A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000201100013-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: July 7, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201100013-5
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGa_
MARY McGRORY it
A Rock and
A Hard Place
T HE PERSONAL and political
Tiisto of Edgar Chamorro
Coronel makes him more than
an unusually intriguing immigration
case. hamorro, a member o the
most powerful clan in Nicaragua and
ro e
one-time darlin of the C
with the contras in ovem r
and is now threatened with
ddeegortation from the rated States.
A former Jesuit priest, educated in
this country, Chamorro was in
Washington last month, vigorously
lobbying against "humanitarian" aid
to the contras, and sympathizers in
Congress are crying that his
threatened expulsion is "politically
inspired" (Rep. Bill Alexander (D-
Ark.) and a "perfect example of the
administration using the immigration
laws to_censor debate" (Rep. Barney
Frank (D-Mass.).
Perry A. Rivkind, district director
of the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) in
Miami, says he knows "how it
looks," but denies that there is any
vindictiveness in the "routine
processing" of Chamorro's 1980
request for political asylum. "I never
met Chamorro and, until this
happened, I didn't know anything
about him," he says.
He says that two recent
Chamorro articles in U.S.
newspapers which were highly
critical of U.S. policy in Nicaragua
"rang a bell" and caused him to look
up Chamorro's file. His petition for
asylum was turned down "just like
90 percent of requests from that
area" long before Chamorro turned
on the contras.
T he matter has stirred up
passions in Miami, with pro-
Sandinistas threatening to
picket the INS office and pro-contras
being exhorted by a fiercely
anticommunist local paper, La
Cubanissimo, to demonstrate outside
Chamorro's house.
WASHINGTON POST
7 July 1985
Chamorro thinks the INS action
could be a "coincidence, that
bureaucratic delays and confusion
with a cousin by the same name could
have caused the problem. But it may
be academic anyway, because,
according to Chamorro's lawyer,
Grisel Ibarra, Chamorro's sister
applied for his admission under the
"fifth preference" section of the INS
code in 1980, and her petition could
be taken up before lengthy
deportation proceedings even get
under way.
The INS appears slightly
embarrassed by another instance of
the zeal which caused the exclusion of
Hortensia Allende, widow of Salvador
Allende of Chile. Much skepticism
attends its version of events, because
Reagan has never shown in dealing
with Nicaragua the restraint that
marked his recent performance on
Beirut.
Chamorro says he was totally
sympathetic to the revolution but
dubious about the Sandinista
government from the first.
"Too much Castro," he said on
recent trip to Washington. "Daniel
Ortega grew up in a house with
Fidel's picture on the wall - his
father greatly admired him. That's
the trouble with Latin America - no
role models."
In 1979, Chamorro brought his
wife and children to Miami to watch
from afar how the wind would blow.
A quick trip later that year to Costa
Rica with forays across the border for.
meetings with old friends in power
convinced him that the direction was
hopelessly Marxist-Leninist, and he
came back to the United States to
stay. His house in Managua was
confiscated by Tomas Borge, the
minister of defense.
By 1982, he was persuaded tha
only sharp, quick military action could
rescue his country from the
"tyrannical" Sandinistas, and he was
recruited by the CIA for the FDN,
the contra group set up by the CIA.
With his brains and connections
Chamorro was considered a catch.
STAT
He was made a director, provided
with a se travel documents y t e
CIA aand made countless tries back
and forth to Honduras and Costa
Rica. agent arranged a "final"
interview wit t e for his
po itica as lum petition
But he soon became disillusioned.
Late in 1984, in an interview with
Christopher D key of The
as iV~ hington Post, he criticized the
.cold-blooded executions" carried
otif by ex- mocistas who think that
to lull a communist is not really
mg and the total CIA control of
the contras.
'-TiFamoorro was fired by contra
leader Adolfo Rubelo. He is now
urging a political solution to the
problem.
"I would like to go back to
Nicaragua one day," he says. "But I
don't want to be deported. If I go to
Costa Rica; which is where the INS
wants me to go - they think I lived
there and they've got me mixed up
with a cousin with the same name -
the contras would come and kill me.
If I went to Nicaragua, I would be
used by the Sandinistas, as a defector
from the contras. Or they could try
me. The amnesty declaration on
contras doesn't cover the leaders."
Chamorro thinks the contras are
on the wrong track because they
want to replace the current group
with a "good Somoza."
"What we need is not strong men
but strong institutions," he says.
The prospects are currently
remote. It is not easy for someone
who believes in genuine democracy
to live in Nicaragua - or, for that
matter, the United States.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201100013-5