TARDENCILLAS AFFAIR: PRESSURE FROM THE TOP?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000606260017-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 27, 2010
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: March 19, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606260017-5
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By Edwin M. Ya3er Jr.
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
19 !ARCH 1982
cized last week in a briefing by John
Hughes of the Defense Intelligence
Agency.-The Cubans are. working
swiftly to turn Nicaragua into a for- .
tnidable bastion of regional military
power.*,,
intelligence- also has 1
good `reason to believe that Yasir
Arafat has boasted of sending Pales-
tinian pilots and "revolutionaries" to
Nicaragua. and El Salvador, and that
the Vietnamese, another Soviet sur-
rogate. are sending American fire-`
arms. But the extent to which this--
sort of intelligence should be public
ly displayed is the subject of a bloody
and still unresolved battle within the`,
administration. Ultimately, the main question is-
not whether substantial information
exists. It does. The question is what it
means: The evidence in hand is con-
sistent; for example. with Nicara-
gua's professed fear of hostile Somo-
za counter-insurgents, or of some
U.S=financed plan for covert action.
WASHINGTON - The >fitst com
mandment in sound intelligence
work, as any professional. will tell
you. is skepticism: not only of what
the evidence seems to prove but of
what sdurces claim.
That commandment was flagrantly
violated in the embarrassing affair
of Orlando Jose Tardencillas Espino-
za, the 19-year-old adventurer who
was to be- the State - Department's
"smoking Sandinista": proof of heavy
Nicaraguan involvement in the El
Salvador insurgency.
That was in part because U.S. intel-
ligence professionals played no
known role in the Tardencillas pro-
dui tion and were as astounded by its
disagreeable outcome as everyone
else.
"They should at least have given
him a lie-detector test," said one in-
tel;igence analyst, shaking his head
at a private briefing. (Like "Mother,"
Aaron Latham's fictional counterin?
telligence chief in Orchids for Moth-
er, intelligence people are convinced
that "most people would sooner lie to -
God than to a polygraph.")
Young Tardencillas switched . his .
previous tale (that he's been trained
in Cuba and Ethiopia and sent to El
Salvador by the Managua comman-
dantes) 180 degrees between San
Salvador and Washington. He pre-
sumably would have flunked his
polygraph test, cool customer though
he is. And it might have occurred to
the plodding mind to wonder,, any-
way, whether this precocious "free-
dntn fighter" had enjoyed so far.
flung an education in revolutionary
techniques as he claimed. .
Whoever his preliminary interro-
gators were. they failed to glean
timely hints that they. were dealing
with a slippery witness, one that a
good country lawyer would have
hesitated to put on the stand before a
courthouse jury.
But it would be wrong to conclude
from the Tardencillas fiasco that the
United States lacks reliable. informa-
tion about the extent of Cuban and
Soviet scheming in Central America.
Only willful blindness could ignore
or discount: the: intelligences publi-
The latter possibility might be
p
g
more' easily dismissed but for the and El Salvador. They have done
Nixon administration's covert o enter- their duty. For whatever conclusions
pages inering Chile. Contrary to and policies are based on these facts,
lingering they were and above all for conclusions that
more limited in scope. method and outrun them, the administration is
aim ,than is often supposed. But in strictly accountable.
iew of Salvador Allende's uneasy It is the judgment of politicians.
view'
grip, they were probably ill-advised. not intelligence professionals. that
Politica1_eressure to, push intelli- should be under the closest scrutiny;
gence information beyond its .value today i c.
is a constant. From day one of the
Reagan era, the State Department has
been under pressure from the hard
right to take a more aggressive and
militarized line in Central America.
In the transition period, this predis-
position was signaled by the dis-
graceful and vindictive hounding of
U.S. Ambassador Robert Whi':e. That
professional diplomat insisted, to the
displeasure of Sen. Jesse Helms (R
N.C.) and others, that the situation of
El Salvador was politically complex.
There is a correspondingly simplis
tic view among liberals that intelli-
gence is invariably distorted by ideo-
logical or military bias. Often it is. In
the.Vietnam War period, there were i
entirely too many -"captured docu- I
r~
aff--i al
ments," too many fudged military 1
estimates, too many dodges and pre-
varications.
For instance, there is the disturb
ing story of Anthony Riccio. a CIA'
analyst who was asked for informa-
tion about North Vietnamese militia
arms at Son Tay. the POW-camp ulti-,
mately raided-by U.S. forces in 1970..:
When Riccio checked the files and I
found no information, his boss. irri-'a
tated, sat down and wrote the an-.11
swer: "old Japanese and French ri-;i
fles, pitchforks and machetes." (In I
fact, the. guards had submachine .'s
guns.) . .
How strong the pressure is now to
strain available intelligence is tin
knowable. But the Tardencillas affair
is a warning that it may be consider-
able. Even if the young Nicaraguan' I
had sung the tune he was supposed to
sing, one man's war story is not
enough to make a case.
Intelligence professionals can
produce - have, indeed, already
produced - impressive facts about
ua -
enetration of Nicara
the hostile
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/27: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606260017-5