THE SANDINISTAS SISTER-IN-ARMS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402740001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: October 4, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT ~ ~
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11 :CIA-RDP90-009658000402740001-7
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C.~ ~_--~' -~--~ 4 October 1984
The :Sandinistas
,lister-in-.Arms
By Art Harris N
A
Ora
StOrga:.
Iv'EW .YORK, .Oct. 3-She walks
down the stairs in Gloria Vanderbilt
jeans and a green cashmere sweat-
er The cheekbo a h' h " 'th
n s are i
v
~
't'he Ardor of
g ,
v
a
wisp of blue shadow about dark A R P Vn~ 1) tl nn a rv
brown eyes. Her nails are lacquered
pearl and her voice is husky from
inhaling too many ~D'larlboros and
exhaling revolution.
. She smiles.
You can see how her charm could
' become the flirtation that left a Ni-
caraguangeneral with his throat slit
in her b?droom.
Ever since Nora Astorga, Nica-
ragua's deputy foreign minister,
lured a top Somoza general to her
home in 1978 and left his corpse
behind, vanishing into the jungle to .
carry a rifle for the Sandinistas, she
has become the stuff of legend.
To the left, she is a hero who
risked her life to swap a life'of priv-
ilege and motherhood for an AK-4?
in order to save her country. To the
right, she is viewed as a ruthless
femme fatale, Freud's worst macho
nightmare. As one joke bandied
about Managua put it, "There is one
question you don't ask Nora As- j
-torga: 'Your place or mine?' "'
She hears the joke and smiles.
But it does not surprise her as she
~ stretches out on a couch in the ram-
ti b!ing Westchester County home of
? Nicaragua's U.N. ambassador and
sips strong cafe negro. Far worsg
was said about the twice-divorced ~
mother of five when the White
House rejected her last April as 1
Nicaragua's ambassador to the
United States.
"I don't see myself as a calculat-
ing monster," says Astorga, 35,
' comparing herself to Judith of bib-
lical fame who murdered King Holo=
fernes after he subjugated the Jews.
No matter whose version is pre-
ferred, the allusion to Judith evokes
the incredible horror of man's be-
trays) by a woman. Classical paint-
ings conjure the parable with'gory
scenes of Judith holding a severed
head aloft, dripping blood, mocking
man's weakness and raising the ul-
timate question: Is all fair in love
and war? And is it fair for a woman
to fight on both battlefields at once?
Last night, afte>; a long day on the.
front lines of the public relations
offensive Nicaragua is staging at
the United Nations and .throughout
'- the city; it was pokerfaced -junta
coordinator, Daniel Ortega, 'who
held down the official receiving line
at a trendy New York Athletic Club
reception hosted by lawyer Michael
Kennedy.. ~ .
But across the .room, a swelling
crowd of women talked about As-
torga beneath ceiling murals of men ~
wrestling, ,boxing.. and running
track. A piano. player was singing, 'Z ~
-Love You Just the Way You Are."
? "Oh, God;' said Susan Horowitz,
a political activist who champions
liberal causes. "To try to get the
guy to bed, and then kill him! Fan-
tastic. It's like a western. That's my
dream, to do that to Reagan,
George Bush, go right ~ down the
line. I've got to meef this .Mats
~i-Iari." ..._. .__~.. _..
WASHINGTON
T
Among the crowd were celgbri-
ties like Abbie Hof~tpan, actor-pro-
ducec Michael Douglas, Miku:~Wal-
lace, Shana Alexander, judges and
.rabbis, doctors and lawyers. .None
sparked Freudian debate tike As-
torga. .. = ,
"From a purely`.esthetie ~ stand-
point," sniffed one investment 1iank-
er, "I'd say she's not worth getting
killed for." ~ ' ~~:;
"I think she's great ;looking;" "
snapped his wife, eyeing t$e crowd
build-up. "I'd say the women are
more interested in her than the
men." r ., a , L r
"That's because they all watit to
do what shy did," he replied.
Nearby, Horowitz, , a = ? stunning,
intelligent-looking woman with bng
brown hair accompanied by husband:
David Horowitz, president of MTV,
was chiding feminists for denying
they use sexuality to get what they
want. 'Z know I do," she said.
"So many women on the left deny
they'd ever use their sexuality be-
cause they assume it's not in keeping
with women's liberation," she went
on. "But I know a lot who use their
looks and wiles, even though they'd
never march into the Wonder Woman
foundation and say. `Hey, I got this
guy to do something for m~e because I
gave him the hint 3'd do something
for him in return.' " ~ : --
She saw Astorga as an inspiration
for the New Woman. "She's the most
exciting modern female revolutionary
around. I bye it "
? ~
Under fire b CIA-backed contras
r -- --
and7~ent eaKan or. _, au elec-
tloas, exporUn revojution and other
assorted ills.. i~agu~.1.s_fghttng
a war o? wordg~ . , .
~+~~~s!n:+ua
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11 :CIA-RDP90-009658000402740001-7
 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11 :CIA-RDP90-009658000402740001-7
Astorga ranks numt-er ~ three in
1Vlanagua's foreign ministry. But with
Miguel D`Escoto, the bespectacled
foreign minister, off selling Sandi-
nismo abroad, and vice minister Vic-
trr Tinoco busy as a special repre-
sentative to the U.N. Security Coun-
n7, Astorga usually winds up running
the show..
"The United States treats unde-
veloped countries, like little children,"
sbe says, striding through the U.N.
delegates' lounge, waving, kissing
arrd shaking .hands with admirers.
"Their attitude, is, 'If you behave, I'U
give you some candy. If not, I'll spank
You.' "
Her pitch appears to sell well at
the U.N. Had she not personally lob-
bied dozens of crucial nonaligned na-
tions under U.S: pressure to vote for
anyone but Nicaragua, .her. country
would 'still be ,out in left field on the
General Assembly fluor, not in the
influential Security Council, say fel-
low diplomats;
"There came a point when we put
in our heavy artillery and sent in
D'Escoto and Nora, one on one," says
Nicaraguan diplomat Alejandro Ben-
- dana, 34. "She's warm, friendly and
honest. She disarms people. She
speaks fluent English and [disabuses]
Americans from the perception that
Nicaraguans speak Russian and Pat
babies for breakfast."
Indeed, clutching the day's list of
nations to lobby, she fixes the pint-
sized ambassador from Tanzania with
a magic smile, locks eyeballs and
makes the pitch. Moments later, he
stands up beaming-all five feet of
him-walking tall.
'She's clever, intelligent and very
professional," says Augusto Ramirez,
Colombia's dapper minister of foreign
affairs. "She does her job quite well."
It is a coordinated attack. Ortega
yesterday at the U.N. blistered 1?res-
ident Reagan for dispatching guns
and butter to antigovernment con- i
tras, vowing to fight any invasion. He
pleaded his case on and off camera, at
breakfast with reporters, at network
lunches, at private, elegant soirees ~
w'.th powerful businessmen like Ed-
gar Bronfman and Richard Manoff.
Nora, "Morita" to friends, was usu-
ally nearby. She tried not to upstage,
but sometimes couldn't help it. It is
Nora whom most feminists want to
meet: the archetype herself, a living,
breathing, left-wing Dirty Harriet in
the Age of Eastwood.
Added Cornmandante Ortega: "She
typifies the new Nicaraguan woman,
in this case professional Nicaraguan
women who played a very active role
in the struggle against the Somoza
dictatorship and now in defense of
the revolution. She upholds very
highly the concept of democratic con-
q~"
With Ortega and company, she was
scheduled to attend the dinner here
tonight:for Contradora ministers that
Nicaragua desperately wants to keep
in their corner after signing key re- ',
gional peace accords that red-faced
U.S. diplomats predicted would never
be signed and that they are now try- .
ing to torpedo.
And she was with Ortega today
when he toured restored Lower East
Side tenements. CBS will feature her
on a "64 Minutes" episode this Sun-
day. And she was served up for in-
terviews by public relations counsel
retained to sell the Sandinistas to
America.
The fum, Agendas International,
aims to whet media appetites for in-
formation on the woman behind the
myth and keeps her schedule flexible
so other reporters may dine out on
the general's bones.
Such strategies are "the only de-
fense" Nicaragua has against Reagan
media domination, said an account
executive... _ ~
Astorga fires uu another Marlboro.
"Judith dressed u in her best gown,
put on ume an went to Holofer-
nes tent. ~ ~~"Then she Q~t
him drunk and killed him~~yo~
low what the Bib a savs2 'Pry
Judith because she saved her neoole.'
Exceat for the-CIA, most people see
me as a courageous woman who did
what should have been done.---
On awall behind her in a ambas-
sadorial residence in Westchester
hang photographs: one of Sandinista
martyr Auguste Cesar Sandino,
gunned down by National Guard
troops in 1934; another of the assns-
' sin who got even with the first So-
moza in 1956; more of children car-
rying guns to war. Outside, two boys
race about in a play gunfight. The
smell of beef stew wafts in from the
kitchen.
__ "I never felt guilty," she says,. her
eyes downcast as she works to ex-
Plain: `."The plan was to kidnap him,
` but he fought back and. had to be
;killed ... ~It was something you had
to do [for] revolutionary justice. He
had killed so many. He was a mon-
ster." , , ~
G,
ova
Her journey from high society girl
to guerrilla fighter began before As-
torga was aware it was happening.
She was born into wealth. in a small
town named Villa Somoza. Now it is
called Villa Sandino.
- Her father was a lumber exporter.
She grew up on his farm and in Ma-
nagua, the oldest of four children
whose grandfather; ~a rich landowner,
was once defense minister under So-
moza.
When Astorga was 9, the dictator ,
bounced heron his knee and gave her
20 cordobas.
"I wondered why did I have things
and others had nothing to eat," she
says. "So I asked my teacher, 'Why is'
it?' And she said, 'Because God
wanted it that way. [But) you have an ~
obligation to give to them.' "
She went to mass, visited hospitals I
and did charity work. Otherwise, she
spent her time at parties, - '
Like most teen-agars, she had po-
litical fights with her father. "All I
knew was that the country was poor,
women. were getting raped, and
there was nothing to eat. So I figured
Somoza was no good. My father
would say, 'No, it's not like that.' "
When she clung to her stubborn
ways, he dispatched her to Catholic
University in Washington, D.C., "to
save me from my.thoughts."
One day, a professor wrote off Nic- ~'.
aragua in a class as another "banana
republic." And she discovered racism.
"To a lot of people, I was a 'spic.' "
She saw blacks riot after Martin Lu-
then King Jr. She says: "I was living
life like any other teen-agar, and that ,
reminded me that I didn't belong
here, but in Nicaragua."
She went home, only to fall back
into Managua's high society fast=
track. '
Next came law school. A fellow
student told her -one day, "You're a
beautiful young lady, but now I hear
you're only interested in having fun.
Let me ask you one question: Are
you haPPY with yourself?"
"That was it," .says Astorga. "I
wasn't. but I didn't know what to do ~
about it:" -
' The student was a member ~of the ~~
Frente Sandinista Lberacion
National (FSLN), a revolutionary
group founded in 1961. Astorga
signed on to the fledgling illegal
group and soon got her fast job: find
a safe house for Oscar Turcios, an
underground member who became
her political mentor.
Her code name was Maria. He
went by Eduardo. She found a house
and played courier, she fetched food,
ran messages, cut his hair. He taught
i her about revolution.
1'r.n: ;::.;i
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11 :CIA-RDP90-009658000402740001-7
 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11 :CIA-RDP90-009658000402740001-7
She got married, against Turcios' ~~.~"
advice, to a fellow student member,
Jorge Jenkins, now Nicaragua's am-
bassador to Sweden.
She nursed Che Guevara fantasies.
"I wanted to be a hero," she re-
fleets, "do something great, some-
thing big, go to the mountains, do
dramatic things. I wanted to fight."
Oscar said no. She had a perfect
rover: a blossoming law student from
a top family. She could do things for
the FSLN others could not.
cv~
Astorga stunned her parents by
taking part in student strikes on cacn-
pus..She hel take over a church,
P~. - __ -
fasting to protest political prisoners.
Her mother showed up and called her
? a "disgrace" to the family:
Soon she was the mother of two.
She graduated from law school, stud-
ied in Europe for a year with her hus-
band, then found work as a lawyer for
' a construction fum. '
She struggled with indecision over
?whether to be a revolutionary fuf!
tune or a mother and a wife." Then,
in 1973, Turcios was captured by
.National Guard troops: Six hours later.
er, he was dead; a bullet in his head. ".
"They tried to say he was killed in ` j
a }eep wreck, but it was`coldbk~oded i
murder," she says. Astorga then bur-
rowed into her family. "I left my po-
litical life. I became dependent on my ~
husband." But-'she-wasn't happy. "I
filed for divorce ~tti survive as a .per-
son. That was the end of parf of my
,..~. j.
She worked' as`a `courier for the
FSLN, zipping betty ~een Managua and
San Jose, Costa 12ica~ Her boss, En-~
rique Pereira;`? whose ,firm did $40
nullion in cot~stiii~ioa?work a year; ,
asked her , bo="~ ~ y. ~ ...
"I'm a messenger forSandinis- .
tae," she tald ~fi.~'He laughed it off -~
and never brought it up again. -
One day, Pereira dispatched her to
negotiate a contrail with the number
two man ' in' the. National Guard, ~;
Reynaldo Perez-Vega.' She only knew
him by his reputation on the left as
"El Perro" (the dog), a short, stocky ,
man who raped, tortured and shot ..
political enemies at will, and was an
indefatigable womanizer.
~At_the time of American refusal to
accredit her as ambassador a series
of leaks from o ~cials_portra~lu s
a so as a T~ "asset," su~Pl~n fake I r _ : -
passports to_gents __ _ ~.
Left, Nora Astorga in New Yo>:k;... '
inset, with Eden Pastors in 1978
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/11 :CIA-RDP90-009658000402740001-7