CONGRESSMEN SOLOMON & STUDDS/NICARAGUA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000100670004-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 21, 2007
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: April 21, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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.RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEW CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 656-4068
STATION Canadian Broad-
casting Corporation
DATE April 21, 1983 10:00 PM CITY Toronto
Congressmen Solomon & Studds/Nicaragua
NEWSWOMAN: It's a story with all the classic trappings
of CIA involvement; smuggled arms, well trained guerrillas, a
left-leaning Central American country under attack, and a U.S.
president denouncing the country as a hotbed of communism. A new
Cuba involved in spreading arms and revolution throughout Latin
America.
NEWSMAN: The country is Nicaragua, and the evidence is
mounting every day that the CIA, with the support of Ronald
Reagan, is backing a group of counter-revolutionaries fighting
the Sandanista regime of the sparsely populated region of
Northern Nicaragua.
[Sounds of bombs and gunshots.]
For a secret war, it has received an extraordinary glare
of publicity. These pictures are of a training exercise, real
bullets, in a counter-revoluntionary camp in the Honduras
countryside. Key American legislators believe these men are
being trained with CIA money to overthrow the Sandanista regime
in Managua, and the legislators want it stopped. Government
officials have consistently refused to discuss covert activities,
but there's been so much pressure on the Administration, Ronald
Reagan was forced to hold a mini-news conference on Nicaragua.
He denied the U.S. was trying to overthrow the government.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: Anything that we're doing in
that area is simply trying to interdict the supply lines, which
are supplying guerrillas in El Salvador.
NEWSMAN: Inside the training camp, one of the leaders
of the Contras, as the insurgents are known, has a very different
Material supplied by Radio N Reports, Inc. may be used for file and reference purposes only. It may not be reproduced, sold or publicly demonstrated or exhibited.
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message. Edgar Chamorro is one of the leaders of the Nicaragua
Democratic Front.
EDGAR CHAMORRO: We are fighting here, not to stop the
flow of arms to El Salvador. We're not fighting here to just put
little pressures so the Sandanista might calm down, they might
calm down, they might slow down. We're fighting Sandanista
because we are principle, we think this is a crusade.
NEWSMAN: Reporters who have traveled with the Contras
and who have visited their training camp say that, for a guerril-
la force they are remarkably well trained and armed. Most of the
materiel comes from the United States, and although this man, who
goes by the nom de guerreCommander Francis says, most arms are
captured from the Sandanistas. He couldn't explain why they're
still neatly in their original packing cases.
COMMANDER FRANCIS: We think that for guerrilla force we
have just about all the weapons we need.
NEWSMAN: All along the mountainous terrain on the Hon-
duras/Nicaragua border, there have been a series of clashes
between Contras and the Sandinistas. There are charges that the
United States has set up and manned a sophisticated listening
system to pass on valuable intelligence to the counter revolut-
ionaries. The Contras crossed by foot over the rugged terrain
into Nicaragua. They use classic guerrilla techniques, hit and
run attacks on small towns. Both sides are exaggerating the
intensity of the fighting, but people are dying, and an economyy
pinched by a cut off of aid is further disrupted.
The Sandinistas charge that the Contras are ex-national
guardsmen, followers of the deposed dictator Anastasio Somoza.
Most of the rebel leadership did serve under Somoza, but the rank
and file are also disillusioned Sandinistas and peasants hard hit
by a destroyed economy. The government in Managua is using the
two-fisted threat of the U.S. backed Somoza inspired counter
revolution for all its worth, to rally its own people. In an
interview with The Journal earlier this year, Foreign Minister
Miguel Disquoto(?) denied American charges that Nicaragua's true
aim is to export Cuban style revolution throughout Central
America.
MIGUEL DISQUOTO: Before you know, in 1928, American
invasion to Nicaragua was try to -- they tried to justify it on
the basis that Nicaragua was on the verge of becoming a second
Mexico. Now they say that we are going to become a second Cuba.
We are becoming nothing but a first, truely and authentically
democratic, independent sovereign Nicaragua.
NEWSWOMAN: The Reagan Administration makes no bones
about its opposition to the Sandanista regime, but it is bound by
law of Congress to refrain from acting to overthrow the govern-
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ment of Nicaragua. That law is known as the Boland Amendment. The
congressmen who sponsored it and other major congressional
leaders charged that the Administration has clearly violated it.
Opposition in Congress is so strong, President Reagan plans to go
before a Joint Session of Congress next week, to defend hisCen-
tral American policy.
Congressman Gerry Studds is one of the outspoken critics
of the Reagan policy. Congressman Gerald Solomon says the
President has not violated any laws.
Congressman Studds, is it the letter of the law or the
spirit of the law that you think is being broken here?
CONGRESSMAN GERRY STUDDS: There's no question in my
mind that the law is being broken in every respect, and when I
say the law, I don't even necessarily mean the so-called Boland
Amendment. One can argue and split hairs, as people have been
doing for the past week or two over that.
I would have preferred a much more clearly written law,
which is the Charter of the Organization of American States,
which states that no nation has the right to intervene directly
or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or
external affairs of any other state. Under the Constitution of
the United States, the treaties are made and ratified by the
Senate, are the law of the land, the supreme law of the land
according to the Constitution. That seems to me abundantly
clearly, and it seems to me tragically sadly clear that we're
violating that law.
NEWSWOMAN: Now, how do you take, then, the Administ-
ration's stand, its position, its agrument, that it is not
attempting to overthrow the government of Nicaragua or to
interfere, but to put pressure on it in order to stop the arms
flow from Nicaragua to El Salvador?
CONGRESSMAN STUDDS: Well, the Administration is attempt-
ing to make that argument with respect to the Boland Amendment. The
Administration, for understandable reasons, does choose to
discuss the OAS Charter, because it simply is unarguable.
We are interfering. The only question is, what the
purpose of that interference is, and one can haggle forever
whether the purpose is to overthrow the government or whether the
purpose is to harass the government or to intimidate the govern-
ment or annoy the government, but the fact of the matter is,
apparently, that a good many thousands of people armed and
trained and financed by the United States are inside the terri-
tory of Nicaragua. If that is not interference, the English
language, which is already badly wounded in Washington, has
departed the field altogether.
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NEWSWOMAN: Mr. Solomon, do you feel that the United
States Administration is on strong ground when it says that it is
not trying to overthrow the government?
CONGRESSMAN GERALD SOLOMON: I don't think there's any
question about it, and I can understand why Congressman Studds
does not want to talk about the Boland Amendment because there's
no question that the United States Government is not in violation
of the Boland Amendment.
Further, I think it's an outrageous assumption to think
that the Reagan Administration or President Reagan, who happens
to be one of the most principled presidents that this country has
ever had, would even support or condone any kind of action that
would be in violation of either the Constitution or any law of
the United States.
If there is any involvement whatsoever, it is the
involvement of the United States to prevent weapons and arms from
going into El Salvador. The same people that are bringing up the
subject that we are in violation of the Boland Amendment and are
aiding and abetting any kind of guerrilla activities in Nicar-
agua, are those same members of Congress who want us out of El
Salvador.
There are just as many of us in Congress that don't want
international communism to spread anywhere in the world, much
less in Central America and on to the shores and adjacent to the
United States of America. As a matter of fact, just in the last
48 hours four planes have been stopped in Brazil and detained there.
They were supposed to be carrying medical supplies from Libya
to Nicaragua. Those planes, according to Brazilian Government,
were loaded with Russian and Soviet made arms going into Nicar-
agua, the same kind of arms that are being used in El Salvador
against a duly elected democratic government in that country.
NEWSWOMAN: But the Nicaraguan government has more and
more excuses to tell its people that it needs the arms because of
United States interference. Doesn't it?
CONGRESSMAN SOLOMON: Well let me just say this, that
the --I don't put any faith in anything that the Sandanistian
government says. They haven't lived up to any of their promises
during the revolution. And that's why many of the people that
supported the revolution have subsequently left the Sandanistan
support, and are no longer in support of that government. They
haven't lived up to their agreement to be a non-allied country.
They haven't lived up to their agreement for political pluralism
in Nicaragua, preservation of private property, freedom of
speech, press and religion. So, I put no faith in what the
Nicaraguan government has to say.
NEWSWOMAN: Congressman Studds, if what you wanted to do
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was to stop the flow of arms into El Salvador from Nicaragua,
Cuba wherever, what would be the way to do it?
CONGRESSMAN STUDDS: Well, I think the best way to do
it, first of all, would be to do it in a way that respected the
law of the United States. We could make the evidence public,
whatever it may be. We could take it to the Organization of
American States and seek the kinds of regional sactions that are
available pursuant to both domestic and international law.
The question isn't whether one wishes or does not wish
to stop the spread of international communism, these horrible
bugaboos we keep hearing about in this hemisphere. There isn't
a member of the United States Congress that wants to see commun-
ism spread to the -- throughout the hemisphere. I would trust
that would go without saying, although one wonders, given the
number of times that some of our colleagues feel like they have
to say it.
The question is, how one can most effectively stop it.
My contention is that those who argue that the United States must
act like the Soviet Union in order to compete with the Soviet
Union, do a fundamental disservice to what I like to think the
United States stands for; which is to say something very dif-
ferent from what the Soviet Union stands for, which is to say,
among other things, respect for the law.
It seems to me that if you argued that you have to fight
fire with fire, which is essentially the argument of the Reagan
Administration, that they're doing it so we have to do, that it's
too darned bad that the world is as cold and ugly as it is, that
if they're going to put arms in there, we have to put arms in
there. That if you make that argument you don't have history or
morality or law on your side. And in addition to being illegal
and politically inept and unnecessary, it has -- and you think
this -- if the other three disqualifications didn't mean anything
to Reagan and his people, you think this might, it won't work.
NEWSWOMAN: Okay, let me put that to Congressman
Solomon, because we hear that charge more and more often, Mr.
Solomon, that the whole policy is counterproductive; that the
United States supports the wrong people, loses the support of the
populations in the area, and achieves the exact end that it
wishes to avoid.
CONGRESSMAN SOLOMON: Let me specifically use as an
example, El Salvador. Through American intervention and American
encouragement, we now have a duely elected democratic government
in El Salvador that has made tremendous strides.
NEWSWOMAN: You know that is debated all the time and
disputed?
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CONGRESSMAN SOLOMON: Well it can be disputed. I just
got back from El Salvador and I saw firsthand where I spoke to
the Cardinal in Central America, who says the same thing that I'm
saying, that tremendous strides have been made and it's through
our support and our encouragement that we now are going to have a
truly elected government in El Salvador, and that's what American
foreign policy seeks to achieve throughout the world.
NEWSWOMAN: Congressman Studds, let me ask you if you
have any concern that in the general picture, in its fight
against global communism, the United States is seen to be
fighting with one arm tied behind its back; whether because it's
such an open society, because covert actions are never really
covert, because Congress wants to examine everything that
happens and pass laws.
CONGRESSMAN STUDDS: No, I don't think, with perhaps
some limited exceptions where there is a genuine assault on our
own security in a direct way.
The covert activities of this nature are within the
American character, within the character of the history and the
people and the values of the United States. The Secretary of
State says that we can't -- we won't tolerate talking to people
who want to shoot their way into power in El Salvador. Well for
heaven sakes, he's the same person who's arming the people who
are shooting their way or attempting to shoot their way into
power in Nicaragua.
Who are we to criticize with impact and meaning and with
telling effect, around the world, the behavior of the Soviet
Union and what they perceive to be their spirit influence. For
example in Poland or Afghanistan, if in -- for our own part
in what we perceive to be our spirit influence as a superpower,
we allow ourselves to act in essentially the same way. After
all, here you have two American congressmen essentially debating
the internal affairs of what are supposed to be sovereign
nations in this hemisphere. That ought to give you some idea of
why the United States has difficulty down there.
CONGRESSMAN SOLOMON: Well again, let me, let me just
quote the communist guerrilla, Sebastian Carpio(?) who said in
August of 1980, he heads up the guerrilla movement in El Salva-
dor; "The revolutionary process in Central America is a single
process and sooner or later we will take over all of Central
America." I think that's what the real agrument's about and
there are those of us in the Congress and President Reagan does
not intend to see that happen.
NEWSWOMAN: Congressman Solomon and Studds, thank you
both very much.
CONGRESSMAN SOLOMON: You're very welcome.
CONGRESSMAN STUDDS: Thank you.
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