LETTER TO WILLIAM P. CLARK FROM WILLIAM J. CASEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88B00443R001604250020-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 4, 2010
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: December 11, 1984
• Content Type: LETTER

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The Director of Central Inwence
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11 December 1984
The Honorable William P. Clark
Secretary of the Interior
Washington, D. C. 20240
I sent the attached to the President
today.
Yours,
William J. Casey
Attachment:
Letter to the President
dtd 10 December 1984
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W SECRET W
The Director of Central Intelligence
% shingon. D. C 20505
10 December 1984
The President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President:
I must draw your attention to the acute danger that we may be on the
brink of a great failure in Central America. This could not only bring
permanent damage to our security and geopolitical position in this hemisphere
but could also reverse what has been achieved in checking the advances the
Soviets had made in Asia, Africa and Latin America before your presidency.
Twenty years ago, Khrushchev said Communism would "win not by nuclear
war which could destroy the world, not by conventional war which could lead
to nuclear war, but by national wars of liberation." In 1980, this prophecy
seemed well on its way to fulfillment as the Soviet Union transformed itself
from a continental power to one with global reach with bases and surrogates
in Cuba, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Angola, South Yemen and Mozambique, and was busy
establishing other positions close to the Panama Canal and Persian Gulf in
Nicaragua and Afghanistan, as well as promising relationships with radical
Arab states.
During the 1970s, people in Africa, Asia and Latin America were flocking
into Communist guerrilla movements. As 1984 draws to an end, this dynamic
has been transformed. In Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Cambodia
and elsewhere, people are fighting to recapture their freedom. Some 300,000
people have taken up arms against Soviet-imposed or supported regimes in
these countries.
Right now people in Central America and, indeed, those fighting Communism
in Afghanistan and elsewhere are watching Nicaragua. The Sandinistas are
piling in weapons to extinguish the armed resistance, cracking down on the
political opposition and pushing negotiations to cut off outside support
and influence in order to buy time to consolidate their first base on the
American mainland. A Honduran delegation visiting Washington week before last
made it quite clear that they are watching our effort to sustain support to
the Contras to see how far they can depend on us.
I bring this to your attention now because the signal will be read very
early next year. I am not sure that the Congress will renew support for the
Contras. But it is necessary to make an all-out effort to get some form of
support and to have some method of holding out hope to the opposition in
Nicaragua if we should fail in the Congress.
SECRET
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I read in Sunday's New York Times that the prevailing Administration view
is to seek a "political so ution." If that's all we do, we will be playing
into the hands of the Soviets, the Cubans and Sandinistas who for well over
a year have,been trying to buy time to consolidate Nicaragua as a base for
further expansion.
We need some reaction to the heavy shipments of more and heavier weapons
to the Sandinistas and their steps to wipe out the armed and the political
opposition. If we continue to negotiate without the requirement that the
1979 commitments to the OAS be implemented, as they see the U.S. ready to
risk the consolidation of a second Cuba on the Mainland, elements in Costa
Rica and Honduras favoring neutralism and appeasement of Cuba, Nicaragua and
the far left would become much more significant. Honduras and Costa Rica
most likely would then prevent the Nicaraguan freedom fighters from being able
to operate from their territory. In El Salvador, there would be deep fear
and a greater physical risk to Duarte and other moderate leaders from both
extremes. For some months, there might be a reduction in Nicaraguan support
for the guerrillas in El Salvador while the armed resistance is destroyed in
Nicaragua. Cuba could use existing clandestine routes through Honduras,
Mexico, and Belize to keep supplies flowing to the Salvadoran and Guatemalan
guerrillas.
We need to give courage and time to the opposition in Nicaragua, enhance
our chances of getting support from the Congress and lay the groundwork for
carrying on without it if necessary. We can do this with a bold two-pronged
approach focusing on mobilizing a broad range of our resources and those of
like-minded countries to (a) resist Communist expansion in the less developed
world and (b) bring them the economic progress the Soviets can't deliver.
The common thread and the common interest in defeating the Communist
version of creeping imperialism has not been recognized and projected. Some
dozen countries in and ouside the immediate area support resistance movements
in Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia and Cambodia. Other sources of support are
available to the resistance in those countries and in Nicaragua as well.
But it is important for us to take the lead and to do this in economic and
political as well as security terms. A show of weakness in one area is
noted by opposition forces in other areas. A broad recognition and articulation
of the political and security interests at stake will strengthen resistance
everywhere and shut the door to the consolidation the Soviets seek to achieve.
The momentum we have achieved in checking Soviet expansion can be greatly
accelerated by weighing in with the economic instruments the Soviets can't
match.
We have a historic opportunity to bring progress to lesser developed
countries (LDCs) around the world by demonstrating that Western-capital,
technology and managerial skills can accomplish what Soviet military and
economic assistance have failed to deliver.
LDCs around the world know that the Soviet economic system did not live
up to expectations, that Communist countries supplied only meager amounts
of economic aid and were unable to provide significant markets for LDC goods.
They know that prospects for large amounts of Western foreign assistance
have diminished.
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V
It is the lesser developed countries that can least afford the burden of
inefficient government bureaucracies and ponderous state enterprises. In many
of these countries change is beginning. Large "second economies" consisting
of small-scale enterprises are emerging. LDC governments are increasingly
willing to contemplate and experiment with market-oriented approaches.
This changing climate presents significant economic opportunities for
the United States:
-- To increase the promotion of small-scale enterprises within LDCs
and the acceptance and adaptation of new technologies.
-- To enlarge the flow of foreign capital and help state enterprises
become more efficient and find ways to relinquish some functions
to the private sector.
-- To strengthen our trade, finance and investment links with LDCs
based upon a growing mutuality of economic interest.
In order to make the most of this increasingly important evolutionary
and grass roots development process, we need to reorder economic aid programs
so that more assistance reaches the small-scale entrepreneur and the flow of
private capital, technology and skill to LDCs is stimulated.
I am proposing a two-pronged approach to mobilizing our resources and
those of other countries with interests threatened by Soviet expansion in the
less developed world to help both friendly governments which may be threatened
and those resisting oppressive governments. This would require leadership
in AID capable of articulating and strongly implementing the call you made
at Cancun in Mexico a while ago., It requires quiet but strong diplomacy of
the kind practiced by Prime Minister Lee on Cambodia, President Zia on
Afghanistan, Savimbi on Angola and King Fahd.on Ethiopia to generate support
from over a dozen countries for freedom fighters in those countries.
This would not be a substitute for all-out effort to get continued
support from Congress on Nicaragua. It would make it part of a broader effort
to accelerate the momentum already achieved in turning back Soviet expansion
in the less developed world.
Respectfully yours,
/zl
William J. Casey
SECRET
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