TAKING AIM AT NICARAGUA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000201580012-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: March 22, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

A YY 7T Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201580012-4
PAGE cal.O . ?' 22 1TAP !1
STAT
Hughes points out a military installation: Longer and louder alarms about communist meddling in America's backyard
As a result, the Administration has found from candid about the size of their military
itselfwithfewalternatives other than sound- buildup, nothing in thedeclassified material
ingeverlongerandlouder alarms.
showed a direct conduit of arms into El
It was hard to say what the alarm bells Salvador. "I think most people were ready
foretold. Washingtonseemedtobeplayinga tobelieve that the Nicaraguans arebuilding
high-stakes game cif psychological warfare up their army," said one U.S. official, "but
designed to keep the Nicaraguans, Cubans that was never the problem."
and Soviets guessing about Reagan's ulti- The Administration hoped to make the
mate intentions.Onepossibilitywasthatthe Nicaragua-Salvador connection with a pa-
Administration was hoping to use its evi- rade of witnesses from the front-but the
first step went disastrously awry. The State
Department invited six reporters to inter-
The Administration . view Orlando Jose Tardencillas Espinosa,
19, a Nicaraguan captured in El Salvador.
launches a frenetic ..Tardencillashad"confessed" earlier that he
an had been sent to the war zone by the Sandin-
propaganda Canpalb istas. But when the tape recorders started
in training and put the total number of men th lat leaves troubling rolling, he stunned the reporters-and U.S.
officials-by suddenly taking back every-
under arms at 70,000=the biggest and most
threatening army in Central America. questions unanswered. thing he had said. He described himself asa
"Who is helping the Sandinistas do this?" free-lance revolutionary and said he had
he asked. "The fingerprint we find, in every been tortured and beaten into collaborating
case.. . [belongs to] the Cubans." dence to enlist other Latin American na- withEl Salvadorand Washington. "The day
The carefully orchestrated show-and-tell tions to help cut the flow of arms to Salva- before I came, an officer from the U.S. Em-
session was the most successful element in a doran leftists. Looming behind it all was the bassy told me what I should say," he said.
ragged propaganda blitz last week. The of- prospect ofadarkerplan:aCIAproposalto "He told me they needed to demonstrate the
fensive seemed to reflect the Administra- help paramilitary groups cut the flow of presence of Cubans in El Salvador. I was
tion's growing frustration over the ]imits'of armsfrom Nicaragua to El Salvador. given a choice. I could come here and do
its ability to act in Central America. Neither Therewas no doubt about the earnestness what I'm doing-or face certain death."
Congress nor the public seems inclined to of the Administration's concern, but its me- Tardencillas's bizarre turnabout left the
acceptReagan'swarningsaboutcommunist dia campaign raised as many questions as it Administration in a bind. For weeks offi-
meddlingintheregion.Thepublicmoodhas answered. While the photo evidence dem- cials had been hinting that they had top-
all butruled nutdirectmilitarv intervention- onstrated that the Sandinistas had been far secret intelligence data on the Sandinistas'
T he lights dimmed, the projector
beamed and the screen filled with
blown-up aerial photographs that conjured
up an earlier time of confrontation. Before a
packed house of reporters, John Hughes,
the photo-intelligence expert who present-
ed the evidence in the Cuban missile crisis
twenty years ago, took a pointer last week
and made the Reagan Administration's
case against Nicaragua. Flipping through
the grainy photographs, Hughes said the
Sandinistas have built 36 new military in-
stallations in just two years. He pointed to
new airfields, lengthened runways and a
dramatic array of Soviet-made tanks, truck-
drawn howitzers, helicopters and amphibi-
ous ferries. He showed Nicaraguan troops
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201580012-4 'VT1