CENTRAL AMERICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000201350009-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 22, 2008
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: August 24, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO N REPORTS, ~N~.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
pr~~AM Late Night America STATION WHMM-TV
PBS Network
DATE August 24, 1984 11:30 P.M. CiTy Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT Central America
DENNIS WHOLEY: Right now we're going to talk about
Central America. The political conventions, the Olympics, and
Geraldine Ferraro's taxes have pushed Central America off the
front pages of the newspapers. Our guest says there's more going
on there than we know about. We're going to talk about that
tonight. He is Stephen Goose. He is a senior research analyst
at the Center for Defense Information.
Good to have you here tonight.
STEPHEN GOOSE: Good evening.
WHOLEY: What's the Center for Defense Information all
GOOSE: We're a private research group in Washington,
D.C. headed up by senior retired military officers. We address
the entire range of military topics. We're oftentimes called a
Pentagon watchdog group.
WHOLEY: Would you say it leans to the left, leans to
the right?
GOOSE: We like to think we're right down the middle.
We support a strong defense, but we don't like policies or
programs that we consider excessive or that increase the risk of
nuclear war or that might lead the U.S. into foreign 'involvements
which are ill-advised.
WHOLEY: Where do you get your money?
GOOSE: Private foundations, private contributions.
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WHOLEY: Do you have membership?
GOOSE: We do not have membership. People who receive
our monthly publication, the Defense Monitor, will send us in
money, but we're not a membership group.
WHOLEY: Okay. You have a very strong statement in one
of the recent issues that says the United States military policy
is preparing for direct war in Central America. What's the basis
of that conclusion?
GOOSE: Well, the U.S. military has been very, very busy
in Central America over the past year and a half. We've been
building military facilities in Honduras which could be used for
future interventions throughout the region. We have been
practicing for war in the region. We've been conducting maneu-
vers on the ground, in the air, at sea. We've been increasing
the number of U.S. military personnel in the region. And you add
it all up and it doesn't lead one to believe that an invasion is
inevitable, but it certainly is pretty strong evidence that we're
preparing for such a contingency in the future.
You say in your literature that the target -- and I've
never heard anybody express it this clearly before -- that the
target is to topple the Sandinista government.
GOOSE: Well, the Reagan Administration has made it very
clear from the beginning that it does not like the Sandinistas.
In fact, the Republican platform states quite clearly that the
continuation of a Marxist-Leninist regime in this hemisphere is
unacceptable. They've played around with their language a little
bit, saying that the support of the Contras, who are the anti-
Nicaraguan-government guerrillas, is designed just to harass and
intimidate the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. But it's
pretty clear, I think, that what they have in mind, eventually,
is the overthrow of that government.
WHOLEY: The President and his advisers, and certainly
many people in the United States, fear a Soviet presence, a Cuban
presence, a Communist presence throughout Central America.
Obviously, it's there to some degree.
What do you say about that?
GOOSE: Well, there is no doubt that Nicaragua has
received a significant amount of aid from the Soviet Union, and
from Cuba in particular. Cuba and Nicaragua are very close.
Soviet aid, Soviet Bloc aid to Nicaragua has been roughly equal
to American aid to E1 Salvador, which in my view is excessive.
It's been several hundred million dollars since 1979, when the
Sandinistas came to power.
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What is not clear, however, is the degree to which the
Soviets and the Nicaraguans are aiding the revolution in E1
Salvador, which is the main point that the Administration likes
to bring out. They've yet to present any convincing evidence on
that point.
WHOLEY: We have a map which we're going to ask Clark to
put up on the screen that shows some diagrams, some activity
around Nicaragua. Could you tell us what we're talking a look
at?
GOOSE: Well, this map highlights a lot of the different
activities that I mentioned at the very beginning. We can see
there that they're building a lot of different airfields, that
they're building radar sites, that they have proposed weapons
storage depots. This is all in Honduras.
In addition to that, the little flare-ups that you see
in Nicaragua represent spots where the CIA helped to mine harbors
in Nicaragua. You can see fleets off both the Atlantic and
Pacific coasts of Nicaragua. We have made a habit of keeping
those ships. We have surveillance ships on the Pacific side.
Right now we have the Iowa, which is the sister ship to the New
Jersey, a battleship off the Pacific coast.
You recall the New Jersey, of course, was the ship that
was lobbing shells into Lebanon.
And on the Atlantic coast right now we have a guided-
missile frigate, as well as several hydrofoil missile boats.
WHOLEY: Let me ask the folks at home to jump into the
coversation....
How much money is the United States sinking into Central
GOOSE: Well, it's hard to get a total figure. In terms
of military aid, you can come up with hard figures. It is a
skyrocketing figure. From 1950 through 1981, the United States
provided $245 million in military aid to all of Central America.
In the next two years, 1982 and 1983, we exceeded that 31-year
total by about $45 million.
The Reagan Administration has proposed that over the
next two years -- that is, 1984-1985 -- we provide over $600
million. So, it's an exponential increase.
In addition to that, all these construction activities
and NATO maneuvers add up to additional hundreds of millions of
dollars. So you're talking fairly sizable amounts.
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WHOLEY: Honduras figures in this whole thing rather
critically, doesn't it?
GOOSE: Honduras has become the focal point of U.S.
military activity in the region. We're doing all of this
construction. We can't put too many people into E1 Salvador
because of congressional limitations. So what we've done is
increased the number of U.S. military personnel in Honduras from,
oh, about two dozen in early 1983 to an average of over 2000 now.
WHOLEY: We have three pictures which we want to put up
on the screen right now. And as we take a look at them, could
you tell us what we're taking a look at?
GOOSE: This is first one is at Trujillo. This is an
example of the housing that we're building there. These are
known as CAT houses, Central American tropical houses. We've
built enough of these for about 800 troops. They're fairly
permanent. Vietnam vets have told me that they're better than
what we were building in Southeast Asia. The Administration
calls them temporary. We built these during the military
exercises, but they could last a good ten years.
This next picture here is at Agua Cate (?), which is
near the Nicaraguan border. We constructed an 8000-foot runway
at Agua Cate. What we're looking at are concrete culverts there
which are used to direct water. They're an indication that these
airstrips are not temporary.
This is sort of a before picture at Homistran (?), which
is also near the Nicaraguan border. Both Agua Cate and Homistran
are about 30 miles from the border, and we've built a 4000-foot
airstrip there. All very close.
These airstrips can be used by U.S. military personnel
in the future if we do indeed decide to take military action
against Nicaragua. They also have been used by the anti-
Nicaraguan rebels, the Contras. The Contras, themselves, have
acknowledged that Agua Cate, where we have been doing this
construction, is a major storage depot and launching pad for
their activities.
WHOLEY: At the beginning of our conversation, when we
talked about the kind of staff people that work at the Center for
Defense Information, you mentioned a lot of retired military
people. What do the retired military people feel about all this
military activity?
GOOSE: Well, my directors, who are two retired admir-
als, are extremely concerned. They are more convinced even, I
think, than I am that this all adds up to a U.S. master plan to
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invade Nicaragua in the future. The Reagan Administration, as I
mentioned, is committed to getting rid of leftist-oriented
governments in this hemisphere. And they think that all of these
military activities, the training, the construction, the increase
in personnel, is aimed at this goal.
WHOLEY: Yet the heaviest fighting at this particular
time certainly is in E1 Salvador. In late August of 1984, what's
going on in E1 Salvador? What should we know about it?
GOOSE: Well, the heaviest fighting in Central America
certainly is taking place in E1 Salvador right now, although many
people don't realize that the anti-government rebels in Nicaragua
now outnumber the rebels in E1 Salvador. That is, the rebels
which we are backing outnumber the rebels in E1 Salvador.
That is, I think, a sort of secondary purpose of this
increased U.S. military activity in the region -- that is, to
bolster these authoritarian but anti-Communist governments which
are in existence.
WHOLEY: You know, I get an awful lot of mail from folks
who watch different interviews that we have on the program, and
obviously they are very, very patriotic Americans. They have a
very, very strong feeling that whatever President Reagan is up to
militarily and what he's up to in his foreign policy, they
support it a hundred percent.
How do you begin to suggest to people who hold that
point of view that there's anything going on that they should be
overly concerned about and that, indeed, a war centering around
Nicaragua might come to pass?
GOOSE: Well, I suppose it's according to your perspec-
tive. If you think that it's proper for the United States to be
engaged in the overthrow of foreign governments, then you could
support the activities of the Administration. If you think that
you can install democracy and a free enterprise system at the
point of a gun, then you can support the kind of activities which
the Administration is taking right now. But if you think that
the wiser course in the long run is to pursue non-military
solutions to the problems of the region, problems which are set
in long-term economic and social disparities, and not, as the
Administration will lead people to believe, in Cuban- and
Soviet-inspired subversion, then you again would have to oppose
what the Administration has been doing.
WHOLEY: What do we know about -- what do you know that
we might not know about the level of intelligence activities in
Central America?
GOOSE: Well, it's very extensive, and it is part of the
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increased activity. We haven't talked about one particularly
disturbing aspect of our involvement, which is increased direct
involvement in the combat activities that are taking place in E1
Salvador and in Nicaragua. We have just this past week returned
to Honduras an intelligence battalion out of Georgia which is
flying OV-1 reconnaissance aircraft over E1 Salvador and pro-
viding what they call near-instantaneous battlefield intelligence
to Salvadoran government troops on the ground. These reconnais-
sance vehicles on occasion get shot at.
We are also flying these reconnaissance aircraft out of
Panama. And there are other examples that I could give of direct
involvement in the combat activity.
WHOLEY: Stephen Goose is our guest, senior research
analyst at the Center for Defense Information.
WHOLEY: You're on Late Night America.
MAN: My name is Dan. I live in Washington, D.C. I'd
like to ask my question, and also preface it. My question is:
What is the ultimate objective of all that you've explained about
Central America and the preparations there for the United States
to go to war for the American people? What is the ultimate
objective for the American people?
And I'd like to say openly that we are invading Nicar-
agua and we want to invade Nicaragua in order to have our boys
killed. That, I feel, is the way I'd like to preface this. And
it's our need -- what's most disturbing is our need to support
this atrocious violence against people in Central America.
WHOLEY: Okay. Let's get a comment from Stephen Goose.
GOOSE: Well, as I say, I think the two major objectives
of all of this acitivity are, one, to undermine and eventually
overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and, two, to
maintain in power the authoritarian regimes in E1 Salvador and
Guatemala and Honduras.
I cannot agree, however, with your feeling that the
Administration wants to kill American boys. I think that a
direct invasion, a direct massive U.S. invasion involving a lot
of U.S. combat troops is something that the Administration is
going to use as a last option. That's why they've been pouring
so much money into the Contras. We've spent over $70 million
building up about a 15,000-man force of guerrillas to fight the
Sandinista government. They've been unsuccessful so far, which
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is what has me worried that eventually we may go in directly with
our own troops. But I think the Administration is going to see
it as a last-ditch solution.
WHOLEY: I would want to echo Stephen's thoughts. I
don't think that anybody is wanting to get any American soliders
killed.
You're on Late Night America.
MAN: This is Mark. I'm calling from Washington state.
I have a question. I spent a month and a half off the coast of
Central America last summer on a naval vessel, and my big
question is like we really didn't do anything. What good are the
naval vessels and the Navy as such doing just sitting there doing
nothing off the coast?
WHOLEY: What'd they tell you you were there for?
MAN: They didn't.
WHOLEY: They didn't? You just go, huh?
MAN: We just went.
WHOLEY: I guess you go where they tell you to go, huh?
MAN: Always.
WHOLEY:. All right.
GOOSE: Well, the Administration has made quite clear
that the purpose of keeping naval vessels -- we've had aircraft
carrier battle groups and we've had both the New Jersey and now
the Iowa off the coast of Nicaragua -- is to intimidate the
government of Nicaragua. We also had them there at the time of
the E1 Salvador elections. This is an example of how the
Administration is relying on military initiatives to try and deal
with the problems in the region.
WHOLEY: Is there any way that the presence of this
military hardware, ships, weaponry, whatever, is holding some-
thing together in Central America that might be falling apart if
they weren't there?
GOOSE: Well, you can certainly make the point that
demonstrations of military power can serve to bolster your
commitment to your allies. That is, perhaps having these ships
there makes the Honduran government feel safer, because the
Honduran government has felt threatened by Nicaragua. But even
now, it's been going on -- we've had these exercises going on for
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about a year and a half, and it's been quite clear from recent
reports that the Honduran government and the Honduran people are
getting sick and tired of the extensive U.S. military presence
and want us to cut back.
In fact, it's happening in E1 Salvador also. General
Gorman, who is the Commander-in-Chief of Southern Command in
Panama, who is responsible for U.S. military activities in
Central America, recently went before Congress and suggested that
we should increase our advisers in Honduras [sic] to 125 from 55.
Well, two days later the Salvadoran Army Chief of Staff came out
and said, "We don't want any more advisers. We want less." They
want to run their own war.
WHOLEY: You're on Late Night America.
MAN: I want to know, is biological or chemical warfare
going to be used in Central America?
GOOSE: I don't believe so.
WHOLEY: Either one.
GOOSE: Correct.
WHOLEY: You're on Late Night America.
MAN: I get the impression that the CDI isn't too
concerned about Communist Cuban and Russian influence in Central
America. And if they are, how would they suggest that the United
States go about eradicating this very, I think, severe threat to
our southern border that could possibly require us to allocate up
to 100,000 troops to secure, you know, the Gulf Coast in case of
any kind of action.
WHOLEY: Are you worried about Communist presence there?
GOOSE: I'm not worried about it because I don't feel
it's a threat to the United States' interests. I would certainly
prefer that all of the governments in Central America are
oriented towards the United States and not the Soviet Union or
not Cuba.
I think what we have to understand, though, given the
what is really tragic history of U.S. involvement in the region,
that governments in Central America are going to be liberal in
the future, maybe even radical. But they don't have to be
anti-American and pro-Soviet. We've got to try and work with
these governments and not against them.
WHOLEY: But can you see the caller's point of view that
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if just left to their own resources, things might start to
crumble rather quickly down there and come back to haunt us?
GOOSE: Well, things could happen rather quickly and
come back to haunt us whether or not the Soviets had any involve-
ment. And, in fact, probably would and probably will. This is
largely because over the course of many, many decades we have
contributed to the situation which is -- where you have military-
dominated, repressive regimes who have kept the general popula-
tion very unhappy, in a very impoverished state. You have
wealthy elites who dominate the political and economic situation.
And you have essentially here a situation where revolution is
almost inevitable.
WHOLEY: Let's turn the clock ahead to 1990 and say that
in 1984 an election was held, the Democrats were elected, the
Democratic Party pulled all of this military might out of Central
America, and in 1990 three of the key countries that we were
talking back about in 1984 were all similar to Cuba. How would
you feel about that?
GOOSE: It would make me very unhappy. Unfortunately...
WHOLEY: But that's what they're arguing, that that's
reason that they're there for today.
GOOSE: You can device as undesirable a scenario as you
WHOLEY: Yeah, but that's the basis of the President's
scenario. Right?
GOOSE: Certainly. I disagree that that would happen.
And what I especially disagree with...
WHOLEY: Did it happen in Cuba? It happened in Cuba.
GOOSE: What I especially disagree with is that the
proper way to stop that from happening is to militarize the
region and to continue to pursue military rather than diplomatic
or political initiatives.
WHOLEY: Okay. But you wouldn't want three countries
more to be Cubas, would you?
GOOSE: I would not want any more countries to be Cubas.
WHOLEY: Okay. So you say that trying to hold what-
ever's going on there in check may be the right idea, but to do
it militarily is a disaster.
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GOOSE: To do it militarily will probably insure more
WHOLEY: That's an interesting point. Follow up on
GOOSE: Well, the military activities which we've been
undertaking, I believe, are counterproductive in the long run.
They are going to alienate the general population of all of the
countries of the region. We're putting all of our eggs into the
baskets of the dictators who've run these countries for years and
years and who the majority of the populations have come to
oppose.
WHOLEY: You're on Late Night America.
MAN: Suppose the United States were to invade Nicar-
agua. How long would such a conflict last? Would it be a
Genada-type invasion lasting only a week, or would it be a
Vietnam-type war going on for years and years without end?
GOOSE: I think in between those two. I don't think
that Nicaragua -- it would certainly not be as easy an operation
as Grenada. You could not devise a much easier operation than
Grenada, even though we didn't do so well there. It's according
to what kind of invasion we tried to institute.
I think that we could relatively quickly, by marshaling
massive air and naval power and a few amphibious landings, we
could probably very quickly destroy the majority of Nicaragua's
air force and naval assets, and we could probably occupy dif-
ferent parts of the country, cut off its economic lifeline.
However, that would not mean that Nicaragua would then be in the
U.S. camp. I think that essentially what would happen is the
Nicaraguan population would rise up against the United States and
treat it as a foreign invader, and that we would find ourselves
involved in urban and rural warfare over a period of many years.
I don't think it would be quite as bad as Vietnam
because Vietnam is a much larger, more difficult country to fight
in than Nicaragua.
WHOLEY: You're on Late Night America.
MAN: I'd like to ask Stephen, does the United States
have a moral reesponsibility to aid the freedom fighters to
defeat the Sandinista government?
GOOSE: No, certainly not. The Sandinistas are not the
good guys, but that does not give the United States the right to
try and overthrow the foreign government and to support, essen-
tially, what could be viewed as terrorists. We're always talking
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about the terrorists in the Middle East and the terrorists in E1
Salvador. But you're seeing the exact same kind of activity from
the Contras.
WHOLEY: We are out of time. It's a frightening thing,
and I don't think it's ever quite happened like this before, that
here were are sitting on a television program talking about the
possibility of war in and about Nicaragua.
Stephen Goose has been our guest, senior research
analyst with the Center for Defense Information.
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