NICARAGUA/U.S. AID

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000200910010-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 27, 2008
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: October 20, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2008/06/27: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000200910010-7
ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT
20 October 1983
NICARAGUA/ JENNINGS: Good evening. For the second time in three months,
U.S. AID the House of Representatives has said no to one of President
Reagan's policies in Central America. The House has voted to
cut off covert aid for tom ose forces fighting the government in
Nicaragua--covert aid, which the president defended as recently
as last night. As Charles Gibson reports from Capitol Hill, the
decision was not made until there had been a heated and
sometimes bitter debate.
GIBSON: House Intelligence-Committee Chairman Edward Boland has
made it almost a personal :crusade" to Cut-off CIA financing for
guerrillas in Nicaragua.. -Be 'argues the .Reagan administration is
trying to overthrow the liear.aguan:government with the
guerrillas .and that U_S- -support 'for them make this -country the
.meddler., .the bully in the region. And Boland has support from
the House RZr-. TIP O'NEILL? '(Speaker of the House) :
When a government is a government of the people and a true
government of the people, we certainly shouldn't be trying to'
overthrow it. And I think that's a long policy for this
government to follow.
GIBSON: Opponents argue a cutoff in covert aid to the
guerrillas just demonstrates U.S. impotence. REP. HENRY HYDE
(R-Ill.): Were consigned to the role of the poor, lumbering
Gulliver, tied down by wimpish, Lilliputian congressional.
inaction--a Congress that hasn't the will or the wit to resist
leftist socialist ideology.
GIBSON: The president, last night, strongly defended covert
activities of the kind the CIA is financing in Nicaragua.' The
Nicaraguan foreign minister at the State Department, today, was
complaining that when the president defends covert action be
defends violations of international law. KIGUEL D'ESCOTO
(Nicaraguan foreign minister): What is covert action, if not a
euphemism that is used in the United States to signify actions
of destabilization to signify political murders, to signify
sabotage.
GIBSON:. But House Democrats knew earlier in the day they had
the votes-to defeat President Reagan. 'They confidently scrapped
a planned secret House session to debate-the issue. The key
vote was 227-to-194 to cut off the covert aid. It was. theexact
same margin by which the House voted for the cutoff four-months
ago. That vote was ignored by the Republican Senate, and the
Senate could well-ignore this vote as well. :But House
Democratic leaders.say they plan to keep attaching the aid
cutoff to critical money bills so that the Senate and the..
president have to act on the issue. Charles Gibson, ABC News,
Capitol Hill.
Approved For Release 2008/06/27: CIA-RDP88-0107OR000200910010-7