INTERVIEW WITH FORMER CIA EMPLOYEE DAVID MACMICHAEL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000201240004-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 18, 2008
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: June 12, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2008/09/18: CIA-RDP88-01070R000201240004-7
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Good Morning America
SIMON WJLA-TV
ABC Network
June 12, 1984 7:00 AM ay Washington, DC
Interview With Former CIA Employee, David MacMichaelit
JOAN LUNDEN: From 1981 to 1983, David MacMichael worked
under contract for our CIA.
His job was to sort through and analyze military and
political developments in Central America. Well this past week,
he has stirred up some controversy by publicly criticizing the
Agency and American policy in that part of the world. He
charges, among other things, that the Reagan Administration is
not telling the truth when it says that Nicaragua is a major
supplier of weapons to the leftist rebels in El Salvador.
And David MacMichael and Steve Bell joining now from
Washington. Good morning, Mr. MacMichael.
DAVID MacMICHAEL: Good morning.
LUNDEN: You've said that our government is wrong when
it claims that the Sandinista government of Nicaragua is export-
ing revelution with arms to the rebels in El Salvador. If that
is, in fact, not the truth, then what is?
MacMICHAEL: What I am saying is that the -- the
evidences does not support the Administration claim of massive
continuing arms flow from Nicaragua into El Salvador for use of
the insurgents. We had abundant evidence of this as accepted by
everyone from, roughly, the fall of 1980 until the spring of
1981, and since that the time the -- the evidence that seizures,
which once were common, and so forth, completed ceased. As a
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matter of fact, there's been no seizure of an arms shipment in
the past three years.
LUNDEN: You say that they have a lack of evidence, but
do you have evidence and proof, facts, that in fact they have
ceased?
MacMICHAEL: [Laughs]. That's a difficult question to
answer. It's -- certainly, we've got a pattern in this same
three years of the Administration continuing to charge that
Nicaragua does it, and Nicaragua continues to deny that it does
it.
And it seems to me that it's incumbent upon the person
who brings the charge to bring forth the evidence.
STEVE BELL: Mr. MacMichael, when I talked to several
members of Congress and the intelligence community last night
about your charges, they said it's subject to interpretation.
There can be honest differences. However, they still are getting
numerous sightings, night flights across the border, unmarked
planes, unmarked boats going across the bay. What are those
doing if they aren't carrying weapons?
MacMICHAEL: Well, I -- I really can't say what they
might be doing, but it seems to me, Mr. Bell, that if these
sightings are as frequent as they are, or if they are accurate as
they seem to be, and with the resources deployed in the Gulf of
Fonseca and air resources in the region it seems most unlikely to
me, especially with the -- the crucial nature of this -- this
charge to support the Administration policy that one, two, three
of these things would be intercepted and brought forward as
evidence.
BELL: But there are so many analysts, as you were, in
the defense establishment and intelligence establishment -- all
the various branches. Why are you the only person coming out and
saying this?
MacMICHAEL: I'm the only person coming out and saying
it, but I'd rather believe that there are people are not coming
out and saying it.
BELL: Who believe the same as you do?
MacMICHAEL: I think so, yes.
LUNDEN: And what is it that you believe? Do you
believe that it's bad intelligence gathering, bad spying, if you
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will, or do you believe that the government is deliberately
something? And if so, why?
MacMICHAEL: Well, I think, you know, one would have to
say that once the decision was made to support the so-called
Contras allegedly for the purpose of interdicting the arms, when
that decision was made I inquired and asked to see the analysis
on which this was based. In my experience in dealing with
insurgencies and the interdiction of the arms supplies in
Southeast Asia, for example, these activities were always
preceded by very careful analyses and continuing analyses of the
-- of the supply system, of the organization you were opposing,
the routes they were using, the type of arms that were coming
across, the -- the impact on their operations any interdiction at
a particular level would cause, and this, to my knowledge, has
never been done. So, it -- it seemed to me from the beginning
that the -- the interdiction of arms has not really been the true
purpose of the Contras, and the Contras themselves are going to
say it's not.
BELL: A brief final question. A lot of people who
might want to hear your charges are bothered that you've been
down there in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas protesting in front
of the U.S. Embassy. You have more at stake here than just your
interpretation of the data?
MacMICHAEL: I have, you know, I'm very open in my
opposition to the policy which I regard as, you know, fraught
with danger for the United States, certainly, and the way it's
being carried out is producing deaths and atrocities everyday in
Nicaragua, and I certainly didn't check my constitutional right
to protest openly against policies with which I disagree when I
joined the CIA and when I signed the secrecy agreement by which I
-- I do abide.
LUNDEN: Mr. MacMichael, thank you for joining us and
giving us your views. And we should just say for the record that
the State Department and the CIA declined to comment on what Mr.
MacMichael has said, and both declined to send a spokesperson to
join us this morning.
Approved For Release 2008/09/18: CIA-RDP88-01070R000201240004-7