CONTRAS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706570001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 15, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-009658000706570001-9
LOS ANGELES TIES
15 March 1987
Contras
7 h- Tad $sulc
WASHINGTON
The Reagan Administration
created the Nicaraguan con-
tras and now appears to have
fatally injured them. Through
its obsessive need to control,
manipulate and direct all their leaders and
all their activities, this cherished force
may disappear.
Ironically, while the Administration
had risked possibly illegal steps to keep
the guerrillas armed during a recent
congressional ban on direct military aid,
continued political interference by the
White House, State Department and Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency-to keep* the
rebels obediently in line-undermined the
whole effort.
Now the contras' political leadership is
on the verge of collapse with the sudden
resignation of Arturo Cruz, a liberal-
minded member of the rebel directorate,
as Congress prepared, begrudgingly, for
the next installment of contra funding.
Cruz resigned in protest against the U.S.
interference and his own inability to
introduce contra reforms.
This month, contra political chiefs were
testifying before federal investigators
concerning secret operations undertaken
on their behalf by Lt. Col. Oliver L. North
and his associates. Their testimony, in-
cluding submission of bank records, is
likely to throw additional light on the
Iran-contra scandal and could lead to
criminal prosecutions against current and
former Administration officials.
The contra leaders' willingness to testi-
fy comes from bitterness-what they
claim has been cavalier treatment by
high-ranking gringos. Many of them feel
used by the United States for its own ends.
The extent of disarray among the top
contras comes clear from a month-long
series of interviews with American offi-
cials, past and present, rebel leaders and
other Nicaraguans in Washington, Miami
and New York. A new picture emerges:
The two-year congressional ban on
direct U.S. military assistance to the
contras-between October, 1984, and Oc-
tober, 1986-was the best thing that ever
The value of aid received during the
ban was approximately $100 million in
arms, ammunition, support services and
cash. At least $55 million came from
private networks run by North and some
funds are virtually certain to have come
from illegal U.S. arms sales to Iran.
Between late 1981, when Reagan autho-
rized aid to the contras, and the congres-
sional cut-off in 1984, the CIA had
provided slightly more than $80 million,
barely enough to keep the guerrillas
going.
The Tower Commission did not account
for all the money from the Iran arms sales
or determine the exact sources of private
funding. While much of the contra financ-
ing is believed to have come from foreign
governments, some may have come, ac-
cording to Nicaraguan informants, from
political action committees in the United
States. That would be illegal. The Tower
commission alluded to this possibility,
saying that information concerning
North's contacts with political-action
committees "will be available to congres,
sional committees." Federal investigators
are also looking into the possibility that
funds raised for the contras may have
been used in 1986 U.S. congressional
elections against those opposing the guer-
rillas' cause, and will explore charges that
the contras earned money from narcotics
dealing.
The State Department, according to
investigators, has played a much more
active role than heretofore understood in
championing the contras' cause during the
ban on arms aid. Such activities would fall
into a legal gray area, they may include
use of the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland
for European fund-raising in behalf of the
contra,, assistance to North in offshore
banking arrangements and the expendi-
ture of State Department funds to finance
the lobbying of Congress by the contras.
But even as the Administration was
trying to turn the contras into a viable
force that could pose a serious military
threat to the Sandinistas, the Administra-
tion was, on all levels, determined to
control that force-its leadership and its
conduct of the guerrilla war. Contra
political and military chiefs alike were
told that, in effect, they must take orders
from Americans, whether CIA handlers or
Consider the anger of Adolfo Calero,
head of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force
(FDN), controlling the contra army in the
field. He was forced out by the U.S.
Administration in mid-February from the
three-man directorate of the United Nic-
araguan Opposition (UNO) :
"First we are told that the official cover
story for the armed opposition is that
we're helping to interdict arms traffic
from Nicaragua to leftist guerrillas in El
Salvador," Calero said in March. "OK, so
we went along with the story. Why not?
Then the story became that our struggle
was to force the Sandinistas to restore
democracy. Then the story was that we
were fighting to force the Sandinistas to
negotiate with the opposition, including
with us, the opposition in exile. In the end,
we don't know what the Administration
wants us to fight for."
Calero, who founded his FDN with U.S.
support in 1983 and signed a unity pact
with the Revolutionary Democratic Alli-
ance (ARDE) of Alfonso Robelo in 1984,
does not hide him r.m.ntment over the
Administration's 1985 pressure to accept
UNO as the political umbrella organiza-
tion. The State Department had demand-
ed that contra leadership be expanded and
"liberalized" with the inclusion of Cruz, a
banker who had served as ambassador to
the United States for the Sandinista
regime before breaking with it. The
notion was that Calero was regarded as
too conservative, that his army included
too many officers from the prior Somoza
regime and that the contras had to be
made more appealing to Congress before
it would lift the ban on direct U.S. military
aid. Calero begrudgingly accepted Cruz
but insisted on maintaining command of
the contra army.
Cruz, for his part, also resented the
Americans. He said in a March interview
that he had been determined to run for
president in the 1984 elections against
Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista chief, be-
cause even in defeat he would be a brake
on Sandinista totalitarian tendencies, es-
pecially if some of his supporters were
elected to the National Assembly. But the
opposition leadership in Managua. Cruz
said, failed to register him in time as a
candidate, despite his urgent requests
from Rio de Janeiro where he was
meeting with European socialists and
Sandinista officials. Cruz suspects that the
happened to the guerrillas that President They also soon learned that U.S. poli-
Reagan described as "freedom fighters." cies tend to change in terms of who is to
During that period, the contras received be supported and who is to be dis-
more funds and materials, mostly through missed-and that the Administration was
White House-controlled secret "private" never capable of making clear its ultimate
channels, than in the previous three years objectives. This uncertainty, intelligence
when the CIA-covertly but legally-fi- specialists suggest, may have contributed
nanced the movement. The contra army to the contras' failure to make any
grew to nearly 15,000 men astride the meaningful progress against the Sandin-
border between Nicaragua and their Hon- istas. A U.S. intelligence analyst said, "If
duras sanctuary. they don't know why they are fighting,
why should they risk their lives?"
diplomats or officials in Washington
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706570001-9
CIA had a hand in preventing his friends
from registering him, to demonstrate that
Ortega would not allow opposition candi.
dates.
Late last year, as the Iran-contra
scandal broke and as the Administration
became concerned over congressional
willingness to disburse the remaining $40
milliomfor the contras from the $100-mil-
lion appropriation that marked the end of
the cutoff, the State Department moved to
dislodge Calero altogether.
By then, Cruz and Robelo had formed
an alliance against Calera within the
ruling directorate and new complex politi-
cal maneuvering began by all partici-
pants, including Elliott Abrams, U.S.
assistant secretary of state for inter-
American affairs.. Cruz had become
Abrams' favorite and had been receiving a
$7,000 monthly subsidy from North since
1985. As the principal players in the
contras operation, Abrams and North
were in permanent contact and their
arrangements included payment for UNO
offices in Washington and Miami by a
political group linked to North's Project
Democracy.
When Calero refused to resign from
UNO, Abrams persuaded Cruz to threaten
his own resignation in order to bring
unbearable pressure on his fellow Nicara.
guan. Cruz, who no longer received the
subsidy-it ended last November after
North's dismissal-went along with this
ploy. Calero met with Abrams in Wash-
ington in February, finally agreeing to
quit UNO, but insisting on remaining FDN
chief and urging the election of a new
directorate by Nicaraguans in exile.
Calero's removal from UNO has been
deplored by many Nicaraguans as
an illustration of "gringo power,"
the ability and custom of the
United States, as one of them said,
"to use us, then discard us in the
garbage bin." Others remember
how the CIA worked with Cuban
exile leaders for the 1961 Bay of
Pigs invasion in similar fashion,
"treating us as servants."
Anger is on all sides. Cruz, Calera
and other Nicaraguans privately
refer to Americans as gringos,
underlining a contempt for them as
allies. U.S. officials, in turn, hold
most Nicaraguan opposition politi-
cians in similar contempt. Nicara-
guan exile leaders hardly talk to
each other-and bad-mouth one
another to visitors.
Calero had been urged by Amer-
ican friends to invoke the Fifth
Amendment before Lawrence E.
Walsh, the independent counsel in
the Iran-contra scandal. He decid-
ed to testify but would not explain
that decision. A friend of his com-
mented that "Adolfo was treated
like dirt, and he doesn't want to be
the fall guy for the gringos."
Given the mutual hostility, it is
hard to figure out how the Admin-
istration will get along with Calero
as chief of the contra army. Cruz, in
turn, insists that he is through with
UNO and Nicaraguan politics. In
the end the contras are left without
viable political leadership.
At the same time, the Adminis-
tration must create a credible poli-
cy toward both the contras and
Managua. There is rising pressure
from Latin American allies for the
United States to resume negotia-
tions with Nicaragua in the context
of the latest peace plan drafted by
Costa Rica President Oscar Arias.
There is the pressure from Con-
gress for a halt to aid for the
contras. And this month, a high-
level Soviet mission visited Mana-
gua to promise more aid for the
Sandinistas. Many diplomats be-
lieve that Soviet support was in
fact triggered by the contras'
build-up. Even Cruz thinks that
the United States mounted military
pressure on the Sandinistas four or
five years too early: "You helped
them to consolidate."
In December, 1981, Reagan
signed a national intelligence
"finding" establishing U.S. support
for Nicaraguan "resistance forces."
Now, more than five years later,
this policy is lost-in a jungle of
atrocious American mismanage-
ment and in the thicket of a White
House scandal still unfolding. ^
Tad Szulc is the author of "Fidel: A Critical
Portrait" (Morrow).
oL
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706570001-9