EARLY WARNING ARTICLE RE CENTRAL AMERICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88B00443R001500070022-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2007
• Sequence Number: 22
• Publication Date: May 18, 1984
• Content Type: MEMO

Approved For Release 2007/08/29: CIA-RDP88B00443RO01500070022-4
18 May 1984
MEMORMOUM "OR: Chief, LA Division, DO
FROM: Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: Early Warning article re
Central America
I would like your comments on the
attached.
William J. Casey
Attachment:
Copy of article
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PEARLY WARNING
Vol. II, No. 4 May, 1984
The Crumbling of Central America
While the Reagan Administration's Central American
policies are enmired in a gruelling battle with Congress,
there are signs of a very rapid - and potentially disastrous
- deterioration in the anti-communist fighting forces in
the field. EW's intelligence sources report that General
Raul Menedez Tomassovich, who is Raul Castro's
deputy at the defense ministry in Havana, has been
placed in charge of a planned guerrilla offensive that will
not only involve the effort to set up a "provisional liberated
government" in a "liberated zone" on Salvadoran territory,
but will extend to Honduras, Guatemala and Costa Rica
and to attacks on American citizens throughout the
region. General Menendez recently visited Managua for
a series of high-level planning sessions with Nicaraguan
defense officials, guerrilla leaders from El Salvador, and
their Cuban field advisors.
The month ahead will see intense activity on several
fronts in Central America. Three major political events
are looming up in May. They will pose a less severe test
for the ,United States than the probable escalation in
guerrilla activity and the mounting disarray in the ranks
of the Reagan Administration's allies in the region, and
can be quickly summarized:
1. The runoff election in El Salvador. We expect that
the Christian Democrat candidate, Jose Napoleon Duarte,
will emerge the victor and that the country's militarychiefs
will allow him to take office as the next President. This
will not heal the deep divisions in the anti-communist
camp in El Salvador. Furthermore, Duarte will be a prime
target for extreme right-wing assassins. We have learned
from a knowledgeable source that three separate rightist
hit-teams were recently infiltrated into El Salvador from
Guatemala. They are composed of Guatemalan extremists
aligned with the newly-formed Partido Unificado Anti-
comunista. Our source believes that Duarte may be
at the top of their hit-list.
2. Presidential elections in Panama. We anticipate
that Nicolas Ardito Barletta, a former vice-president
of the World Bank, will win by a comfortable margin.
He is the personal choice of the real power-broker,
General Noriega, the present head (and former intelli-
gence chief) of the National Guard, who has had secret
dealings with the Cubans over many years. Panama will
continue to be a reliable transhipment point for Cuban
arms, money and agents en route to guerrilla groups
throughout Central America.
3. Reagan's meeting with de la Madrid. It seems unlikely
that President Reagan's scheduled meeting with Mexico's
President Miguel de la Madrid will lead to any shift in
Mexican foreign policy in a direction favorable to the
United States. Washington has .few pressure-points
available at present, while clandestine Cuban activity in
Mexico - with the active collusion of at least two senior
members of de la Madrid's cabinet - has been stepped up.
Meanwhile, at the same moment that Congressional
critics of Reagan's policies are seeking to impose new
restraints on U.S. support for the anti-communist forces
in Central America, those forces themselves appear to
be losing strength and cohesion. This is in part the result
of the demoralization fostered by the endless sparring-
match between the White House and the CIA, on the
one hand, and Capitol Hill and the contenders for the
Democratic presidential nomination, on the other. But
an internal crisis in Honduras imperils the most
important base for the anti-communist resistance in
Nicaragua, and confronts the Reagan Administration
with. the possible embarrassment of witnessing a military
coup while 30,000 U.S. troops are on exercises in the
region. Specifically:
CONTENTS
The crumbling of Central America ............. 1
Soviet plan to base subs in Norway ............. 3
Why Qaddafi unleashed his assassins ........... 4
Syrian Forces in Libya ........................... 5
Nigeria, the Saudis and the next'Oil Break' .... 6
Special Report: The LaRouche Organization ... 7
Flashpoints: Cuban spychief in Damascus;
Paraguay; Iranians in North Korea; Australia
and Indonesia ................................. 14
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a. Setbacks for the contras. After the recapture of
San Juan del Norte, the town on Nicaragua's Atlantic
coast that Eden Pastora's ARDE managed to hold for a
few days, his movement was buffered by new squabbling
within the contra camp and by a clash with the Costa
Rican authorities. On April 26, Costa Rican police raided
ARDE offices, and there were reports that Pastora
(famous, as an anti-Somoza guerrilla chieftain, under
the sobriquet "Commandante Zero") was preparing to
seek asylum in Panama. From a base camp near the
Nicaraguan border, Pastora declared that his problem
with the Costa Ricans was part of a new effort by the
CIA to pressure him into linking up with the Honduran-
based contras on their terms. Things were smoothed
over in the end, but the episodes was a reminder, not
only of the crippling divisions that persist among the
contras, but of the fact that the Costa Ricans are
increasingly nervous that their own country is becoming
a major target for the Cuban-led forces because of the
sanctuaries it affords to Pastora's men.
jealousy and suspicion run deep between the leaders
of ARDE and those of the Honduran-based Nicaraguan
Democratic Force (FDN) and, despite the attempts of
some U.S. advisers to play marriage-brokers, a merger
seems further away than ever. The Indians are a critical
factor in the Nicaraguan resistance, since they control
most of the guerrilla bases in the northeast of the
country and have proved to be determined fighters.
Steadman Fagoth, leader of the largest Miskito resis-
tance group, MISURA, was trying to assemble the most
important leaders for a major war council at the begin-
ning of May.
b. Rumblings in Honduras. Enrique Bermudez, the mili-
tary chief of the FDN, is no longer as welcome in Honduras
as in recent years. According to our sources, Bermudez
was a business partner of the recently-deposed Honduran
chief of staff, General Alvarez (who is currently in
Miami). The prime reason for the ouster of General
Alavarez, we are told, is that he had failed to cut in
enough of his colleagues on the profits skimmed from a
number of lucrative defense contracts; one of the most
notorious involved the supply of boots to the Honduran
army.
The problem for Enrique Bermudez - and for the FDN,
so long as he remains a key figure - is that the new chiefs
of the Honduran army believe that Alvarez is plotting a
comeback, possibly in the form of a military coup, and
are nervous that his friends among the contras could
give him decisive help. In his gilded exile in Miami,
Alvarez is currently intriguing with well-heeled Cuban
rightists leaders, notably Domingo Moreira. What
worries the troika of colonels - Gonzalez (the new
Chief of staff), Reyes, and Eric Sanchez (who deals with
the FDN) - who now control the Honduran army is that,
prior to his abrupt departure from Tegucigalpa, General
Alvarez is established what amounts to a private army.
Under the umbrella of the benign-sounding Association
for the Development of Honduras (APORH) he recruited
an armed labor militia that disposes of hidden caches of
arms.
The fall-out from a coup in Honduras could be lethal.
Given the present mood of Congress, there would be
tremendous pressure on the Reagan Administration to
withdraw its military presence. If the White House
succumbed to this pressure, the Nicaraguan contras
would be fatally weakened and Honduras itself would
become an easy and inviting target for a new campaign
of subversion and guerrilla war mounted by the Soviets
and the Cubans with Nicaragua, once again, as the
staging-post. (An alliance of rival Honduran guerrilla
factions has already been pulled together as a result of
a series of meetings arranged and stage-managed by
officials of the Cuban DGI.)
c. The big push in El Salvador. There has been much
speculation about the build-up to a "fall offensive" by the
Salvadoran guerrillas, whose patrons have their eyes on
the U.S. presidential elections, beyond all else. They no
doubt calculate that a crisis that would confront the
Reagan with a choice between sending in U.S. combat
troops - and losing American lives - or watching another
communist victory unfold at America's back door would
not improve his re-election chances. But events are
speeding up at such a rate that some of our best-informed
intelligence sources predict a major show-down in the
field in El Salvador by early June.
They believe that the Salvadoran guerrillas and the
Cubans supervising the whole campaign have set
themselves are objective of establishing a "provisional
revolutionary government" that could appeal for inter-
national recognition inside the borders of El Salvador.
There are indications that the guerrillas will try to
accomplish this within a "liberated zone" in Morazan.
(The guerrillas have already established a local admini-
stration within 'liberated areas' of the Department of
Chalaltenango.)
d. Terror against American citizens. We have received
a specific warning of urgent importance to U.S. citizens
based in (or visiting) El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras
and Costa Rica. Our intelligence sources predict a wave
of physical attacks on Americans in these countries. The
most likely (and vulnerable) targets will be businessmen
and - especially in Guatemala - farmers. We are told that
this terrorist plan is well-advanced, and that foreign
hit-men, notably Libyans, will be involved. Colonel
Qaddafi's immediate response to the decision of the El
Salvador government to move its embassy in Israel to
Jerusalem - which presages increased Israeli help with
advisers and equipment - was to promise the leaders of
the FMLN that Libyan teams will fight with the Sal-
vadoran guerrillas in the field. The motives for a chain-
attack on private U.S. citizens are not difficult to discern.
One of the unfortunate conclusions that terrorist
organizers drew from the U.S. pull-out from Lebanon in
the wake of the Beirut bombing is that, if you take
American lives, the Americans will go away. In the case
of Central America, they are not bent on seeing
whether the principal applies to corporate board-rooms
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