NICARAGUA, AN ECHO OF THE BAY OF PIGS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706570005-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: March 16, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
~ Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13 :CIA-RDP90-009658000706570005-5
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ON PAGE ~.~ 16 March 1986
STAT
Nicaragua, an Echo of ie
Tad Szulc, who covered the Bay of ?
Pigs invasion as a reporter for The B a O f
New York Times, is author of "Fidel Y
Castro: A Critical Portrait," soon to ?,J ]]T111
he published. i.e., a sizable popular uprising or sub-
By Tad Szulc
WASHINGTON
pril 17 marks the nearly for-
gotten 25th anniver-
sary of the invasion of
the Bay of Pigs in
Cuba -organized, fi-
nanced and directed
by the United States. That sorry en-
terprise provides an uncannily real
analogy with President Reagan's lat-
est efforts to arm the Nicaraguan
contras in order finally to oust the
Sandinistas. Congress might do well
to ponder this analogy as it prepares
to vote on President Reagan's request
for 5100 million in new aid to the
rebels.
There is, to begin with, an eerie
similarity in the assumptions under-
lying United States involvement in
Cuba 25 years ago and in Nicaragua
today. There are also parallels in the
sequence of policy making decisions
that gradually linked United States
geopolitical objectives, first with
Cuba, now with Nicaragua.
In the case of Nicaragua, the White
House began by asserting that the
Sandinistas were threatening to
spread the virus of Communism
throughout Central America. A se-
cret decision was made, apparently
in the early days of the Reagan Ad-
ministration, in the National Security
Council to uproot Managua's Marx-
ist-Leninist leadership. This was fol-
lowed b the self-se declaration
t at most icaraRUans were eter-
mined to be rid of the Sandinistas and
that all it would take to help them ac-
complish this would be clever para-
military support provided by the Cen-
tral lntelliAence Attencv.
In the case of Cuba, the National
Security Council met on March 10,
1959, to discuss, in secret, ways to
"bring another Government to
power." This was barely two months
after Fidel Castro swept into power
with overwhelming national support
for his social revolution.
On March 17, 1960, President
Dwight D. Eisenhower approved "A
Program of Covert Action Against
the Castro Regime" because Fidel
Castro was moving toward Commu-
nism and a stronger,relationship with
the Soviet Union. ideanwhile, his Ad-
ministration had begun to develop a
paramilitary force outside of Cuba
for "future guerrilla action."
On Feb. 3, 1961, the Joint Chiefs of
Statt approved a "Military Evalua-
tion of the C.I.A. Paramilitary Plan
- Cuba," but with the warning that
"it is obvious that ultimate success
will depend upon political factors,
stantial follow-on forces.
However, the C.I.A. misled Presi-
dentJohn F. Kennedy about the likeli-
hood of an uprising after the landing
of the Cuban exiles' brigade. Secre-
tary of State Dean Rusk later told a
Presidential board of inquiry "that
the uprising was utterly essential to
success."
No major uprising occurred in
Cuba along with the landing, and not
only because Mr. Castro had had the
foresight to round up thousands of
potential opponents. Even those who
had become increasingly disen-
chanted with Mr. Castro refused to
welcome what they suspected to be a
United States-engineered return to
the status quo of the Fulgencio
Batista dictatorship -indeed, the in-
vading forces included several
Batista officers.
Let us now turn to the Nicaraguan
rerun of the Bay of Pigs operations.
Obviously, the conditions are not
identical. The Sandinista comman-
dantes have been in power for nearly
seven years, and, notwithstanding
their generally appalling leadership
they have managed to consolidate
their police and political hold on the
population. Bad as life is in Nicara-
gua, and repressive as the Govern-
ment's internal policies may be, the
masses have not rushed to join or sup-
port the contras after nearly four
years of C.I.A. entreaties.
In othgr repressive societ}es, the
people gave risen against well,armed
dictatorships - as in Poland with
Solidarity, and in the Philippines -
without C.I.A. manipulations. They
have had convincing reasons to rebel,
and they have done so with clean .
hands. Clearly, this point entirely es-
capes President Reagan when he
compares the contras with the Filipi-
nos or real freedom fighters else-
where in the world.
Despite its failures, the Nicaraguan
revolution of 1979 has brought consid-
erablesocial justice and care to Nica-
ragua's impoverished people. The
United States cannot ignore this fact
any more than it can ignore the
strong nationalistic sentiments of the
Nicaraguan people arising, in part,
from earlier armed interventions by
United States Marines.
Nor can it ignore the fact that the
leadership of the contras is probably
as repugnant to ordinary Nicara-
guans as the leadership of the Bay of
Pigs force was to the ordinary Cuban
25 years ago. Thnt the contras are led
by key officers of the old Somoza
dictatorship's National Guard, the
main oppressors of the population in
the old days, is either sheer C.I.A.
folly or a confession that no better
leaders could be produced.
The Administration confronts this
argument by pointing out that re-
specteddemocrats from the first San-
dinista regime, including Arturo Cruz
and Alfonso Robelo, are members of
the umbrella political organization
attached to the contras, and that this
in turn suggests the existence of wide-
spread support inside Nicaragua for
the anti-Sandinista effort.
Here again the Cuban experience is ,
instructive. The C.I.A.-backed Demo-
cratic Revolutionary Front was
headed by Jos@ Mirb Cardona, the
first Prime Minister after the Cuban
revolution, and included Manuel Ray,
who had been Mr. Castro's liberal-
minded public works minister. But
despite their individual popularity,
and the fact that they had been dis-
missed by an increasingly radical
Fidel Castro, they did not have signif-
icant backing inside Cuba, and when
the invasion came, the C.1.A.-con-
trolled Democratic Revolutionary
Front turned out to be totally useless.
Just as the C.I.A. misled the Ken-
nedy Administration about the inter-
nal support for the exiles' invasion,
the Reagan Administration -equally
misleadingly -applies self-fulfilling
prophecies to the Nicaraguan dis-
ppute. The President says he is willing
to forget the contras if Managua
agrees to negotiate, but what he evi-
dently means by negotiation is either
a Sandinista capitulation or power-
sharing with the contra-backed oppo-
sition outside the country.
Since, as President Reagan must
realize, this is an unacceptable propo-
sition to any government, he will be
able to proclaim that, having turned
down his peacemaking ultimatum,
Nicaragua is now fair game for the
use of force. And at that juncture he
will have trapped himself.
Recent history shows that the
United States can impose its will in
Latin America only by applying or
threatening the use of its armed
forces. The leftist regime in Guate-
mala was thrown out in 1954 by a rag-
tagguerrilla army directed by United
States officers, ushering in a corrupt
rightist dictatorship. In 1965, it took
two United States combat divisions to
make the civil war in the Dominican
Republic come out our way. In 1983,
tiny Grenada was simply knocked out
by American forces.
What happens, therefore, in Nica-
ragua if the contras, even with a
fresh 5100 million, fail to win their
war? Will President Reagan, in des-
peration, order the use of American
troops there? This is the one thing
that John F. Kennedy chose not to do
at the Bay of Pigs. ^
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/13 :CIA-RDP90-009658000706570005-5