SUICIDA'S SECRET WAR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201580003-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 19, 2012
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: December 22, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST A T
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Z1 NF-)
WASHINGTON POST
22 December 1985
cuKwA's
SECRET
WAR
How one contra got serious
about the battle to oust
the Sandinistas
N DECEMBER 1981, Ronald Reagan
signed a presidential finding that estab-
lished a force for "parainilitary operations?
against Nicaragua. This force became known
as the "contras" or "counterre ioflaries
Originally planned as a 500-man, covert CIA
operation aimed at stopping arms traffic from
Nicaragua to the rebels in El Salvador, the "secret
war" became a catch phrase for Washington's at-
tempts to pressure, harass and destabilize the
Nicaraguan government. By 1985, the contra
fighting force had grown to an estimated 10,000
men
The largest contra faction, the Nicaraguan
Democratic Force (FDN), operated out of Hon-
duras crossing the border into Nicaragua to make
raids on villages and Sandinista militia positions.
Because U.S. support for the contras was part of a
CIA-funded program, little was known initially
about the FDN commanders, their
tactics. Washington Post foreign
Christopher Dickey was one of the first reporters
to go behind contra lines.
In this excerpt from Dickey's book With the
Contras, we join one FDN force under the com-
mand of Pedro Pablo Ortiz Centeno, known to his
men as "Suicida." A former member of dictator
Anastasio Somoza-Debayle's National Guard, the
most feared of Somoza's security forces, Suicida
earned his nom de guerre by taking his men into
battlet--and winning them-when other com-
manders and their troops would have died on the
battlefield As a result, S earned intense
loyalty from his troops and those directly under
him, his lieutenants Krill and Cancer, a loyalty
surpassing that held by the men for the FDN it-
self. In their devotion to Suicida, these troops
waged their own war, a war out of FDN control
and, ultimately, beyond the scope of anything
Washington had envisioned Though the CIA and
the FDN supported Suicida's war at first, ulti-
mately Suicida and his men became a matter of
international embarrassment for them.
Y NOVEMBER 1982, Suicida had his men, he
had his guns and he felt ready for his kind of
war big attacks looking for big wins. First they
would eliminate the Sandinista outposts along
the border, then they would push their forces
deep inside the narrow northern tip of Nueva
Segovia in Nicaragua. They would attack Jalapa
itself. If they could take it, they would call in
support on the airstrips around the town, and
reinforcements overland from Honduras. They
would declare a liberated territory. Then the war
to oust the communists could get serious.
At FDN headquarters in Tegucigalpa, Honduras,
however, there did not seem to be much enthu-
siasm for this idea. The general staff toyed with it.
It sounded good. But the men at the other bases
were still in training, and they did not want to act
until everyone was ready-if then. In the middle of
November, without orders from Tegucigalpa, and
on his own account, Suicida began his infiltration
and his offensive in the Segovias.
The initial attacks were small. Most of Suicida's
new recruits were raw; many could not be relied on
to fight. But the Sandinista forces they were up
against were often half-trained militiamen as raw
as anyone in their own ranks. As Suicida's people
gained experience in little ambushes and engage-
ments the scope of the fighting grew. Krill and
Cancer were spearheading the operation, and well
past Providencia they had yet to encounter major
resistance. The only problem was ammunition. The
new recruits wasted a lot and they were running
out quickly. Suicida started calling to the other
bases asking for support, trying to draw them into
the fight. But one by one the responses came back
over the radio. "Negative." Now he called Teguci-
galpa. He had an offensive going. He was giving hell
to the Sandinistas, couldn't they tell that? And,
however reluctantly, they began diverting supplies
to his camp to try to sustain him.
The general staff in Tegucigalpa had not known
what to do about Suicida's offensive when it began.
But they soon saw that, at least in the short term, it
could give them the credibility they wanted as a
fighting force. He was inside Nicaragua, he was
fighting, and he was holding his own.
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have bem Ka began to work on
{RILL HAD BEEN AWAY for month on the
th
em a soon as they were captured.
coast pursuing his little vendettas, looking for the
They were week already, twere
odd dollar, sulking and drinking and ranoarhartg. old and soft for this kind they h action.
And then he had shown up in the camp at Piro
Uno in Ho duree and taken over again as the Apparently they were vulnerable to
intimate of Suicide. Krill was a survivor and a killer each other's pain and could be made
to be reckoned with. No one could deny his skills in to talk to protect each other. Whether
the field. But he brought with him his mix of sullen in the long night of marching the
peesions and childish glee at the prospect of woman was raped and just how badly
they both suffered in their first inter-
"Cancerwasnot like Krill," commandos from rogations are not matters of any cer-
important would say qualias if that were ty. and dark with clears back to Pino Uno-the man got them
most wounded
w ey and the regular, cheekboned and half-crawling, eyes s an and the regular, high- the woman dou-
features left by a lot of Indian blood, Cancer had a bled over in pain, drying blood
quiet nature, but not a sullen one. And he showed smeared along the insides of her legs
considerations that the men and his women -Krill probably knew be was bring-
appreciated. He was a fighter but not a killer. ing Suicide a pair of prizes.
Their names were Felipe and
KR1I.'S MEN moved only as quietly as they Maria Eugenia Barreda. He was 51
had to along the sharp edges of the mountains years old, she was 49 and people
above the government cooperative at Wuambuco. called her Mary . They were from
The rows of dark green bushes up and down the Esteli and they had been Sandinista
steep hillsides showed the red berries of ripe coffee, partisans fora long time. They was
and Krill knew the Sandinistas would send some- the kind of people who had made the
body to try to pick it. All Krell had to do was wait revolution possible in the first place:
for word that the pickers were arriving and then middle middle-class; he was a self-
deploy his men for the attack. made man, a jeweler and one-time
The local people and migrant worhs who usu. member of the Lions Club, a bit of a
ally picked the delicate berries now refined to go to drinker and gambler and then a com-
the coffee estates near the combat zones, especially witted Christian. She was an activist
those rum by the government, so militias and stu- who first worked with the Sandinistas
dents, government employee and members of the because her son worked with them
Sandinista Front's political apparatus were sent in- and was wed, then went on to lead
stead. Most had had a little rudimentary military VOUPS of mothers on hunger strikes,
training and about half of them had been handed fighting for human rights and against
guns along with their harvest baskets when they Somava. During the war, their home
went into the groves in the morning. But they did was a headquarters and safe house for
not really know how to fight.. Sandinista leaders.
Krill's attack began clumsily. A lookout spotted After the war she was an inde-
same of his men and ran shouting down the hill- fatigable member of Esteli's recon-
side. "Get down, get down! The contras are coming at'ruction junta "We won the revolu-
there!" The workers, even most of those with guns, lion, but I lost my wife," her husband
scattered and scrambled through the bushes. An used to say, only half-joking. They
M60 went into action, raking beck and forth near wen active in the party, active in the
the harvesters; then Krill's men began to follow left wing of the church, proselytizers
them along the peaka, dogging the prey from the of the revolution. The Barredas went
'high slopes, knowing they would try to make it to the coffee plantations to make a
back to the farmhouse. A heavy-set, middle-aged political example of their commit-
man reached a jeep and was using the radio to call ment.
for help. One of Krill's men raked When Suicide got hold of them be
had called them "Los roams meros,"
him with a burst of fin and ran on. the essence of the essence,
Occasional shooting continued for a
couple of hours, but Krill's men were SUICIDA was famous but frus-
soon rounding up prisoners. Near the trated in his limited world. In the
bullet-riddled jeep they looked for mountains of the Segovias everyone
the man wounded in the initial en- knew his name. And in Tegtiucigalpa
counter. They found him in a ditch and D nli he was feared as well as ad-
with a middle-aged woman beside mired. He was the object of pride,
him looking as weak and as bloody as envy and anger among the other task
be. force commanders and the general
By some accounts the woman had a staff in Tegucigalpa. Krill's capture of
gun in her hand. Another story sug- the Barredas could only build Suic-
gesta that the husband's efforts to can de's reputation more and he called his
for help over the radio singled him parientito Noel Ortiz at Radio 15 de
out for abuse. But however that may Septiembre to come down and inter.
view them.
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Meanwhile, 5uicida had handed
the Barredas over to El Muerto, the
sallow 22-year-old boy with a gaunt
face and heavy lids whom he saw as
Tegucigalpa's spy. Maybe he thought
he would be flaunting his prize this
way, or perhaps he simply wanted the
dirtiest jobs under his command to be
carried out by his most hated subor-
dinate
Prisoners were chained to trees at
Pino Uno. They were left to sleep
half-naked and sometimes unable to
lie down in the rains that fell in the
evenings and the bitter chill that set-
tled into the mountain forests. What
beatings did not do at first, exposure
was left to accomplish for a night or
two. Nearby was the graveyard of
Pino Uno, with scores of mounds vis-
ible.
Not all prisoners were treated
harshly. Any man captured, espe-
cially if he surrendered his weapon,
was likely to be encouraged to join
the ranks of the FDN. Some did so
thinking they would escape later, and
some out of conviction, and some
because they thought they were going
to be on the winning side. Suicida and
Krill and the rest, and everyone
above them up to the level of the
FDN directorate,were certain this war
would be won by the summer of 1983
at the latest. After all, that was what
the Americans told them.
Several young n ilicianoa were
caught at Wuambuco with the Barre-
das and, after interrogation, briefly
joined the ranks of the FDN. But
when they were taken to an old Ma-
sonic lodge in Danli where refugees
were housed, they managed to call the
Nicaraguan consul from a telephone
nearby. He picked them up and they
returned to Managua, where they told
vivid horror stories. If it were not for
what happened later, their stories
might be discounted. But as it is,
given the events of the spring and
summer, their observations at Pino
Uno have a certain grim credibility.
One of the milicianoe, for instance,
said he was present when "the
greens," as the Honduran soldiers
were called, turned over three FDN
deserters, one of them 13, another 17
and one 20 years old. 'rhey had tried
to escape to Nicaragua. They were all
torn up, naked, their bodies black and
blue all over from the blows, as if
from whips. When they were going to
be executed, the 13-year-old kid
screamed to El Muerto, `Boss, I won't
do it again. Don't kill me, hoes.' El
Muerto shut him up and kicked
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him. And he cut his throat there. And
the others who were tied up to some
stakes then also had their throats
cut."
El Marto did most of his work in a
little house seta short distance from
the rest of the camp. His room, as de-
scribed by some of his prisoners, had
a military cot, an electric generator,
even a coffee maker. He had a little
television and a big tape roomier on
which he used to listen to "that music
from Manhattan Island, modern
music from New York" to drown out
the screams.
The Barredas were kept apart in
the open and interrogated individual-
ly. By some accounts El Muerto beat
Felipe Barreda with the butt of his
pistol, reopening Barreda's wounds.
There were differences in the stories
the Barredas told about who they
were and what they did. Then El
Muerto brought them together and
confronted each with the other's
"lies," his voice and the beatings and
the threats of death growing more
savage as the interrogation went on.
Noel Ortiz arrived from Radio 15
four days after the Barredas were
captured. Suicida took him proudly
to whom the Barredas were being
held. They looked weak, in pain, as
they lay bound, filthy and exhausted
on the ground.
"Why are they like that?" Ortiz
asked Suicida.
"They're loo meros ,nerve," said
Suicida smiling.
Ortiz wanted to talk to the Barre-
das for the radio and he had brought
a television camera to make a propa-
ganda film. Time prisoners, it was
hoped, could be made defectors. But
they were not presentable. The Ba-
rredas had urinated on themselves
from fear.
Mary Barreda spoke to Ortiz as
someone who might, at last, bring re-
lief. Could she have something, she
asked, to help the pain? Ortiz ordered
an injection for her. Mary and Felipe
Barreda were taken to a stream to
bathe, and they washed the blood and
dirt from each other, delicately, pain-
y.
"Ezcvse the abuses of the war,"
Ortiz said lamely as he took the
woman aside. "We understand you're
directors of the Sandinistas. We don't
want to commit abuses." He asked
Mary Barreda what she did, exactly,
and he understood her to say she was
the political chief of Fateli.
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~LOOa+ erne 1111M ? y we were "T'here was a man sick. He asked
fooled into coming to this area. I
thought we were going to pick coffee.
But they were moved from one farm
to another, ever closer to the border
and combat, and they were getting
rifles and training and when she
asked about this the r+esponsabler
had said only that "the dogs were
near." She was fooled, she said. She
was fooled.
She was taped for Radio 15 the
next day, saying that she was tired,
naturally, but not mistreated and
that she had a bad conscience for
bringing people to pick coffee when
really they were taken into combat.
But she did not denounce the revolu-
tion.
It may be that Ortiz told Suicida he
did not want the Barredaa hurt, and
that when he went back to Teguci-
galpa he met with the representative
of the International Red Cross at the
Hotel Maya to try to arrange a pris-
oner exchange. As late as May, the
fate of the Barredaa was one of Pino
Uno's unspoken secrets.
Ortiz said afterward that they were
left in the hands of El Muerto and he
was responsible for what happened to
them. In the summer of 1983, after El
Muerto was a prisoner of the Sandin-
istas, he first denied that he was re-
sponsible, then said that the order
came from Suicida, then that it came
from Tegucigalpa.
One of the FDN officers who
looked into the case later said that
Suicida had been ordered to turn the
Barredas over to the commander in
Tegucigalpa And Suicide refused
In El Muerto's words, always in the
passive voice, "They were elimmat-
ed."
"You buried them there?"
"Correct. They made a hole. They
lay down. And they were killed
there."
SALVADOR ICAZA kept his
diary hidden and worried constantly
that Krill or Cancer would come
across the notes he had taken since
his arrival at Pino Uno.
Suidda had made Icaza, an erst-
while judge from Esteli, his S5, in
charge of communication and psycho-
logical operations and morale. Ic aza
took his assignment seriously: to talk
about morality, religion, common
sense. He felt those elements were
important to winning the war. Icsza
saw the side of Suicida that made
many of his men love him.
him what was wrong. And he said,
Well, I'm sick. And he gave him $50."
But Ic aza did not know what to
make of Suicida's msicho games in the
field, or the way that Krill and Can-
cer and Caramalo acted in the camp.
They drank a lot. They were "uni-
versal carbu retors,"said Icaza. They
drank "anything from unleaded to
Fla de Cana." They emptied their
guns in the air, raising bell all over
the place. There were fights over
women, and over who was the braver
and the better soldier and there were
fights, 88 well, over d"
said Icaa"power m made the people
drunk"
And when Icaza was alone he wrote
down what Cancer told him in his lit-
tie book.
Icon was told about Suicida and
Krill and the Barreda couple, whom
he had known in Fsteli.
One night during the assaults
against El Porvenir, Icaza heard that
whad as been brought in
new and that Krill Prisoners
going to interro-
gate them.
"I had been hearing rumors," as
Icaza put it in his usual understate-
ment, "that Krill was not a good
guy."
The prisoners were taken to the
stand of trees outside the camp where
prob-
ably the same area where the 'Bane-
das were held and tortured. The cap-
tives were boys, 17,18 years old,
"your kids like my son,? thought
Ica& They were qotajod bound
and had been thrown down on the
dirt. Krill was half-drunk. asking
questions. He got an answer he didn't
like. His black-cleated jungle boot
caught one of the kids under the chin
and the head bobbed back on the
dirt. And Icaza, who would claim later
that he witnessed no murders first-
hand at Pino Uno, did not want to see
what would happen next. He grabbed
Krill. The muscles of the command-
er's aar~m~~ were as taut as an animal's.
"Krill, please, quit mesamg with
this guy."
"Mr. Icaza, it is not your business."
"It is my business," said Icaza. He
had been made S5, and prisoners
were part of his responsibility and
they had to be treated like prisoners
of war.
.. Are you crazy, man?" Icaza
continued. "There is no way you are
going to get away with that stuff."
Krill said nothing, then suddenly
arrived at a decision, said "Hey, go
ahead You can do what you want
with him."
By late June, Icaza said he had
compiled a report of 26 handwritten
pages about "what I had heard and
noticed in Pino Uno. Rumors. And I
investigated more than that" By his
count, Krill alone was said to have
murdered more than 30 commandos,
prisoners and civilians.
Finally Icaza took his report to
Echaverry, the FDN chief of
staff in Tegucigalpa. "And
they said, you know, `Forget
it. You know what happens in
this revolution. Everybody
gets wild. Well take care of
it," Icy recalled. What they
did, he said, was nothing.
DIRECTOR of Central
Intelligence William Casey,
along with his deputy, his na-
tional intelligence officer, the
head of his international af-
fairs division and Duane R.
Clarridge, "Dewey," a trusted
aide, dropped in on Central
America for a couple of days
in late June 1983: one day for
El Salvador, where Casey
wanted to talk to the locals
about toning down their
death squads, and one day in
Honduras to check up on the
war. Central Americans who
met with Casey's crew re-
member a flying circus of
aging men in tropical shirts,
looking like insurance execu-
tives at a convention in Ha-
waii Confident, energetic and
abrupt as ever, Casey gave the
impression that be thought
everything was under control
The problem of Suicida
apparently did not come up.
Maybe there was too much
information to sort through,
one agent suggested, too
many details. The reports on
what was happening at Pino
Uno were "very fuzzy," he re-
called. It seemed Suicida
had been totally enraged by
something that had hap-
pened to some of his people
and he went in and massa-
cred a whole bunch of people.
As I remember it, it was
pretty cold-blooded. Not
something he did just in a
rage, but he stood them up
and killed them."
Y
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Another CIA man remem-
bered "there was a little rip-
ple of shock in the agency
when it turned up he was
99
prisoners.
At least one member of the
m
congressional intelligence
committees, a supporter of
the paramilitary program,
heard stories of atrocities
from friends in the agency.
There was an account that
said Suicida had taken sev-
eral captives, as many as 30,
and killed them all. There
were rumors, as well, circulat-
ing among the civilians in Te-
gu cigalpa; rumors they did
not want to believe about
men buried alive, about muti-
lations.
One agency veteran ex-
plained the low level of atten-
tion given Suicida's actions
by the authors of the secret
war as a matter mainly of bu-
reaucratic discretion: "I think
they kept it as quiet as they
could as long as they could
within the agency."
The CIA station chief in
Tegucigalpa and Dewey, at
Langley, were still big on the
idea of command and control
as the solution to their worst
problems with the FDN. They
had worked out a system to
sidestep the FDN general
command. The idea was to
have a single officer running
operations from a camp either
on the frontier or, preferably,
inside Nicaragua. He would
be called a "theater com-
mander" and he would see to
the needs and the strategies of
the various task forces. He
would dear up any confusion
about objectives, disburse-
ments, discipline. He would
take away the need for insub-
ordination and dean up.
The FDN command was
wary. It rejected the first
name suggested by the Amer-
icans and countered with one
of its own; the bright young
ex-Guardia National captain
Hugo Villagra, who went by
the code name Visage. A
protege of Somoza's son. A
terrorist in Costa Rica. An
airplane hijacker. A close
friend of the men who spon-
sored El Salvador's death
squads. This was the man
who was supposed to clean up
the operations of the FDN.
The agency accepted him.
One of his first assign-
ments was to get Krill.
VISAGE waited on the
green hillside for Krill. For
almost two months Suicida
and his men had been "in re-
bellion." Troops under one of
his group commanders or an-
other-hundreds of troops,
some of them the best fight-
ers in the contra army-were
wandering all over the place.
And nothing had been done.
Visage could say he had
seen this coming. Suicida's
loss of control had been gradual and
Visage had tried to warn the general
staff months before. But then Su d-
da's men were fighting a lot. All the
patrols
ere ambushing o well; they
w he place.
They inflicted a lot of casualties on the
Sandinistas. Piro Uno was the force
that gave the greatest result.
Still, Visage considered Krill and
Caremalo complete thugs. With Krill
there was this thing of killing his own
commandos for the least cause. There
were a great quantity of them, not just
two or three. It could be for any reason
at all- say, for example, that one was
very late bringing soave information.
Visage knew that kind of thing had
been common an the southern front
during the war of'78 and '79. But here
in the FDN they had said they weren't
gig to do that. You can punish a
person by demand his attention,
putting him on watch or sending him
on a hike, because you have to take
diec4plinary measures for certain fail-
ings. But you don't kill the man.
Ten, 20, 30-there may have been
as many as 40 commandos killed by
Krill. No one knew for certain. Their
stories were lost to confused rumor
and unmarked graves.
And then there had been Cancer.
After Krill murdered Cancer, the
camp had broken to bits. And now it
was weeks, months later, and Visage
had to try to put it all bock together
again The Americans were saying
they didn't want to get involved. Al-
though of course they knew about
these "anomalies."
Krill always moved more easily
than the rest. Visage waited for him.
Visage had brought with him four of
the boys he had trained as his special
corps to go with him to set up the new
command pat inside Nicaragua.
They spread out slightly to cover
lines of fire.
Visage ordered Krill into the
waiting Huey copter. Krill told him to
go to bell. He was staying here in the
mountains with his men. No, said
Visage, these boys he'd brought with
him were here to establish a base
where they could begin to recuperate
all those from Pino Uno who were
wandering the mountains without
rest these last months. Krill was no
longer needed here.
Krill looked around for backing
from among the commandos. But
Visage had chosen his moment well
There were no eyes to look into that
signaled support-The hundred or so
men in Krill's patrol were exhausted
and beaten. They were not going to
fight with the new theater co?nmand-
er. Krill was angry, but he swung
himself into the Huey.
Caramalo was picked up the same
day. Visage saw him as a bum now,
not even trying to carry on the war
with his little group of men. Both the
prisoners were taken to the aban-
doned chicken farm-La Quints Ea-
cuela-now run by the Argentines as
their school just outside the capital
EL SUICIDA was not arrested
when Captain Luque, the Honduran
liaison to the FDN, found him near
Arenalea. By some accounts he was
with his woman Sara. He was invited
back to the capital to talk. Suicide
trusted Luque. He had heard there
were changes and he went.
Noel Ortiz did not know what had
happened to Suicida until a note was
smuggled to him at Radio 15 de Sep-
tiembre. "Parientito, they've cap-
tured me," Ortiz remembered its say-
ing. "My life's in danger. They want
to kill me."
Ortiz called Villages at la Quints
to find out what was happening.
"Suicide has got problems," said
Villeges, the Argentine adviser most
trusted by the FDN field command-
ers. "Don't get into it."
Ortiz said that if there was going to
be some kind of proceeding, he
wanted to defend Suicide.
"Don't get involved," said Villages.
The manager of Radio 15 de Septi-
embre, Suicide's oldest friend in Te-
gucigalpa, drove to La Quinta to we
what he could do, and once again he
confronted Villagaa He could hear
from one of the rooms?--or thought he
could-the voice of a man shouting,
"Parientito! Parientito!" But Villages
would not let him in.
S
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201580003-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201580003-6
Q
"They were people who never ac-
cepted any of their mistakes," ex-
plained one of the FDN officers who
judged Suicide and Krill, Caramalo
and Habakuk. 'Not one. They said it
was all envy, that it was a codabula-
ton; they had done everything `for
the fatherland.' But `for the father-
land' is not going around lulling peo-
ple who are fighting for you, your own
comrades. `For the fatherland' is not
raping women."
Suiada and the rest were con-
fronted with the charges at La Quints
in a makeshift court-martial before
the general staff. Three former
guardia o[ficera, mates and heuten
ant colonels, had been brought down
from Miami to conduct the investiga-
tion and the proceedings. There was
about the affair an atmosphere of
nervous self-righteousness.
The majors and lieutenant colonels
from Miami "brought out the facts
encountered and the realities and
made their recommendation," said
one of their captors. Death.
THIS ARTICLE is excerpted from the forthcoming
book, With the Contras, copyright ? 1985 by
Christopher Dickey, to be published by Simon &
Schuster in January.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201580003-6