INTERVIEW WITH DAVID MACMICHAEL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000201250003-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 11, 2008
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: June 11, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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'RADIO IV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
Freeman Reports STATION CNN-TV
DATE June 11, 1984 10:00 P.M.
Atlanta, Ga.
SANDI FREEMAN: The debate on the Reagan Administra-
tion's policy in Central America has been growing as election
time draws near. And new ammunition was added recently by David
C. MacMichael, a former CIA analyst who was working on Central
America. He came out strongly against Reagan policy there and
he's convinced that the evidence the United States is using to
justify its presence in Central America is nonexistent.
Mr. MacMichael is my guest tonight in our Washington
Bureau, along with Raymond Bonner in our Los Angeles Bureau. Mr.
Bonner is a reporter and author of Weakness and Deceit: U.S.
Policy in El Salvador."
And also in Washington is Dr. Mark Falkoff (?), resident
fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, specializing in
Latin American policy issues.
evening.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for being with us this
First I'm going to go to you, Mr. MacMichael. Why did
you leave your job with the CIA, and why did you speak out now?
DAVID MACMICHAEL: All right. In answer to the two
parts of your question, I was a CIA employee on a two-year
contract, which was completed in April of 1903. And the contract
was not renewed, and.I left.
In answer to the second part of your question, why I'm
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speaking out now. I've spent the time since I left further
examining the question which had absorbed me during my time in
the Central Intelligence Agency, and that is the justification,
the evidence for the Administration's policy vis-a-vis Nicaragua.
And my consideration of this, my study of it, my observations
within Nicaragua, my discussions with other people convinced me
that the present policy is indeed wrong, it is producing a great
amount of destruction with Nicaragua itself, and its justifica-
tion is based on what I believe to be very much insufficient
evidence. And I believe that during this election year, as you
point out, the situation should be examined fully by the American
people. And the evidence, the charges by the Administration
should be placed out and fully justified, or the support for'the
so-called Contra war down there be abandoned.
FREEMAN: You had just said that you feel that the
evidence is insufficient for the Reagan Administration's actions
there. Is your evidence sufficient?
MACMICHAEL: Well, what I'm speaking of is an examina-
tion of the evidence which the Reagan Administration has relied
upon.
And I first want to enter a caveat here. As you know,
I'm bound by the secrecy agreement which I signed when I served
with the Central Intelligence Agency, and I can not and will not
refer to specific intelligence, nor will I identify individuals
with whom I served as I respond to that.
FREEMAN: But in coming forth and speaking out at this
time, you have said that you feel that there was definitely a
lack of evidence to support the Reagan Administration's policies
in Central America, specifically towards Nicaragua, as far as
being a way station for arms. Tell us more, as much as you can,
anyway. What led you to believe that there was no reason for
this kind of action?
MACMICHAEL: Well, as you know, Miss Freeman, the
situation is this: Certainly between the fall of 1980 and the
spring of 1981, as is acknowledged by the Nicaraguan government,
is well known, Nicaraguan territory and Nicaraguan government
personnel were involved in the transshipment of arms which came
from various places in the world to the insurgents in El Salva-
dor. When the present Administration came into power, as noted,
for example, by former Secretary of State Haig in his recent
volume of memoirs, Caveat, this Nicaraguan involvement was made a
very strong point, a demarche by the United States to Nicaragua.
And since the early spring of 1981, when the evidence was indeed
abundant and readily available for analysts to observe and
comment upon, it has simply disappeared.
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Further, we may note that in this long period of time
since then, three years, there has not been one single seizure of
any arms shipment identified as coming from Nicaragua to El
Salvaodr.
And I would suggest, very frankly, that this record,
this amount of evidence does not support the Administration's
charges of a continuing massive flow of arms from Nicaragua into
El Salvador and the reliance of the El Salvadoran insurgency on
this flow of arms.
FREEMAN: Now, you worked with the CIA as an analyst in
Central America from '81 to '83. You mentioned that earlier. Do
you feel that that was really enough time for you to fully
understand what was going on there?
MACMICHAEL: Miss Freeman, I did not come into that
position with no background in the matter of insurgency. I had
spent some years in Southeast Asia as -- on a Department of
Defense contract studying insurgency, and, as a matter of fact,
had-specialized in the study of support systems for insurgencies.
And one of the things that distressed me, disturbed me
greatly at the time the decision was made to support the Contra
war, ostensibly to interdict this flow of arms, is I learned that
none of the preliminary studies and analyses about the insur-
gents' supply system, its means for delivering weapons, types of
weapons, the significance of the alleged arms for the conduct of
the insurgency at various levels, the means of delivery, the
--everything connected with this, which in my experience neces-
sarily undergirds an effort such as we then embarked upon, had
not been done, and to my knowledge still has not been done.
FREEMAN: You mentioned that you left the CIA. in 1983
when your contract was not renewed. Would you have stayed if
they had renewed your contract?
MACMICHAEL: I would have preferred to stay and fight
the issue from within. Yes, I would have.
FREEMAN: And was. any reason given to you why the
contract wasn't renewed?
MACMICHAEL: I was informed that, at that time, that my
work was not up to the standard which had been expected when I
was. hired, and so my contract was not renewed.
FREEMAN: What is your opinion?
MACMICHAEL: Oh, I think I did great work. I always do.
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FREEMAN: [Laughter] What is your opinion why they
didn't renew the contract?
MACMICHAEL: You know, I really can't comment on what
other people's motives are. I know from some comments that have
been made that I had made, let us say, a pest of myself in
pressing this issue. But I can't say that tha was the reason why
my contract was not renewed or extended.
FREEMAN: After you left the CIA you visited Nicaragua.
What did you find there as compared to what you were reading in
the documents that went past your desk every day in regards to
Nicaragua?
MACMICHAEL: Well, I didn't find any -- you know, I
can't, once again, comment on the documents themselves. What I
will say is that what I found in Nicaragua, which I think most
visitors to Nicaragua find -- and it is a very open country, as
you know. It welcomes North Americans and anyone else who wants
to come there -- is that it is very far from being the tyrannical
police state which is portrayed in the statements of Administra-
tion leaders in this country.
FREEMAN: And what do you expect to accomplish by going
public now? Is it the campaign? Is it the election year? Is
that the purpose for coming forward now?
MACMICHAEL: The timing of the election year certainly
plays a great part in it. Miss Freeman, I really regard the
Administration policy vis-a-vis Nicaragua, and in Central America
generally, as a very mistaken policy. It has already involved
the United States quite openly, and I think to its loss in
diplomatic -- in international standing, and the support of a
very nasty and dirty war within Nicaragua which would not exist
were the United States not paying for it.
The incident of the mining of the harbors, for example,
was not one of the bright chapters in current American foreign
policy.
So, what I would like to do, through.. coming forward at
this time, is to force an open debate on the issue, because I
simply, as I say, cannot accept on the basis of the evidence,
with which I believe I'm very familiar, the hyperbolic and
extreme statements of the Administration about Nicaragua and its
relation to the insurgency in El Salvador.
FREEMAN: Dr. Falkoff, you've been listening to what my
guest has been having to say. And.let me have your response to
your reaction.
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MARK FALKOFF: Well, Dave and I are pretty good friends.
I've known him since I came to Washington about two and a half
years ago.
MACMICHAEL: Nice to, see you again, Mark.
FALKOFF: Nice to see you.
Some of the things which Dave says he has said to me
over brunch tables and lunch tables and over drinks, and I was
sufficiently concerned about some of them to take them up with
some friends of mine. One particular friend of mine -- I think,
probably, you know which one I mean, Dave -- who was a high CIA
official. But I'm not totally surprised, then, that he's Saying
these things now, although I have a slightly different recollect-
ion of some of the things -- these are conversations that are
about two years old, in some cases.
I remember when we talked about the Nicaraguan situation
and the Contras, Dave made rather strong representations to me
that this was just making the Nicaraguans -- or, rather, the
Sandinistas look good internationally. It was making people feel
sorry for them. It was attracting attention from the rather
nasty things that they were doing on their own society.
I guess I would disagree with Dave in his impressions of
Nicaragua. I too was there fairly recently. I would agree that
it is certainly not a totalitarian Marxist-Leninist dictatorship
yet. It is certainly not a democracy. I would describe it as a
kind of left-wing variant of a Central American police state,
which doesn't mean it doesn't have considerable popular .support.
But then so did Somoza for part of his role.
What concerns many of my friends in Nicaragua -- and I'm
thinking particularly of one gentleman who is the managing editor
of La Prensa, the opposition paper. His view was, "Yes, it's
true this isn't a Marxist-Leninist police state yet. But they
are training their cadres. They will have them in place in the
future. This net will eventually fall over us. This is really
like Cuba in 1960 or '61."
That may be overblown on his part. It was something to
make me kind of pause and think about what kind-of an animal are
we dealing with here.
FREEMAN: ...Administration's are absolutely the proper
ones at this point in time.
FREEMAN: Do you feel that the Reagan Administration's
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policies are correct and should be followed now?
FALKOFF: Let me put it this way. The Nicaraguan
government made two promises to the OAS at the time it took
power. One was nonalignment and the other was free elections.
Now the Reagan Administration says that its policy of supporting
the Contras is intended to get the Sandinista government to honor
its commitments to the OAS.
Now, many people say this isn't true, the Reagan
Administation's trying to overthrow this government.
Now, whether that is true or not is almost irrelevant.
Because if the Nicaraguan government does honor its commitments
to the OAS, the wafer-thin majority by which the Administration
in the House of Representatives has gotten authorization for aid
to the Contras will dissolve and disappear. And if those
elections are held and they're real elections under international
supervision -- and I'm not sure that the Sandinistas won't win
those elections.' But the fact that they're held in a proper
democratic fashion means that there will be a role for the
opposition in Nicaraguan political life. And that's an outcome
that I would regard as a good one. And as I've often said, if it
isn't what the Administration is secretly seeking, or really
seeking, its an outcome that the Administration, this one or any
one, could happily live with.
FREEMAN: Dr. Falkoff, Mr. MacMichael, we'll return
after these words. And when we do we'll be joined in our
conversation by Mr. Bonner in Los Angeles.
FREEMAN: Mr. Bonner, Raymond Bonner, who is a corre-
spondent for the New York Times and author of Weakness and
Deceit: U.S. Policy in El Salvador, please join our conversation
.from our Los Angeles Bureau. You've been listening to what my
other two guests have had to say to" Mr. MacMichael and to Dr.
Falkoff. Give us your opinion.
RAYMOND BONNER: Well, thank you, Sandi.
I think what Mr. MacMichael is saying is basically
--what he's now saying publicly is what we reporters have been
hearing privately from other intelligence analysts for quite some
time. And basically, that is that there's simply no evidence to
support the charges of massive arms support from Nicaragua or
Cuba for the guerrillas in El Salvador; that, in fact, the source
of most of the weapons for the Salvadoran guerrillas is the
United States Army, the United States Government, because the
weapons are sent to the Salvadoran Army, the soldiers then
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surrender, turning over their weapons to the guerrillas. Or, in
some cases, there have been reports that Salvadoran officers have
simply sold the U.S. weapons to the guerrillas.
So, I think what Mr. [Mac]Michael has done is to now say
publicly what many of us have long suspected, that there just
isn't the evidence.
FREEMAN: And Mr. MacMichael, you have come forward now.
What kinds of repercussions, if any, are you receiving?
MACMICHAEL: I haven't received any repercussions,
particularly. I expect that I will hear from some people on
this.
I would like to get back to Mark's comments. And one
thing I'm not going to do is get into a debate with as competent
and able a political scientist as Mark is on the exact nature of
the current Nicaraguan regime. However, I do want, you know, to
bring the focus of this back to this issue of the so-called
massive arms flow from Nicaragua, on which Mr. Bonner has just
commented so ably, and to, you know, point out that if this is
the justification for the U.S. Government's support of the
Contras and, as Mark indicates, that the real purpose of the
United States, in supporting. the Contras, is to force them to
live up to the promises made to the OAS in 1979 in a manner
satisfactory to the United States Government, it seems foolhardy,
at most, to expect to beat them into it by using precisely those
most despised elements of the old Somoza regime, and that is the
remnants and former leaders of the National Guard.
FALKOFF: Well, part of that is true, Dave. But on the
other hand, I doubt the 14,000 peasants and small-business
people, and so on, that are fighting under General Bermudez are
doing so because they want to install a new Somoza.
The other thing is, you still have to, and I still have
to, account for the phenomenon of the Arde (?) and Eden Pastora,
who is far from Somozistas,.we know, and is in fact refusing to
take aid from the CIA or to work closely with the United States.
It's no secret that Eden Pastora is not a favorie of the Reagan
Administration. He is distrusted and disliked,'in fact, but some
of those people. And yet he is continuing to fight, and claims
he will continue to do so regardless of what happens with the
FDN.
So, I guess the reason that I don't buy into that whole
thing is that I wonder how we explain away the phenomenon of Arde
and Eden Pastora and his people.
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MACMICHAEL: Well, it is clear that Eden Pastora is a
phenomenon and he is very hard to explain or explain away. He is
unique. As you know, when he originally broke with the Sandi-
nista government, his first port of call was Cuba. He announced
-- at first it appeared to many people that he was emulating the
late Che Guevara, that he was prepared to draw his revolutionary
sword for the overthrow of tyranny elsewhere in Central America.
I believe he at one time offered to head the movement against the
Guatemalan government, head the insurgency in Guatemala. And he
bounced back and forth for quite a while until he finally settled
on his present course. He is indeed a phenomenon.
FREEMAN: Gentlemen, we have to take this last timeout.
FREEMAN: Welcome back. I have just enough time to
thank all of my guests....
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