HOUSE CONFEREES BALK AT ARMS AID

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100620016-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: May 18, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100620016-7
WASHINGTON POST
18 May 1984
` Latin Requests Face Further Test
House Conferees Balk at Arms Aid
By Joanne Omang
sign aid, could balk at actually' providing the plan and that it had been dropped as a re-
sult.
Long was briefed yesterday morning by
was ij t Poet Starr writer money.
A House-Senate conference com- After the House votes, the bill must go
mittee broke Up in sharp disagree- back to conference.
went yesterday over Reagan admin. Undersecretary of State William
istration requests to send more mil- Schneider Jr., who was present during nego-
itary aid to Central America, and tiations on both measures, said he was "cau
returned them to the House for an. tiously optimistic" that the House would ap-
other test of strength on the issue, prove some funding for both programs. "If
possibly next week.
House conferees said they not, there are other legislative vehicles we
" were in can use,+, he said. The most likely one is a
I "total Opposition" to a Senate pro- pending bill to raise the national debt ceil-
vision th
t
ld
i
a
wou
g
ve $21 million to
rebels fighting the leftist government ing, a Senate source said.
I of Nicaragua; the House rejected The conferees acted swiftly to return the
such aid twice last year. The House contra aid program to the House after Rep.
members also balked at a Senate Edward P. Boland (D-Mass.), chairman of
provision giving $61.75 million in the House Permanent Select Committee on
emergency aid to the government of Intelligence, said he stood "in total opposi-
El Salvador, which is fighting leftist tion to this particular activity."
insurgents.
The conferees' stance was a sur-
prise. They were expected to give in
to the Senate after the House nar-
rowly voted a week ago to authorize
more than twice the amount at stake
in the conference.
"We could lose on the House floor
on this," said Rep. Clarence D. Long
(D-Md.), a leading opponent of full
funding for the Salvadorans, "but
they [the Reagan administration]
can't take it to the well too many
times. People are getting awfully
tired of voting foreign aid to El Sal-
vador."
The conference action will bring
to the House for the first time this
year the three-year-old program of
aid to the Nicaraguan rebels, called
"contras" as well as force the House
to vote on an actual appropriation
for El Salvador.
The Democratic-controlled House
last week authorized. funding there
by only four votes, and many Re-
publicans, generally hostile to for-
.cJA Dfftci b. "If we don't get what we
thought we'd be getting" in information on
the plan, Long said, "we'll want to take a
further look at it."
Long, who is chairman of the House Ap-
propriations subcommittee on foreign oper-
ations, proposed a "mini-conference" on Sal-
vadoran aid between himself and his Senate
counterpart, Sen. Robert W. Kasten Jr. (R-
Wis.). Long indicated that there might be
"agreement on language." But be and Kas-
ten, and about 20 other staff and State De-
partment officials, emerged from the meeting
half an hour later with no accord. -.
Sources close to both sides said that nei-
ther offered a compromise proposal. `
The .administration requested the Salva-
House Appropriations Committee Chair-, doran money in February on an emergency
man Jamie L. Whitten (D-Miss.) predicted basis, but Congress did not act and Pre_si-
` heavy going in the House for the proposal dent Reagan finally used a special fund in
"Boland feels very strongly about this. I have mid-April to send El Salvador $32 million in
backed him on it and will continue to do so," arms and ammunition without congressional
he said. approval. About half of the $62 million un-
The Salvadoran decision took longer. The der consideration now would go to repay the
conferees had delayed a vote Wednesday
after Long said that he wanted to be briefed
about new, secret information that he had
just been given. He entered yesterday's ses-
sion announcing that he was "satisfied this is
not a problem we have to worry about here."
Congressional sources said the information
concerned a classified proposal from the CIA
last month under which the agency WQul~
have provided about 20 million worth of
helicopters and.other_ h1epw miliiar--equip-
ment directly to the Salvadoran government,
bypassing Congress.
The sources said that Long had received a
letter from Boland advising him that the
- intelligence committee had protested the
special fund.
The conferees approved nearly $1.1 billion
for other parts of the appropriations meas-
ure, including $845 million for women's and
children's nutrition programs, $60 million for
African drought relief, $100 million for sum-
mer youth employment programs, $25 mil-
lion for Custoris Service airplanes and $7
million to aid refugees in El Salvador.
The conferees also approved three pet
congressional projects: $21 million requested
by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) for the
Army Corps of Engineers to buy a water pro-
ject in Tug Fork, W. Va.; $14 million for con-
struction of the Cumberland Gap Tunnel in
Maryland and $1 million to clean up the Col-
orado Tailings mining site in Colorado.
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100620016-7