AIDING THE CONTRAS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100250012-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 24, 2011
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: March 5, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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WALL STREET JOURNAL
5 March 1985
STAT
STAT
Aiding the Contras
Why the Covert War
in Nicaragua Evolved
And Hasn't Succeeded
Mishaps and Bad Judgments
Have Plagued Program,
But Gains Have Occurred
The Umpire and the Salesman
By DAVID IGNATIUS
And DAVID ROGERs
~Orrers el THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Jose Francisco Cardenal still has the
degeared index card that the Central Intel-
ligence Agency man in Miami gave him
arforeM . Carden a;'s first meeting in July-
:992 with "John," hir CIA contact in Tegu-
cigalpa, Honduras.
The card instructed the Nicaraguan ex-
ile leader to arrive at 7 p.m. at the Hotel
La Ronda in Tegucigalpa and take the
stairs-not the elevator-to Room 333. He
should knock on the door and say, "I am
early." The CIA mar. would respond, "No.
You are exactly on time." The rendezvous
went like clockwork, and it opened a direct
channel between the then-leader of the
Contras and the CIA station in Teguci-
galpa.
The CIA's secret war against the Marx-
is: Sandinista government in Nicaragua
has rarely worked so smoothly. From its
start in 1981, the agency's Contra program
has been plagued by mishaps and political
misjudgments. The troubled history of the
program shows that, however adept the
CIA may be at arranging secret meetings
abroad, it has considerable difficulty try-
ing to run a covert war from an open soci-
ety like the U.S.
Gains and Losses
The Contra program has achieved some
military gains. The often brutal covert war
has hurt the Nicaraguan economy and put
pressure on the Nicaraguan government to
negotiate with the rebels and the U.S. It
..as also reduced the flow of arms into El
Salvador. But there have been heavy polit-
ical and diplomatic losses. Political prob-
!ems in Washington, especially the CIA's
srrained relations with Congress, under-
.n,.ined support for the program and led
Congress to cut off funds last year, forcing attack -Nicaragua
the Contras to turn to private contribu- C shot down one is u
Lions Y1 planes, accord ing to the CI A sum-
mary.
"The Project," as CIA personnel The CIA officers involved in the Contra
dubbed the Contra program, will face in- program were enthusiastic and sometimes
tensive public scrutiny during the next few eccentric. One, a retired Army major who
months as Congress debates whether to re- wrote a controversial CIA manual on psy-
sume financing. Interviews with Contra cholog;ca! warfare, liked to dress entirely
leaders, Reagan administration officials, in black and called himself "the Priest or-
members of Congress and their aides, and Death"; the Contras used a less r:reten
U.S. intelligence officials may provide tious name for him: "the Umpire." Duan
some lessons for the next round of Ameri- "Dewey" Clarridat- the senior CIA official
can policy in Central America. They also w iT re program sported safari suits
reveal new details about how the CIA ran
its first bi in the field and at home decorated his jeep
g paramilitary program in more with a post-Grenada bumper sticker that
than a decade. Some highlights:
-American read: "Nicaragua Next."
goals in the Contra pro- From its first days in office, the Reagan
gram were confused. The Reagan adminis administration viewed Central America as
tration originally sold the program to Con- a test of U.S. ability to contain commu-
gress as a way to harass Nicaragua and to nism. The situation there seemed to be de-
halt arms shipments to El Salvador, even teriorating fast in early 1981, as Nicaragua
though some U.S. officials and most Contra rushed weapons into El Salvador by the
leaders from the beginning held the truckload. To the new administration the
broader goal of removing the Marxist gov- question wasn't whether to use American
ernment in Managua. The official CIA Po- power against Nicaragua and its patron
sition was a Catch-22: The secret war Cuba, but how-overtly or covertly.
didn't violate a 19S2 congressional ban An internal debate raged in early 1981
against overthrowing the Sandinistas be- about what strategy the U.S. should adopt,
cause the Contras weren't strong enough to Alexander Haig, then the secretary of
win. state, argued that the U.S. should "go to
-The program got off to a bad start the source" by pressuring Cuba directly.
when the CIA turned to a surrogate, the - After Mr. Haig outlined a set of tough mill-
right-wing military dictatorship in Argenr -, tary options against Cuba at a National Se-
tina, to organize and train the Contras. The curity Council meeting in mid -1981, one
Argentines already had a small training NSC member turned to another and whis-
program for the Contras in Honduras, and pered: "Did you hear what I heard? This
by working with them the U.S. shielded its guy will get us into a war."
own involvement. But the heavvhanded Ar Instead of going to the source, the Rea
genune approach tainted the movement in gan administration decided to go to the
the eyes of many Nicaraguans. The U.S. CIA. Officials viewed covert action as a
had few alternatives, since the CIA at the sensible middle course between doing noth-
time didn't have any reliable paramilitary ing and declaring war. But the precise
capability of its own. strategy wasn't well-formulated. The CIA,
-CIA planners, eager to show results says one U.S. official, became "a substi-
once they began running the program di
tute rectly, used aggressive military tactics Tfor crisis a the CIA IA t nature C nthat sometimes backfired politically. In ad- pressure The
on t the program put
dition to training the Contras, the agency find a quick fix. The
b y administration's immediate worry was to
used a separate and secret paramilitary cut down arms shipments to leftist Salva-
force composed of what were called dorans, and this put a priority on military
UCLA-unilaterally controlled Latin as- action-rather than politics-in building
sets-to mine harbors and raid targets in the Contras as an insurgent movement.
Nicaragua. A U.S. official who helped run And although the administration talked re-
the program concedes that tactics were
sometimes "overzealous." peatedly about developing a broad eco-
`The Priest of Death' nomic and political strategy in Central
the emphasis was on
A secret CIA document lists 19 such op-
- milita y in pressure.
ry .
erations in early 1984, and the intensity of
the attacks and the level of U.S. involve-
ment are larger than previously reported.
Americans flew-and fired from-a heli-
copter launched from a CIA "mother
ship." A fixed-wing U.S. plane provided so-
phisticated radar guidance for the night-
time attacks. In the turmoil following one
Co bNW
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President Reagan approved the basic
elements of the program: In early 1981, he
agreed to begin rebuilding the CIA's co-
,-n-action capat.'!ity; a March 1981 deci-
sion authorized the agency to develop a
:goad political-action effort in Latin Amer-
ica: a November 1981 directive committed
the U.S. to "assist" in developing an anti-
Sandinista guerrilla army.
The political decision to conduct a co-
ver, war in Central America revived an
old problem for the CIA. Agency officials
don't like running secret armies because
the programs usually don't stay secret and
because U.S. political leadership often gets
cold feet. From the outset, the Contra pro-
gram carried these same risks and wor-
ried many career CIA officials.
Bad Track Record
The U.S. track record hasn't been very
good: In Cuba, Indonesia, Laos and Kur?
distan, the CIA has recruited guerrilla ar-
mies and the:i, when the political winds
changed back 'ome, abandoned them. One
CIA paramilitary veteran, bemoaning the
cutoff of funds to the Contras, says rue-
fully: "We leave them hanging every
time. "
A more immediate problem for the CIA
was the lack of paramilitary skills at the
agency. During the 1970s, CIA training
camps and bases had been closed and the
agency's paramilitary experts, derided by
the brass as "knuckle-draggers," had been
purged. A special covert-action unit,
known as the International Activists Divi-
sion. was little more than a shell, staffed
by wary survivors of the 1970s.
"When we started up the program, you
couldn't find five guys who knew what they
were doing in terms of organizing a resis-
tance operation," says a U.S. official who
helped manage the program. To gain ex-
pertise quickly, the agency tried to lure
back the old-timers, the "hairy-neck para-
military types," offering them one-year
contracts. The agency also began acquir-
ing the assets-boats, airplanes, helicop-
ters and Third World nationals-for the se-
cret strike force that would later be used
to mine Nicaraguan harbors.
La Tripartita
The structure of the program was
known as La Tripartita. The idea was to
combine American money, Argentine
trainers and Honduran territory to create
a guerrilla army known as the Fuerza De-
mocratica Nicaraguense, or FDN. Later,
the U.S. financed other guerrilla groups
operating from Costa Rica.
The FDN embodied the political ten-
sions that have plagued the Contras from
the beginning. Founded in August 1981, the
group combined a rightist military leader-
ship. directed mostly by people who had
been loyal to deposed Nicaraguan dictator
Anastasio Somoza, with a moderate politi-
cal leadership. It wasn't a comfortable
niarriae.
The head of the Argentine training mis-
sion in Honduras was Col. Osvaldo Ribeiro,
known as Ballita, or the Little Bullet. He
became a prominent figure in Teguci-
galpa, living in a large house, distributing
American money and dispensing what CIA
officials viewed as unsound military ad-
vice. For example, since his own experi-
ence was in urban rather than rural com-
bat, he advised the Contras to mount a pro-
gram of urban terrorism. The CIA wanted
to cultivate a popular insurgency in the
countryside.
The Argentines also apparently toler-
ated a practice of killing prisoners. A for-
mer Contra official describes the informal
rule for dealing with captives: If a pris-
oner has ammunition when captured, let
him live, since he hasn't fought to the last
bullet; if a prisoner hasn't any ammuni-
tion, kill him. (To stop the killing, CIA offi-
cers ordered in mid-1982 that all prisoners
be brought back to base for interroga-
tion.)
Coordination Difficulties
The CIA's goal was for the Contras to
coordinate with insurgents inside Nicara-
gua, but that proved difficult. One U.S. of-
ficial recalls: "The moderate opposition
was in flight. We would make contact with
people in Managua and ask them to help
I us and they would say, 'Can you get me a
green card?' " to live in the U.S.
To supervise the expanding American
effort, the director of central intelligence,
William Casey, named Mr. Clarridge head
of the Latin American division af the
agency's directorate of operations. The
Contra program to some extent had been
thrust on the CIA, but Mr. Casey; who
helped run covert operations during World
War II, was determined to make it work.
He seemed to have found a soulmate in
Dewey Clarridge, an ambitious, hard-
charging intelligence officer.
Mr. Clarridge impressed the CIA direc-
tor as an activist in an agency that had be-
come cautious and demoralized during the
1970s. He had served most recently in
Rome, where he had won points by giving
an elegant late-night supper for Mr. Casey
in 1981. He had little background in Latin
America but much enthusiasm.
"Dewey is more responsible than any-
one for what success there was," says one
U.S. official. "But Dewey cut corners and
rammed things through. He crossed the
line from being a professional intelligence
officer to being an advocate."
The program was managed in Washing-
ton by a "restricted interagency group,"
or RIG. The group was headed by the as-
sistant secretary of state for Latin Amer-
ica, initially Thomas Enders and later
Langhorne "Tony" Motley. Other mem-
bers were U.S. Army Gen. Paul Gorman,
representing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who
was later replaced by Navy Vice Adm. Ar-
thur Moreau; Lt. Col. Oliver North, a
Marine officer with extensive paramilitary
experience who served on the NSC staff;
and the CIA's Mr. Clarridge. All were, by
temperament and background, aggressive
risk-takers.
Leadership Recast
As the American role increased during
1982, the CIA decided to repackage the
FDN leadership. The aim was to broaden
the group's political appeal and reduce
the rightist Argentine aural by bringing in
well-known Nicaraguans with good anti-So-
moza credentials. The head of the CIA's
Central America task force visited Miami
in November 1982 to interview candidates
for the new FDN board of directors. He
called himself "Tony Feldman."
(Mr. Clarridge has been identified in
print previously by the Associated Press,
the Washington Post and The Wall Street
Journal as director of the CIA's Latin
American division. Other CIA operatives
discussed in the article are identified by
the code names they used in dealing with
Contra leaders.)
Edgar Chamorro, who joined the new
leadership, remembers the pitch this way:
"Feldman said that he was speaking on be-
half of the U.S. government. He said that
the president was interested in finding a
solution to the problem. He said it was im-
portant to do it before the election year. He
spoke in very confident terms. He said that
the Sandinistas must go."
"I called him the Salesman," says Mr.
Chamorro of the CIA official. He recalls
that Feldman even promised that there
would be a Lear jet to fly the Contra lead-
ers from Honduras to Miami on the week-
ends to see their families. Not only was
there never a Lear jet; the Contras waited
nearly a year for the CIA to provide a sim-
ple cargo plane that could drop supplies to
i the fighters inside Nicaragua.
The Unveiling
The repackaged FDN was unveiled at a
Dec. 7, 1982, press conference. To avoid
awkward questions to Mr. Cardenal from
reporters, a group that Feldman charac-
terized as "sharks," the CIA asked the for-
mer FDN leader to get out of Miami for
Contnli
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t,ie day. The new FDN leader was a ai-
caia;uan businessman named Adolfo Ca-
erg.
CIA hn.ndlers arranged a public-rela-
tions tour for the %-w FDN directors, Mr.
Charnorro stn: s. They were packed off to
the :led N meet with represen-
tatives of nena.1:,-ned countries. and in
March 1953 they traveled to Europe to
meet with nnn-'`Marxist European social-
I ists. For the European trip the agency pro-
?v-ided each director with S150 a day in ex-
pense mon=_v, delivered in a bulging atta-
che Lase.
The real action was taking place in
Honduras, w; ere the FDN was building a
large guerrilla force. By early 1983, an es-
timated 7,000 FDN fighters were based in
camps along the Honduras-Nicaraguan
border, and they were beginning to operate
overnight inside Nicaragua. The guerrillas
did more than just harass Sandinista
troops. They raided villages, burned crops,
destroyed roads and blew up bridges. By
CIA estimates they killed 55 Cuban ad-
visers in 1984.
Boxes of Cash
The Americans provided the money-
$300,000 a month-and it arrived every two
weeks in cash, in large boxes filled with
L.S. dollars, Honduran lempiras, and Nica-
raguan cordobas, according to Mr. Cha-
morro. The fighters were supposed to live
on $1 a day. The FDN directors, who
mostly stayed in Miami, were receiving
about $2,000 a month.
The Contras never controlled their own splitting the country in two and establish-
weapons and logistics. The Americans sup. ing a Contra shadow government.
plied guns, ammunition, uniforms and But the optimism faded, at least offi-
most other military gear-apparently to cially. An internal report by the CIA in-
make sure the guerrilla army didn't grow spector general in early 1983 concluded
faster than Congress had authorized. When that the insurgency couldn't succeed at its
Congress cut off funds in 1984, the Contras current levels. A June 30 National Intelli-
suffered from their lack of logistics train- ?ence Estimate, representing the collec-
ing, tine judgment of the intelligence commu-
"They didn't know how to buy rifles or pity, was even blunter. It said the Contras
webbed belts or any of the things they would have difficulty holding large popula-
needed,'' says a U.S. official. tion centers, let alone toppling the Sandin-
Mr. Chamorro ves most of the CIA op? istas.
eratives in the field high marks. "George," Conservatives were angered by the in
the CIA officer with whom he maintained telligence estimate, but it also served Mr.
daily contact, was "first-rate" and "a Casey's purposes by giving him a shield
bright young man with liberal ideas," he
says. The veteran officer who ran the
training camp, "Col. Raymond," was "as
good as you can find."
The Project was expanding rapidly in
mid-1953, despite a 1982 congressional
amendment specifying that CIA covert
money couldn't be used to "overthrow" the
Sandinistas. The amendment was a warn- i
ing shot from Congress of its growing un-
ease about the direction of the program.
Mixed Assessments
Within the CIA there were mixed as-
sessments about the Contras' prospects.
An internal planning memo prepared in
1982 had set out a timetable leading to the
fall of Managua by Christmas 1983. Later,
CIA officers encouraged the Contras to at-
tack the Rama Road, a route for arms
shipments from the port of El Bluff to
Managua, and there were even dreams of
against criticism that he was trying to
overthrow the government. CIA officials
recognized that they were running out of
time and might soon lose congressional
support for any paramilitary effort. So
they began planning, in mid-1983, what
would prove the decisive operation of the
secret war: the mining of Nicaraguan har-
bors.
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