A BELEAGUERED REAGAN ON CENTRAL AMERICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000605700095-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2010
• Sequence Number: 95
• Publication Date: April 29, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000605700095-1
ARTIC:.r
ON.PAGE
WASHINGTON TIMES
29 APRIL 1983
;OONIl~'~1RY
A beleaguered Reagan v1~
n the vexing issue of com-
munist expansion into Cen-.
tral America, the Reagan
administration first blew j
hot with Alexander Haig's fulmina-
tions about "going to the source."
When these threats disturbed Amer-
icans more than they intimidated
Fidel Castro, White House staffers
persuaded President Reagan to blow
cold by taking the issue off the front
burner.
While Assistant Secretarynf State
Thomas Enders was given policy
.control over a bolding operation in
-El Salvador, the president-main-
tained a lowprofile for some months
in the hope the problem could be
solved quietly. Instead, the domes-
tic opponents of any kind of U.S.
involvement used the White House's
absence from the debate as an oppor-
tunity to mold American opinion,
and the excesses of the right wing
in El Salvador gave them plenty of
ammunition. The presidential
speech to both houses of Congress
this week was a belated attempt to
rebuild a national consensus on the
need for action.
But it will take more than one elo-
quent speech on a single dramatic
occasion to shift the direction of
American public opinion. The fortui-
tous discovery of arms disguised as
medicines on the Libyan planes
bound for Nicaragua is helpful but
not enough. As Castro has boasted,
~- the outcome of the struggle in Cen-
tral America is likely to be settled
in the halls of the U.S. Congress,
and there the tide is running against
the president.
Part of the administration's prob-
lem in making its case has been the
continuing conflict between the intel-
ligence community's determination
not to reveal sensitive sources and
the desire of the policy advocates to
surface the most conclusive possi-
ble evidence of Soviet-Cuban inter-
'CORD MEYER
mention. For -example, .ex--Sen.
-Richard Stone; the administration's
point man for publicity on Central
America, has written CIA Director
William Casey two urgent memo-
randa pleading for -release of the
definitive evidence of Cuban con-
trol of the Salvadoran guerrillas.
On balance, however, the intelli-
gence community has tended to win
these battles, and policymakers com-
plain that even the best intelligence
no longer will be relevant if entire
countries are lost because of a fail-
ure to use it in time to convince the
skeptics. It has been particularly
frustrating not to be able to employ
irrefutable proof of Cuban control
against the naive contention that the
Salvadoran guerrillas are indigenous
_-reformers.
The administration is solidly
united on the strategic necessity of
providing the Salvadoran govern-
ment with enough military and eco-
nomic aid to prevent a guerrilla
victory and it has come around to
accepting the need for land reform
and improved human rights perfor-
mance.
But on the timing and scale of the
current covert action program the
CIA has been directed to mount in
order to harass the Sandinista
regime, there is growing division
among the best-informed experts in
the administration. As one put it
starkly to this reporter, "I'm afraid
we are seeing in slow motion a replay
of the Bay of Pigs"
When asked to explain so ominous, -
a comparison, he ticked off the indi-
cators of a potential disaster in the
making. In the first place, he
maintained that the guerrilla force
of Nicaraguan exiles that had moved
across the border from Honduras
into Nicaragua numbered about
6,500 men as compared with a
Russian-equipped Sandinista army
of 25,000 and a militia of 50,000. He
argued that as at the Bay of Pigs the
boy to-do a man's job and that it
would have been better to bold this
force in reserve as a threat while
building up its strength to a more
credible level.
Other critics of this overt-covert
operation within the administration
warn that it may be very difficult to
maintain these.guerrillas even as
an harassing force inside Nicaragua
In view of the ambiguity of the
Boland amendment, with its prohi-
bition of any covert support that has
as its purpose the overthrow of the
Nicaraguan government,a confused
and debilitating debate in the U.S.
Congress can easily lead to a cutoff
of all U.S. covert assistance. In its
present mood, Congress is not likely
to replace secret aid with open
funding.
Although the Nicaraguan exile
guerrillas are receiving substantial
local support from small farmers
in the northern border area, there
is no sign yet of any spontaneous
mass defection to their cause. The
main force of the Sandinista army
has not yet been committed, and
Castro is in a strong position to esca-
late if necessary with secret infil-
tration of elite Cuban troops, as he
did in Angola.
The administration's internal crit-
ics of this operation fear that these
risks were not suffficiently consid-
ered when it was undertaken. If it
fails, not only the Nicaraguan exiles
but the friendly Honduran govern-
ment will be badly hurt. .-
A slow-motion Bay of Pigs of this
dimension would finally alert both
the Reagan administration and the
country as a whole to the size of the
problem we face in Central America
and to the fact that it cannot be dealt
with on the cheap. Years of sustained,
consistent effort to build the politi-
cal freedoms and the economic and
military strength of our non-
communist allies are going to be
necessary.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000605700095-1