WISE PEOPLE - REPORT ABOUT INSURGENCY IN EL SALVADOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84B00049R001800110002-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 9, 2007
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 10, 1982
• Content Type: REPORT

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DCI
10 March 82
We are here to brief you on what we now know about insurgency in
El Salvador and how it is run. We will then take questions on El Salvador.
Later, if you wish, we will show you the evidence of the military buildup in
Nicaragua and the massacre of Indians which was shown to the press yesterday.
Here with me today are
Admiral Inman, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
Dewey Clarridge, Chief/Latin America Division, Directorate of Operations
Director/African and Latin America Analysis, Intelligend]fDX1
Directorate
Constantine Menges, National Intelligence Officer for Latin America
I
Chief/Middle America-Caribbean Division, Intelligence 25X1
Directorate
Military Analyst in Middle America-Caribbean Division, 25X1
Intelligence Directorate
Intelligence Operations Research Officer, 25X1
special Operations Intelligence Center, Operations Directorate
All of them have worked on assembling this picture and will be available
to bring you their insights and respond to your questions. I 5X1
have been to Europe to brief our Allies on the Nicaragua buildup 25X1
has just returned from 4. weeks of traveling around El Salvador. 25X1
Hue and cry in press for evidence of external control - can't meet without
losing sources. Last week I presented the El Salvador evidence to two intelligence
committees. All members seemed satisfied and Chairmen Goldwater and Boland issued
statements characterizing the evidence as compelling - comprehensive - overwhelming.
They concluded that the President is acting on good solid information.
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That the El Salvador insurgency is supported externally is not a new
discovery.
- March of 1980, the Defense Department told a House committee that
Cuban support for the extreme left in El Salvador and Guatemala includes
"advice, propaganda, safe haven, training, arms" and "men and material which
transit Honduras, aircraft landings at remote haciendas" with weapons from
Cuba.
- 17 January 1981, in approving lethal military aid for El Salvador,
the Carter Administration stated that its purpose was to "support the Salvadoran
government in its struggle against left-wing terrorism supported covertly with
arms, ammunition and training and political and military advice by Cuba and
other communist nations."
During my watch, for 14 months I have had a steady diet of reports and
photos showing a flow of supplies and trained men from Cuba and Nicaragua
into El Salvador and Guatemala by road in large trucks through Honduras by
small plane from Nicaragua to small landing fields in El Salvador by sea
from Nicaragua to El Salvador mostly across the Bay of Fonseca.
In February 1981, the State Department put out a White Paper detailing how
leaders of diverse Salvadoran guerrilla factions had been brought to Havana and
promised financial and military support if they would unite,li a_Sa Ya_doca
,th
Koradlf' i n commi' ?rfi 'P - and how subsequently
some 200 tons of weapons, US rifles with serial numbers matching those left
behind in Vietnam, Russian hand grenades and Chinese grenade launches, German
G-3 rifles, along with other weapons and ammunition brought by air, sea and
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large truck into El Salvador. The media did a lot of nitpicking on the
details of this White Paper, but in April,of 1981 Fidel Castro told Wisnewski,
the Deputy Chairman of the German Socialist Democratic Party, that the State
Department White Paper was essentially accurate.
In early 1980, instructions went out from Moscow on a new propaganda
policy which would stress the militaristic policies of the United States,
including the charge that we were poised to invade El Salvador. Meetings in
Mexico City and Havana with Soviets and Cubans had the Salvadoran insurgents
establish the FDR (Democratic Revolutionary Front) to represent the insurgency
abroad and the DRU (United Revolutionary Directorate) as the central command
of the insurgents.
In April, the insurgents met at the Hungarian Embassy in Mexico City
with representatives of East Germany, Bulgaria, Poland, Vietnam, Hungary, Cuba
and the Soviet Union to work out cooperation the supply of weapons. In
June of 1980, the head of the Salvadoran Communist party traveled to Moscow
and then to Vietnam, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Ethiopia
to get commitments for weapons, training and financial assistance. In June 1980,
there was a further meeting in Havana in which the propaganda themesand the
channel through which it would be communicated worldwide were laid down.
We saw all this unfold brilliantly in 48 public meetings held around the
world between the 13th of January and the 10th of March of 1981.. Those meetings
have continued around the world and into the United States. I think you will
get an idea of how thoroughly and comprehensively it was done by looking at
this listing of meetings held outside the US during an 8-week period around
this time last year.
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We substantially intensified our efforts to find out what was happening
in El Salvador itself and were able to apply)
to identify planes, ships and trucks bringin
5X1
5X1
25X1
9
arms into the country. We have worked with the El Salvador and Honduran govern-
ments to train intelligence officers and security officers to identify infiltration
routes and develop methods to interdict and reduce the flow of arms over those
routes. We have identified over 150 guerrilla camps, we have traced a sophisticated
communications network through which insurgent tactics and strategies are directed
from Managua, and we have succeeded in learning the strategy and directives which
the El Salvador insurgents use to seek political propaganda and military objectives.
The picture laid out before you this afternoon will disclose a well-organized
and sophisticated structure which is the work not of peasant revolutionaries,
but of professional and experienced revolutionary leaders. You will see them
sending plans, directives and supplies from Managua to the guerrilla bands in
El Salvador and receiving requests for help and reporting results to Managua.
The El Salvador briefing will be presented to you in three segments.
First,
who sifts and puts together this material every day in
our Central America operations room, will describe the insurgent forces and
how they are supplied. Then Dewey Clarridge will give you an overview of the
capabilities we have developed there to help the Salvadorans gather intelligence
and interdict the supplies sent in from outside. Finally,I will 25X1
show you how the insurgency is directed from Managua and give you the plans,
objectives and propaganda themes sent from Managua to El Salvador in the very
words used by those who command and control the attack against the government
in El Salvador.
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APPENDIX'
Montreal
Demonstrations and Protests Against U.S. Polio in El Salvador
DATE
13 Jan.
16 Jan. . Bern -
th+ra woria interest groups, mostly
Swiss but with a smattering of Latin
A
i
mer
can participants ??
16 Jan. Panama City
-16 Jan.
Revolution Student Front..' There was
also an* attempt to firebomb the Embassy.
Sydney 40' "Australian Social'st h-orkers Party"
(T
t
"Usual* run of left-wince :,Huth ' nd
40 Conui to Uni taire De Sol idar-i to Pour
800
ro
ykyite) (NOTE: Some Chileans were
to participate, according to permit,
but were.not seen at site.- ?.
16 Jan.
17 Jan.
17 Jan.
.19 Jan.
20 Jan.
20. Jan.
20 Jan.
20 Jan..
Managua 300 All U.S. Citizens, mainly Maryknoller's,
and others -describing themselves.-as
i.......-_i_
Georgetown 40
Brussels 250
Bilbao 40
Barcelona 50
Vancouver 75
Wellington 8
Quito unk
Pedpl e? Progressive Party (Pro-Soviet
"A .small local Trotskyite_parfy"..and
other?Leftist groups,
Members of the Faculty of Theology
of the University .of Deusto-
Liga Comuni sta Revolucionaria,
Movimiento Comunista de Catalunia
El Salvador/Nicaragua Support
Committee.
Nicaragua Solidarity Committee
Leftist students from Catholic
University .
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20 Jan. -
Rome
Unk
Committee of solidarity with the
Salvadoran People. Speakers included
Brazilian labor leader and Communist
"Lula " Uruguayan Ernesto Gogi, and others
22 Jan.
USUN
200
Committee in Solidarity with the People
of El Salvador
22 Jan.
. Bilbao
Communist Party of Euskadi, Basque -
Regional Branch of Spanish Communist Party.
22 Jan.
Bogota
35
Colombian Communist Party (pro-Soviet)
22 Jan.
Managua
15
Group describing itself as American
.Professional people.from New York and
California
.22 Jan.
.San Jose. .
unk
Unidentified group, mainly foreigners.
The Government of Costa Rica subsequently
expelled 16 foreigners including 3 U.S.
?
citizens for demonstrating illegally.
24 Jan..
'
. Stuttgart
80
Amnesty International., Association of
German Catholic Youth, Action Committee
Stuttgart, Communist?Party of Chile
Latin American Comm., Stuttgart, Movement
? of'tlie Revolutionary Left, Socialist
Party of Chile, Socialist Party CNR,
Chile. ?
24 Jan.
?Ca;lgary
? 2QQ
Committee of Friends of El Salvador
New Democratic Party, the U.S. Association,
the Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights
in Latin America - ? .
29 Jan.
Vienna ? .
1,500
Anti-U.S. campaign spearheaded by
Austrian Communist Party.
24 Jan.
Dusseldorf
100
Working Group for El Salvador, Neuss;
Central America Committee, Wuppertal;
Nicaragua Information Office, Wuppertal;
Initiative Group for the Third World,
Neuss;
? 'Working Group of BDKJ For The Politics
of Development;
ASTA (Combined German Studerrt:Co"ittee
Professional Group _of the PP. Neuss;
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29 Jan. Dusseldorf 100 (Cont'd.)
?
31 Jan.
Mexico'-
.10,000
31 Jan.
Frankfurt
15,000
31 Jan,.
Stockholm
400
a rep.
6 Feb.
Milan
Melbourne
unk
10 Feb..
San Jose
8
10? Feb.
Mexico
150
10 Feb.
Lima
15
Evangelical Student Co;rnittee, Dusseldorf;
Working Group for. Alternatives in Social Work
The Foreigners Group, Bilk;
Action Movement for Housing, Dusseldorf;
Independent Medical Group;
Biker-Base Central Book Assn.;
Saegewerke, E. V.;
Children's Book Store. in Wuppertal, Third
World Section;
Provincial Association for'the North
Rhine-Westphalia "The Green Ones"
.(An Environmentalist Political Party);
Free International University..
(Not attributed by Embassy report)
Informationsstelle El Salvador. Marchers
-.'included several hundred masked leather-jacketed rowdies" and "a number of orderly
Turks and Chileans." The keynote speaker
was Karsten Voigt. There. were acts of violenc
Guatemala-El Salvador Committee. Vast
majority or demonstrators were Latin.
Americans, from Latin American exile groups.
Telephone threat against U.S. Consulate in
Milan by group calling itself MOVEMENT OF
28 FEBRUARY. Caller said in Spanish that-
U.S. must cease giving arms to Salvadoran
Ounta or his organization will take
measures against you."
,
Socialist Workers Party, Spartacist-
League of Australia, International
Socialists, Communist Party of Australia.
' Partido Revolucionario de Los.Trabajadores_
D
e
our
h Internati
ona
"Partido 14undial -De Los Trabajadores."
Partido Obrero Socialista, Liga Obrero
? Marxista, Partido Marxista De Mexico,
Juventud Democratica Mexicana
"Leftist and Communist Demonstrators,
organized and led by Senator Cesar Napuri
(POIMMR) and Diputado Enrique Fernandez (PST)
Nicaragua Reconstruction Committee
emonstration followed series of radio
announcements claiming':Feb. 10 would be
day of world-wide demonstrations against
El Salvador by th
F
t
l
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10 Feb.
Paris
500
10 Feb.
Hamburg
1.0.
10 Feb.
Frankfurt
5
10 Feb.
Lima
15
11 Feb.
13 Feb.
Quebec..
Perth
6
14 Feb.
Amsterdam .
2,500
17 Feb.
Dublin
35
20 Feb.
Oslo
200
25 Feb.
Paris
1,000
26 Feb.
Stuttgart
'15
26 Feb.
Rome
35
277Feb.
Edinburgh
75
28 Feb.
Vancouver
500
Organisation Communiste Internationaliste.
Unattributed
Protest letter delivered by reps of
Internationaler Arbeitskreis Frankfurt.
Persons representing various political
parties, including the trotskyites.
Communist Party - These demonstrators
showdd up during a driving rain store for
demonstration.
?Unattributed (Perth 0030)
E1. Salvador Committee, together with the
the support of other local anti-American
protest.groups-and United Uruguayan Group
In Solidarity With El. Salvador. .
International : ' Communist League,
Convencion Uacional de Trabajadores del
Uruguay,.IKB - Grupo Combate.
El Salvador Support Committee. (.note:
the Embassy in Dublin reported this was
the Fifth demonstration 'by this group.)
ilnattri buted.
Comite Soutien au Peuple du Salvador,
Comite du Nicaragua, Comite du. Guatemala.
(all these groups were organized by the
Organisle 4E Internationale, a Trotskyist
groupl.
Same groups as Jan 24 demonstration.
Partito Democratico Unione Proletario
Fiovimiento Laboratori Per Il Socialismo.
? ` Among the group were six parliamentary
reps of the PDUP.
Latin American Solidarity Campaign Of
Edinburgh. Some damage was done to the
Consulate door'by battering it.
---El- Sal vador/Ki caragua Committee.
 Quebec/ El Salvador (t4EI)
Socialist Party of Australia, Socialist
Workers Party, Communist Party of
Australia.
"Several Danish political organizations
from Center-left of Comnuni st" ' Chile-
Nicaragua Allende-Uruguay Comrnittee.
El Salvador Support~'Cor cnittee.
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28 Feb.
Quebec
500
6 Mar.
Adelaide
30
3 lar.
CopenE gen'
1,500
10 Mar.
Toronto
200