THE PRESIDENT'S COMMENTS ON THE PLO AND CENTRAL AMERICA 20 JULY 1983

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85M00364R001302210011-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: January 4, 2017
• Document Release Date: April 18, 2008
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: July 20, 1983
• Content Type: MEMO

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The Director of Central Intelligence
Washington, D.C. 20505
National Intelligence Council NIC 5255-83
20 July 1983
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
VIA: Chairman, National Intelligence Council
Constantine C. Menges
National Intelligence Officer for Political Paramilitary
Threats
SUBJECT: The President's Comments on the PLO and Central America,
20 July 1983
1. The President met with Ambassador Whittelsey's group this morning and
emphasized the following in his public remarks:
-- We have documented a long history of Cuba/PLO Sandinista
cooperation on behalf of violence and terrorism.
-- The Sandinistas have persecuted the Jewish Community in
Nicaragua, attacked their synagogues, frightened the Jewish
Community out of Nicaragua and have declared themselves to be
enemies of Israel, as well as the United States.
-- Current US policy, if supported by the public, will prevent
violent minorities from bringing communism to Central America.
2. The White House also issued a brief paper laying out the facts: PLO
in Central America (9 pages).
Constantine C. M e seng
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WHITE HOUSE
WHITE HOUSE DIGEST
is a service provided by the
White House Office of Media Relations and Planning
THE PLO IN CENTRAL AFRICA
July 20, 1983
. The Palestine Liberation Organization is an active
ally of Communist revolutionaries throughout Central America.
The PLO supplied traiaing and materiel for the Sandinista
revolution in Nicaragua, and is still supplying military aid
and advisors to the Communist Sandinista government. For
their part, Sandinista revolutionaries were fighting beside
their PLO comrades in the Middle East as early as 1970,
are anti-Semitic and are dedicated to the destruction of
Israel.
Right now, the PLO is giving the Salvadoran Communists
the same sort of help. Since the late 1960s, the PLO has
been working with Fidel Castro and his network of Latin
American revolutionaries and has developed ties to revolution-
ary organizations in a number of Latin American countries.
"BLOOD UNITY"
Though this alliance has received little attention in
the press, neither the PLO nor its Latin Communist allies
trouble to deny it. On June 7, 1979, six weeks before the
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Sandinistas came to power, Sandinista press spokesman Jorge-
Mandi delivered a particularly strong testimonial to the
alliance:
There is a longstanding blood unity
between us and the Palestinians. Many
of the units belonging to the Sandinista
movements were at Palestinian revolution-
ary bases in Jordan. In the early 1970s,
Nicaraguan and Palestinian blood was
spilled together in Amman and in other
places during the Black September Battles.
It is natural therefore, that in our war
against Somoza, we received Palestinian
aid for our revolution in various forms.
Mandi also made it clear that the Sandinistas had
participated in PLO terrorist acts such as hijacking.1
START WITH CUBA
Cuba has been the great organizing center and
supply depot for Communist revolution in Central America.
Fidel Castro introduced the PLO into the region and has
vigorously promoted and supported the PLO's activities there.
Until the mid-1960s, Castro supported Israel. But,
in 1966, Castro sponsored the First Conference of the Organi-
zation of Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America, bringing together revolutionary leaders
from three continents in order to get them to work together.
PLO representatives attended, and Castro began efforts
to make the PLO a part of international revolutionary activities,
especially in Latin America.
By 1968, Cuban intelligence and military personnel
were assisting the PLO in North Africa and Iraq. By 1969,
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r FRONT FOR
THE LIBERATION
OF THE
CONQUERED
GUI,' i
SAN
SALVADOR
UNOERGROUNO
MOVEMENTS
Cuban officers were in joint training with PLO officers in
the U.S.S.R. In June 1969, Cubans from that training class
participated in a joint raid=with the PLO in the Sinai
desert. 2
In 1972, Castro met with PLO leaders in Algeria and the
two sides agreed to step up their joint activities.3 The
PLO undertook to augment Cuban training of Latin American
terrorists with specialized training in Lebanon, South Yemen,
and Libya. In 1973, Castro broke relations with Israel.
Cuba had become one of Israel's most dedicated enemies. In
1974, the PLO opened its first Latin American office in
Havana.4
Since being introduced to the region by Castro, the
PLO has developed ties with revolutionary groups in nearly
half the countries in the region.
JAPAN-
"JAPANESE
RED
ARMY"
COLOMBIA
"COLOMBIA
GUERILLA
GROUP"
GUATEMALA
"MR?18'
IRELAND'
"IRISH
REPUBLICAN
ARMY"
USA
"BLACK
PANTHERS"
HOLLAND
"RED
HELP"
CHILE-
"MIR"
IatiI e. Idor a oa bur linked the PLO with terrorbt and guerrilla otp IZadoUI around the world.
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ARMENIA
"SECRET ARMY
FOR THE
LIBERATION
OF ARMENIA"
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THE NICARAGUA CONNECTION
Cooperation between the Sandinistas and the PLO goes
back at least to 1969, seven or eight years before most
Americans had heard of the Sandinistas. That year, some 50
Sandinista guerrillas went to Tyre for training under the
PLO.5 Other Sandinistas went to train in terror at PLO
camps in Algeria.6
The Sandinista terrorists fit right in with their.PLO
counterparts. It has been reported that Pedro Arauz, a
Sandinista who had hijacked a Nicaraguan airliner in 1969,
trained under the PLO in 1970.7 As the quote from Jorge
Mandi makes clear, Sandinista troops fought beside the PLO
against King Hussein of Jordan in 1970.8
Thomas Borge, Interior Minister of the Sandinista
regime, has confirmed that he*and other Sandinist-leaders
were trained by.Al Fatah, the leading PLO group, prior
to 1970. Borge repeatedly spent much of the early-'70s
working for Castro, and was frequently in the Middle East,
where he used Libyan money and PLO assistance to obtain arms
for Central American guerrilla movements.9
The first official confirmation of the PLO-Sandinista
alliance came in February 1978. The two groups issued a
joint communique in Mexico City that affirmed the "ties of
solidarity" existing between the two revolutionary organiza-
tions. They were united in their hatred of what they called
the "racist state of Israel."
In a similar incident in March of 1978, the Sandinistas
went so far as to join the Democratic Front for the Liberation
of Palestine in a joint "declaration of war" against Israel.
As the Sandinistas became more confident of victory, PLO
aid became more concrete. Early in 1979, shortly before the
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final Sandinista victory, the PLO sent an arms shipment to
the Sandinistas but it was intercepted by the government of
Morocco.10 During the final weeks of the revolution, several
large shipments of arms arrived from the Middle East ' 11
According to one source, Thomas Borge arranged for a shipment
of guns to be sent from North Korea on a ship owned and
operated by the PLO.12
Within two weeks of the Sandinista victory in July
1979, the Sandinistas sent a mission to Beirut to establish
official contacts with the PLO. The PLO facilitated a
$12 million loan to the Sandinistas.13 Today, Nicaragua
is one of the few countries in the world where the PLO
mission is officially designated as an Embassy and the
ranking PLO official is referred to as "Ambassador" -- a
testimony to the importance the Sandinistas attach to their
PLO connections.
THE STORMS OF REVOLUTION
In 1980, on the first anniversary of the Sandinista
Communist takeover, Yasser Arafat came to Managua as an
honored guest. Thomas Borge proclaimed, "the PLO cause is
the cause of the Sandinistas." And Arafat replied, "the
links between us are not new; your comrades did not come
to our country just to train, but to fight. . . .Your enemies
are our enemies?14
The PLO information bulletin, Palestine, commented:
There is no doubt there is a common
line between Nicaragua, Iran, and
Palestine. A common front against
a common enemy. . . .
The Palestinian revolution understands
the international dimensions of its
struggle and its international task of
supporting, within its capabilities15
international liberation movements.
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Current estimates suggest that there are about 50 PLO
personnel in Nicaragua. Some are involved in training
Sandinista military in the use of Eastern Bloc weapons, some
training pilots and flying helicopters, maintaining aircraft
and training Salvadoran guerrillas to export Communist terror
to that country.
IN EL SALVADOR
There is. also a strong alliance between the PLO and
the Salvadoran Communist guerrillas. The Salvadoran
Communists, like the Sandinistas, share the PLO's fierce
opposition to Israel.
One of the first clear signs of sympathy between the
two groups emerged when one of the major Salvadoran Communist
guerrilla groups, the Popular Liberation Forces (FPL)
kidnapped and murdered the South African Ambassador to
El Salvador. The FPL demanded, as part of the ransom,
that the Salvadoran government break relations with Israel
and establish official relations with the PLO.
Just a month later, the People's Revolutionary Army
(ERP), another Salvadoran communist guerrilla group, bombed
the Israeli embassy in San Salvador to show "solidarity
with the Palestinian people," and demanded that the government
recognize the PLO.
In May 1980, a delegation from Revolutionary Coordination
of the Masses (CRM), the unified political front for all the
important Salvadoran Communist groups, met in Beirut with
one of Yasser Arafat's deputies, Abu Jihad, and with George
Habash, head of the terrorist Popular Front for the Libera-
tion of Palestine, and arrived at agreements for training
programs and arms purchases. The first group of Salvadoran
trainees finished a "course" in-PLO-style terrorism at an
Al Fatah camp in June, 1980.16
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On July 23, 1980 representatives of the Salvadoran United
Revolutionary Directorate (DRU) which was then the unified
military command for the various Salvadoran Communist groups,
met with Arafat in Managua. Arafat promised them arms and
aircraft.17 Later in the year, Arafat did send some arms to
the DRU,18 and according to published reports, PLO fighters
were sent to El Salvador in Septemberl9
The alliance picked up steam in 1981. In March,
Shafik Handal, a Salvadoran of Palestinian descent and
head of El Salvador's Communist Party, met with Arafat
and representatives of Habash's Popular Front in Lebanon.
The meeting resulted in a joint communique that, among other
points, included an agreement to continue cooperation between
the unified Salvadoran guerrilla groups and Habash's group.20
By early 1981, according to Congressional testimony
from Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American
Affairs John Bushnell, there had been "a massive influx of
arms from Soviet and other Communist sources. Radical Arab
states and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the
terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have
furnished funds, arms, and training.
In January 1982, Arafat said publicly that PLO guerrillas
were serving in El Salvador.21 And documents captured in
Beirut during the summer of 1982 reveal that there were
Salvadoran guerrillas in PLO camps in Lebanon.
THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
Though these fragments of information have left a
clear trail, even without them there would be no doubt
about the relationship between the Central American Communists
and PLO terror, because both sides have loudly proclaimed it.
In 1981, Yasser Arafat spoke in words too clear to be mis-
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understood or explained away:
We are a great revolution that can
never be intimidated. We have
connections with all the revolution-
ary movements throughout the world,
in E1 Salvador, in Nicaragua -- and
I reiterate Salvador? - and else-
where in the world.
FOOTNOTES
1. Al Watan (Kuwaiti newspaper) June 7, 1979.
2. Palestine (PLO Information Bulletin), June, 1980.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Hadar, The Jerusalem Post, August 14, 1981.
6. Washington Post, July 12, 1979.
7. Bell, Human Events, November 25, 1978.
8. Israeli Defense Force paper, "Report -- The PLO and
International Terror," March 1981.
9. Newsletter, Jewish Insitute for National Security Affairs,
June, 1983.
10. State Department paper, "Communist, PLO and Libyan
Support for Nicaragua and the Salvadoran Insurgents."
May 25, 1983..
11. U.S. News and World Report, September 1, 1980.
12. Op. cit., Hadar.
13. London Daily Telegraph, December 2, 1981.
14. 0p. cit., Israeli Defense Force
15. Palestine, July 16-31, 1980.
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16. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Briefing, May 16, 1982.
17. U.S. Department of State Special Report #30, Feb. 23, 1981.
18.. 0O. cit., Israeli Ministry.
19. Op. cit., U.S. News.
20. 0p cit., Israeli Ministry.
21. Off. cit., Palestine, July 16-30, 1980.
22. Associated Press, April 14, 1981.
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