-
guans to approve the budget and control the money. Feld-
man agreed to this in principle, but said we would work
out the details later. I also asked for a clear definition of
what our goals were and what the Americans' goals were.
This I never received.
We didn't discuss these things in great detail. The most
important thing Feldman said repeatedly was that the CIA
had to put together a group of Nicaraguans-non-
Somocistas-before Congress voted on the Boland
Amendment prohibiting U.S. aid to forces fighting to
overthrow the Sandinistas. He emphasized that we had to
go public quickly in order to get Congress to ease its
position.
So we moved on to cosmetic issues. Some other Nicara-
guan exiles working with me wrote the statement for the
press conference. It was mostly about the right to private
property, and it was very anticommunist. Thomas Castillo
was sitting at the conference table in the suite at the Four
Ambassadors when he read it. "Shit, who wrote this?" he
said, shaking his head. "It sounds like all you want is to
get back what you lost. You have to write something more
progressive, more political. We'll get someone from
Washington to help you." That's when George was called
in. My friends who worked with him told me later that he
insisted they rewrite everything to make it more socialis-
tic. The Americans, I began to realize, liked to make all the
crucial decisions.
n DOUBTS, though, were still relatively minor. I
was convinced the Sandinistas had to be thrown
out. All along I had said we had to see how serious the
Americans were about helping us, and the only way to do
that was to play by their rules. So I quit my job at Cargill
and devoted myself full-time to the FDN. The CIA prom-
ised me a salary of $2,000 a month plus expenses and I was
put in charge of public relations.
We wanted to set up highly visible headquarters in a
shopping center or office building, but the CIA didn't like
the idea. They said it would become a target for demon-
strations or violence. They insisted that we take an elegant
suite at the David Williams Hotel in Coral Gables, which
they paid for. The directors met there to draw up work
plans. The CIA men sat by, with their yellow legal pads,
writing down whatever we said we needed.
The FDN's first public relations coup was not my doing.
It originated, I think, with Feldman's superiors in Wash-
ington. The idea was to put out a 12-point peace initia-
tive-a move I thought was premature given the fact that
we had launched our war initiative only a month before.
But on January 13, 1983, we released the initiative, which
essentially demanded the surrender of the Sandinista gov-
ernment. I asked why we were doing all this.
"This is 90 percent propaganda," Castillo explained. He
suggested I write a letter to the Socialist International ask-
ing to be invited to explain the initiative at its upcoming
annual meeting. "There's no way they will invite you, but
it will give the FDN lots of publicity. It'll be news." So I
signed the letters to the Socialist International.
In March 1983, while Bermudez and I were in Hondu-
ras, the other five directors spent a month presenting the
case for the contras to politicians and reporters in Europe.
Adolfo Calero, a former Coca-Cola distributor in Managua
and increasingly the most powerful civilian on the direc-
torate, and Indalecio Rodriguez, a former rector of the
University of Central America, did a good job of winning
support in Germany and Spain.
Unfortunately the other three directors mostly enjoyed
the $5,000 in expense money that the CIA had given each
of them. Lucia Salazar, Alfonso Callejas, and Marco?Zele-
don, a prominent Nicaraguan businessman, sometimes
treated the trip as a free vacation, courtesy of the Ameri-
can taxpayer. Zeledon, Salazar, and Callejas missed their
planes and appointments. The CIA man began to suspect
hanky-panky. "Is Zeledon screwing Lucia?" one of them
asked me one day after their return. "I don't know if he's
screwing her," I told him, "but he's screwing you."
I MOVED TO Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, to
run the contras' public relations office. With CIA money
I hired several writers, reporters, and technicians to pre-
pare a monthly bulletin called "Comandos," to run our
radio station, and to write press releases. My friend
George had been made deputy to the CIA station chief in
Tegucigalpa, and he worked with me in our headquarters
in a safe house.
Bermudez stayed in Honduras to command the contra
troops, and Indalecio Rodriguez stayed to work with refu-
gees fleeing Nicaragua. The other four directors worked
out of Miami or Washington, mainly to lobby Congress. I
sat in on meetings where the CIA men advised them how
to win votes for continued CIA funding. The CIA men
didn't have much respect for Congress. They said we
could change how representatives voted as long as we
knew how to "sell" our case and place them in a position
of looking soft on communism. They suggested members
whom we should lobby and gave us the names of big shots
we should contact in their home districts.
I continued to press for some clear definition of what we
were hoping to achieve and how specifically we were
going to achieve it. Once we arrived in Honduras, Feld-
man's promise that we would be in Managua before the
end of the year seemed to recede. The CIA station chief in
Tegucigalpa spoke only of holding territory in the Isabelia
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mountain range, and pestering the Sandinista army so as
to weaken it. I knew the CIA was talking with other anti-
Sandinista groups in Miami and Central America, but they
never put us together. And I don't think it was just politi-
cal differences among the groups that blocked unification.
If Bermudez and other National Guardsmen were the ob-
stacle, the CIA could get rid of them. But I realized the CIA
wanted to keep us apart. That way they didn't have to
commit themselves to anyone. They were using us for
their own purposes. Whatever their bigger plan was-
defending the Monroe Doctrine or practicing "contain-
ment" or whatever-they were hiding it from us.
I SLOWLY got a sense of what the CIA's plans did not
include as I attempted to improve the contras' image.
Especially in my first year, it was standard contra practice
to kill Sandinista prisoners and collaborators. In talking
with officers in the contra camps along the Honduran bor-
ders; I frequently heard offhand remarks like, "Oh, I cut
his throat." It was like stomping on a cockroach to them.
So I admitted to the press that there had been executions. I
said that they were not part of our policy, and that we had
to train our men better. The CIA and Bermudez didn't like
my candor, but in the long run it won credibility with the
press, and I believe it had a positive influence in the con-
duct of the war.
I also established a program of political education for the
soldiers. I printed up a little manual called the Blue and
White Book that talked about the meaning of democracy,
social justice, and so on. The soldiers could carry it with
them at all times and educate themselves about what they
were fighting for. The military commanders liked it but
never understood the importance of it. I doubt if Bermu-
dez ever read it.
The political dimension of the struggle meant nothing
to the commanders. They all had the simplistic belief
that Somoza lost because he had his hands tied by Jimmy
Carter and that if he hadn't he could have killed a lot
of people and won. The Argentine officers who trained
them had told them, "We're the only people in Latin
America who've beaten the communists in a war. The way
to win is to fight a 'dirty war' like we did in the 1970s." I
became convinced that the combination of Argentine
training and National Guard mentality was one of the
major obstacles to putting the contra movement on a truly
democratic path.
Bermudez's best friend was Ricardo "Chino" Lau, who
was one of the most notorious and brutal National
Guardsmen under Somoza. Even months after Calero an-
nounced that Lau had resigned from the FDN, Lau was
still the last person to talk to Bermudez at night and the
first person to talk to him in the morning. Bermudez was
even feared by his own officers. At one meeting of the
directorate three of our top intelligence officers, said they
each suspected that Bermudez and Lau were plotting to
kill them, and they asked us what we were going to do.
There was nothing we could do. Bermudez, of course,
denied it. But Bermudez demanded total loyalty and in-
timidated physically those who didn't provide it. Along
with Calero and Calero's top aide, a civilian Somocista
named Aristides Sanchez, Bermudez was unchallenge-
able. Privately, we referred to this threesome as the "Ber-
mudez Mangle."
Needless to say, the civilian directors of the contras did
not gain control of the military. Despite Feldman's prom-
ise, we didn't even get complete control of the budget. It
took six months just to get a Nicaraguan keeping the
books. (One of the Argentines had been doing them up till
then.) And even then we could only approve the budgets
for troop supplies, for logistical goods such as gasoline
and rented trucks, and for political efforts. We were never
given the right to decide either how much we would
spend on weapons or what kinds of weapons we wanted.
I'm not sure the CIA even let Bermudez in on those deci-
sions. And the civilians never had any say in military
strategy. There was simply no mechanism for consulta-
tion. When I tried to raise the matter of civilian control
with the CIA people, I was politely brushed aside. Their
attitude was we were at the war stage of the struggle.
Politics would come later.
The only time all seven contra directors came to Hondu-
ras was whenever Dewey Maroni, the chief of theproject?
for the CIA, flew in. We first met with Maroni at one of our
safe houses in Tegucigalpa in July 1983. He was a power-
fully built man with a barrel chest and a Bronx accent. He
smoked cigars and spoke with authority. As he sat among
us, he reminded me of a proconsul come to tell his subjects
what to do and how to do it. I have never witnessed such
arrogance while working with a foreigner.
During his next visit in October 1983, Maroni proposed
appointing a chairman of the directorate, an idea I fa-
vored. He started saying that this chairman should be able
to work in Washington, not be Somocista, be known in
Washington, and so on. It became obvious he was describ-
ing Calero. Calero was a politician who worked 16 hours a
day and regarded the CIA as his constituency. We direc-
tors went into another room to vote. It was as easy as
picking the color of Napoleon's white horse. When we
came back in the room, Maroni shook Calero's hand.
"Congratulations, Mr. President," he said. We had elect-
ed a chairman, and Maroni, in an unusual demonstration
of the popular will, had immediately promoted him to
president.
A 2 A.M. on January 5, 1984, George woke me up at
my safe house in Tegucigalpa and handed me a
press release in excellent Spanish. I was surprised to read
that we-the contras-were taking credit for having mined
several Nicaraguan harbors. George told me to rush to our
clandestine radio station and read this announcement be-
fore the Sandinistas broke the news. Of course, we played
no role in the mining of the harbors. This was not unusual.
The CIA often gave us credit (or perhaps blame) for opera-
tions that we knew nothing about. The CIA employed its
team of "Latino assets" to bomb the Sandinistas' petro-
leum tanks at Punto Corinto in October 1983. When I
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protested to George, asking why the CIA didn't simply
give us the money and let patriotic Nicaraguans do the
job, he sighed, "This is the way they want us to do it in
Washington."
Meanwhile our own operations were getting inadequate
support. We had doubled the number of volunteers in our
forces from 3,500 to 7,000 in 1983. But we had too few
machine guns and airplanes, and too little logistical sup-
port when we operated inside Nicaraguan territory. Final-
ly, in the summer we received two C-47 planes that the
CIA had been promising for months. They had poor avi-
onics and poor defense systems. They were practically
flying coffins. I remember meeting with the CIA people at
the Marriott Hotel in Rosslyn, Virginia, around this time.
One director told me the CIA had prepared a "nice treat"
for his visit to Washington: a tour of museums and restau-
rants. I said, "Don't forget to go to the Smithsonian,
where you'll see a C-47 as old as the one that these gentle-
men will give us someday."
I got the feeling the CIA didn't want to let us win. I
thought we should try to capture a town, but the CIA said
it was impossible. In a way they were right. People in
Nicaragua still half believed that the Sandinistas were get-
ting better. They weren't ready for another change. Our
troops took the town of Ocotal once for a few hours, but
the people didn't rejoice to see us. They just said, "Good,
you killed that brutal Sandinista guy." They didn't speak
out for the FDN, and our soldiers didn't know how to talk
to them. This was the price we paid for not emphasizing
democratic goals and not working as a constitutional
movement. The Americans wanted an army they could
control. They didn't want to risk an insurrection that was
not under their control.
M Y POSITION in the FDN was getting more precari-
ous. The chain of events that ultimately led me to
leave began around this time. In the fall of 1983 a CIA man
known as John Kirkpatrick arrived in Honduras. Kirkpat-
rick was a character out of a Graham Greene novel. He was
very critical of the top brass of the FDN and loved the
lowest and poorest soldiers. He drank too much and cried
all the time. He was excited by my political education work
with our troops, and wanted to prepare a psychological
warfare manual as well.
We worked a few hours a day for a week or two, then
Kirkpatrick finished the manuscript with my secretary.
When the manual came back from the printer, I discovered
two passages that I thought were immoral and dangerous.
One recommended hiring professional criminals. The oth-
er advocated killing our fellow contras to create martyrs for
the cause. I didn't particularly want to be martyred by the
CIA in its struggle against international communism. Be-
sides, the assassination of Pedro Joacquin Chamorro and
the terrible consequences of changing the destiny of a
nation through political killing was fresh in my memory. I
locked up all the copies of the manual and hired two
youths to cut out the offending pages and glue in expur-
gated pages. I thought that was the end of the matter.
6
I saw Dewey Maroni for the last time on June 14,
1984,
and found his views had changed. A year before he had
praised Eden Pastora for his ability to inspire the peasant-
ry. Now he said he had given up on Pastora, and he
addressed himself fondly to Bermudez: "Well done, Colo-
nel. Keep it up. Your boys are doing fine." I realized that it
was all over for those of us who wanted to make the contras
a democratic political movement. Shortly after that Calero
told me I could no longer work in Honduras. I returned to
Miami to work with the local FDN committee, but I
learned that Calero had told FDN people not to invite me
to any FDN functions.
In October 1984 a New York Times reporter obtained a
copy of the original version of the psychological warfare
manual, and the CIA and the Reagan administration were
embarrassed by repugnant passages. Calero immediately
concluded that I had told the Times about it (I hadn't) in
order to defeat Reagan in the presidential election. We met
one last time in Miami a week after the election. He called
me a traitor and I called him a dictator. On November 20,
1984, I received a letter saying that the FDN directorate
had unanimously agreed to relieve me of my duties.
I NOW BELIEVE that a political dialogue in Nicaragua
should be the United States's top priority. We have
tried military pressure, and it hasn't worked. It hasn't
created the conditions for democracy and it hasn't forced
the Sandinistas to negotiate. The first step toward national
reconciliation must be abolition of the contra army. By
urging the rebels to lay down their guns, the United States
would strengthen the moderates and weaken the extrem-
ists on both sides. President Reagan should also lower his
inflammatory rhetoric and give more than lip service to the
Contadora peace initiative sponsored by Mexico, Colom-
bia, Venezuela, and Panama. Contadora still offers the
best chance for achieving a lasting political solution.
When I joined the contras in December 1982, I thought
the United States and the CIA wanted to restore the prom-
ise of the Sandinista revolution. Now I think they are very
pro-counterrevolution. The idealistic young people who
actually fought against the Sandinista army have real
grievances. Their land has been confiscated or they have
been persecuted for their religious views or they have
resisted the Sandinista draft. But they are being used as an
instrument of U.S. foreign policy by the CIA and the Rea-
gan administration. And they are being used by the Na-
tional Guardsmen and Somocista politicians who simply
want to go back to Nicaragua to get back the money and
the power they lost in 1979. If the contras ever took power,
they would simply replace the communists with a law-
and-order regime and no one would be any better off.
What's more, many of the civilian contra leaders have chil-
dren in their teens or 20s, and yet they do not send them to
fight the war they favor so much. They expect the campesi-
nos to continue to die while they live in Miami and wait for
their dream to come true. I am now convinced that the
contra cause for which I gave up two years of my life offers
Nicaragua nothing but a return to the past. 0
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