A CONTRA'S NEW ENEMY
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350011-0
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
1
Document Creation Date:
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date:
November 13, 2012
Sequence Number:
11
Case Number:
Publication Date:
August 12, 1985
Content Type:
OPEN SOURCE
File:
Attachment | Size |
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Body:
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350011-0
1
ARTICLEC "
N PAGE TI
Philip Geyelin
WASHINGTON POST
12 August 1985
A Contra's New Enemy
In making its case against the San-
dinistas in Nicaragua for complicity in
terrorist acts in El Salvador, the Rea-
gan administration does not hesitate to
offer in evidence sketchy testimony
from Napoleon Romero Garcia, a cap-
tured Salvadoran rebel leader who
turned state's evidence.
But when it comes to an unfriendly
witness with far better credentials . . .
well, take the case of Edgar Chamorro.
He's an unswerving supporter of the
purposes of U.S. policy who happens to
think the administration is going about
? the business of promoting democracy in
Nicaragua all wrong. So the administra-
tion would be obliged if Chamorro would
abandon his exile in Florida and get lost.
Chamorro, you see, has met the
enemy of democracy in his native land
three times. His family led the political
opposition to the Somoza tanny. Next
he watched the once
ista revolution succumbPmfgslit Sandin-
ista and
communist influence just as Ronald Rea-
gan says. Then he linked up with the
counterrevolutionary (contra) move-
ment promoted and manipulated by the
CIA and recently restored to good
standing in Congress with $23 million in
khumanitarian
For more than a year, he was the
CIA's handpicked candidate of the
sevenmember directorate of the Nica-
raguan Democratic Force (NDF), the
political arm of the contra fighting
forces. That's when he met yet a third
enemy of democracy in Nicaragua?
it is us.
Or so he alleges in "Confessions Of a
. Contra" in a recent issue of The New
Republic. In the course of richly docu-
menting the case, Chamorro suggests a
larger lesson about the way the United
States, and not just the Reagan crowd,
behaves in these matters: arriving late
with a heavy hand and a tendency to
lose sight of democratic principles when
their sanctity gets in the way of
commie-bashing.
Chamorro and some like-minded Nica-
raguan exiles* began organizing in 1980,
he recalls. They saw the Sandinistas
growing "more repressive [and] became
convinced that they had to be replaced
and that only armed opposition could do
it." At that point, he was on Reagan's
wavelength as a shining example of right-
thinking Nicaraguans who were, as the
president put it, "denied participation" in
the Sandinista government
But in less than a year, Chamorro con-
cluded that he was not at all on the CIA's
wavelength. As he came to see it, the
agency was exploiting him: timing the ac-
tivities of the NDF to fit the U.S. con-
gressional agenda, showing indifference
to contra atrocities, coming up short with
promised weaponry and insisting on
making the important decisions.
After giving Chamorro and his associ-
ates a promise in November 1982 that
they would be victorious by July 1983,
the CIA was giving the impression by
1984 that it "didn't want to Let US win."
Chamorro went public with his disillu-
sion on American op-ed pages and in
congressional corridors. In late 1984, he
was relieved of his duty by the NDF di-
rectorate. His summing up what he had
learned begins with his belief that "a
political dialogue should be the United
States' top priority. We have tried mili-
tary pressure and it hasn't worked. . . .
The first step toward national reconcili-
ation should be abolition of the contra
army.. . . President Reagan should also
lower his inflammatory rhetoric and
give more than lip service to the Conta-
dora peace initiative."
He still thinks there are idealistic
young people with valid grievances fight-
ing against the Sandinistas. "But they are
being used as instruments of U.S. torer
pohcz by the CIA and the Reagan admin-
istration. . . and by the old Somonsta
gang to get back the money and the
power they lost in 1979." His
sununation: "If the contras eviTris=
power, they would simply replace the
communists with their law-and-order re-
gime and no one would be any better ott.
. . . 1 am now convinced that the contra
cause for whicfi 1 gave up two years of
my life offers Nicaragua nothing but a re-
turn to the past."
Small wonder that the administration
does not wish to put on the witness stand
a man who sees no happier prospect at
the hands of those whom Ronald Reagan
sees as "freedom fighters" than he does
at the hands of the Sandinistas.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/11/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350011-0