COUNTERSPY: ECONOMIC WAR AGAINST NICARAGUA
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Publication Date:
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Terrorism in Miami
ECONOMIC WAR
AGAINST NICARAGUA
a r. Also in this issue: Secret U.S. Bases in Honduras ? CIA, Vatican and Nazis ? Reagan's
Censorship Law ? U.S. Nuclear Weapons in West Germany ? Philippines Interview: From
"Queen of the Pacific" to Political Activist ? TNT: Israeli Terror Group ? FY85 Pentagon
Budget: Space War and Third World Intervention
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Counterspy Statement of Purpose
The United States emerged from World War II as the world's dominant political and economic
power. To conserve and enhance this power, the U.S. government created a variety of in-
stitutions to secure dominance over "free world" nations which supply U.S. corporations
with cheap labor, raw materials, and markets. A number of these institutions, some initiated
jointly with allied Western European governments, have systematically violated the funda-
mental rights and freedoms of people in this country and the world over. Prominent among
these creations was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), born in 1947.
Since 1973, Counterspy magazine has exposed and analyzed such intervention in all its
facets: covert CIA operations, U.S. interference in foreign labor movements, U.S. aid in
creating foreign intelligence agencies, multinational corporations-intelligence agency link-
ups, and World Bank assistance for counterinsurgency, to name but a few. Our view is that
while CIA operations have been one of the most infamous forms of intervention, the CIA is
but one strand in a complex web of interference and control.
Our motivation for publishing Counterspy has been two-fold:
? People in the United States have the right and need to know the scope and nature
of their government's abrogation of U.S. and other citizens' rights and liberties in order
to defend themselves and most effectively change the' institutions.
? People in other countries, often denied access to information, can better protect
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NOW AVAILABLE: Reprint from Counterspy
U.S. NUCLEAR THREATS:
A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY
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Editors:
Konrad Ege
John Kelly
Board of Advisors
Dr. Walden Bello
Congressional Lobby
Director, Philippine
Support Committee
John Cavanagh
Economist
Dr. Noam Chomsky
Professor at MIT,
Peace Activist
Joan Coxsedge
Member of Parliament
State of Victoria, Australia
Ruth Fitzpatrick
Member, Steering Commit-
tee of the Religious Task
Force on Central America
Dr. Laurie Kirby
Professor, City University
of New York
Tamar Kohns
Political Activist
Annie Makhijani
Chemistry Student
Dr. Arjun Makhijani
Consultant on Energy and
Economic Development
Martha Wenger
Office Worker,
Counterspy's Copy Editor
Cover Design:
Johanna Vogelsang
Counterspy magazine
P.O. Box 647
Ben Franklin Station
Washington, D.C.'20044
ISSN 0739-4322
-", Mler? X?523
4
12
26
36
42
58
Contents
News NOT in the News
Seychelles Blocks Grenada Style Invasion ... New Intelligence
Agency ... Afghan Heroin ... U.S. Navy to Sri Lanka? ... "Free
Trade" in Human Organs ... TNT: Israeli Terror Group ... CIA
and Afghanistan ... U.S. Money for Salvadoran Death Squads
Features
U.S. Economic War Against Nicaragua
by John Cavanagh and Joy Hackel
Klaus Barbie and Robert Verbelen: The U.S. Government, Nazis
and the Vatican by Konrad Ege
Spying on Canada's Peace Movement by Derek Rasmussen
Interviews
Terrorism in Miami: Suppressing Free Speech
Nelia Sancho Liao: From Beauty Queen to Political Activist
Censorship
Reagan Prepares Censorship Law by John Kelly
British Government Clamps Down on Journalists
by Morris Riley
Ift WOM SAYS DRUG
ABUS2 I$ RAMPANT IN
THe UL15RD RJ KV
I WOND2R
%kT TA G2H RAZE
AR2 OIL.,,
Military Issues
New Pentagon Budget: Wars in Space and Third World Inter-
vention by Konrad Ege
Arms Treaty Violations: The U.S. Campaign Continues
U.S. Nuclear Bases in West Germany
Reagan and South Africa: Making the Bonds Stronger
Secret U.S. Bases in Honduras
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News NOT in the News
TNT: Israeli Terror 1984, no one had been arrested. TNT had set
five hand grenades outside three Christian and
one Muslim religious institution in Jerusalem on
Group December 9; set fire to three Arab-owned cars
in East Jerusalem on December 21; placed booby-
trapped grenades that exploded at the entrances
of two mosques in Hebron, an Arab town in the
Fatmeh Abu Shusheh, a Palestinian woman who West Bank, on December 30; and set off a grenade
lives in the village of Husan on the Israeli- at the entrance of a Russian Orthodox convent
occupied West Bank, opened her door on the on January 15. One nun and three Muslim imams
morning of December 12, 1983, and was startled (religious leaders) have been injured in the
by the sound of something falling. Seconds after attacks.
she slammed the iron door shut, a booby-trapped These terrorist attacks have provoked a
Israeli Army issue hand grenade exploded through mixed response in Israel. Member of Parliament
it and shattered the windows of the house. Abu Yossi Sarid, one of TNT's announced targets,
Shusheh's quick action had saved her from serious demanded on December 13 that the government
injury. Israeli soldiers later found and defused acknowledge the existence of (in the words of a
two other grenades, primed to go off and hidden Jewish Telegraphic Agency report) "a rightwing
in rock piles in' the village. An anonymous caller Jewish underground movement bent on terrorizing
from a group calling itself "Terror Against Arabs." But the following day, Israeli Police
Terror" (TNT in the Hebrew acronym) claimed Minister Yosef, Burg told Israel Radio that "until
responsibility for the attack and warned that "our we catch them we cannot say if they are really
next targets are [Labor Party member of Jewish, if they are a group." He said that his
parliament] Yossi Said and [former general and department was investigating the possibility that
Peace Now activist] Matti Peled." (Peace Now the attackers were actually Arabs. Other high
is the largest Israeli anti-war group.) level government figures made comments in the
Three days earlier, the same TNT group put same vein. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir told
the torch to six Palestinian cars in al-Thowri, the press on January 11, 1984, "1 cannot say
southeast of Jerusalem, three of which were anything definite...." when asked to confirm or
totally destroyed. TNT claimed credit in a call deny the existence of a Jewish -underground terror
to Israel Army Radio. Residents of the area group. Defense Minister Moshe Arens, in remarks
complained that the municipal fire brigade addressed to fellow Likud party members on
arrived only after 45 minutes, leaving them to January 3, said that Israeli society had not
fight the blaze with hoses and buckets of water. created the tools with which to cope with the
When the police arrived, one resident said, they TNT group.
"tried to make it look like an ordinary criminal Meanwhile, a poll conducted by the
act, when it is clearly a planned act of sabotage." Jerusalem Post in early January 1984 found that
Israeli soldiers, who soon joined the police, were although the majority of Israeli Jews oppose the
reportedly more interested in the political graffiti creation of a Jewish group such as TNT to "fight
scrawled on the walls than in the burning cars. terror with terror," a large minority - 18.7
"The Israeli Army and police make every effort percent - favored the idea. Among those polled
to arrest Palestinian stone-throwers, and youths who are supporters of the ruling Likud party, the
who write 'graffiti," one Palestinian car owner number was even higher: one out of four, 26.2
said, "but no Israeli vigilante has been arrested." percent, supported TNT's terrorist actions.
Indeed, although Terror Against Terror There are conflicting reports on the origin
carried out 14 attacks against Arab and non- of TNT and how long it has existed. An Israel
Jewish religious targets in late 1983 and early Defense Forces Radio report on December 30,
4 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
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1983, states that TNT was once active already
ten years ago, but only resumed activity a month
ago. Al Fajr, a Palestinian newspaper, reports
that TNT has claimed responsibility for several
serious attacks in recent years: the car-bombing
assassination attempts against three West Bank
mayors in 1980, the bombing of Al = Fajr's
newspaper offices in 1980, and the killing of
Jewish Peace Now demonstrator, Emil Grunzweig,
in 1983. According to the Israeli newspaper,
Maariv, the TNT caller who phoned their offices
to claim responsibility for setting the grenades
in Husan village sounded like the same person
who had called the paper 10 months earlier to
take credit for murdering Emil Grunzweig.
TNT's actions come at a time when Israeli
settlers in the West Bank - many of them with
rightwing ideological and religious convictions -
are increasingly "taking the law into their own
hands." Well-armed settler vigilante groups have
been responsible for repeated attacks against
Palestinian residents. In one serious recent
attack, on December 8, 1983, an Israeli settler
shot an 11-year-old Palestinian girl three times
in the back inside a bakery in downtown Nablus.
She died almost immediately. - Martha Wenger
Sources: Al Fajr (English version), December 16,
1983, and January 18, 1984; Gil Sedan, "MK Says
Rightwing Jewish Underground Movement is Bent
on Terrorizing Arabs," Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Daily News Bulletin, December 14, 1983; Foreign
Broadcast Information Service translations of the
following Israeli media reports,: Jerusalem Post,
December 22, 1983 and January 13, 1984; Tel
Aviv IDF Radio, December 30, 1983; Jerusalem
Domestic Service, January 3, 1984; and Jerusalem
Television Service, January 11, 1984. &
Rock Against Reagan
The US State Lepartment has been caught
fabricating again. In September 1983, it released
yet another report on alleged Soviet "active
measures," i.e. examples of Soviet disinformation
calculated to manipulate the Western press and
create problems for the US and friendly
governments. One such Soviet "active measure"
purportedly concocted by the intelligence agency
KGB was a tape of a phone conversation between
President Reagan and British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher. In that two minute
conversation, Reagan urges Thatcher to show
restraint in the Falklands, while Thatcher queries
Reagan about nuclear war in Europe.
Four months after the September 1983
report, two members of the British rock band
Crass dropped by the London office of the
Associated Press and played them a copy of the
tape. The two musicians, Andy Palmer and Pete
Right, said that they - not the KGB - had
produced the tape in their recording studios by
laboriously clipping and splicing words together
syllable by syllable. It took Crass three months
to finish the tape.
State Department officials did a quick
turnaround and now claim that they never said
the tape was a KGB product. "It was included
in the publication [about alleged Soviet
disinformation] because it is an example of an
active measure" and because "it fits the pattern
of Soviet active measures."
Right and Palmer will be surprised to hear
that. The musicians say they produced the tape
as a "hoax" and to show that the techniques US
government officials use in unmasking alleged
KGB disinformation plots "aren't quite as
infallible as we think they are." a
License to Write?
In January 1984, US government officials charged
that a Canadian citizen living in New York was
illegally engaging in "trade" with an "enemy
nation" (Cuba) without the required license. They
ordered Bob Rutka to leave the country. Rutka's
"commodity"? Words. For several years, Rutka
has been a reporter for the Cuban news agency,
Prensa Latina. When Rutka refused to apply for
a "license" to write, the Reagan administration
forced him to leave the country. Two Prensa
Latina reporters based at United Nations
headquarters in New York are allowed to report
only about matters relating to the UN. R
New Intelligence
Agency
The US Army has set up a new intelligence agency
to handle "security questions" affecting US GIs
stationed in Europe. The "Theater Intelligence
and Security Command," headquartered in
Zweibruecken, West Germany (right next to a
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nuclear weapons depot) will "coordinate" and
"streamline" ongoing Army intelligence
investigations. Army officials in Washington
refuse to disclose further details about its
activities. However, according to the West
German weekly Deutsche Volkszeitung, "the new
intelligence agency apparently is going to be used
against the demonstrations and actions of the
[West German] peace movement in connection
with the stationing of the Pershing II and cruise
missiles. In addition, it is to prevent the growth
of the peace movement inside the US Army." a
Nuclear War:
Chickens Will Survive
Will a post-nuclear war America be able to feed
itself?
Take heart, carnivores. According to the
federal government's Emergency Management
Agency (FE MA), "Even though livestock and
poultry receive minimal shelter from nuclear
weapons effects, they are likely to survive blast
6 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
and fallout better than our population." While
46 percent of humans are expected to survive
both the immediate impact and fallout from a
massive nuclear attack, 57 percent of cows, 64
percent of pigs, and 54 percent of broiler chickens
will probably make it.
This is one of the nuggets of information
offered by a recently released FEMA study which
combines Strangelovian insight with Orwellian
language.
Some other reassuring facts:
? We shouldn't expect farm labor
shortages since, unlike the metropolitan
population, 80 percent of the rural population is
expected to survive. Moreover, "the dependence
on 'guest workers' for fruit and vegetable
harvesting is not expected to be. an additional
problem following a nuclear attack. These
workers should survive at least as well as the
US rural population, and the Department of Labor
sees no reason why they would not continue to
participate in US harvests."
? Since over 50 percent of the productive
capacity of the drug industry is expected to be
destroyed, available medicine might not be
sufficient to treat both surviving humans and
animals adequately. Thus, "we might have to
choose between treating animals or humans in a
post-nuclear world."
... AND %MIEN WE RETURN WE'LL
Na C NIG14 LIME POLL ON
PREESI DENT REAGAN'S
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IAlvasi
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? Vegetarians, better pray that the attack
comes later in the growing season, in August,
rather than earlier, since "a June 1st attack would
be likely to threaten yields of major crops." Still,
"even then the reduced yields would not
necessarily threaten survival."
These conclusions may smack of gallows
humor, but the motives behind the study should
occasion apprehension. That the study was
undertaken in the first place ought be seen as
another indication that the Reagan administration
harbors the belief that the US can fight a nuclear
war and still survive as a viable society.
This suspicion is strengthened by the study's
confident assertion that once the government's
civil defense program of "crisis relocation" is
completed by the 1990s, "80 percent of the
population should be expected to survive a
massive attack." The only problem that the
FEMA crystal ball gazers see is that with more
humans but the same number of animals surviving,
"the relatively favorable balance between
population and livestock survival rates under
current Civil Defense capabilities could
disappear...." - Walden Bello
Uranium Disappears
Between 1979 and 1982, 178 pounds of enriched
uranium disappeared from a US government
nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
US officials are offering no explanation as to
where the material might have ended up. The
uranium disappeared in spite of government
claims that security procedures have been
tightened over the last' few years. Since the
plant started operating in 1947, a total of 1,700
pounds of enriched uranium has "disappeared"
without a trace, an amount sufficient to make
dozens of nuclear weapons. @)
Afghan Heroin
The admission is late in coming. The US Drug
Enforcement Agency is finally acknowledging that
the Afghan rebels are financing their war in part
with proceeds from the sale of opium. Some of
this opium later reaches the United States in the
form of heroin. According to David Melocik, the
Drug Enforcement Agency congressional liaison,
"250 to 300 tons of opium were produced in
Afghanistan in 1982," enough to convert into 25
to 30 tons of heroin. The Drug Enforcement
Agency estimates that four to 4 1/2 tons of
heroin are smuggled into the US annually. In a
rare moment of candor for an administration
official, Melocik even concluded that "American
interests in Afghanistan are somewhat
contradictory because the administration wants
to fight drug trafficking but also would like to
see the Afghans drive out the Soviets."
[Counterspy has reported extensively on the
Afghan rebels' heroin operations, which are
reminiscent of the CIA-supported heroin
smuggling carried out by anti-communist Hmong
mercenaries during the US war in Indochina. See
"US Intervention in Afghanistan," Dec. 79 (vol.4,
no.1); "CIA Rebels Supply US Heroin," Nov. 80
- Jan. 81 (vol.5, No.1); and "Afghanistan-Pakistan
Update," Aug. - Oct. 81 (vol.5, no.4).] o
U.S. Navy
to Sri Lanka?
As Sri Lankan President Junius Jayawardene
continues to repress the Tamil ethnic minority.
and leftist opposition parties on his Indian Ocean
island, the Reagan administration is stepping up
military aid to his regime. Four helicopters (two
of them gunships) were diverted to Jayawardene
in late 1983 from a US arms shipment intended
for Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and, in
June of that year, the Sri Lankan government
signed a $71 million economic and military aid
agreement with the United States.
In November 1983, President Reagan's
ambassador-at-large and former Deputy CIA
Director, Vernon Walters, met with Jayawardene
for consultations. While in Sri Lanka, Walters
said that in order to avoid "unnecessary"
speculation, he would not visit Trincomalee, a
well developed port on Sri Lanka's east coast.
Trincomalee is the price Jayawardene might have
to pay for continued US support. Both Walters
and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who
visited Sri Lanka in October 1983, apparently
raised the possibility of increased use of this
strategic base by the US Indian Ocean Navy.
In order to hang on to power, Jayawardene
also needs-and has received some-increased
assistance from the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. Sri Lanka; which
Jayawardene once billed as the capitalist
Counterspy - March-May 1984 - 7
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"showcase" in the Third World, is moving toward
economic collapse, with 40 percent inflation, a
massive foreign debt, repeated devaluation of the
currency and more than 600,000 of its 15 million
people unemployed. The military budget for 1984
will be 200 percent higher than for 1983.
Tourism, a chief source of foreign currency,
has declined dramatically in recent months in the
wake of the summer 1983 riots in which thousands
U.S. Money for
Salvadoran Death
Squads
of members of the Tamil ethnic group (who make The Reagan administration has discovered that
up some 20 percent of the population) were some of the money used to finance the rightwing
massacred. Close to 100,000 Tamils were forced death squads in El Salvador comes from the
to flee their homes to cramped refugee camps United States-from the Salvadoran exile
or to other countries. In some cities and villages, community in Miami. According to Newsweek,
government troops and police officers the administration has begun an investigation to
participated in the anti-Tamil riots; killing, find out whether it can freeze some of the
burning, looting and raping. Some members of Salvadorans' bank accounts. Continues
Jayawardene's government have themselves Newsweek: "Some officials admit that they
played leading roles in the anti-Tamil campaign should have started the investigation three years
for years. Their goal: to take economic and ago, when death squad supporters were less
political control of the traditional Tamil areas sophisticated about hiding and transferring their
in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. money." m
Sledgehammer Spies
Jayawardene has publicly justified the
inaction of his security force during the anti-
Tamil campaign, and has done nothing to
prosecute soldiers and officers who participated
in the killings. In addition, Jayawardene took no
steps to prevent further killings, and instead
outlawed the Tamil United Liberation Front, the
largest opposition party in parliament.
Jayawardene also shelled out $3 million for an
advertising campaign abroad to woo tourists back
to Sri Lanka. Everything was back to normal,
the ads said; the disturbances caused by the
"unrealistic grievances" of the Tamil people were
over.
(For more information on Sri Lanka, see
Lanka Review, P.O. Box 613, Station "P",
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1Y4, Canada.)
8 -- Counterspy - March-May 1984
Robert Henderson, a businessman from Adelaide,
was looking forward to a comfortable evening as
he walked down a corridor on the tenth floor of
the Sheraton Hotel in Melbourne, Australia. Then
he saw two men using sledgehammers to smash
the door to one of the rooms. Henderson
immediately summoned general manager Nick
Rice. Rice went up to the tenth floor, dragged
one of the men into the elevator and took him
to the first floor. There, an assistant manager
called the police, but Rice's "prisoner" escaped
back to the tenth floor, only to come down again
shortly thereafter in the company of four others
armed with submachineguns and wearing party
masks. The gunmen yelled, "Step back," forced
their way through the kitchen, jumped into a
waiting car and sped away. The police arrived
as they were leaving, gave chase, and arrested
the men only seven blocks from the hotel.
The officers were in for a surprise. So was
hotel manager Rice. Another hotel guest walked
up to him and said, "I'm from the Defense
Department. We owe you an apology. We'll pay
for any damage." The gunmen told the police
the same thing: "We're with the Defense
Department."
That wasn't entirely untrue. The men were
officers of the Australian Secret Intelligence
Service (ASIS), Australia's CIA. The ruckus-from
smashing the door to threatening hotel personnel
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with machineguns-was part of a bungled "training
exercise" authorized by ASIS director John Ryan
himself, and carried out in collaboration with the
military. Two men in the hotel room were to
be the "hostages" in the ASIS exercise, while the
others were to free them, according to the game
plan, using "subterfuge and deception." Instead,
they came in with sledgehammers. When hotel
manager Rice interrupted the exercise, the ASIS
officers tried to escape without exposure, holding
the hotel staff at gunpoint.
The "Night of Sledgehammer Spies" (Sydney
Morning Herald), November 30, 1983, was in
Australian media headlines for weeks. ASIS head
Ryan and Prime Minister Bob Hawke were hard
put to find an explanation. Public and media
criticism was rough. "The fundamental point to
grasp about ASIS is that it exists to break the
civil and criminal law. Its operatives are trained
to persuade, spy, intercept, bribe, blackmail, steal
and no doubt kill, to achieve the functions of
the organization," opined a Sydney Morning
Herald writer.
The question remaining for Australians is
whether there was more to the operation than
has been admitted. The Canberra Times reported
that the action was carried out by a new security
agency using ASIS as cover. This agency, to be
used in "extremely sensitive counter-terrorist
operations" is also said to have a "strike force"
capacity. Officially, ASIS has no such capacity.
In the past, elite police units and the Special Air
Service have had that responsibility. Nonetheless,
according to the National Times, ASIS itself has
participated in assassination operations in
Indonesia, and has armed and trained paramilitary
groups.
Many members of the Australian Labor Party
are demanding more and more loudly that ASIS-a
"cold war anacronism"-be abolished. But Labor
Prime Minister Bob Hawke will have none of that.
He is backed by a number of prominent Party
officials who had called for ASIS's abolition
before the Labor Party took power in March 1983,
but have now changed their minds. Even Bill
Hayden, now Foreign Minister, who is on record
as having said that ASLS has "not justified its
existence," has apparently had a change of heart.
After visiting CIA headquarters in Langley,
Virginia, in 1983, he proudly told journalists that
the CIA had praised "the quality of [ ASIS] work
and acknowledged that ASIS, in much work it
conducts in our region... was far superior to
anything they [the CIA] were able to achieve."
CIA and Afghanistan
The CIA's largest known ongoing covert
paramilitary operation continues to escalate.
According to Congressional sources, $20 to $25
million has been added to the CIA's annual budget
for aiding the Afghan rebels. This brings the
total annual CIA budget for Afghanistan up to
$120-125 million. (See Newsweek, 12/26/83.) &
Seychelles Blocks
Grenada-Style
Invasion
Thousands of miles separate the island nations of
Grenada in the Caribbean and the Seychelles in
the Indian Ocean, but these countries are
strikingly similar in certain ways. Both are
former British colonies with less than 100,000
inhabitants, which gained independence in the
mid-1970s. Shortly thereafter, both were taken
over by progressive governments: one headed by
Maurice Bishop, the other by Albert Rene.
But the similarities don't end there. For
years, both countries have faced external attacks
calculated to bring them back into the "pro-
Western fold." In Grenada, these attacks
culminated in the 1983 US invasion. Now there
are signs that a similar invasion was in store for
the Seychelles until the plot was uncovered by
that country's security services.
On December 5, 1983, the Seychellois
government released a statement detailing the
coup plot, which is said to have involved the
assassination of President Rene. This was to
create "panic and chaos" on the island. "We also
knew that they [the hired mercenaries] had
planned to attack the tracking station and kill
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certain American individuals in order to attract
the US to intervene militarily in a Grenada-style
invasion," the statement continued. (The
"tracking station" is a US Air Force facility which
has been operating there since 1967.) Such an
attack would have given Ronald Reagan a pretext
to send in the marines to "rescue" the Air Force
personnel.
According to the Seychellois government, the
operation was to be financed largely by Hong
Kong businesspeople anxious about the impending
reintegration of Hong Kong into the People's
Republic of China. The businessmen were said
to have been promised Seychelles passports and
land and business privileges in return for their
bankrolling of the coup. Some of the mercenaries
apparently were being trained in South Africa,
and "the recruitment of a larger group of
mercenaries" had already begun. According to
South African Commissioner of Police Johan
Coetzee, the South African government is
"investigating" the recruitment of the
mercenaries.
The December 1983 revelation of the attack
plan marks the second time in two years that the
government of the Seychelles has thwarted a coup.
In November 1981, some 50 armed mercenaries
coming from South Africa flew into the Seychelles
as "tourists;" their coup attempt was foiled by
Seychellois soldiers at the airport. The
mercenaries, including several former and current
South African intelligence officers and military
personnel, made their escape from the Seychelles
by hijacking a passenger plane back to South
Africa. Most of them were never tried there
despite South Africa's strict anti-hijacking laws.
(See "BOSS Gets Caught," Counterspy, vol.6, no.3.)
After the 1981 coup attempt, Seychellois
President Albert Rene denounced "attempts by a
group of foreign businessmen" to fund mercenary
operations to "turn Seychelles into a casino and
arms distribution center for the Indian Ocean."
These foreign businessmen apparently haven't
given up. 9)
"Free Trade" in
Human Organs
There is, it seems, a "shortage" of human organs
for transplant in the United States. More people
want and can pay for organs such as kidneys and
livers than there are people willing to donate
them for transplantation. Currently, either
family members donate organs for their kin, or
people can allow their organs, like eye corneas,
lungs, etc., to be removed after they die to be
made available to any medically suitable
recipient. This supply being insufficient, Dr. H.
Barry Jacobs of the chic Washington suburb of
Reston, Virginia has come up with a plan to meet
the "shortage." He would, for a commission,
arrange for the purchase of human organs,
beginning with kidneys, from those in financial
need here in the US as well as from "Third World
indigents." He would have these matched and
transplanted into waiting US recipients with the
cash or insurance coverage to pay for them.
Dr. Jacobs told the Washington Post that
having seen the poverty and the people dying of
starvation in Bangladesh on TV news one day, he
lamented "the waste of all those organs lying
there" and decided to set up the business.
The US Surgeon General's office informed
Dr. Jacobs in early 1983 that this business would
be legal, but that it might be inadvisable to
proceed. He is, however, going ahead and has
already set up a company, International Kidney
Exchange, which is incorporated in Virginia. He
expects that eventually the US government will
become one of his main clients, since-it would
want to reduce its expenditures on the
government's Medicare and Medicaid health
insurance programs by making kidneys available
to patients in need of continuing dialysis.
Currently, however, Dr. Jacobs faces a
boycott from the surgeons at US i.cspitals
certified to do such transplants. Some surgeons -
with the sponsorship of Congressman Albert Gore,
Jr. of Tennessee - are even attempting to outlaw
trade in human organs within the US. In a
conversation with this writer, Dr. Jacobs assailed
these surgeons as "monopolists" who are "violating
the Sherman Anti-Trust Act." He is determined
to proceed and to promote "free trade" in human
organs. 'Tree trade is what life is all about,"
he said firmly.
To circumvent his difficulties in the US, he
plans to begin with cash only transactions,
preferably outside this country. He says that he
is attempting to set up organ removal operations
(called "harvesting") in Third World countries.
The kidneys could then be transported to the
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waiting recipients in the US. He would prefer
the entire procedure, including transplantation to
the recipient, to be done in Third World countries
since it would be much cheaper. Presumably, he
also anticipates having more pliable surgeons
there.
The seller of the kidney would be given
written forms to sign, and a tape recording of
what is on them in case he or she is illiterate.
The money would be placed in an escrow account
payable upon removal of the organ.
There is already a shady and at least partly
illicit trade in human blood plasma and eye
corneas from some Third World countries to the
US, notably from Brazil. If Dr. Jacobs can
successfully set up his operations in the Third
World, it would institutionalize and legitimize
this trade. He might even get the support of
some governments eager to earn foreign
exchange - for instance, South Africa, Chile,
Guatemala and the Philippines, might welcome
him.
One can imagine US and Japanese and West
German businessmen such as those who now go
on sex tours to the Philippines and Thailand
coming back with brand new organs to boot. It
would save airfare to do it all on one trip. Some
governments might even set up Tax Free Organ
Export Zones, complete with hospitals, where the
poor could be housed for a few weeks, fed well
and cured of any diseases - particularly as Dr.
Jacobs insists that he will buy only healthy
organs. He also promises to obey all laws. He
will operate through lawyers and agents who will
manage the escrow accounts into which the
purchase moneys would be deposited. If these
agents procure organs, for instance, from gangs
who coerce the poor into selling them and who
pocket the money, that would be a problem for
the government and the agent.
Dr. Jacobs, who spent 10 months in jail and
whose license to practice medicine in Virginia
has been revoked because of fraud involving
Medicare and Medicaid, the US government's
health programs for the old and the poor
respectively, insists on legality, cleanliness and
competence. According to him the "donors" will
be exercising "pure choice" in the "free market."
Jonathan Swift's eighteenth century does not
seem so long ago after all. In response to tht
complaints of the rich that the Irish, then
numbering one and a half million, were breeding
too much and were thus responsible for their own
poverty, he wrote his famous satire, "A Modest
Proposal":
I have been informed by a very knowing
American... that a young healthy child well
nursed is at a year old a most delicious,
nourishing and wholesome food....
"I do therefore humbly [propose that
children of the poor] ....be offered for sale
to the persons of quality and fortune
throughout the kingdom, always advising the
mother to suck plentifully in the last month
so as to render them plump and fat for a
good table....
"I grant that this food will be somewhat
dear, and therefore very proper for landlords,
who, as they have already devoured most of
the parents, seem to have the best title to
the children."
Unfortunately, Dr. Jacobs' proposal is no
satire. His business represents one of the saddest
and most inhuman aspects of European history of
the last five hundred years, which in the search
for gold and profit led to the slave trade and to
colonialism. For instance, in 1875 Lord Salisbury
announced to his peers in the British Parliament:
"India must be bled," adding that the "lancet
should be directed to the parts where the blood
is congested or at least sufficient...." By his use
of surgical language Salisbury sought to create
the impression that there was enough or even
too much food in India. What use could the
people of India have for so much food - or two
kidneys each?
Lord Salisbury arranged for the export of six
million tons of foodgrains from India during 1876-
78. Six million people died of the famine that
resulted from that operation. A century of
bleeding later, Dr. Jacobs covets the organs in
the bodies wracked by hunger in Bangladesh and
elsewhere in the Third World. It will be, he
anticipates, "a very lucrative business." 0
Arjun Makhijani
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Features
U.S. Economic War
Against Nicaragua
John Cavanagh and Joy Hackel
Wars need not be fought exclusively with guns.
In the shadows of US-backed military aggression
against Nicaragua, the US government, banks and
corporations are waging a quiet yet devastating
economic war aimed at weakening, and eventually
toppling, the Nicaraguan government. The
Reagan administration is carrying out this
concerted campaign of economic sabotage in
order to assist what it labels the "forces of
moderation" - the Nicaraguan private sector -
elected in Chile in 1970, Richard Nixon issued a
crisp directive to his CIA director Richard Helms:
"Make the economy scream." As implemented
by Henry Kissinger' and his subordinates, that
policy of economic suffocation culminated in a
bloody coup that plunged Chile into a decade of
brutal military dictatorship and a deep economic
crisis which, since 1983, have provoked
widespread social insurrection.
which it claims is the strongest voice of
democratic pluralism for the Nicaraguan people.
Thus far, the US policy has exercised quite
another effect on the plurality of Nicaraguans.
By depriving the Nicaraguan government of most
external finance, and forcing it to divert scarce
resources to the military, the Reagan campaign
has weakened the Nicaraguan economy and sapped
funds from social and development programs.
Along with CIA aid to the contras, it has also
fueled a mass mobilization of the Nicaraguan
people to defend the revolution.
US-imposed economic
sanctions, according to the
Nicaraguans, deprived them
of $345 million in lost trade in
1981 alone.
US-imposed economic sanctions, according to
Nicaraguans, deprived them of $345 million
dollars in lost trade and loans in 1983 alone,
while US pressure internationally has resulted in
a loss of an additional $112.5 million in
multilateral loans since 1980.1
These sanctions, imposed by the United
States in clear violation of the Organization of
American States charter, are not without parallel.
When a left leaning president was popularly
Violating the most basic tenets of
international law and free trade, the United
States has unleashed a similar economic assault
on Nicaragua: slashing bilateral aid and trade
quotas; pressuring multilateral agencies to halt
loans to Nicaragua; and severely discouraging the
participation of US corporate investment and
bank loans. In short: economic war.
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Politicizing Aid and Trade
The victory of the Sandinista revolution in July
1979 posed a major foreign policy challenge to
the Carter administration. Carter's tactic
directly after the Sandinista triumph was to co-
opt, rather than overthrow, the revolution by
pumping aid into private sector companies. In
November of 1980, US policy toward Nicaragua
took on the task of forging new alliances within
Sandinista opposition forces. At this juncture, a
$75 million loan to Nicaragua was drawn up and
heavily lobbied for by the Agency for
International Development (AID).2 The program,
to be implemented in fiscal year 1981, slated the
money primarily for private sector organizations
with explicitly anti-Sandinista political objec-
tives: the Superior Council of Private Enterprises
(COSEP), FUNDE (an anti-government alternative
to the Sandinista Organization of Cooperatives),
and the American Institute of Free Labor
Development (AIFLD), which frequently clashes
head-to-head with Sandinista unions.3
Ronald Reagan's victory over Carter was felt
by Nicaraguans immediately after the January
1981 presidential inauguration. The incoming
Reagan administration moved swiftly to clamp
down on the Nicaraguan economy. Several days
after Reagan took office, he suspended most
forms of US assistance, with the exception of
the portion of the $75 million AID program still
to be dispersed.4
By April 1981, on the pretext that Nicaragua
supported "terrorism" by supplying arms to
Salvadoran guerrillas (and thus by law was not
eligible for US economic assistance), the Reagan
administration severed the remainder of its
bilateral aid. Simultaneously, Reagan cancelled
$9.8 million of previously authorized Public Law
480 ("Food for Peace") food credits for the
purchase of wheat, effectively cutting off
Nicaragua's supplies of bread and noodles.5 Since
private grain traders and generous PL 480 food
loans had successfully driven Nicaragua's annual
grain imports (mainly from the United States)
from 21,000 tons in 1955 to over 10 times that
amount by the late 1970s, the embargo hurt.6
Ironically, the same day as the grain cutoff, the
State Department, unable to produce any
evidence of its previous claims, announced that
Nicaragua had "virtually halted all flow of arms"
to the Salvadorans.
The Reagan administration quickly moved on
other battlefronts. Nicaragua was banned from
government programs which promote US foreign
investment and trade, such as the trade credits
of the Export-Import Bank, and the insurance of
US investments offered by the Overseas Private
Investment Corporation.?
Sugar Quota Slashed
Extending the economic straightjacket to trade,
Reagan slashed Nicaragua's quota of 59,000 tons
of sugar exports to the United States for fiscal
year 1983 by 90 percent to 6,000 tons.8 The
reduction equalled $15.6 million in export
earnings in a period of severe shortage of foreign
exchange for Nicaraguans.9 Although new sugar
markets have been secured, primarily in Algeria
and Iran, the Sandinistas receive only 6 cents per
lb. for sugar which Nicaragua could have sold to
the United States for a preferential price of
17-22 cents per lb.12 Arguing that the United
States had violated its commitment to free trade,
Nicaragua filed a formal complaint under the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
Administration officials in the United States
claimed, "we haven't eliminated it [the sugar
quota], we have just adjusted it."13 They
acknowledged the sole reason the United States
didn't totally rescind Nicaragua's quota was due
to the requirements of GATT, which stipulate
that importing countries utilizing quota systems
must maintain "equity" among exporting nations.
Ironically, the quota cutback punished Nicaragua's
private sector, which controls 50-60 percent of
the sugar sector and 60 percent of the economy
overall. Nicaragua's largest private sector sugar
firm formally protested the cutback as a severe
penalty on its operations.
While the United States extended the
economic squeeze to trade, Nicaragua responded
by diversifying its commercial partners. In 1983,
10 percent of its exports were bound for entirely
new markets in the Middle East and Northern
Africa. European nations have increased their
exports to Nicaragua, most notably France and
Spain. Mexico estimated it would export $100
million worth of manufactured goods to Nicaragua
in 1983 and planned to boost this figure by 25
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percent in 1984. In the process, Mexico has
replaced the United States as Nicaragua's primary
trading partner. (Imports from the United States
dropped from 30 percent of Nicaragua's total
before the revolution to 16 percent in 1983.)14
Selective Lending
Pressure from the United States has spread the
financial blockade of Nicaragua into institutions
whose charters explicitly prohibit political
criteria from entering into decision-making - the
multilateral lending organizations. In 1979, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) flagrantly
violated this ban on politics by directing a $66
million loan to the Somoza dictatorship just nine
weeks before its downfall.15 Barely a trace of
the $66 million, thought to be one of the most
ill-advised loans in IMF history, remained in
When the Nicaraguan
government announced
plans to market bananas on
its own ... the president of
Standard Fruit threatened to
"bury" Nicaragua's bananas
by "flooding the market"
with their own fruit.
international agencies such as the IMF?
Nicaragua's "adjustment policy,". in stark contrast
to the adjustment program which the IMF would
seek to impose, gives primacy to social and
economic objectives which actively promote a
reapportionment of power and wealth. Rather
than following the Fund's directives to "reassure"
the private sector, Nicaragua's economic
program
? opposes across the board devaluation of
the cordoba, while implementing a system of
differential exchange rates to provide incentives
to specific export sectors; and
? imposes a 50 percent tax on non-
essential imports such as luxury consumer goods.
With IMF funding clearly out of the picture,
the Reagan administration has extended the
economic blockade of Nicaragua into the two
other major multilateral lending organizations:
the World Bank and the Inter-American
Development Bank. While in 1979, Nicaragua
received $179 million from these two institutions,
with prospects for an an additional $149 million,
forthright pressure from the Reagan adminis-
tration cut the figure to $30 million in 1983.17
When President Reagan ordered the United
States to vote against any loans to Nicaragua
from these two institutions this past summer, he
was only articulating what had already become
unofficial policy. Nicaragua has not received one
cent from the World Bank since January 1982,
when the sole dissenting vote of the United States
was unsuccessful in attempting to block a $16
million loan to finance low-income neighborhood
improvements and storm drainage.18 In February
of 1982, the World Bank's upper management
circulated a Country Program Paper which
proposed the immediate suspension of all Bank
assistance in the areas of:
? water supply - even though the report
notes that only 34 percent of the rural population
Nicaragua's Central Bank when Somoza fled the
country. As an additional hardship for the
Sandinistas, they were required to repay the loan
immediately since Somoza's officially proclaimed
budget deficit for 1979, as reported to the IMF,
was based on incorrect, concocted figures.
Since Somoza's overthrow, the US Executive
Director of the IMF has led the campaign to
demand such harsh conditions on any loan to
Nicaragua that the two have never come close
to an agreement. Meanwhile, every other country
on the Central American isthmus has received
substantial loans from the IMF over the past two
years.16
What economic program has Nicaragua
pursued that has so outraged and alienated
14 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
has access to safe water;
? education - while the report acknowl-
edges a high demand for education, the cutoff
ended a $40 million loan to support the literacy
campaign;19 and
? rural roads.
In the areas of agriculture, industry and
energy, where projects had already been
developing, programs were indefinitely delayed.20
The Country Program Paper acknowledged:
"Nicaragua has handled its external obligations
responsibly and in spite of continual foreign.
exchange constraints met debt payments
punctually." The Paper also noted that the
Nicaraguan government has targeted the very
projects terminated by the proposed World Bank
freeze as vital to the recovery of the Nicaraguan
economy. Thus, the shutoff of Bank funding was
clearly part of the conscious undermining of the
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Sandinista economic program.
Within the Inter-American Development
Bank, a similar scenario has been repeated, with
the United States, on numerous occasions, beingg
isolated in voting against loans to Nicaragua. 21
In July 1983, the United States blocked the
release of $2.2 million from the IDB to Nicaragua,
overriding the endorsement of a project by all
the other 42 bank members. The funds were to
be used to complete a road project which the
United States had endorsed during Somoza's rule.
Economic "Hit List"
The campaign to ostracize Nicaragua within the
IDB is far from covert. The Wall Street Journal
has reported that, according to a recent study
ordered by Congress, the Reagan administration
targeted Nicaragua on a "hit list" (to use the
Administration's own terminology) in 1981, along
with four other left-leaning governments. The
United States has acted to prevent the countries
on the "hit list" from receiving funding from the
IDB and other international lending institutions.
The financial squeeze implemented by the
United States has brought ever increasing
pressure to bear on private banks lending to
Nicaragua. The repercussions have been
significant since the influence of American bank
lending in the area is weighty - US banks
contribute to over 40 percent of bank lending to
the Caribbean Basin countries, and in early 1983,
US bank exposure in Nicaragua totalled $404
million.
When Somoza fled Nicaragua in 1979, he
saddled the new government with $1.6 billion in
private debt, approximately half of which was
owed to commercial banks. In the wake of the
Sandinista's 1979 victory, Nicaragua promised to
repay Somoza's debts, and private banks pledged
to keep loans flowing. Under heavy pressure
from the US government, however, only a paltry
$11 million in new private bank loans have
reached Nicaragua since 1979, and these loans
were only 90-day credits.
The Reagan administration has moved on a
variety of fronts to sever the line of commercial
credit to Nicaragua. US bankers were
substantially deterred from lending to Nicaragua
by the governmental "Inter-Agency Country
Exposure Review Committee," which prepares the
US classifications on developing countries that
receive loans from US banks. In early 1983,
despite Nicaragua's full and prompt payment of
its debt service, the committee downgraded the
country's status from "sub-standard" to
"doubtful."22 A recent study by the prestigious
business organization, the Group of Thirty, found
that some bankers believe these ratings to be
less than fully objective: "An assertion made by
several commercial banks was that U.S.
supervisors were politically influenced by the
State Department in their assessment of claims
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held on sovereign borrowers by American
banks."2 3
Banana Diplomacy
United States corporations are playing an
important role in supporting the economic
embargo. In October of 1982, with the
enthusiastic support of the Reagan State
Department, Standard Fruit (the banana
subsidiary of Castle & Cooke), the sole buyer of
Nicaraguan bananas, abruptly pulled out a five-
year contract which it had signed with the
Sandinista government in 1981.24 When the
Nicaraguan government announced plans to
market bananas on its own, with shipments
scheduled for England, Holland and France, the
president of Standard Fruit threatened to "bury"
Nicaragua's bananas by "flooding the market"
with their own fruit.25 Despite the threats, since
October of 1983 and declared they would blow
up all incoming vessels. New vessels have been
chartered to carry crude, and Exxon continues to
refine petroleum within Nicaraguan borders.
Disrupting Nicaraguan oil shipments could deliver
a severe, disabling blow to the economy.
Nicaragua is presumed to have only a one or two
month oil supply on hand, and more than one-
third of the country's total export earnings are
reserved to purchase oil. Currently, Mexico
supplies virtually all of the oil imports - which
amount to $225 million per year - at a less than
market rate through a long-term credit
arrangement.
Funding Economic Destruction
Perhaps the most unabashed component of the
United, States campaign to undermine the
Nicaraguan economy is its generous funding of
and collaboration with contra forces who are bent
on destroying Nicaragua's infrastructure.
According to Nicaraguan government estimates,
Ronald Reagan's victory over
Carter was felt by
Nicaraguans immediately
after the January 1981
presidential inauguration. The
incoming Reagan
administration moved swiftly
to clamp down on the
Nicaraguan economy.
Standard Fruit's pullout, the Nicaraguan state-
owned company Embanco has marketed more than
four million boxes of bananas, reaping $35 million
in precious foreign exchange.26
Even more recently, Exxon, which owns the
largest single foreign investment in Nicaragua -
the oil refinery in Managua27 - refused to
transport. petroleum from Mexico to Nicaragua.28
The refusal followed a dramatic escalation in the
campaign of economic sabotage being carried out
by the contras, the rebels financed and advised
by the CIA. Contra forces launched five major
attacks on oil installations during September and
16 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
between May 1981 and October 1983, the total
material damages caused by the Nicaraguan
contras exceeded $1 billion. The rebels have
concentrated their major attacks on key
Nicaraguan economic facilities. In addition to
the attacks on oil installations, the contras have
strafed the strategic bridge at the Pacific, port
of Corinto over which most foreign trade
passes.29
The United Nation's Food and Agriculture
Organization had singled out the Jalapa Valley
as a prime site for agricultural development
projects, yet consistent raids by the contras have
stalled initiation of the projects.30 Contra
attacks have disrupted the coffee and cotton
harvests and paralyzed land transportation by
blockading the Pan American Highway -
Nicaragua's only major international thorough-
fare - simultaneously on the Costa Rican and
Honduran borders.31 The contras act upon the
knowledge that Nicaragua's economic base
revolves around less than a dozen critical
installations. A series of strategic blows at
targeted pipelines, bridges, refineries and border
crossings could seriously undermine the
Nicaraguan economy.
It is telling in this case that the Reagan
administration has totally disregarded the
rhetorical free trading underpinning of its foreign
economic policy. The United States is currently
waging an economic war against a nation which
it labels "Marxist," but the majority of whose
economy remains in private hands. The US State
Department encourages corporations to pull out
of Nicaragua, even though the Sandinistas have
passed a foreign investment code that is favorable
to foreign corporations. Whereas Somoza had
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insisted upon 50 percent Nicaraguan ownership of
all foreign investments, Nicaragua currently
allows foreign investors to own 100 percent of
operations in several sectors.32 Cognizant of
the potential negative effects of foreign
investment, an official of the International
Directorate of the Sandinista Front proclaimed
that the code would be applied in a way that
"will strengthen Nicaragua's currency, broaden
our commerce throughout the world, and combat
unemployment."33
The actions of the United States against
Nicaragua have been denounced by nations such
as Mexico and Venezuela as clear violations of
the Organization of American States charter.
The charter prohibits members from utilizing
coercive economic measures to gain advantage
from other states or to stifle a nation's economic
growth.
A growing number of North Americans are
also expressing opposition to the US policy.
Hundreds of US citizens have been flying to
Nicaragua to spend time on the border with
Honduras where most of the contra raids
originate. Others have entered the country with
international coffee picking brigades which, in
addition to their small contribution to the
economy, represent a strong show of solidarity
with the Nicaraguan people. R
7) Center for International Policy, International Policy
Report, March 1983.
8) New York Times, May 11, 1983.
9) Washington Post, May 10, 1983.
10) Multinational Monitor, June 1983, p. 5.
11) Washington Post, May 12, 1983.
12) Multinational Monitor, June 1983, p. 6; and
Washington Post May 10, 1983.
13) Washington Times, April 4, 1983.
14) Financial Times, September 5, 1983.
15) Center for International Policy, op? cit., p. 11.
16) Ibid.
17) Christian Science Monitor, December 6, 1983.
18) New York Times, February 3, 1983.
19) Center for International Policy, op? cit., p. 10.
20) World Bank, Country Program Paper: Nicaragua,
February 16, 1982.
21) Washington Post, July 30, 1983.
22) Mark Hansen, "US Banks in the Caribbean Basin:
Towards a Strategy for Facilitating Lending to Nations
Pursuing Alternative Models of Development," paper
prepared for conference of Policy Alternatives for the
Caribbean and Central America (PACCA), October 1983.
23) Ibid.
24) Guardian, January 19, 1983.
25) Ibid.
26) Guardian December 8, 1982.
27) New York Times, December 8, 1982.
28) Washington Post, October 15, 1983.
29) Washington Past October 6, 1983.
30) Institute for Food and Development Policy, Food
First News, Winter 1983.
31) Washington Past October 6, 1983.
32) New York Times, December 8, 1982.
33) Multinational Monitor, March 1983, p. 21.
T" ""'TAN
COMMISSION ON
CENTRAL AMERICA rAN OFFERS TI I REGION NODE
FOR P~M
Footnotes
1) Christian Science Monitor, December 6, 1983.
2) David Landes, "Bilateral Economic Aid Policy," Paper
prepared for conference on Policy Alternatives for the
Caribbean and Central America (PACCA), October 1982,
p. 8.
3) Jeff McConnell, "Counterrevolution in Nicaragua:
The US Connection," Counterspy May-June 1982, p. 16.
4) Ibid., p. 15.
5) New York Times, February 12, 1982.
6) Joe Collins, What Difference Could A Revolution
Make? (San Francisco, 1982.
Political cartoons and graphics for
your publication
For a free sample contact-
Estelle Carol and
Bob Simpson
2501 N. St. Louis St.
Chicago, IL 60647
(312) 227-5826
Counterspy - March-May 1984 - 17
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Klaus Barbie and Robert Verbelen
The U.S. Government,
.Nazis and the Vatican
Konrad Ege
Through its August 1983 report, "Klaus Barbie
and the United States Government," the Reagan
administration had hoped to lay to rest the sordid
matter of US intelligence agencies knowingly
hiring Nazi and Gestapo officials after World War
IL The report concluded that the US Army's
Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) had indeed hired
former Gestapo official Klaus Barbie immediately
after the war, and that US officials had misled
the French government by not informing it that
Barbie was in West Germany working for the
CIC. (See "Klaus Barbie: Global Nazi,"
Counterspy, vol.7, no.4.) The report, authored
by Justice Department official Allan Ryan,
recommended that the US "express to the
government of France its regret for its
responsibility in delaying the due process in the
case of Klaus Barbie."
Now the Justice Department has been forced
to look into another case of US intelligence
agencies hiring a former high-ranking SS officer
in Belgium, Robert Jean Verbelen, a man who
was sentenced to death in absentia for war crimes
Instead, they gave him a 5,000 schilling
compensation and discharged him. Verbelen, who
now lives in Vienna, claims that he was offered
the chance to come to the United States, but he
preferred to stay in Austria to work for that
country's intelligence service.
Hiring Nazis for National Security Reasons
With the Klaus Barbie report as ' a model, it is
unlikely that the Justice Department
investigation into the Robert Jean Verbelen case
will disclose many details about Verbelen's hiring
and his activities as a US intelligence operative
in Vienna. In fact, while widely praised in the
US media as an honest and decent example of a
government admitting a mistake, the Barbie
report could be used in defending Verbelen and
the officials responsible for his hiring. In the
report, the Justice Department declares that "the
by a Belgian court in 1947. By that time,
Verbelen was safe and sound in Austria, working
for US intelligence. The charges brought against
him in Belgium-which Verbelen denied-include
having tortured two US Air Force pilots who had
been captured in a farm house.
In Austria, Verbelen served the United States
in anti-Soviet operations, using a variety of
aliases. Verbelen says the aliases were provided
to him by US officers. According to declassified
Hundreds of war criminals
made it to the US itself, or
were recruited for a "covert "
war against the Soviet Union.
and heavily censored Army documents, some
f
Army o
ficers were unaware of Verbelen's past
and did not know his real name. In 1956, Verbelen
complained to his superiors that he had been
"unable to carry out his work" because of
surveillance by Austrian police; in the ensuing
conversation, his real identity became known.
The Army officers did not arrest him,
however, nor did they extradite him to Belgium.
18 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
decision to use Barbie was a defensible one, made
in good faith by those who believed that they
were advancing legitimate and important national
security interests." What author Ryan criticized
was only that US officials lied to the French
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government after France had demanded Barbie's
extradition so that he could be tried in France
for murdering and torturing anti-Nazi resistance
fighters while a Gestapo officer in Lyon.
The US officials responsible for hiring former
SS officer Verbelen could also defend their
actions by pointing to another statement in the
Klaus Barbie report: "There can be... no
meaningful or enforcable regulation to define
whom intelligence agencies may and may not use
as informants. The very nature of intelligence
gathering abroad requires the use of informants
and it would be grossly unrealistic to require that
they be subject to the same standards of
character... that are required for... civil or
military service with the United States
government."
The Klaus Barbie Report
The Justice Department report on Barbie has
been a boon for the US government. The media
gave it favorable attention, yet at the same time
it provides a blanket ideological justification for
US intelligence agencies to hire virtually
anybody-including someone like Verbelen, a man
accused of having tortured US Air Force pilots.
With regard to the facts of the Barbie case,
the Justice Department report makes apologies
for the US officials involved in the Barbie hiring
and the subsequent coverup. For instance, Ryan
claims that the Counter Intelligence Corps was
unaware that Barbie was a suspected war criminal
when he was put on the US payroll in 1947.
There is considerable evidence to the contrary.
? As a former Gestapo and SS officer,
Barbie was (as was Verbelen) in an "automatic
arrest" category after the war;
? The French government had submitted a
statement to the United Nations War Crimes
Commission as early as August 1944, charging
Barbie with "murder and massacres, systematic
terrorism, and execution of hostages;"
? Barbie was listed as a war criminal
suspect in the Central Registry of War Criminals
and Security Suspects (CROWCASS) of Supreme
Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force as early
as 1945; and
? The Counter Intelligence Corps' own
Central Personalities Index listed him as the head
of the Gestapo in Lyon. Ryan writes: "There
was no evident concern over Barbie's Gestapo
background or any of his wartime- activities."
When the Counter Intelligence Corps realized
in 1950 that they might not be able to protect
Barbie from extradition to France for much
longer, they decided to arrange for his travel to
South America. CIC provided him with a false
passport made out to "Klaus Altmann" and placed
him in the so-called "rat line." This rat line, an
underground railroad for Nazis and their
supporters, was organized by Monsignor Krunoslav
Dragonovich, a Croatian priest in Rome. A CIC
detachment in Austria had worked with
Dragonovich for several years to help "defectors
and informants who had come from the Soviet
zone or Soviet bloc countries" to go to South
America.
The CIC knew perfectly well what kind of
man Dragonovich was and what kind of people
he assisted. A CIC report quoted by Ryan states
that Dragonovich "is known and recorded as a
fascist, war criminal, etc." Dragonovich was
primarily interested in providing travel
opportunities for other Croatians whom Ryan
describes as "Croatian riationaliSts fleeing from
the Yugoslav authorities." These "nationalists"
were Croatians who had collaborated with the
Nazis, and with Italian dictator Mussolini, who
had established the "Independent State of
Croatia" (formerly part of Yugoslavia). The
"nationalists" who ran that state rivaled the Nazis
in brutality, and conducted pogroms against Jews.
They also massacred hundreds of thousands of
Serbs who happened to live in the "Independent
State of Croatia." (One of these Croatian
leaders, Andrija Artucovic, today lives in
California.) See NAZIS, pg. 22
Walter Ratiff
Another Nazi officer who, like Klaus Barbie,
was able to escape. to Latin America after
World War II is Walter R.auff, the man in charge
of the Nazi death trucks which were used to
kill tens of thousands of Jews. Each of these
trucks had an enclosed loading area into which
dozens of victims were pushed. The door to
the loading area was. then closed and the
engines turned on while the exhaust was
pumped into the loading area. The victims
died slow, agonizing deaths of asphyxiation.
Rauff was arrested by US troops in Italy
in 1945, but managed to escape from his
detention center. Then Rauff, in his own
words, "was helped by a Catholic priest to go
to Rome where I stayed for more or less 18
months, always in the convents of the Holy
See," i.e., the Vatican (New York Times,
1/26/84). Later, Rauff and his family moved
on to work for the Syrian government. In 1949,
he left Syria for Ecuador, and in 1958 went to
Chile.
Walter Rauff still lives in Chile, where he
is alleged to have collaborated with the
Pinochet regime. But justice may be about to
catch up with him. The Israeli government
has made a formal request for his extradition.
Counterspy - March-May 1984 - 19
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FWA051
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WHICH IT CA114 RELEASE TO THE PL'bL I C RE SUBJ' S Ei?iPLOYi4EkT
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ACQUITTED OF ALLEGED WAR CR Ii?iES BY AUSTRIAN COURT IST
STILL CONSIDERED MURDERER Ai1D TRAITOR BY BELGIANS. GP-3
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This message from US Army Headquarters Europe in Heidelberg to the Counter Intelligence Corps'
513th Intelligence Center in Oberursel, West Germany, indicates that Robert Verbelen's employment
with the United States government did not end in 1956, when he supposedly was dismissed from
his job with the CIC in Vienna. Heidelberg is asking Oberursel to check on Verbelen since
USDAO (?) in Brussels, Belgium, had received a query from a Belgian citizen about Verbelen
stating that he was a war criminal. The message from Heidelberg states that Verbelen is
"currently employed with the Embassy," apparently referring to the US Embassy in Belgium.
20 - Counterspy - March-tilay 1984
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SUM
MAY OE INFORMATION EJul,~ 1956
PREPARING OFFICE
Region IV, 66th CIC Group, APO 108, US AM 36583292
SUBJECT
VEBBELEU, Robert Jean (2)
CODE FOR USE IN INDIVIDUAL PARAGRAPH EVALUATION
OF SOURCE: OF INFORMATION:
COMPLETELY RELIABLE ..... A CONFIRMED BY OTHER SOURCES. I
USUALLY RELIABLE ... , . , e PROBABLY TRUE ......... I
FAIRLY RELIABLE ........ C POSSIBLY TRUE .......... I
NOT USUALLY RELIABLE .... O DOUBTFULLY TRUE ........ 4
UNRELIABLE ..... a IMPROBABLE ... ?
RELIABILITY UNKNOWN ..... IF TRUTH CANNOT BE JUDGED . . .
SUMMARY OF INFORMATION
d. At an unknown date SUBJECT became involved with the ISDAP (I so.
tianal Sosialistische Deutsche Arteiter Partei - Rational Socialist Germany
Workers Party). SUBJECT worked as a public speaker for the ISDAP and made a
amber of appearances in the Sport Eall in Liaberg nca, Germany. SUBJECT also
worked closely with the 6S and the 3D (Sieherheitsdienat - Security Service)
during the German Occupation of Belgium. SUBJECT was charged with the counter-
acting of the Resistance Movement within Belgium. SUBJECT stated that sev-
eral bomb attempts were made on him and that several times he was shot at
from ambush during this period. SUBJECT also states that he assisted his
brother, Peter Verbelen, to reach the Tree french Ibroes with whom the latter
fought until the and of World 1kr II0
e. Steen Belgium was liberated SUBJECT withdrew with the German
Ybrees leaving his if. and two (2) children behind. Unable to reach SUB-
JECT and take revenge on him, members?of the Resistance Movement murdered
$UBTh 7's family by throwing them out of the fourth (4th) floor window of
their hors.
f. In early 1946 SUBJECT was walking on the street in Vienna,
Austria, having arrived their approximately two (2) weeks earlier. SUBJECT
not an S8 General, new not specified, with whom SUBJECT had worked in Bel-
gium. the General aa3:ed SUBJECT if he wished to continue to fight against
communism. Upon receiving a positive reply the General confided that he
was in.contact with an American ' e and wculd recommend that SUBJECT also
be given employment.
oIaTRlsurloN
R- 0 4 7 1
1-asadgoarters 66th CIC Grou
s
I
-
egim
p
T
This secret US Army memorandum of July 11, 1956, written by the 66th Counter Intelligence
Corps Group and released under a Freedom of Information Act request illustrates how closely
former Nazi officers were collaborating with the US forces after World War H. It describes how
Verbelen was "recruited" for the US by a former SS officer Verbelen had worked with in Nazi-
occupied Belgium. The former SS General apparently recommended to the Counter Intelligence
Corps that Verbelen be hired after he had been assured that Verbelen was still interested in
"fighting against communism."
Counterspy - March-May 1984 - 21
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NAZIS, from pg.19
CIC paid Dragonovich to get Barbie and his
family to Bolivia, but Ryan asserts that "no other
case was found where a suspected Nazi war
criminal was placed in the rat line, or where the
rat line was used to evacuate a person wanted
by either the United States Government or any
of its post-war allies." Ryan took great care to
choose the phrase "post-war allies," since
Dragonovich, working with the CIC, had helped
hundreds of Nazi collaborators such as his
Croatian compatriots escape. These persons were
undoubtedly wanted by Eastern European
governments.
much larger scandal. He was just one of
thousands of Nazis whom the US government
recruited for the war against its new enemy, the
Soviet Union. To name but a few: the CIA set
up Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's general in charge
of espionage against the Soviet Union, to become
the head of West Germany's Bundesnach-
richtendienst (equivalent of the CIA); the US
hired Walter Schreiber, who had conducted
experiments on humans in Auschwitz, to develop
biological weapons for the U.S. Air Force. Later,
according to Le Monde Di lomatiue the US
arranged for. his travel to Argentina.
According to a September 1983 report in the
Evangelischer Pressedienst (Frankfurt), some
10,000 German war criminals made their way to
Latin America after World War II, often with the
The Justice Department
report ... provides a blanket
ideological justification for US
intelligence agencies to hire
virtually anybody - including
someone like Verbelen, a
man accused of having
tortured US Air Force pilots.
support of US intelligence and the Vatican.
Hundreds of war criminals made it to the US
itself, or were recruited for a "covert" war
against the Soviet Union. (See "CIA Hires N&,
Counterspy, vol.7, no.4.)
US government collaboration with Nat.
became routine practice after the war. The only
difference in the Barbie case is that the US got
caught. The US government has been forced to
investigate the Klaus Barbie case because Barbie,
unlike thousands of other Nazis the US recruited,
is finally going to stand trial in France for his
crimes against humanity.
Robert Jean Verbelen is unlikely ever to go
to court. His employer after World War II-the
US government-has taken good care of him. In
the Klaus Barbie report, Justice Department
official Allan Ryan intoned magnanimously that
Ryan also glosses over the involvement of
the Catholic Church in these cases, including
Barbie's. The Justice Department report never
mentions the 1947 State Department report
"Illegal Emigration Movement in and through
Italy" which calls the Vatican the "most
important" organization aiding the escape of Nazi
war criminals. Some 50,000 Nazi war criminals
were given Vatican passports, according to a July
1983 Mother Jones article about the connections
between the Vatican and US intelligence. (Ryan
was given the 1947 State Department report by
Charles Allen, who has exposed a number of Nazis
living in the US.)
Recruiting Nazis for Anti-Soviet Efforts
Ryan treats the Barbie case as an isolated
incident, and fails to place it in an historical
context. Barbie's hiring by the Counter
Intelligence Corps was only a minor part of a
22 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
"justice delayed is justice denied." For Verbelen,
it appears, the US government did more than
delay justice: it prevented justice from being
carried out altogether.
WOMEN SPEAK OUT:
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Bernadette Devlin McAliskey & Martha
McClelland on Ireland
Joan Coxsedge, M.P., on anti-nuclear
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$2.60 (Add $1.40 for overseas airmail).
Counterspy Magazine, PO Box 647, Dept. W,
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Spying on
Canada's Peace
Movement
Derek Rasmussen
While George Orwell's 1984 and the titillation of
fictional totalitarianism have enthralled the
media in Canada, real domestic repression in that
country is getting little or no attention. Given
that Canada's secret police, the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police (RCMP), spend thousands of
dollars a year cultivating an image of scarlet-
clad defenders of law and order, dashing about
on horseback, such disregard is hardly surprising.
If the media were interested, there would
be plenty to write about. The last year has seen
a large-scale police intimidation and subversion
campaign aimed at progressive elements of the.
Canadian peace movement to counter the rise of
popular resistance to the testing of US cruise
missiles in Canada and to the production of cruise
guidance systems by Litton Systems in Toronto,
Ontario. The police campaign has involved
metropolitan, provincial and military police
forces as well as the armed forces and the
Security Service (SS), the political arm of the
RCMP.
Two of the organizations targeted by the
police are the Alliance for Nonviolent Action and
the Cruise Missile Conversion Project; both use
tactics of nonviolent direct action and civil
disobedience. Here is a short chronology of
recent operations aimed at these groups.
? Early December, 1982: During the trials
of activists arrested at a civil disobedience
blockade of Litton Systems on November 11, word
is "leaked" to the press by the Crown Attorney
about a diary "linking" the Alliance for Nonviolent
Action and the Cruise Missile Conversion Project
with the Soviet intelligence agency, KGB.
? December 6, 1982: The owner of the
diary, student Ivan LeCouvie, who had
participated in the Litton protest, is watching a
movie at a cinema. At about 10:30 pm he goes
to the washroom, where police arrest him for
"attempted murder" (in connection with the
October bombing of the Litton factory in Toronto
by a group calling itself "Direct Action"), and
hustle him outside into a waiting cruiser. Several
police officers interrogate LeCouvie, a
claustrophobic, in a small room. They tell him
that they have an ironclad conviction, and that
he won't see the light of day for six years-unless
he tells them about the "Direct Action" group.
LeCouvie maintains his innocence throughout 12
hours of interrogation, and is released the next
day. The charges are dropped.
? December 8, 1982: The Crown Attorney
holds a press conference to show that LeCouvie's
diary mentions a trip he made to
Europe-including Moscow-which "proves" that
there is a "Russian connection" to the peace
movement. Within ten days of the press
conference, the offices and five homes of
members of the Cruise Missile Conversion Project
and the Alliance for Nonviolent Action are raided
by Metro Toronto police and the RCMP. They
stuff political and private papers into shopping
bags and confiscate them. Pretending to be
interested in a voice check, the police attempt
to get one of the more prominent activists, Kan
Hancock, to read a statement claiming
responsibility for the Litton bombing into a tape
recorder.
? Early April 1983: Fifteen members of
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the Cruise Missile Conversion Project are served
notices indicating that they are under police
surveillance.
? May 26, 1983: The Alliance for
Nonviolent Action and Third World solidarity
groups stage a protest against US Ambassador
Paul Robinson, 'who is to speak at the Royal
Military College in the city of Kingston. One
hundred protestors arrive that afternoon to find
the College declared a "National Defense Zone,"
and the entire city on military alert. The College
The last year has seen a
large-scale police
intimidation and subversion
campaign aimed at
progressive elements of the
Canadian peace movement
to counter the rise of popular
resistance to the testing of US
cruise missiles in Canada.
take a more active interest in the peace
movement in the fall of 1982, after the bombing
of a cruise missile component factory in Toronto.
Moxley, however, had begun infiltrating peace
groups in April 1982. He soon became a leader
of Students for Non-Violent Action at Ottawa's
Carleton University, and a key spokesperson for
the "Peace Camp" on Parliament Hill. Moxley
told the RCMP about marches, demonstrations
and civil disobedience actions and about their
participants; he also informed on individuals who
took part in actions he himself had
planned-including an attempted occupation of
the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill, and a protest
at the Ottawa office of Litton Systems.
A 30-year-old Carleton University com-
munications student, Moxley claims to have
served in the Canadian Armed Forces from 1970
to 1975, including a two year stint with the
peacekeeping forces in Cyprus. Between 1975
and 1977, he worked as a guard at Kingston
Penitentiary. After that, he says, he went to
school "off and on."
In an interview with the author, Moxley
claimed to have been recruited on December 10,
1981, by two RCMP officers who came to his
home. They had a search warrant and found 15
envelopes with the Solicitor General's official
letterhead on them. The officers threaten to
charge Moxley with theft. "But they came back
in a few weeks and said, 'We're not going to
charge you,' but they noticed that I was involved
dfI
is surrounded by barbed wire, military boats stand
off shore, 200 soldiers with live ammunition form
four lines of defense, along with troop carriers,
military police, Kingston police, provincial police
and a SWAT team. The chief of. military police
justifies this awesome display of force by
claiming to have uncovered a "Direct Action" and
Alliance for Nonviolent Action "terrorist plot" to
kidnap the ambassador.
RCMP Recruits a Spy
One month later, on June 30, 1983, an Ottawa
man active in the Alliance for Nonviolent Action
reveals to the press that he has been working as
an infiltrator for the Security Service of the
RCMP. Only days before this admission,
Solicitor-General Robert Kaplan (the highest
government official. responsible for the RCMP)
had assured the press that "no resources are
allocated for surveillance of the peace
movement.... No one is being planted in the
groups. No one is being asked to bring in
information."
According to Moxley, the RCMP began to
24 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
in El Salvador solidarity work and wondere i
would 'help' them."
Moxley says the RCMP officers explained to
him they "had good reason to believe that Cuban
intelligence officers were involved in the El
Salvador group in Toronto and maybe also in
Ottawa." They wanted him to feed the RCMP
information about this alleged "Cuban
connection," and picked Moxley as an informant
because they figured as an "ex-military, ex-prison
guard" he was "probably halfway on our side
anyway."
Working as an Informer
Moxley accepted, and began his work as an
informant. He had rather grandiose pretentions
about the significance of his work, claimirg that
he "cleared" an El Salvador solidarity group "of
any Cuban influence." Having established himself
with a radical image, Moxley was assigned to spy
on peace groups. As he portrays it, he was doing
these groups a "favor," and consistently refused
to accept money from the RCMP for his services.
"I didn't join the peace movement to work
for the RCMP; if anything, I joined the RCMP
to work for the peace movement.... I feel the
RCMP has the right to know if anything like
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espionage or violence is going on in a group." If
nothing was "wrong" with a peace group, Moxley
says generously, "I could give someone a clean
bill of health" and tell the RCMP to "leave them
alone."
In the fall of 1982, Andy Moxley joined an
Alliance for Nonviolent Action affinity group in
Ottawa, after participating in a nonviolence
training session. He then took part in the
November 11 (Canadian Remembrance Day) civil
disobedience blockade of the Litton cruise missile
component factory in Toronto.
Moxley was very conspicuous, wearing a
large, white neck brace. With Litton surrounded
by hundreds of riot police and mounted police,
there were many instances of police brutality
throughout the day, as 150 people blockaded the
factory. Moxley, one of approximately 75
blockaders arrested, was carefully handled. He
was placed, surely by no coincidence, in the same
jail cell with several prominent Alliance activists,
including a Toronto man targeted for surveillance
by the RCMP, Ken Hancock. "You're in," the
RCMP supposedly told Moxley later. "Ken
Hancock has seen you in jail; how much more of
a pro stance can you get? He's going to know
you're okay. We love that because we want to
know about Ken Hancock."
In fact, neither Hancock nor most Alliance
for Nonviolent Action activists ever trusted
Moxley. He was let out of jail that same day,
while his cellmates remained in for a day or days
longer. At the subsequent trial, all charges
against Moxley were dropped without explanation.
Why Did Moxley Quit?
Since the police have informed some members of
the Alliance for Nonviolent Action that they are
under surveillance and that their phones are
tapped, the police presumably knew that Moxley
wasn't trusted. Is this why he was allowed to
"quit" and go public? With all of the laws and
money at their disposal, the RCMP could probably
have bribed or otherwise pressured Moxley to
remain silent. Some activists suspect that the
RCMP Security Service decided to allow him to
"come out" for the purpose of lulling them into
complacency and perhaps allowing more
convincing infiltrators or provocateurs to subvert
or discredit the Alliance for Nonviolent Action
and other groups.
The lesson should be caution. The peace
movement has nothing to hide, but a reckless
remark over the phone may still send someone
to jail. The RCMP Security Service has shown
it is not above splicing tape and framing
dissidents.
In this regard, the RCMP is living up to its
history. It was originally formed in 1920 as a
counter-revolutionary force in response to the
post-World War I labor radicalism that swept
across Canada (see Bryan Palmer's research in
Our Generation Journal, vol.14, no.4). Earlier,
the RCMP's predecessor, the Royal North-West
Mounted Police, had managed to infiltrate every
important revolutionary organization in western
Canada, often capturing positions of leadership.
Moxley's activities are nothing new and
neither is repression; it has been around for many
years. Perhaps this is what George Orwell meant
when.he attempted to entitle his book 1948. His
publisher overruled him and demanded that he
reverse the last two numerals in his title. If
the attempted title had been 1949, perhaps most
North Americans would have been content to wait
another ten years before looking for the
repression that has been with th ;n all along. c)
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sample copy to:
WREE, 130 E. 16 St., NYC 10003.
Counterspy - March-May 1984 - 25
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Interviews
Terrorism in Miami:
Suppressing Free Speech
Demonstrators are shot at.
Churches and meeting halls are
firebombed. Thousands of people
are terrorized into silence. This
time it's not in El Salvador or
Guatemala, but in Ronald
Reagan's own backyard: Miami,
Florida. Cuban and Nicaraguan
exile organizations there have
made it impossible for some pro-
gressive organizations, such as
Miami's solidarity network,
LACASA (Latin American and
Caribbean Solidarity Association),
to work openly. Cuban-American
groups advocating the establish-
ment of diplomatic relations with
Cuba have been effectively
silenced.
In a December 1983 inter-
view, a LACASA member de-
scribed the direct and indirect
support Miami's leading poli-
ticians, the police department,
the Republican Party in Florida,
and the White House have given
such terrorism.
There will be statements on some
of the Spanish-speaking radio
stations and editorials against
LACASA. This campaign will
accelerate until close to the
event. At times there have been
death threats.
In one instance, in April
1983, when we planned a demon-
stration protesting the deporta-
tions of Salvadoran refugees,
Omega 7, a Cuban terrorist group,
had a statement read over the
radio. It said that Omega 7 was
not going to allow LACASA to
have a demonstration in Miami,
and that if we demonstrated,
people would get hurt and people
would get killed. Omega 7, you
should know, has been declared the
most dangerous terrorist group in
the United States by the FBI.
disrupt it.
It's not just Cubans anymore
who are attacking us. The
Nicaraguan ex-National Guard had
to go somewhere after the
Sandinista revolution in 1979, and
I think a considerable portion of
them came to Miami.
So there were about 60 men.
They chanted, shouted and yelled,
"Viva, Reagan" and "Traitors," and
"Communistas" to us. Our spokes-
person, a Vietnam veteran, was
trying to read his statement to the
press. They pushed him, grabbed
his speech from him and would not
let him read it.
The police told us that we had
to leave because they couldn't
guarantee we were going to be
protected. Assistant City Manager
Cesar Odea, who was there,
claimed that we had provoked the
crowd: "It's like waving a red flag
at a bull. It's another provocation
against the Latin community."
Here was a city official
stating that we didn't have the
right to be there, that we should
be "sensitive" to the Cuban
community, instead of ordering the
police to protect us.
What happens when LACASA
sponsors an event protesting
Reagan's policies?
Any time elements in the Cuban
community in Miami find out that
LACASA is planning an event,
they start working against it.
26 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
After the radio announcement,
what did you do?
We had a special meeting because
we didn't know if we could take
responsibility for people's safety.
We decided we couldn't have the
demonstration, and planned to have
a press conference instead at the
site of the demonstration. But we
couldn't even have a press
conference. About 60 Cuban and
Nicaraguan thugs showed up to
So these Cubans and Nicaraguans
basically broke up your press
conference?
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Miami, we feel, has been almost a test of
how to deal with public opinion....
The rightwing in Miami has demonstrated
that they can keep control of a progressive group
by using fascist tactics.
They broke it up and we were
escorted out of the park by the
police. At that time, a Cuban
exile with a high-powered rifle
fired his gun over the remaining
crowd. He had come late and did
not realize that we had left and
that he was shooting at his own
buddies. He was arrested im-
mediately and got six months in
jail, which surprised us all. That
is the only conviction that we know
of resulting from all the attacks
against LACASA. *
Another organization that has
suffered from these terrorist
actions is the Antonio Maceo
Brigade, an organization of young
Cuban-Americans that supports
normalization of relations with
Cuba. In November 1982, for in-
stance, the Brigade tried to hold
a press conference in the Columbus
Hotel in Miami. Bomb threats and
radio announcements forced them
to move it to a church. But the
mob followed, and attacked mem-
bers of the brigade in the church.
Brigade spokespersons were forced
to flee.
How can solidarity groups operate
in such a climate?
We have only one solidarity
)rganization in Miami and that's
JACASA. We cannot leaflet on
the street, we have a difficult time
renting facilities to show a movie
or have a speaker. We get new
members by one-to-one contact.
There's no college that supports us
because they are all either right-
wing or fearful of terrorism.
*Shortly after this interview took place,
the FBI arrested Eduardo Arecena, a
Cuban associated with Omega 7 in Miami
and New York. He is charged with having
produced the bombs used in ten attacks
in Miami from 1979 to 1983, and with
having been involved in several other
bombings in New York. The arrest of
Arecena and several of his accomplices
in late December 1983 won't be a major
blow to Omega 7. Arcena apparently is
a renegade member of the group.
Traditional ways that I see
solidarity groups working in other
parts of the country do not apply
to us. Our main purpose is for
the organization to stay alive, to
respond when things happen.
City Money for Terrorism
You mentioned the role of the city
administrator who criticized your
press conference. How does the
rest of the city government and
the police force respond to
harassment of your group?
They don't respond. You're talking
about a City Commission unlike,
probably, any other in the United
States. This Commission has de-
clared an El. Salvador Day in
support of the rightwing regime
there, and an Orlando Bosch Day.
Our mayor went to Caracas,
Venezuela, to plead for Bosch's
release from prison. Bosch was
convicted in connection with a
bombing of a Cuban airplane in
1976 which killed 73 people.
The City Commission has
pronounced Miami an anti-com-
munist city and tries to prevent
anyone from a Marxist orga-
nization from participating in con-
ferences in the city. The Com-
mission has also approved a
$10,000 grant to Alpha 66, a Cuban
terrorist organization. The money
was supposedly to be used to set
up an office to assist the Cubans
who came to the US in the Mariel
boatlift.
Is it possible to pinpoint the
organizations and individuals who
are harassing and terrorizing
progressive groups?
Yes. The most important groups
are Omega 7 and Alpha 66. Other
groups that encourage the
terrorism and actively harass
progressive groups are the Cuban
Patriotic Council; Abdala, another
Cuban group; the Nicaraguan
Democratic Front, made up mostly
of ex-National Guard people;
Brigade 2506; and the Cuban
American National Foundation.
Omega 7 is by far the most
deadly group to deal with. They
also operate in other parts of the
country. In September 1980, for
instance, they assassinated a
Cuban official at the United
Nations.
Brigade 2506 is made up of
veterans from the CIA-sponsored
invasion of Cuba in 1961.
Alpha 66 can get large
numbers of people to come out
against progressive events by
broadcasting the location of the
events over radio stations. They
have been quite successful in
disrupting meetings with very little
notice. Their members usually
don't hesitate to identify
themselves as Alpha 66. In July
1983, they broke up a film shown
by LACASA in a church. Later
that evening, the church was
firebombed.
Reagan and the Cubans
Has there been any federal
investigation of these incidents?
Supposedly. There have been very,
very few convictions, especially
when you think that there was a
three-month period in 1975 when
something like 75 bombs went off
in Miami. But that isn't really
surprising when you see the
president of the United States
coming down and addressing one of
these organizations.
Officially? Which one did he
address?
Brigade 2506. You see; the leaders
of Brigade 2506 are also leaders
in the Dade County Republican
Party. Reagan came down and told
these people at a rally, "We will
Counterspy - March-May 1984 - 27
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Florida Chronology
1981
Jan. 13 Bomb threat against Padron Cigars. The owner
had raised the ire of the Cuban exiles when
he was pictured in the Miami News handing
Fidel Castro a cigar during a talk about
prisoner release.
Sept. 25 A powerful bomb is found outside the
Nicaraguan consulate.
Oct. 29 Cuban and Nicaraguan exiles break up a press
conference of the Antonio Maceo Brigade.
Nov. 15 Little Havana bar is shot up by gunmen who
claim to be with Omega 7.
July 14 Alpha 66 announces it will kill Fidel Castro at
July 26 celebrations.
Sept. 11 The Nicaraguan consulate in Miami and the
offices of the Cuban-American magazine
Replica are bombed.
Sept. 12 The Mexican consulate is bombed; the bombing
is coordinated with a blast at the Mexican
consulate in New York City. Omega 7 calls
the bombings a "gift" to Mexico.
Oct. 13 Cuban and Nicaraguan exiles break up a debate
between Nicaraguan Ambassador Arturo Cruz
and the former US Ambassador to Nicaragua,
Lawrence Pezzullo. Several members of
LACASA are assaulted.
Dec. 30 Omega 7 bomb is found outside a Hialeah travel
agency which arranges trips to Cuba.
Dec. 30 The government of Nicaragua charges that
CORU, a Miami exile organization, set the
blast that injured five and destroyed a
Nicaraguan plane in Mexico City.
1982
Jan. 17 Violent Cuban-American demonstrations pro-
test the deportation of a Cuban refugee.
Feb. 19 Explosives found at the Trans Cuba travel
agency and at Replica magazine.
Feb. 22 Omega 7 attacks Padron Cigars and a Cuban-
American pharmacy in Hialeah doing business
with Cuba.
July 26 Cuban exiles in Miami demand that Venezuela
release convicted terrorist Orlando Bosch.
Sept. 2 Omega 7 bombs Venezuelan office in Miami.
Sept. 22 Mon Petit Lounge, a Little Havana bar, is
bombed.
28 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
1983
Jan. 12 Omega 7 bombs Padron Cigars.
Feb. 28 A bomb is found in the car of Rev. Espinoza,
the former leader of a church group involved
in dialogue with the Cuban government.
Mar. 29 Almacen El Espanol, a shipping agency dealing
with Cuba, is bombed.
May 2 A planned LACASA demonstration is called off
because of threats. Cuban and Nicaraguan
thugs break up a LACASA press conference.
May 11 Gaspar Jimenez returns to Miami from prison
in Mexico and gets a hero's welcome. He had
served time in prison for the attempted
assassination of a Cuban diplomat whose
bodyguard was killed in the incident.
May 20 Thousands of Cuban exiles line the streets to
show their support for Ronald Reagan. A
visitor to the city who refuses to participate
is beaten up.
May 21 City Manager Howard Gary's life is threatened
after he refers to Reagan as a racist.
May 28 Little Havana's Intercontinental Bank is
bombed by Omega 7, apparently because
Bernardo Benes, a bank official, has advocated
dialogue with the Cuban government.
June 13 The Socialist Workers Party bookstore is
firebombed following threats to members of
the organization.
July 30 A film showing by LACASA is threatened by
men identifying themselves as Alpha 66
members. A firebomb is thrown in a shed
adjoining the church. It causes extensive
damage.
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The rightwing Cuban groups ... are full of confidence
because they haven't been investigated,
they're able to operate ...
and they have the political power
in the Republican Party in Miami.
free Cuba." It was reminiscent of
what Kennedy told the same people
before the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Reagan continues to feed them
what they want to hear, and they
do things for him. They hold
counter-rallies to our rallies-
which is fine, they have every right
to do that. But when they hold a
rally and get a telegram from the
Reagan administration thanking
them for their support of the US
intervention in Central America,
and four days later, our rally is
broken up by Cuban thugs....
When you read about Reagan
going to Florida to speak to
"Hispanic businesspeople," it is
these Cubans he is talking to.
Most of the Latin population in
Miami is Cuban or Nicaraguan.
There are many other Latin groups
in Miami, but to implicate them
as being responsible for any of
these actions would be wrong.
Only a minority of Cubans and
Nicaraguans are active supporters
of terrorism, but the terror groups
have succeeded in intimidating
most of the Latin community into
silence.
The Republican Party
Are there other ties between the
Republican Party and the Cubans
that are involved in terrorist
organizations? -
Let me give you an example. When
Miami's Black city manager,
Howard Gary, criticized Reagan's
domestic policies last year, the
Cuban groups and the Republican
Party quickly made him sorry he
had spoken out. The Dade
Republican Party organized a huge
petition drive to demand Gary's
resignation.
Two individuals quoted in the
Miami Herald supporting the
petition drive were Santos Rivera,
the chairperson of the 1500-
member Florida delegation to the
Republican Hispanic Assembly, and
Carlos Salmen. Salmen was the
chairperson of the Reagan-Bush
campaign in Miami and also heads
the 500-member rightwing Cuban
American National Front.
Together with the petition
drive against Gary, death threats
started to come in. Gary had to
be put under 24-hour police
protection and a few days later he
had to apologize for making that
statement.
I think that incident
demonstrates the position the
rightwing groups are in. They've
been patted on the back by an
administration that supports what
they are doing. Reagan has come
to Miami, he's told them they're
doing a good job. They're full of
confidence because they haven't
been investigated, they're able to
operate, they've got a free hand
in the radio stations, and they have
the political power in the
Republican Party in Miami.
They've just gained momentum.
It's not as though bombs are
going off weekly, though there
were some bombings in 1983. But
there also isn't a strong pro-
gressive element in the community
any longer.
Yes. Back in 1978, a contingent
of Cuban-American businessmen,
church groups, and workers' and
community organizations wanted
normalization of relations with
Cuba. These people were quickly
terrorized into not making such
statements.
So the terrorism was quite
effective?
It was extremely effective. The
thing that concerns us is that these
attacks are no longer isolated in
the Cuban community as they were
in the early 1970s. First it was
against Cubans that spoke for
dialogue with Cuba or for
norrnalizat ion of relations. Then
it was against Cubans who spoke
against terrorism. One man,
Emilio Median, had his legs blown
off in a car bomb because he
editorialized against terrorism. So
the Cuban community has been
literally terrorized into silence.
Now we've! seen terrorist attacks
spread frorn being directed against
progressive Latin groups to being
aimed at other progressive groups
like LACASA.
Terrorism its Spreading
Do you see the rightwing
harassment and terrorism spread-
ing beyond Miami?
Miami, we :feel, has been almost a
test of how to deal with public
opinion. When the Reagan
administration takes its big hand
and goes around the world
squashing other governments, it's
got to worry about what people at
home are thinking. By silencing
groups that are speaking what they
feel to be the truth about Central
America, th'e administration is able
to keep 1 he facts from the
American people.
Right now, the administration
faces the early development of an
anti-war movement in this country
through the! solidarity networks.
The rightwing in Miami has
demonstrate4d that they can keep
control of a progressive group by
using fascist tactics.
I've hee.rd of more and more
similar instances in other places in
the country where you have exile
communities. People have been
attacked in New Orleans. A few
months ago, there was an attack
in Long Island. Last November a
woman was severely threatened in
Counterspy - March-May 1984 - 29
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INC : 2113957H FIELD REPORT I'NFCRMAT REPORT EA E
ii;x##n;.2.1 40411r, ##~# MODUS OPERANDI
PREMISE: 124 CATEGORY: 0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMENTS:
t; h;~Rn+ri#~#Rk# ####: NARRATIVE #.t
THESE OFFICERS RESPONDED TO THE ABOVE ADDRESS WHERE A PRO COMMUNIST FILM
WAS BEING SHOWER. THE FILM WAS TITLED "NICARAGUA UP FROM THE ASHES". AND
IT ATTRACTED A GROUP OF APPROXIMATELY 50 DEMONSTRATORS IN FAVOR O
DEMOCRACY WHO CHANTED SLOGANS CALLING THEM TRADERS. THESE OFFICERS SPORE:
TO THE LEADER 3 OF THE GROUP SHOWING THE FILM. WHITE MALE - AND BLAC;~
MALE ~. IWWM~ STATED THAT THE MOVIE 1N FACT WAS PPP
COMMUNIST AND I.-HAT HE HAD THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO SHOW IT.- THEE
OFFICERS ALSO OBSERVED, AS f:LACR MALE E STARTED TO SHOUT
OBSCENITIES AT THE CROWD, CALLING THEM "SONS OF BITCHES" AND ALSO SAID THAT
IF ANY CF THEM DARE SET FOOT INSIDE THEIR PROPERTY HIE WOULD SHOO THEM AS
HE SHOT A MAN i:;NCE BEFORE. HE IJENT ON TO SAY THAT HE HAD SHOT iisr SE OFF AND
THAI' HE I S MGT AFRAID OF DOING I T AGAIN. LA rE;ti ON HE S.TA rED THAT O-F : C _!t
GC.NZALEZ, HOMI CIDE UNIT IS- A SON CF A BITCH WHO TRIED TO FRAME HIM AND THAT
JANET REND "WA E A CUNT, AND THAT SHE TRIED CST HIM TG CO TO JAIL FOR 7G
`(EARS, AFTER Hi_ HAD KILLED A MAN, BUT SHE WAS l.'RONO BECAUSE HE BEAT THE RAP.
UPON ARRIVAL, THIS OFFICER CARMES O SFRVEC~ A =:C:VTE:T C :MM,JNIST FLAG BEING PUT
INSIDE A BLUE CUSTOMIZED VAN WHICH LEFT THE SCENE A FEW MINUTES LATER. THE E
OFFICERS WERE .ABLE TO OBTAIN NAMES AND ADDRESSES OF THEE LEADERS OF THE
This field report filled with the Miami Police Department illustrq.tes the way the police responded
when they were called on to protect LACASA members from rightwing Cuban "demonstrators,"
some of whom identified themselves as members of Alpha 66. The police were summoned to
St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church, where LACASA was showing a film, to stop Cubans from
throwing rocks, damaging cars and physically threatening people attending the event. Shortly
after the police left, a building adjoining the church was firebombed. Rev. Don Olson, pastor of
fit. John's Church,, later wrote to the police department: "In reading the enclosed report (INC:
2113937H), I note! many obviously erroneous and slanderous statements made by the person(s)
preparing the report. It appears to be highly prejudicial and filled with insinuations and
misquotations." Indeed, according to LACASA members who were present, virtually the entire
report is a fabricaition.
San Francisco. Her house was
ransacked, by people probably
associated with the FDN, a
Nicaraguan paramilitary group. So
we see the terrorism spreading to
other places.
What do you do to fight it?
We've gone back to basics in
Miami. We have established a
Committee for Free Speech. The
premise of the Committee is that
people have a right to free speech
and to assemble. That right has
to be reestablished in Miami. We
have not been successful in going
through the traditional judicial
channels. The Justice: Department
has not responded to a complaint
we filed. So we are gathering
more evidence.
We should be on the offensive
more. But it's hard because we
don't want any martyrs. And we
have come close to having martyrs.
What other groups are you pulling
in to broaden the Committee?
We have some individuals from the
American Civil Liberties Union,
although-and this is indicative of
the tone in Miami-the ACLU
would not even officially endorse
the Committee for Free Speech in
Miami. LACASA, Women's
International League for Peace and
Freedom, the Haitian Refugee
Center, the American Friends
Service Committee and Citizens
for a Nuclear Freeze are involved.
We don't have a whole bunch
of progressive groups, period, in
Miami. We got endorsements from
the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference and from Operation
PUSH in Miami, and we tried to
get groups from the Cuban
community.
We had a rally for free speech
on October 14 with about 400
people. There were a lot of
threats beforehand. We were all
afraid going out there, but it came
off well. We had State
See MIAMI, p.59
30 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
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Nelia Sancho-Liao
From Beauty Queen to
Political Activist
In mid-October 1983, Philippine
President Ferdinand Marcos was
greeted with an unprecedented
sight: Some 6,000 women of the
Philippine women's movement
marched down Manila's equivalent
of Wall Street to demand an end
to dictatorship. A week later,
8,000 women led a similar protest
past the US Embassy and through
Manila's tourist district.
These demonstrations, spark-
ed by the brutal assassination of a
leading Philippine opposition
leader, Benigno Aquino, were
testimony to how far the Philippine
women's movement has grown in
the few years since its birth. As
this predominantly Catholic nation
of 50 million bubbles up in social
upheaval, women seem to be
shouting, "Our voices will be
heard."
One of these determined
women is Nelia Sancho. A decade
ago, she was the idol of nearly
every young woman in the
Philippines; living testimony that a
little girl from a lower-middle
class Asian family could grow up
tc be an international beauty
queen. As "Queen of the Pacific,"
Nelia was a household word, a
celebrity, and a sign (some said)
of just how far the Philippines had
come.
Today, Nelia Sancho-Liao-
working woman, wife, mother, ex-
political detainee, social activ-
ist-is still a celebrity, but now for
a very different segment of
Philippine society. She stands as
one of the Philippine women's
movement's most prominent fig-
ures. In a society where it is not
uncommon to clothe little boys in
T-shirts blazoned "macho," where
sexist jokes are still more the norm
than the exception, and where a
veneer of strict Roman
Catholicism rules, Nelia has
become a very important symbol,
a sign that the transformation of
Philippine society is already
underway. Her journey to the
center of controversy in a country
now torn by social upheaval has
been a long one.
Let's start at the beginning. Tell
us something about your youth and
the conditions that you grew up in.
I would say we came from the
lower middle class, verging on
middle middle class. Our income
wasn't much. I had a struggling
father who was the main
breadwinner, working and studying
to be a lawyer at the same time,
and a mother who was a housewife.
She tried to supplement the
income; she took care of the
children; and she did the house
chores. And that's also a
description of the lives of most
women in the Philippines.
When you were young did you see
the inequalities between rich and
poor, men and women?
In terms of rich and poor, yes. In
'fact, it had a very striking effect
on me because that's one
characteristic of the middle class:
we know what is one step above
us and we know what's one step
below us. And I think that's
probably why we can be called
vacillating-sometimes we aspire
to the thing one notch above, and
sometimes we identify with the
people below us in income.
Had your upbringing encouraged
you to want to be a beauty queen?
Frankly, I was reared in a very
sexist way, really molded into
identifying with the stereotypical
roles of what girls should be and
what boys should be doing. It was
not just me or my family
specifically; it was the cultural
molding of Filipino girls and
women. Overall, we live in a
culture which subjugates women.
The media and our educational
system do not look down on beauty
contests. In fact, they really
glorify them, even to this day.
They will always show Miss
Universe or Miss International on
television. The government also
likes beauty contests very much,
and it even sponsored a Miss
Universe pageant in 1974 as a way
of drawing the tourists to the
country. My joining beauty
contests was perhaps just like what
other young girls in the Philippines
might be thinking: that they'd like
to have adventure, to experience
other things, to travel for free.
But you did enter college in the
late 1960s to study journalism?
Yes, I started college in 1968,
which was a time of ferment on
the campuses. But being middle
class and also being considered to
be a "pretty girl," my friends then
were mainly sorority girls coming
from upper-middle class back-
grounds. They could easily identi-
fy me as part of that circle since
I was a so-called "campus beauty."
This was a time when many of your
University of the Philippines
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The government's side of the story was
that since I was a beauty queen
and university student,
but I was now living among the poor,
I was a "subversive."
classmates were organizing some
of the largest student demon-
strations in Philippine history.
While all those things were going
on, I was just a detached observer.
Then, I started to ask myself, why
were the students demonstrating,
why were they getting themselves
so involved with broader issues,
and why were they willing to suffer
from truncheons and other police
brutality during , demonstrations?
My awareness grew because of the
atmosphere in the campus and
particularly, I think, because of the
subject I was studying: journalism.
I think that about 90 percent
of my journalism classmates were
analyzing the reality about them,
starting with the state of the
media in the country. They were
discussing what journalism is; is
there such a thing as objective
journalism; and, finally, ending up
pushing towards something you
could call "committed journa-
lism." The analysis was that we
have a media whose interests are
linked with a few business interests
and with the govern-ment's
interests. But, instead, what we
need is a kind of developmental
journalism that is committed to
the interests of the majority of
poor and oppressed people in our
country.
So, it mainly started out that
way, just a natural environment for
raising awareness. When martial
law was declared [by President
Marcos in September 19721, three
of my professors were detained for
their outspoken views about the
state of the media and its being
controlled by the interests of
business.
At the same time, you were
pursuing your "campus beauty"
career?
32 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
Yes, from 1968 to 1971, I got
myself involved in social
things-not social reality, but the
frivolous social life of "pretty
women." I was modelling and
entering beauty contests. In 1969,
I was first runner-up in the Miss
Philippines contest. And in 1971,
I won an international contest for
the Queen of the Pacific, after
which I was made to travel
around-New York, London, Paris,
Rome-which was also a good
experience.
Given your current involvement in
the Philippine women's movement,
it's hard to imagine you parading
around in a bathing suit. Did the
idea that women should not be
marketed as sex objects ever enter
your mind?
At the time that I won the contest,
the women's campaign about the
sexual exploitation of beauty
contests had not yet even started.
It was only around 1972 that I
heard of a women's
organization-probably the first
Philippine feminist organization
ever-called MAKIBAKA or
"Liberation Movement of New
Women." It was founded in 1970,
and it staged demonstrations
picketing beauty contests.
How was it that the Queen of the
Pacific decided to leave her
wonderland behind and eventually
ended up living and working in an
urban slum back home in the
Philippines?
The experience of being a beauty
queen itself and modelling
experiences in the previous years
taught me what it really meant.
I was able to see on my own that
beauty contests were part of the
problem. Women being exploited
as a commodity, a sex commodity.
I was not able to come to this
conclusion right away. I had to
feel it for myself, had to feel that
I wasn't taken for what I was as
a person, but for what I looked
like: simply a "pretty girl." I
could feel it when I tried to talk
to people about current events.
They would not take me seriously
and instead would talk in what they
call small talk.
It's what they all expect you
to do: small talk, smile, and look
pretty. I didn't like it. I didn't
like the way I was being treated.
At the same time, I also had
conversation with some foreigners
during my travels. That was a
surprising discovery for me: not
all people glorified beauty contests
as they do in the Philippines. In
America, the people I interacted
with at that time, well, they liked
beauty queens. But in Europe, I
met some very ordinary people,
and they said, "beauty
queen?" they didn't like it at all.
So, things started to dawn on
me, forcing me to start asking
questions and to be critical about
it. But still, I was not able to
form a very highfalutin analysis
about it.
Even the women's liberation
movement in the West is very
much distorted in our media. So
that does not help us at all in
raising our consciousness of the
legitimate issues of women's
liberation.
Yet, your consciousness grew.
How and when did you eventually
act on that new consciousness?
After one year, I decided on my
own to leave that life of "pretty
women." It was just a personal
decision, nothing to do with
politics. It was just the way I felt:
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Since foreign interests are so strong in our country,
the women's movement is striving
to end the abuse of our women and our society
by foreign corporations,
tourists and military interests.
that I did not like being treated
that way. I wanted to be
considered more for the capacity
or the potential that I had as a
woman and as a person, not just
by looking pretty and modelling
nice clothes. So perhaps that was
the start of my awareness, when I
decided to stop.
I went back to the university
in 1972, just before martial law
was declared. The student dem-
onstrations against the govern-
ment of President Ferdinand
Marcos were going on very strong.I
decided to become very open about
new things, to learn new things,
because I did not know where to
go after that experience of the
contests. So, I started to look
around, to sit down at events like
teach-ins, just to listen. I started
to read books and materials about
Philippine reality. In other words,
I became very conscious about
located, to help out in the disaster
relief campaign after the very big
floods that happened at that time.
I was really taken aback by the
situation that I saw: people living
in such horrible poverty. It was
quite a shock - .he contrast
between my life and the life of
the majority of poor Filipino
peasants. But I also got exposed
to farmers who knew how to
analyze their own situation. They
were telling me that the floods
were not really their main
problem. They said they had
problems with the system, and with
the multinational corporations
ravaging their forest, and with
their logs being exported.
How did those two weeks change
you?
And from your face, it's clear that
that experience had a strong effect
on you.
Marcos on Women
Ferdinand Marcos on the growing number of women demonstrators: "I
don't want to have anything to do with them. I have enough problems
with men. One rule that I have adopted; you don't see any women on
my staff. I am not a male chauvinist. I like pretty women. I admire
beauty as you can see through the way I married. But I would rather
have nothing to do with the neurotic women of today. They are so
neurotic they don't know what they want. They don't even know
whether to look beautiful or to be male reformers, and that certainly
makes for a strange animal." (Fortune, 11/28/83)
national issues-but not yet about
women's issues even though it was
my experience as a beauty queen
that had made me very open.
In the latter part of 1972, just
one month before martial law, I
got involved with a team of
student volunteers who travelled to
the central region of Luzon, the
Philippine island where Manila is
was a direct and deep kind of
involvement: seeing poverty
directly and being with the people
and listening to them. We stayed
with one peasant family after
another in those two weeks, so we
saw and heard a lot. Our main
purpose was to distribute relief
foods, but, in turn, we were
educated by the peasants.
It was just before martial law was
declared. When I went back to
Manila, I really started to join
demonstrations because I had
internalized in some way the
feeling of neglect that the farmers
had. When I heard speakers talking
about graft and corruption and
about how we should be looking
after the people's welfare, I could
already empathize with it. It
wasn't just a rhetorical statement
anymore. It was something I really
understood.
But even then, though I felt I
had left the world of "pretty girls"
far behind, I also heard sore
comments about me from people
who were protesting. Some of
them were happy that I joined in
demonstrations because they
considered me a kind of
celebrity-I was always publicized
in the papers for some - minor
involvement in this and that. But
then I heard remarks that perhaps
I was just joining because it was
the thing to do.
Then martial law was de-
clared in September 1972, which
was another experience.
How so? How did your life change
after that?
I saw immediate effects of the
repression. Many of my class-
mates decided to hide-not because
they had done anything wrong, but
because they didn't know what
would happen now with the martial
law state. We heard many reports
of thousands of arrests. My own
teachers were arrested. Martial
law meant arrest, indefinite
detention, and, for some, solitary
confinement. And there were
reports of torture.
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Martial law meant arrest,
indefinite detention,
and, for some,
solitary confinement.
And there were reports of torture.
After a while, I decided to
stop school. It was hard to stay
on with all these things happening.
So, I didn't finish that school year.
I never got back to finish.
A social action group invited
me to the southern Philippine
island of Mindanao around 1973.
Actually, this was not such an
uncommon thing. Many of my
classmates also left the privileged
world of the university for urban
slums or poor rural areas where
the majority of Filipinos live.
Until 1976, 1 lived with an urban
poor family there in a slum in a
small provincial city. I lived as
they lived and what they ate, I
ate. It was mainly very simple
fare of a. lot of rice and "bagoong,"
the dried salted fish that is the
subsistence diet of poor Filipinos.
That's how I developed a real
appetite for food. You know, the
feeling of deprivation makes you
learn to eat.
And that . was where you were
arrested?
It was February 1976. I was
twenty-five years old, married, and
I was arrested in an urban poor
community. In the Philippines, if
you decide to live and work with
the poor by choice, you are called
"subversive." So the government's
side of the story was that since I
was a beauty queen and university
student, but I was now living
among the poor, I was a
"subversive."
But they never actually
charged me with anything. The
law is such that they didn't have
to. It was indefinite deten-
tion-you don't know when or if
you will be released. But still,
maybe because I was well known,
my experience was relatively mild
compared to what numerous other
detainees have gone through. But
it was still a very difficult
experience for me, that imprison-
ment for two-and-a-half years.
Especially difficult was the one
month I was in solitary confine-
ment in an interrogation house.
What does it mean to be in solitary
confinement in an interrogation
house?
It was a place where they put
detainees right after arrest for
interrogation. I was there for one
month. I was not able to talk to
anybody except the guards.
Was your family able to visit you?
I was visited by my father, but
only once. Most of the time I was
alone, and that experience was
extremely hard for me because of
the boredom and depression and
those repeated questions, over and
over again: "why were you there
living with the poor?"
I kept asking them to transfer
me to a regular detention place.
But nothing happened. So, I went
on a hunger strike. It was just my
own idea. It was because I felt I
had to fight for my sanity; I had
to talk with other people. So I
decided that I would fight for it,
or else I would lose my spirit, or
they would break me.
Well, I just missed two meals
and right away the next day, they
moved me to another detention
camp in Manila. And then, three
months later, we political
detainees were moved to Camp
Bicutan which was the newly-
opened, so-called "rehabilitation"
place for detainees. It had lots
and lots of buildings. It was built,
I think, for the many political
detainees to come.
34 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
You were with other political
detainees at this camp?
Yes. The experience there, sharing
with other detainees, taught me
what it really meant to be arrested
and detained. That's why I am
able to say that my own experience
was relatively mild. I heard their
accounts of tortures and abuses
suffered at the hands of the
military men who arrested them.
It was a common story from one
detainee to the next-suffering
from electric shock in the genitals
or in other parts of the body.
But what was really more
moving for me at that time was
the experience of the women
detainees. One girl seemed to be
having a nervous breakdown, and
it was very hard to communicate
with her at the start. Later, she
started talking about what she had
gone through. Besides the physical
abuses, she had suffered sexual
abuses. The military interrogators
played with various parts of her
body and threatened her several
times with rape. I guess she wasn't
actually raped, but I think what
she suffered was just as terrible.
Some of the women detainees
did very well in coping with the
abuse. Another girl said that while
interrogating her, they fingered
her vagina. They did it to break
her down, to make her .lose her
sanity through indignity and anger.
But she said she made it appear
to the military that, okay, you do
that to me, but you cannot break
me down with that. After they
saw that it wasn't affecting her,
they stopped.
When did you become really
interested in devoting some of your
life to women's issues?
This period of two-and-a-half years
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of detention became a real
learning experience for me as to
what repression and inhuman prison
conditions of men and women
mean. So, I said, if these things
happen to ordinary people, I think
it's something that needs to be
changed.
We staged two hunger strikes
at that time, and mostly in the
forefront were the women
detainees. We were the most
outspoken and could really fight it
out with the guards or whichever
officers came in to try to suppress
us. And I think this helped a lot
also to boost the morale of the
other detainees.
Your husband was arrested a year
after you and is still a political
detainee. How have you coped
with that?
It is a very difficult situation to
be a single parent with my husband
in prison. I've got to care for the
children and to earn my living. I
am part of a group that organized
a day care center in Manila. At
the same time, I must work for
change, while specifically working
for the release of not only my
husband but also other political
detainees.
Did the brutality that you saw
towards women during your
imprisonment lead you into
involvement with women's issues?
It was a kind of gradual awakening
about women's issues. In prison, I
became very much aware of the
decisive par-ticipation of women
in the human rights movement and
in the struggles of the people for
freedom, justice and democracy,
and against exploitation of our land
and resources by foreign powers.
I also saw how outspoken and
strong women could be.
But the consciousness of
women's problems of repression
and exploitation actually evolved a
little more slowly. My addressing
issues specific to women started
with the issues raised about women
detainees: besides equally
suffering with the male detainees,
what was done to them as women
to make them lose their dignity
and how sex was used as a weapon
of harassment to break their will.
My awareness spread after I
was releasd as I reexamined the
experience of many housewives-
even women in the progressive
forces who have to take on a lot
of responsibilities for childcare and
house chores. I began to
understand the kind of molding we
get from society. Being a
housewife is assigned to us as a
traditional role, and so now I have
seen how important it is to educate
both men and women, from the
progressive forces down to the
majority of the population.
So you see the women's movement
in the Philippines as part of a
larger movement?
In the Philippines-and perhaps all
Third World settings-we have to
address ourselves to national
problems. Women are part of the
people and so are equally affected
by the national problems of
exploitation and repression.
At the same time, we see the
necessity simultaneously to work
on women's issues, defining a
distinct program so that women
can fight for greater participation
in the national struggle. It is
essential to organize women as a
political force, which is why we're
building the Alliance of Women
Against Repression and
Exploitation, AWARE.
What are the principal goals of
AWARE and the Philippine
women's movement?
The organized women's movement
in the Philippines is focusing on
four areas where we believe
exploitation and repression have
been the worst. First, the
economic participation of women.
In many parts of the economy,
women serve as an unpaid reserve
of labor, especially in agriculture
and household chores.
Second, in the commercial and
industrial sector, our government
advertises our women as cheap
labor. This is, in fact, the case.
Even when women are paid
salaries, it is seldom enough to
meet the needs of their families.
Third, women are often
treated as sex objects. Prostitu-
tion has increased to unprece-
dented levels to serve Western sex
tours to our country as well as the
"needs" of American soldiers
stationed at the US military bases.
Finally-and I have seen this
myself-women are the objects of
sexual intimidation and terror by
the armed forces in order to
suppress dissent. AWARE is trying
to raise awareness of these
problems among the people, both
women and men. But awareness
is only the first step. It is also
fighting for the democratic rights
of women and to give women an
equal place in society. Since
foreign interests are so strong in
our country, the women's
movement is striving to end the
abuse of our women and our
society by foreign corporations,
tourists, and military interests.
Do you see the women's movement
as primarily the responsibility of
women, or do you see a distinct
role for men as well?
Well, when you talk about
childcare or rather, lack of
childcare support, it's not just a
women's problem. If you talk
about low wages, it's not just a
problem of the women, although in
that context it's a double
exploitation of women. When we
talk about parenting responsi-
bilities, it's not just a problem of
our women principally. Overall, it
is the inhuman conditions that we
live in, the poverty, which does
not allow us to be good parents.
How can we provide for our
children's needs, when the society
does not support the parents?
So we cannot help but always
relate it to the larger context.
When we do that, we see that both
women and men are affected by
common problems of repression
and exploitation. Fortunately, it
is very much recognized among
people working for change in the
Philippines that Filipino women
have a decisive role to play in
building a new society. Through
AWARE and other women's groups,
we Filipino women are learning to
break our silence and put our
problems into political demands.O
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Censorship
Reagan Prepares
Censorship Law
President Reagan, in his crusade against "leakers"
within the government, claims that unauthorized
leaks to the news media have endangered national
security, and that stories based on leaks have
harmed US relations with "another country." To
clamp down a tight lid on secrecy, Reagan, in
March 1983, signed an "Executive Order on
Protecting National Security." So far, Congress
has blocked the implementation of this order.
Under the Executive Order, all US
government employees with access to "sensitive"
information-they number in the tens of
thousands-would be required to sign lifetime
secrecy agreements as' a condition of employ-
ment. Both during and after their tenures, these
employees would have to submit all their writings
to the government for pre-publication clearance.
During the investigation of a leak, the FBI could
demand that these officials submit to a lie
detector test-whether or not they are reasonably
suspected of leaking information. Refusal to take
the test could be the basis for dismissal. The
Reagan administration also proposes prison terms
and fines for convicted leakers.
An examination of a series of classified
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents
suggests that Reagan's proposed crackdown might
be motivated by reasons entirely different from
the publicly-expressed "national security
concerns" rationale. Some classified documents
may need to be kept secret simply because they
are embarrassing or because they contradict the
36 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
government's public announcements. The cables
in this collection, for example, document the
following:
? Contrary to the administration's claim
that it is arming Honduras only to enable that
country's military to defend the border, Honduran
troops have aided the Salvadoran military in its
war against the guerrillas there.
? The US government is aware that South
Africa is engaged in a disinformation campaign
about its military operations against Namibia.
? Contradicting Reagan's public claim that
his administration's "constructive engagement"
policy (i.e., no public pressure or sanctions)
toward South Africa is working to abolish that
country's apartheid system, South African
authorities continue their brutal reprgssion
against Black workers.
Honduras
The Reagan administration has been silent on
Honduras' joint military operations with El
Salvador while greatly increasing military aid to
Honduras on the grounds that it needs it for
defense. A secret Defense Intelligence Agency
cable of July 29, 1982, reveals these joint
Honduran-Salvadoran operations. In July 1982,
"Honduran forces in blocking positions along the
border [with El Salvador] ... had been deployed
at considerable cost and effort." The deployment
of the Honduran troops had been coordinated in
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advance with sweep operations by the Salvadoran
military in San Vincente and Chalatenango, El
Salvador. The Honduran troops were in place to
shell and attack any retreating Salvadoran
guerrillas.
The DIA cable further suggested that the
Salvadoran military attacked not military targets
but civilians. "The operation in San Vincente
Department, conducted by the US-trained
Atlacatl battalion, concluded on 15 July, one day
after it began. There was no reported contact
with the insurgents." Nonetheless, there were
said to be casualties during the attack.
Describing the Salvadoran military operation
in Chalatenango, the cable said that "reportedly
the Salvadoran Commander concentrated only on
capturing two towns and failed to focus on the
insurgent forces." When the administration
brought these Salvadoran troops to the United
States for training, it had said that they would
be trained to concentrate on military targets and
to avoid civilians. The Pentagon has also
remained silent on the poor performance of these
US-trained troops while it is preparing to bring
thousands more to the United States.
Costa Rica
Long before the US media-never mind the
Reagan administration-even hinted at it, another
DIA report of July 1982 stated that "at least
two insurgent attacks have been launched from
Costa Rica" into Nicaragua. The DIA identified
three anti-Sandinista groups operating out of
Costa Rica: the Nicaraguan Democratic
Union/Nicaraguan Revolutionary Armed Forces,
"active in southern Nicaragua in 1981;" the
Nicaraguan Christian Army, which includes
members of the late dictator Somoza's National
Guard; and the Sandino Revolutionary Front which
operates the "Radio Voice of Sandino." The DIA
report said that the Front "is believed to be
preparing to stage such activity [military raids
into Nicaragua] by year's end." The Front is
now conducting such raids.
South Africa
The Reagan administration's South Africa policy
has shunned public pressure and sanctions in favor
of purported "behind the scenes" diplomacy to
get that government to change its racist policies.
The administration supports the presence of US
corporations in South Africa, saying? they provide
jobs for Black workers. In a recent vote in favor
of a $1.1 billion International Monetary Fund loan
to South Africa, US IMF director Richard Erb
praised South Africa's training and education
programs which he said were opening up the labor
market for Blacks. Some 300 US corporations
continue to operate in South Africa. (Even CIA
Director William Casey has investments in mining
operations there.)
A secret DIA report paints a different
picture. It points out that Black miners are not
unionized and that their grievances are dealt with
exclusively by force. In a recent peaceful
demonstration, says the DIA, "at least 10 deaths
and numerous injuries" of Black miners occurred.
"Moreover, many blacks have been arrested and
dismissed from their jobs." If mines are closed,
"racial tensions could intensify, since most of
those likely to be dismissed would be black
workers." The report concludes: "Thus far, the
authorities do not seem prepared to respond to
their [Black miners'] demands through any means
other than force."
One public justification for the adminis-
tration's rapprochement with South Africa is the
alleged strategic value of its ports. A secret
DIA report illustrates US government awareness
that the South Africans are consciously manipu-
lating this issue to garner Western support:
"South African Chief of Naval Operations RADM
[ Rear Admiral] Andries Putter recently
indicated that Western warships would soon not
be able to use the facilities at the Simonstown
Naval Base during an emergency.... The South
African media interpreted RADM Putter's
statement as a warning to the West to revise its
policies before Simonstown is allowed to
deteriorate. Press reaction should be viewed in
the context of the continuing efforts by South
Africa to limit its international isolation by
emphasizing to Western powers the significance
Reagan's Executive Order
would be the United States
of America's first unofficial
Official Secrets Act.
of the Cape Sea Route and Simonstown." The
DIA report suggests that in reality Putter's
remarks "represent a realistic assessment of the
limited value of Simonstown."
Namibia
On Namibia, the Reagan administration usually
claims that the main obstacle to a peaceful
settlement is the presence of Cuban troops in
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Angola. Simultaneously, the administration
downplays repeated South African raids into
Angola. Secret DIA cables do not blame Cuban
troops but rather South African raids for
undermining "recent diplomatic initiatives aimed
at a peaceful resolution to the Namibian
conflict."
Detailed descriptions of these raids in the
DIA cables make clear that they are pre-planned,
full-scale military incursions, and not "hot
pursuit" operations after fleeing guerrillas. The
DIA cables also accuse the South Africans of
lying about these invasions. A November 4, 1981,
DIA cable says that South African military
headquarters in Pretoria "has denied press reports
that a major cross-border strike is underway.
Privately, however, military officials acknowl-
edge continuous 'follow-up' operations in the
aftermath of their recent large-scale incursion
into Southern Angola." The same cable con-
sidered it possible that this incursion was aimed
at "solely Angolan military targets" and not at
camps and facilities of the South West African
Peoples Organization (SWAPO).
A year later, the South Africans were at it
again, according to the DIA. A July 23, 1982,
cable reported the deployment of 14 South
African Mirage fighter jets along with an
augmented mechanized infantry battalion. This
deployment was accompanied by a South African
disinformation campaign warning the United
Nations Secretary General that South Africa
would retaliate against any escalation of SWAPO
activities in Namibia. According to the DIA
cable, "thus far, there is no evidence of an
escalation [by SWAPO]. Either the South
Africans are reacting to a valid threat perception,
based on their own intelligence, which could be
faulty, or they have issued the warning to the
UN to serve as a pretext for offensive action."
A follow-up cable of July 30, 1982, reported
a South African claim, based on captured
documents, of plans for wide-scale increases of
SWAPO guerrilla operations. Concludes the DIA
38 - Counterspy - March-May 1984
cable: "The validity of these documents is
uncertain. The South Africans have been
reinforcing their military positions in both
Southern Angola and Northern Namibia. This
buildup is indicative of preparations for a major
cross-border raid into Angola. Thus, the warning
to the UN, together with the allegations of
SWAPO treachery, may reflect Pretoria's efforts
to lay the political groundwork for justifying
another major military incursion into Soutern
[sic] Angola." After all, noted another DIA
cable, "an incursion could be planned for the near
future, it is that time of year again...."
Indeed, it was that time of the year again:
South Africa launched an invasion of Angola in
August 1982. The invasion was pushed even
farther north into Angola after the South Africans
supposedly captured more SWAPO "plans"
allegedly documenting that SWAPO intended to
violate a cease-fire agreement.
The DIA's assessment of these captured
documents and the invasion was summarized in
a secret cable of August 11, 1982: "The [South
African] military seems to be using these
documents, the validity of which is uncertain, to
justify an escalation in its counterinsurgency
activity in South-Central Angola.... The publicity
now surrounding this activity may seriously
undermine US and Western efforts to achieve a
negotiated settlement of the Namibian question."
An Unofficial "Official Secrets Act"?
It remains a mystery why the information
provided in these cables would endanger US
national security. Public release might, however,
endanger the Reagan administration's credibility.
When asked to back up their claims that national
security is at stake, proponents of the Executive
Order and other secrecy laws find a convenient
way out. For example, Daniel Silver, who
authored the CIA's secrecy agreement-a
prototype for Reagan's Executive Order-failed
to provide even one example of how a leak had
endangered national security on a recent McNeil-
Lehrer show. Silver said that to do so would
disclose classified information.
Reagan's Executive Order would be the
United States of America's first, unofficial
Official Secrets Act. "The effect of the new
Presidential directive," charged Senator Daniel
Moynihan in a speech to the American Newspaper
Publishers Association, "could well be to strike
at the heart of the ability of the public to be
informed about their government."
Moynihan and other opponents of the order
will get another chance to continue fighting it.
In April 1984, Congress is to review an amend-
ment passed last year to block implementation
of the order.
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British Government
Clamps Down on
Journalists
Morris Riley
The reach of British government censors has
apparently extended to influence book publishing
in the United States. The censors certainly did
so in the case of The Circus (Stein and Day, New
York, 1983), a history of the internal British
intelligence agency, M15, written by Nigel West.
The British edition, MI5 - A Matter of Trust,
was published by Weidenfeld in London in early
1983 after heavy-handed government pressure
forced the deletion of several segments.
When the book was to be released in the
United States, it appeared first that it would be
published with the censored portions intact.
Indeed, the Boston Globe reported that "copies
of the US edition cannot be sold in Britain and
any that are taken into the country are liable to
seizure."1 As it turns out, the British government
censors had their way with the US edition also.
In the words of Nigel West, the US reader "will
notice that there are now half a dozen blank
spaces in the [MI5] organisational -charts." The
US edition, as we shall later see, only contained
one new area, unseen by readers of the British
edition.
West's book is but one on a constantly
growing list of books and articles that have fallen
victim to an upsurge in censorship activity by
the British government. Over the last eighteen
months, censorship has changed markedly in
dealing with "sensitive" information. More and
more often, legal injunctions are issued to curtail
publication.
Prior to 1982, censorship did not often have
to resort to legal measures. Instead, it mainly
took the form of unofficial arrangements with
friendly newspaper editors who "spiked" (killed)
articles, or leaned on recalcitrant staff. Pressure
tactics-D Notices (see sidebar)-were (and still
are) used.
In the past two years these D Notices, which
have no legal sanction, have been supplemented
by legal measures. When, for example, the
London City Limits in October 1982 published an
article based on '!secret" information, British
intelligence prompted the government to slap an
injunction on the paper. City Limits had received
documents, some marked secret, confidential, or
restricted, concerning foreign policy matters.
The injunction instructed City Limits to return
the documents to the government and not write
any articles about them beyond the one already
Just to make sure the injunction had sufficiently
convinced the paper's editors, Detective Chief
Superintendent Robert Hardy of Scotland Yard's
Serious Crimes Squad, along with four detectives,
visited the offices of City Limits late in the
afternoon of October 4, 1982 armed with a search
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warrant. City Limits editor Duncan Campbell
was ordered to hand over the bundle of Foreign
Office Documents.
Campbell complied, but was bemused by the
whole affair. "I could understand it all if we
had published details about troop deployment and
movements on the Falklands-but not this
innocuous stuff."2 The documents, dealing with
US sanctions against companies involved in the
construction of the Siberian natural gas pipeline
to Western Europe, British reaction to Israel's
invasion of Lebanon ("no surprise"), its attitude
The reach of British
government censors has
apparently extended to
influence book publishing in
the United States.
toward the Palestine Liberation Organization, and
Common Market and NATO issues, contain no
major revelations. The only reason the British
government would consider them "sensitive" is
because they are embarrassing, demonstrating
discrepancies between the public and the private
-positions taken by the British government.
But sensitive or not, Foreign Office official
Robin Gordon-Walker, who had lost the papers
on the subway, found himself in court and charged
under Section 2(1)(e) of the 1911 Official Secrets
Act. This section declares that a person has
committed an offense if he or she "fails to take
reasonable care of, or so conducts himself as to
endanger the safety of [any official infor-
mation]." It didn't help Gordon-Walker much
that the prosecution itself admitted the docu-
ments were "of not too sensitive a nature."3 He
was convicted and fined L500.00 in January 1983.
Only days after City Limits received its
injunction, another one was served on Weidenfeld,
the London publisher of A Matter of Trust. The
injunction, issued by Justice Russell on the
request of Attorney General, Sir Michael Havers,
also covered all British newspapers and
magazines. Havers had argued that the book
"could seriously damage the security services";
and that it contained "previously unpublished
information classified as seeret.r4 A Matter of
Trust, according to the Attorney General, also
describes "incidents, operations and investigations
which can only have been related by past or
present members of the Security Service."5
After protracted maneuvering and protests
by West, the Attorney General agreed to lift the
injunction "on the condition that the author made
some 30 deletions from the original manuscript."6
The injunction, however, remained in effect
against all other British publishers.
Most of the 30 deletions applied to these
two areas: charts dealing with the organizational
structure of MI5, including the names of many
high officers; and allegations that the head of
M15 from 1972 to 1979 was a suspected Soviet
agent and the subject of "very serious and
prolonged investigations."7 This official for
whom the Soviet agent allegations were deleted
from the British edition-is Sir Michael Hanley.
What West had written in his original manuscript
would certainly not have been news to any other
major intelligence service. Publication of the
matter in Britain, however, would have been
embarrassing for the Thatcher government.
Also of embarrassment to the British
government was the publication of British
Intelligence and Covert Action by Jonathan Bloch
and Patrick Fitzgerald (Junction Books, London,
D Notice No. 6
D Notices, sent out by the Defence, Press
and Broadcasting Committee, are still widely
used in Britain to intimidate writers and
editors. The Secretary of the Committee
sends these notices to journalists to pressure
them to send "sensitive" articles to the
Committee for pre-clearance. D Notice No.
6, for instance, requests "that nothing should
be published without reference to the
Secretary [of..the Committee] about":
? "specific operations of the security
and intelligence services and those involved
with them;"
? "details of the manner in which
operational methods... are actually applied
and of their targets;"
? "the identities, whereabouts and
tasks of persons employed by these
services...;"
? "the addresses and telephone
numbers used by these services;"
? "the organisational structures, com-
munications networks, numerical strengths,
and training techniques of these services...;"
and
? "technical advances by the security
and intelligence services, in relation to their
intelligence and counter-intelligence meth-
ods, whether the basic methods are well
known or not." ?
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1983). It describes British intelligence operations
over the last 30 years, ranging from Malaysia to
Ireland, including coups in Africa and the Middle
East. In addition, British Intelligence and Covert
Action identifies more than 100 former and
currently serving British intelligence officers.
Needless to say, the idea of publication did
not go over well with the British government,
particularly the "Defence, Press and Broadcasting
Committee" which is in charge of handing out D
Notices. Its secretary, Rear Admiral N.W. Ash,
without having seen the book, wrote to Junction
Books on March 24, 1983 that the intended
publication would be "very harmful to the national
interest." On April 25 Ash fired off another
letter, stating that "I now understand that the
book contains an appendix which identifies a
number of people as being British intelligence
officials involved in intelligence." By then, Ash
had "obtained" a copy of the book, but not from
the authors or Junction Books. His copy had
been stolen from the home of Jonathan Bloch by
an intelligence operative.8 When questioned by
The Guardian (London) about how he had obtained
a copy, Ash lamely explained that "sometimes
we get (books] in the post and sometimes they
are drawn to our attention."9
Nonetheless, in the end it was Ash and his
D Notice Committee that were outmaneuvered.
Bloch and Fitzgerald had played their cards well.
Fearing that the government would issue an
injunction against the book, they had it published
quickly before the government could act. All
Ash could do was inform Bloch and Fitzgerald
that the book "constitutes an extensive and
serious breach of D-Notice No. 6." (See sidebar).
Footnotes
1) See John Bierman, "Intrigue Surrounds the Effort of
Briton to Tell his Spy Story," Boston Globe, 3/30/83.
2) Information from Campbell to the author.
3) See Duncan Campbell, "Behind Closed Doors," Sunday
Times Magazine, 8/21/83.
4 Cf. supra, #1.
5) Ibid.
6) See Simon Freeman and Barrie Penrose, "MI5 Spied
on its Own Moles," Sunday Times, 11/19/82.
7) Ibid.
8) Information from Bloch to the author.
9) The Guardian (London), 5/3/83.
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Military Issues
New Pentagon Budget
War in Space and Third
World Intervention
Konrad Ege
February 1, 1984, the Senate Caucus Room:
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and
Joint Chiefs of Staff head Gen. John Vessey,
towing behind them a large entourage of middle-
aged, white men, enter the room to present the
Fiscal Year 1984 military budget request. Texas
Senator John Tower, who chairs the Senate Armed
Services Committee, greets Weinberger with a
hug. Photographers click away and direct the
two men to move into the light of the chandelier
overhead. Weinberger and Tower oblige, still
embracing.
The hearings commence. Little has changed
since last year, or the year before that.
Weinberger, standing against a background of
various colorful charts, explains that the United
States military still needs to catch up to the
Soviets after a "decade of neglect." That "catch
up," says the Reagan administration, will cost
$305 billion, a 13 percent increase (after
inflation) over the Fiscal Year 1984 budget.
(President Carter's Fiscal Year 1980 military
budget - in 1985 dollars - was $192 billion.)
Weinberger's charges of "neglect" and his
charts and graphs supposedly illustrating Soviet
advantages went largely unchallenged. Few
senators questioned the discrepancy between
Weinberger's clamor about the "need" for
continued spending increases to' "restore" the
"military balance" and Ronald Reagan's January
16, 1984 speech. In that speech, the President
proclaimed that "America's... restored deterrence
has made the world safer." (Emphasis added.)
Nuclear War Is Winnable
Testimony from Vessey and Weinberger and the
Pentagon's Annual Report to Congress for Fiscal
Year 1985 illustrate that the Reagan admin-
istration-contrary to public relations state-
ments-still operates under the belief that there
can be a winner in a nuclear war against the
Soviet Union. Says Weinberger's Annual Report:
"We must plan for flexibility in our forces and
in our options for response, so that we might
terminate the conflict on terms favorable to the
forces of freedom, and reestablish deterrence at
the lowest possible level of violence...." Or
General Vessey: "Should deterrence fail, the
strategy is to restore peace on favorable terms,
and at the lowest scope of intensity of warfare
consistent with our objectives."
Weinberger's budget request includes a
substantial increase in spending for strategic
nuclear weapons programs. The budget for the
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) force
alone is to rise from $4.75 billion last fiscal year
to $5.85 billion, most of that for procurement of
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61 MX missiles over these two years. (In Fiscal
Year 1986, Weinberger plans to buy another 48
MX missiles, bringing the total to 109.) $345.4
million will be spent in 1985 on developing a
small, mobile ICBM, despite the Strategic Arms
Limitation Treaty which forbids the deployment
of more than one new ICBM type. (This new
type is the MX missile; the small mobile ICBM
would be a second missile type.)
Another big jump in spending for nuclear war
is for the development of the sea-launched
Trident II missiles ($2.09 billion in 1985, up from
$1.47 billion in 1984). These missiles, proclaims
the Pentagon's Annual Report, have "the
capability to put hard targets at risk." In other
words, they serve as sea-based first strike
weapons, capable of destroying Soviet missiles in
hardened silos before they are launched.
The administration wants to spend $7.71
billion for 34 B-i bombers. (17 others are being
bought with funds appropriated in previous years.)
The Air Force is also equipping B-52 bombers
with low-flying nuclear Air Launched Cruise
Missiles; 90 B-52s will be equipped by the end
of Fiscal Year 1984, and the Pentagon is also
developing a new advanced Air Launched Cruise
Missile with a longer range to be deployed on
the B-52 and the B-1 bombers.
Weinberger's 1985 report is notably vague in
its discussion of the intermediate range nuclear
weapons program, i.e. the Pershing II and the
Ground-Launched Cruise Missiles now being
Planning for War in Space
Reagan's highly touted "vision of a future which
offers hope" - his intention to build an anti-
ballistic missile system - is a key component of
the 1985 budget request. President Reagan, for
all intents and purposes, has announced that his
government intends to break the 1972 Anti-
Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty which forbids the
development and deployment of exactly such a
system.
The "Strategic Defense Initiative," as the
Pentagon refers to Reagan's ABM plan, will cost
some $1.78 billion in Fiscal Year 1985, and $3.8
billion in Fiscal Year 1986. Caspar Weinberger
waxes philosophical when discussing the
implications of the ABM program: "I believe it
Ronald Reagan's Star Wars
scenario is moving towards
becoming reality. Treaty
constraints on the arms race
in space are being ignored.
deployed in Europe. No procurement or cost
figures are provided. According to the 1984
Annual Report, 120 cruise missiles and 104
Pershing II missiles were to be procured in 1985
(bringing the Pershing II total to 311).
A key element of Reagan's "nuclear war
fighting" plans is the continued improvement of
the command, control and communications (C3)
facilities. Further improvement is needed so that
"we could employ our forces effectively," says
the report. "These systems also must be able to
ensure that our forces would... remain responsive
to national authority both during and after an
attack." Improving the C3 system means spending
more than $1 billion on strategic communications,
including the Military Strategic and Tactical
Relay (MILSTAR) satellite communications
system. MILSTAR, "now in full-scale develop-
ment, will use extremely high frequency (EHF)
communications which are... less susceptible... to
the effects of nuclear detonations and jamming.
The satellites also will incorporate a variety of
survivable features to ensure their continued
availability in a nuclear war." $327 million will
be spent to improve military command centers;
they "must be able to survive a nuclear attack
and continue to support decisionmaking and
control of our strategic forces."
is the most significant step we can and will take
to preserve peace with freedom and to pass on
to our children the legacy of a safer world. It is
a program that offers the hope of rendering
nuclear missiles impotent. Removing this horror
from the future is one of our highest priorities."
What Weinberger and Reagan don't mention
is that a space-based anti-ballistic missile system
is a key component of a first strike capability.
It is highly unlikely that an ABM system - no
matter how advanced - would be so perfect as
to do what Reagan claims it will: destroy all
incoming missiles in a massive Soviet attack.
What an ABM system might be able to do, though,
is to destroy a much iaore limited Soviet
retaliatory strike following a US nuclear attack.
Space warfare plans go even beyond the ABM
system. On January 21, 1984, an anti-satellite
(ASAT) weapon was launched from an F-15 fighter
plane toward "a point in space." It was the first
test flight of a new advanced weapon designed
to destroy Soviet satellites. By the end of the
decade, the Reagan administration plans to have
in operation a total of 112 anti-satellite weapons,
based at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, and
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at McChord Air Force Base in Washington.
The Pentagon will also make increased use
of the Space Shuttle. Construction of a shuttle
facility at ' Vandenberg Air Force Base is
scheduled to be completed by October 1985.
Under Reagan's July 1982 National Space Policy,
both the Air Force and the Navy established
space commands, and the Defense Advanced
Projects Research Area (DARPA) is focusing its
efforts on "high-energy laser and particle-beam
research, which provides the foundation for
implementing both space-based and ground-based
directed-energy weapons." These weapons would
be used in anti-satellite and ballistic missile
defense missions.
Ronald Reagan's Star Wars scenario is
moving towards becoming reality. Treaty
constraints on an arms race in space are being
ignored, and the Reagan administration is
unwilling to negotiate limitations on space
weapons. Weinberger is determined not to discuss
such limits with the Soviet Union - if ever -
at least until the United States has a vastly
supgrior space weapons arsenal. ASAT testflights
represent yet another chance for arms control
that is now lost.
Wars in the Third World
More than any other Annual Report written by
Secretary Weinberger, the Fiscal Year 1985
report stresses the need to prepare for Third
World conflicts. "Over the next several years,
we could find ourselves facing serious challenges
in a number of areas around the globe - perhaps
simultaneously," writes Weinberger. "In the last
year alone, we have dealt with incidents and
crises in such widely separated places as Lebanon,
Chad, Central America, and the Caribbean."
The US "victory" in Grenada features
prominently in Weinberger's report. "Grenada
reinforced a lesson from the 1982 war in the
Falklands: we must not only structure our forces
to cope with potential contingencies that we can
foresee, but must also provide ourselves with the
wherewithal to deal with the 'unforeseen
contingency."' The "loss" of the airfield in
Grenada, Weinberger claims, "is potentially a
significant blow" to the Soviet Union. US security
in the Caribbean "was strengthened by restored
good relations with Grenada and closer ties to
other neighbors."
"Force Projection" is the key term here:
"We must be prepared to dispatch forces promptly
to any of a number of regions around the world -
possibly simultaneously." Weinberger writes that
the US must be able to fight concurrent wars in
Europe, South West Asia and the Pacific region.
For that purpose, the US is expanding its
efforts to preposition equipment in potential war
areas. Heavy equipment for four Army divisions
has long been in place in Europe; now Belgium
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and the Netherlands are storing equipment for
two more divisions and Norway is storing
equipment for an amphibious Marine brigade. In
South West Asia (SWA), the US is prepositioning
weapons and ammunition on ships and on the
island of Diego Garcia. Overall, writes
Weinberger, "we have dramatically improved our
military capabilities for the region.... Our
programs for SWA and the Middle East continue
to be a mainstay of a larger effort to revitalize
our overall world-wide rapid-response capability."
Weinberger proudly refers to base agreements
with, and joint military exercises in, Kenya,
Somalia, Oman and Egypt.
The US military budget includes $220 million
to supply Jordan's King Hussein with an 8,000-
man strike force to aid Middle East governments
friendly to the United States threatened by unrest
or revolution. Hussein's strike force is to take
over the police role in the Middle East. US
troops would only provide air transportation for
the Jordanian units.
Preparations for stepped-up intervention in
Third World countries can be seen most clearly
in the budget's emphasis on new aircraft carriers,
amphibious assault ships, light infantry divisions,
and expanded special operations forces. The Navy
had 12 deployable aircraft carriers in 1981; by
1989 it will have 15. The use of aircraft carriers
makes little sense in a war against the Soviet
Union; they are vast, vulnerable targets for a
nuclear-armed power. Instead, these carriers and
their accompanying battle groups are used "to
respond rapidly to crises in distant regions of the
globe and to condu't maritime operations in areas
where we do not maintain airfields and other
major land bases" - i.e., in the Third World. In
summer 1983, for instance, Reagan sent two
aircraft carriers to the Nicaraguan Atlantic and
Pacific coasts; each one carried more powerful
warplanes than the entire Nicaraguan air force.
Also to be used for Third World intervention
are amphibious assault ships and other landing
craft. The administration is planning to purchase
a total of 90 air-cushioned landing craft (LCAC).
States the Weinberger report: "Designed to carry
the combat and logistics vehicles of a Marine
landing force from ship to shore at speeds in
excess of 40 knots, the LCAC will enable our
forces to launch assaults from tens of miles
countries, thereby, says the Pentagon, reducing
"the likelihood that US forces will become
involved in combat." At the same time, according
to the Annual Report, their "sensitivity to
cultural differences allow SOF to work
effectively with the peoples of other countries
in a way that builds good will." To create more
of that "good will," the Pentagon is adding Army
SOF units and Navy SEAL teams, and, as of
January 1, 1984, created a "joint Special
Operations Agency" that is supposed to develop
"truly effective joint special operations."
To achieve increased mobility, the Army is
training an increased number of troops for "rapid-
response and forcible-entry operations world-
wide." The Army is also reorganizing its 9th
Infantry Division into a "high-technology light
division" and is restructuring another division as
a light infantry division of 10,000 men "that will
be used to examine additional ways to improve
the deployability and capability of our light
forces." Again, these light forces are certainly
not equipped primarily to fight in a war in Central
Europe against heavy Soviet armor.
Deep Strike in Europe
One component of the Pentagon's war plans for
Europe - stressed in the Fiscal Year 1985 report
as never before - is the "deep interdiction"
concept. "Deep interdiction," part of the Army's
new AirLand Battle doctrine which emphasizes
early offensive operations, means that US forces
will attack opposing troops deep in enemy
More than any other Annual
Report written by Secretary
Weinberger, the Fiscal Year
1985 report stresses the need
to prepare for Third World
conflicts.
offshore, outside the reach of many enemy
weapons."
Expanding the special operations forces (SOF)
"remains one of the Administration's highest
priorities." This expansion, writes Weinberger,
"reflects our recognition that low-level conflict -
for which SOF are uniquely suited - will pose
the threat we are most likely to encounter
throughout the end of this century." At present,
SOF units are active in training missions in 15
territory. The opponent is to get no chance to
reach the actual zone of battle.
While these deep strikes are ideally suited
to kick off an attack, the Pentagon puts them in
a defensive framework. "New technologies are
providing our land forces with radically new
techniques for defeating armored attacks. We
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are developing systems that will be able to locate
and track fixed and moving targets deep behind
enemy lines." Since detailed and timely intelli-
gence about enemy troops and their movements
is necessary to successfully carry out such deep
attacks, Secretary Weinberger proposes to double
the budget for the development of an advanced
airborne radar system, Joint STARS, and for Joint
Tactical Fusion (JTF). JTF is an "automated
system" that will "process, analyze, and distribute
intelligence reports obtained from multiple
sources."
The Fiscal Year 1985 budget request also
provides for stepped-up expenditure for
developing and procuring advanced conventional
weapons systems to destroy these "deep targets."
One of these systems is the Multiple-Launch
Rocket System (MLRS) which can be used to
strike targets, such as air defense systems, far
beyond cannon range. "A single launcher can
fire its load of 12 rockets in less than a minute,
covering an area the size of six football fields
with approximately 7,000 grenade-like sub-
munitions effective against both personnel and
lightly armored targets." In Fiscal Year 1985,
the Pentagon plans to buy 22 launchers and more
than 50,000 rockets.
The Pentagon also plans to give high priority
to the development of other cluster bomb-type
munitions and terminally guided "smart" missiles
and munitions. Many of these "smart" munitions
find their targets with the help of laser
designators, which illuminate targets. The Army
and the Marine Corps are buying hundreds each
of two laser designator systems.
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Four More Years?
If Ronald Reagan is reelected, the military budget
will continue to skyrocket. In Fiscal Year 1989,
Reagan plans to spend $446 billion. Even a new
Democratic president would find it difficult to
significantly cut the military budget. Many
programs to which Congress has already
committed itself - the 600-ship Navy and the
space programs, for instance - require major
funding not in the Fiscal Year 1985 budget but
several years down the line. And while Congress
cut several billion dollars from the Reagan
request last year and is likely to cut even more
from the Fiscal Year 1985 budget request, it has
never eliminated a single major weapons program
in its entirety. Since these programs have
remained largely intact, Congress has in effect
pre-programmed an increase in the military
budget each year until at least the end of the
decade.
Congress also has a bad track record on
cutting programs that are in the midst of
production. Nonetheless, it is only through the
elimination of entire programs that the military
budget can be cut. Much more importantly, the
elimination of specific programs in the Reagan
arms buildup - the MX, Trident II and Pershing
II missiles, and space weapons, to name just a
few - would make the earth a much safer place
in which to live. W
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Arms Treaty Violations
The U.S. Campaign
Continues
The rightwing columnists Rowland Evans and
Robert Novak were ecstatic. For years they had
been propounding their theory - based on a
steady stream of leaks from the Pentagon and
the White House - that the Soviet Union is
violating all sorts of arms control treaties.
Finally, in mid-January 1984, the Reagan
administration released a 55-page classified
report to Congress on alleged Soviet violations,
as well as a six-page "fact sheet" to the public.
For Evans and Novak and their ideological
companions in the government, the President's
report gives "him a trump card for the 1984
campaign the Democrats will find hard to stop,"
meaning that the report is to counter demands
by advocates of arms control that Reagan
negotiate with the Soviet Union in a serious
fashion. If the Soviets are breaking existing
treaties, this theory goes, there is no point in
continuing negotiations.
The release of the Reagan report charging
violations came in the same week as the
President's internationally televised "peace
speech" in preparation for his reelection
campaign. Evans and Novak write that
rightwingers were not particularly concerned
about "President Reagan's buttery peace appeal
to the Russians" since it "coincided with his
charge of Soviet cheating."
The actual charges made in the Reagan
report are nothing new; they are the same charges
unnamed administration officials have been
making for months to the press. (For a detailed
discussion of arms control questions, see Konrad
Ege and Arjun Makhijani, "Reagan's Arms Control
Sham: Preparing to Violate the Treaties,"
Counterspy, vol. 8, no. 2.) The 1984 report,
entitled "The President's Report to the Congress
on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control
Agreements" was expected to document and prove
alleged Soviet treaty violations; it nonetheless
includes a number of allegations in cases where
even the Reagan administration is not entirely
satisfied that a treaty violation has occurred.
For instance, the public fact sheet calls the
evidence about alleged violations of the Limited
Test Ban Treaty "ambiguous." A supposed
violation of a clause of the Strategic Arms
Limitation Treaty (SALT II) is included even
though the fact sheet acknowledges "the evidence
is somewhat ambiguous and we cannot reach a
definite conclusion." On the question of a
The original version of the
report ... apparently was
even more ambiguous,
containing a number of
dissenting footnotes and
comments written by one or
more of the participating
government agencies.
potential Soviet violation of the Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) Treaty by building a radar in
central Siberia, the fact sheet concluded that the
new radar "almost certainly constitutes a
violation of legal obligations" under the ABM
Treaty.
Reagan's public release of accusations based
on "ambiguous evidence" appears to have ulterior
motives. The usual procedure when questions of
suspected arms .treaty violations arise is to take
the matter to the Standing Consultative
Commission of US and Soviet representatives, a
body set up to deal with precisely such issues.
see ARMS CONTROL, 1).50
Counterspy - March-May 1984 - 47
Approved For Release 2010/06/14: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100130003-0
Approved For Release 2010/06/14: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100130003-0
Nuclear Weapons in West
Germany
Counterspy thanks Karl-Klaus Rabe, a West German researcher and writer, for permission to
reproduce this map which shows nuclear weapons facilities in West Germany as of August 1983.
Over the next few years, some of the nuclear weapons, such as the Nike Hercules missiles, will
be replaced by new "smart" (highly-accurate, guided) conventional weapons. The West German
military has no nuclear weapons of its own. However, US military personnel with nuclear weapons
are assigned to the West German facilities listed here. In case of war, they would supply the
West German weapons systems with these atomic warheads. In peacetime, the nuclear weapons
are stored on or close to the West German bases and guarded by US units.
Glossary
Nuclear Weapons Depot.
155mm Howitzers. Range: ap-
proximately 20 km; nuclear
weapons capable; intended for
chemical and neutron weap-
ons.
203.2mm Howitzers. Range:
approximately 20 km; nuclear
weapons capable; intended for
-chemical, neutron and "smart"
conventional weapons.
Lance missiles. Range: ap-
proximately 120 km; nuclear
weapons capable; intended for
neutron and "smart" con-
ventional weapons with a 400
km range.
P-IA (BRD) Pershing IA missiles manned
by the West German Air
Force. Range: approximately
720 km with nuclear warheads;
to be replaced by Pershing IB
missiles and Pershing II
missiles with a range of no
more than 800 km.
P-IA/P-II (USA) Pershing IA missiles with
nuclear warheads, at present
being replaced by Pershing II
missiles. Pershing II range:
officially, 1,800 km.
P-IA (BRD)* Quick Reaction Alert base for
P-IA missiles manned by West
German personnel, ready to
fire at a moment's notice; to
be replaced by Pershing IB
missiles.
P-IA/P-II (USA)* Quick Reaction Alert base for
P-IA missiles manned by the
US Army; to be replaced by
Pershing II missiles.
Nike-Hercules missiles.
Range: approximately 150
km; conventional and nuclear
warheads. Over the next few
years many Nike-Hercules
bases will be dismantled and
replaced by conventional
Patriot installations.
Nuclear capable West German
Air Force squadrons. ("S" on
French territory stands for
nuclear capable French Air
Force squadrons.)
US Cruise Missile base to open
in 1986.
French mobile Pluton nuclear
missiles. Range: 120 km.
48 -- Counterspy - March-May 1984
Approved For Release 2010/06/14: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100130003-0
Approved For Release 2010/06/14: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100130003-0
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