THE CONTRAS WON'T CHANGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605040006-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 20, 2013
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: April 13, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/02/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605040006-4
AON PACIE142=?
li-HULL
The Contras
Won't Change
Washington quits its effort to bring democratic
reform and civilian control to the rebels
For months now the Reagan adminis-
tration has been trying to reform
the Nicaraguan contras. With the
desperate enthusiasm of a temper-
ance campaigner in a saloon full of
drunks, the administration has been trying
to persuade autocratic contra leaders to
accept democratic procedures and rebel
military commanders to submit to civilian
control. It's a tough sell. Sometime soon the
contras will announce the creation of a new
umbrella organization called the Nicara-
guan Resistance. There will be a lot of talk
about political reforms and newfound unity
among the various rebel factions. But the
changes will be mostly cosmetic. Among
other things, the formation of the Nicara-
guan Resistance will mark the return to
power of Adolfo Calero, the movement's
strongest political boss, only two months
after he was forced out by the advocates of
democracy and civilian control. The net
result of the reform effort, as a contra offi-
cial named Carlos Ulvert puts it, will be "to
throw the reformers out."
According to both U.S. and contra
sources, Calero's resurgence reflects a deci-
sion by the State Department, the National
Security Council staff and the CIA that the
most pressing need is for the rebels to
achieve some kind of military success, even
if that means putting reform on the back
burner. Deciding not to risk turmoil in the
contras' high command, the administra-
tion opposed an effort by the reformers to
purge senior officers who had served under
the old Somoza dictatorship. Now the con-
tras are infiltrating troops into Nicaragua
from their bases in Honduras and have
begun an offensive that consists mostly of
attacks on economic targets, such as power
lines. When the leftist rebels in El Salvador
resorted to such tactics, U.S. officials pro-
claimed it a sign of weakness, arguing that
attacks on nonmilitary targets reduce pop-
ular support for the insurgents. Last week,
however, the contras were outdone by the
Salvadoran rebels, who attacked a strongly
defended military base, killing an Ameri-
can Green Beret, the first U.S. adviser to
die in combat there (following story).
Tight money: Unless the contra-offensive
produces a few victories of its own, the
White House may have a hard time per-
suading Congress to vote additional aid to
the rebels. The administration has said it
NEWSWEEK
13 April 1987
wants $105 million for the contras this
year. But with contra aid becoming an an-
nual political battle, Reagan strategists
may try to break the cycle by asking for 18
months' worth of financing, which could
amount to as much as $200 million. The
catch is that the effort to reform the contra
movement, which many members of Con-
gress had insisted on as a condition for
U.S. financial support, now has been
superseded.
The reform campaign hit its high-water
mark last Feb. 16, when Calero resigned
from the three-man directorate of the
current umbrella organization, the Unit-
ed Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO). The
administration had encouraged the move,
hoping to avoid a break with the other,
moderate members of the directorate, Ar-
turo Cruz and Alfonso Robelo. But Calero
remained the political leader of the main
rebel army, the Nicaraguan Democratic
Force (FDN), and waged an effective
campaign against his former colleagues.
Cruz, a defector from the Sandinista gov-
ernment, alienated many Nicaraguan ex-
iles who regarded his frequent threats to
resign from UNO as an invitation for
Washington to meddle in contra affairs.
Sources said the CIA worried that Cruz
would undermine the war effort by antago-
nizing the contras' top field commander,
Col. Enrique Bermudez. One American
source says the CIA sent Cruz "clear sig-
nals that he shouldn't push too hard" for
reform and that he should be "deferential
to the good colonel." Cruz resigned in de-
spair. "UNO is a corpse," he said last week.
'A human face': Administration officials
disagree. "It is just not true that the reform
movement is in disarray," insists one. U.S.
policymakers blame Cruz for his own de-
mise, charging that his indecision "pulled
the rug out from under the other reform-
ers," as one of them describes it. They re-
gard Calero as an irresistible force. "You
just can't get rid of Calero," says one offi-
cial. "He represents a legitimate, large seg-
ment of the community." One administra-
tion hand predicts that some reforms will
be announced this week. "Even the FDN
has come a long way," he maintains. "They
recognize the need for a human face, for
participatory democracy, for ci-
vilian hegemony. It's been
painful, but they're heading in
the right direction."
The new Nicaraguan Resist-
ance certainly will have the
trappings of democracy: seven
directors and an assembly of 48
members, representing all or
most of the factions. But Nica-
raguans close to the political
negotiations say Calero and the
10,000-man FDN will dominate
both the directorate and the
STAT
assembly. Robelo, the last re-
maining moderate leader, dis-
counted rumors that he intend-
ed to resign. "I'm in it till the
end," he told NEWSWEEK. But
he added an important caveat:
"It depends on the results of the
reforms. Then I'll decide if I will be a candi-
date for the [new] directorate."
By one independent estimate, the con-
tras have infiltrated about 7,000 men into
Nicaragua so far, and their new offensive
against economic targets is beginning to
produce modest results. Two weeks ago the
rebels blew up part of the power line that
carries electricity between Costa Rica and
Nicaragua. Elsewhere in the country they
have attacked other power lines, as well as
farm co-ops and lumber enterprises. In the
Fifth Military Region in the southeast, the
Sandinistas have forcibly evacuated hun-
dreds of peasants, in order to prevent them
from helping the contras, and have created
a free-fire zone. A number of the contra
attacks have been carried out by a specially
trained, 200-man commando unit, some of
whose members have parachuted into Nic-
aragua from CIA planes.
Hit and run: Many of the attacks, however,
have proved to be inept or inconsequential.
Last month, for example, the contras set off
charges at an electrical tower in Managua
but managed to damage only one of its four
posts. Equipment failures produce more
blackouts than do contra attacks, and the
Nicaraguan economy suffers far more from
U.S. economic pressure and Sandinista
mismanagement than from any damage
the rebels may do. One Western observer in
Managua says the only thing the contras
are good at is "breaking off contact." He
adds: "The contras need to be able to mass
and hit a big military target successfully.
They probably won't be able to do that in
the near future."
What if the contra offensive fails? Even
in defeat the rebels might be able to hang
on for years in a few Nicaraguan strong-
holds, supplied by air. But it's also possible
that thousands of beaten guerrillas and the
peasants who supported them might
swarm into Honduras, a country that fer-
vently hopes it has seen the last of the
Nicaraguan rebels. As far as the Hondu-
Continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/02/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605040006-4
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/02/20: C A-RDP90-00965R000605040006-4 ;L.
native policy of its own. In a letter last
week, three Republican senators?Wil-
liam Cohen of Maine, Nancy Kassebaum of
Kansas and Warren Rudman of New
Hampshire?warned President Reagan
that they may switch their support away
from the contras unless the administration
puts more effort into the search for a nego-
tiated solution in Nicaragua. With the reb-
els sagging, and with the Iran-contra affair
still dogging Reagan's presidency, the
United States and its surrogates may yet be
forced to talk instead of fight.
RUSSELL WATSON with ROBERT PARRY and
DAVID NEWELL In Washington,
JOSEPH CONTRERAS in Managua and
DAVID L. GONZALEZ in Miami
` rans are concernea, tne responsiouity vv e are oeginning to rear mat tnis win oe
would be Washington's. "If the contras dis- another Bay of Pigs," exiled Nicaraguan
integrate and return to Honduras, it would banker Roberto Arguello said in Miami.
no longer be a military problem, but a so- Washington hopes the contras will be
cial problem," Honduran President Jose able to score a few mildly impressive vic-
Azcona told NEWSWEEK. "[The United tories by September, when the case for
States and Honduras] have talked, and we more aid will be taken to Congress. The
are certain they would help resolve that administration will make an all-or-nothing
problem." "No guarantees, no guaran- stand. It will offer Congress no alternative
tees," insisted a U.S. official in Tegucigal- to the stark choice between giving the con-
pa. "We have discussed it, and what we tras more aid ind cutting them off entirely.
have said is, 'Look at our record in other, The administration is betting that, with
similar circumstances, such as Cuba and the 1988 election coming up, most mem-
Vietnam'." But to some contras, those prec- bers of Congress will not want to take re-
edents suggest that the rebels may ulti- sponsibility for abandoning the rebels.
mately be abandoned by the United States. But Congress may try to impose an alter-
Salvador's Rebels: Alive and Deadly
The rebels' careful planning
I paid off. At 2 in the morn-
ing, while most of the soldiers
at the garrison in northern El
Salvador were asleep, leftist
guerrillas from the Fara-
bundo Marti National Lib-
eration Front (FMLN) moved
in. From three sides of the
El Paraiso base the guerril-
las unleashed a barrage of
rockets and mortars. The
deafening burst woke S/Sgt.
Gregory Fronius, the only
U S military adviser then at
the base. Fronius sprinted out
of his quarters, past the blaz-
ing garrison headquarters
and intelligence center, and
away from the barracks at the
south of the compound. As he
dashed up a flight of stairs, a
bullet hit him in the chest. He
fell; seconds later a mortar ex-
ploded nearby. The 27-year-
old American and 69 Salva-
doran soldiers died in the
two-hour attack. Only eight
guerrillas lost their lives.
Last week's assault at El Pa-
raiao stung the government
of President Jose Napoleon
Duarte and humiliated the
country's American-trained
armed forces. Despite $700
million of U.S. aid and six
years of nurturing by the U.S.
Special Forces, the Salvador-
an Army cannot always pro-
tect heavily fortified installa-
tions. The rebel blitz camejust
nine months after a similar
assault on a base outside the
eastern city of San Miguel.
It also capped three months
of stepped-up rebel activity:
FMLN fighters resumed hit-
and-run attacks in San Salva-
dor and caused three recent
traffic stoppages that para-
lyzed the country's highways.
New soportalty: The attack
came as Duarte is wrestling
with his worst political crisis
since taking office in 1984. As
he tries to reverse El Salve-
does economic slide and re-
build the capital after a devae-
tating earthquake six months
ago, he faces increasing oppo-
Sloppy mirky? Evacuating a Salvadoran Army casualty
IVAN MONTECINOS?AFP
sition from the revitalised
right as well as the left Say*'
one European diplomat in
San Salvador "The rebels
sense quite rightly that the
government is weaker now
than it has been for some
time?and that weakness
gives them an opportunity
that they should not pass up."
If last week's raid show,
cased the strengths of the
guerrillas, it also pointed up
failings in the Salvadoran
military. In the last six years
the Army has grown from
about 10,000 troops to 42,000.
With Washington's help the
new Army is better trained
and equipped than in the past,
but recently the troops have
seemed complacent and slop-
py. Just days before the El
Paraiso attack, soldiers spot-
ted 400 rebels moving to the
north of the base; the warning
sign seems to have been ig-
nored. Security at the base
had been tightened after an
FMLN attack three years ago,
but several guerrillas man-
aged to enter the base to set
explosive charges, and it was
likely that FMLN fighters
had infiltrated the garrison to
get details about its layout.
The fact that no officers were
killed or seriously wounded
also raised suspicions that
some officers may have fled
into the base's underground
tactical-operations center.
Despite the apparent resur-
gence of FMLN confidence,
U.S. officials insist the guer-
No ossopotSergeant Fronius
Alias, remain incapable of
achieving a military victory.
"They have always hadthe cap
pacity to organize one of these
spectacular raids," said a sen-
ior Defense Department offi-
cial. "This is saying, 'Hey,
we're here. We're alive.' If
they could pull off three or
four more, then I'd be sur-
prised." High-visibility at-
tacks like the one at El Paraiso
keep rebel morale high?but
they are unlikely by them-
selves to tilt the strategic bal-
ance in El Salvador. The
war, which has already taken
62,000 lives, is expected on
all sides to last well into the
1990s. Sergeant Fronius?the
sixth U.S. serviceman to die
in El Salvador and the first
to perish in combat?will
probably not be the last U.S.
casualty.
NANCY COOPER with JOSEPH
CONTRERAS in San Salvador and
DAVID NEWELL in Washington
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/02/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605040006-4