YOU HAVE A FATEFUL DECISION TO MAKE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88B00443R001500070024-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2007
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: May 17, 1984
• Content Type: LETTER

Approved For Release 2007/08/29: CIA-RDP88B00443RO01500070024-2y 1984
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Gentlemen:
You have a fateful decision to make. I appreciate this chance to tell
you why I and, indeed, the Executive Branch, can in no way acquiesce in, and
why you should not make, a decision to deny support to resistance forces in
Nicaragua.
It would be cataclysmic in its impact on the reputation and the credibility
of our country as well as its long term geopolitical and national security
position. It would send a signal to Latin America and around the world that
would take a generation to live down.
President Reagan, in addressing the nation a week ago, spelled out
the details of the Soviet-Cuban threat in our back yard. I will not repeat
that. He laid out the critical moral issue in these words:
"If the Communists can start war against the people of El Salvador,
then El Salvador and its friends are surely justified in defending
themselves by blocking the flow of arms. If the Soviet Union can aid
and abet subversion in our hemisphere, then the United States has a
legal right and a moral duty to help resist it. This is not only in
our strategic interest; it is morally right. It would be profoundly
immoral to let peace-loving friends depending on our help be overwhelmed
by brute force if we have any capacity to prevent it."
Let me address the decision you face in the specific terms of the
responsibility you are in this room to discharge. How can you appropriate
$300 million for defense and withhold one ten-thousandth of that amount to
continue support you've authorized for people who have put their lives on the
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line, relying on your support, to resist aggression and oppression sponsored
by the Soviet Union and their proxies in our own back yard?
How will the world react to such a decision? We've heard from President
Suazo of Honduras. He believes that failure to provide additional funding
could risk "losing everything" in Central America. Cutting off anti-
Sandinistas now would convey impression of USG weakness and lack of concern
for friends in the wake of Lebanon setback. The Communists are seeking to
drive home harder than ever the message that the USG is an unreliable partner.
Cutting off anti-Sandinistas would play right into their hands. That's
Honduras speaking. In Costa Rica, President Monge stated that continued
pressure on Sandinistas by the resistance is essential not only to any hope
of successful negotiations in Contadora, but also to political stability in
Costa Rica.
What are we risking in Central America? With the heavier Soviet supply
and the intensified Cuban support we expect and are beginning to see, there is
a good chance that within a year, perhaps earlier, the national security and
geopolitical position of the United States will have been permanently worsened.
This would represent an historic failure. The record would show that while
the Soviet Union was committing over $4 billion a year in military and economic
assistance to and through Cuba and positioning some 6,000 Soviet troops and
advisors in Cuba, with some 3,500 Cuban military advisors and 100 Soviet
military advisors in Nicaragua, the United States tried to counter this with
less than half a billion in econonic and military assistance and a handful of
military advisors for El Salvador and Honduras.
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