'YOUR GOVERNMENT HAS LIED'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201200010-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: July 20, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201200010-9
ART+1Y'. ""D
3N PAGE
Richard Cohen
WASHINGTON POST
20 July 1985
`Your Government Has Lied'
On Dec. 7, 1982, Edgar Chamorro,
then a director of the Nicaraguan
Democratic Force (better known as
the contras) and five other exiled
Nicaraguans, met in a Miami hotel to
prepare for a press conference the
next day. Joining them were two CIA
agents. One of the Nicaraguans asked
the CIA what to say about their con-
tacts with U.S. officials. They were
told to lie.
Two years later, Chamorro was
awakened at 2 a.m. in a CIA-provided
house in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. A
CjA agent named George handed him
a_press release written in Spanish. It
said that the contras had mined seve-
ral Nicaraguan harbors. George urged
Chamorro to rush to the contras' clan-
destine radio station and break the
news before the Sandinista govern-
ment did. Chamorro did what he was
told, even though the mining was news
tp him. It was the CIA, working
through its so-called "Latino assets."
that had done it.
Chamorro's story, published in the
current issue of The New Republic,
contains other examples of U.S. gov-
ernment duplicity, not the least of
them being the fiction that the contras
want only democracy in Nicaragua and
not-perish the thought-power for
themselves. But overall, the former
contra director provides details to a
story whose outlines are already
known and which is of interest pri-
marily because it provides firsthand
evidence that your government has
lied. Whether it is still lying remains to
be seen.
That question is important because
at the same time that Chamorro's
story was published, the Reagan ad-
ministration accused the Sandinistas of
planning terrorist attacks against
Americans in Honduras. The same
diplomatic note also linked Managua to
the killing of four U.S. Marines last
month in El Salvador and said-al-
though it goes without saying-that
we are not going to put up with this
sort of thing. The terms "react ac-
cordingly" and "serious conse-
quences" were brandished. Nicaragua,
as usual, responded by saying, "Who
me?" and for the umpteenth time ac-
cused the United States of seeking a
pretext for an invasion.
Maybe the first thing to be said is
that both sides are giving hypocrisy a
bad name. The Sandinista govern-
ment excuses its every excess, from
tightening its rule to the expropria-
tion of property to a U.S. invasion
that never comes. But Nicaragua is a
small country. It can hardly match the
flow of cant and mock innocence that
comes from Washington. Here, the
Reagan administration pretends that
for all the world it cannot understand
why the Sandinistas would even
dream of knocking off Americans.
But if "linkage" is enough for the
United States to connect the killing of
the Marines with Managua, then let us
look at our own linkage. We are, in
spades, linked to the contras who are
linked to the deaths of thousands of
Nicaraguans-as many as 12,000, ac-
cording to the Sandinistas. The United
States is linked to the mining of Nica-
raguan harbors and other acts of sabo-
tage, and in El Salvador, it is linked to
a government that is fighting a civil
war. If linkage is good enough for us,
then why is it not good enough for
both the Nicaraguan and Salvadoran
left? Are not the Marines who were
killed linked to the government troops
they have trained, and don't those
troops kill leftist guerrillas?
Enough! Our phony innocence is
suffocating. The truth is that the
United States is engaged in a war of
sorts-a war in which it seems to ex-
pect the other side not to fight back.
In reality, of course, it expects no such
thing. Instead, it uses retaliation as a
pretext to turn up the level of vio-
lence. It hits and then cries foul when
someone hits back. Like the boy who
cried wolf, it is fast losing its credibil-
ity.
There are those of us who would
love the United States to punish the
Sandinistas with cold indifference-to
lay down certain rules (no Soviet mis-
siles, for instance) and then go on to
other, more important, hemispheric
matters. But regardless of the policy
pursued, it and its consequences
ought to be frankly acknowledged. It
should not be possible for someone
like Chamorro to write that the U.S.
government lied-not to its enemy,
but to its own people. His article is
additional evidence that the United
States is at war. As usual, truth is the
first casualty.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201200010-9