THE WAR IN NICARAGUA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000201360003-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 21, 2008
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: August 29, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM Crossroads STATION WDVM-TV
CBS Network
DATE August 29, 1984 8:00 P.M. CITY Washington, D.C.
SUBJECT The War in Nicaragua
BILL MOYERS: Our story now is the debate in Washington
over the war in Nicaragua. It's going to be a political issue
this fall. Three years ago President Reagan authorized the CIA
to start supporting the rebels fighting the Sandinista government
in Nicaragua. The Sandinistas, you'll recall, had earlier been
cheered by virtually every segment of society there for throwing
out of power the much-hated regime of the dictator Somoza. But
instead of democracy, the Sandinistas copied the Marxist govern-
ment of Cuba, with its one-party rule. This drove some Nicara-
guans who had supported the revolution into the countryside,
where, with members of Somoza's old bodyguard, they've been
waging guerrilla war against the Sandinistas.
On the grounds that the Sandinistas were sending arms
from Nicaragua to leftist guerrillas in nearby El Salvador,
President Reagan began CIA support for the rebels. But then he
permitted help for more than the interdiction of weapons, and
soon the U.S. was subsidizing attacks not only against the
Nicaraguan military, but against civilians and their means of
livelihood. This has increased the debate in Washington over
whether we should be involved at all.
The Sandinista government calls them criminals.
President Reagan describes them as freedom fighters. They are
the Contras, the counterrevolutionaries of Nicaragua. These are
the insurgents the United States has been supporting, Nicaraguan
men and women who have been waging a not-so-secret war against
their government.
The song they sing is of fighting and sacrifice and of
the urgency of saving their country.
Material supplier' '"' p ai n, r). ,.,~ Ir- v i m -mri for film nnri r f rrv-m ni imnws nnly It mnv not he reproduced. sold or oublicly demonstrated or exhibited.
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The drills start at dawn at base camps in neighboring
Honduras or hidden in Nicaragua's own countryside. Some of these
people may be former National Guardsmen, the troops of the late
dictator Somoza, who was overthrown by Sandinista revolution-
aries. Some are simple peasants trying hard to become pro-
fessional soldiers.
ALFONSO RABELLO: We're fighting for the democratic
rescue of the Nicaraguan revolution. We are revolutionaries. We
do not accept the name Contras. We are not counterrevolution-
aries. We are part of the revolution that has been betrayed.
MOYERS: Alfonso Rabello (?) was once a member of the
Sandinista government. Disillusioned with its Marxist policies,
he quit to become a rebel leader.
RABELLO: Nicaragua is going around Cuba and Cuba going
around the Soviet Union. And we are now more dependent from the
Soviet Union in Nicaragua than Nicaragua was dependent from the
United States in Somoza time. And there has been a lot of noise
being made by the Sandinistas saying, "We want to be independent
from Yankee imperialism." But we also want to be independent
from Soviet imperialism. If you substitute one by the other, it
doesn't do any good to the people.
MOYERS: These soldiers are the enemies of the Contras.
They are Sandinistas, supporters of the Nicaraguan government.
On a hillside in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas keep watch, guarding
their town against a Contra attack. These men are members of the
militia, unpaid army volunteers. They stay here 24 hours a day
just in case.
The town is Ocotal, a provincial capital with about
20,000 inhabitants. Almost everyone here appears to be armed,
even these schoolchildren who patrol the streets. They say
they're ready to fight if the rebels attack.
The people here know what to expect. On June 1st of
this year several hundred rebels invaded Ocotal, and the streets
still bear the scars of battle. Bullet holes riddle the walls of
family homes and the local hospital.
ALFONSO MALISPIN: We heard shots coming from the
street, people screaming and yelling.
Alfonso Malispsin
when it was attacked.
(?)
was working at the radio station
MALISPIN: They poured gas, gasoline on the floor, on
the desks, chairs, everything, and they set the whole place on
fire. There was an old man sleeping there. They beat him up and
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he got shot. At about the same time, there was a kid next-door.
He was trying to get out to the street. He was caught. They
beat him up, and then he was shot too.
MOYERS: When the rebels left four hours later, 34
people were injured and 14 were dead. Some of the casualties,
like this woman's husband, were members of the army or the
militia, but seven were civilians.
ANTONIO HARKIN: I believe that the whole responsibility
of the war in Nicaragua belongs to the United States.
MOYERS: Antonio Harkin has been Nicaragua's Ambassador
to Washington. He is a native of Ocotol.
HARKIN: And that force is a mercenary force, has been
organized, trained, financed, and directed by -- directly by the
U.S. Administration. We would not have war in Nicaragua without
the President Reagan's [unintelligible] policy.
MOYERS: Would there be no rebels fighting your govern-
ment if it were not for the U.S.?
HARKIN: Certainly not. We will have normal opposition,
as any government has, but not a war.
MAN: This is where they kept the basic grain of the
basic grains program that they were using...
MOYERS: These American medical workers visited Ocotol
to take a look at the damage. They found the granary completely
destroyed.
MAN: This was a storage place in the intermediary where
they have the grains so that they can get them to the peasants at
low cost. You can see what's left of it.
MOYERS: This is all that remains of tall silver silos
that housed food for the people. Now, scavengers search for the
few remaining bits of grain.
Along with the granary, the Contras destroyed a coffee
drying plant, the offices of the electrical company, and the
lumber yard, which had been the largest employer in the region.
Ocotol was no isolated target. Elsewhere in Nicaragua,
the rebels are attacking in an effort to bring the government to
its knees. So far, the estimated damage is over $200 million.
The economy has been further shaken by U.S. Government
attempts to stop the Nicaraguans from getting international loans
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to rebuild their country. But a war against the economy has
become a war against people.
DR. MERNER CUNNINGHAM: I was captured by a group of
Contras and I was taken to a training camp in El Duda (?), and
they kept me for 12 hours, more or less. During those 12 hours,
I was beaten and I was raped by a lot of the Contras.
MOYERS: Dr. Merner (?) Cunningham is one of nearly 200
health and education workers allegedly tortured, raped or killed
by the Contras. Now she's suing the Contras and the U.S.
Government for damages.
DR. CUNNINGHAM: They were very proud because they said
that they were receiving support from the United States Govern-
ment, that they had the Americans that were training them and
bringing them canned food. They had Camel cigarettes and they
were proud because they were smoking Camel cigarettes. And that
made them feel very sure that they were going to win, they said,
the war against the Sandinistas.
MOYERS: Although military analysts say it's doubtful
these Contras could actually win the war, their numbers have been
growing. Three years ago there were about 1500 rebels. Today,
an estimated 15,000. They have received from the United States
about $100 million, funneled through the CIA. The Contra war, as
it's known, is the largest, best publicized, and most controver-
sial CIA operation since Vietnam.
RABELLO: A lot of journalists and a lot of American
journalists ask me, "Well, we have proof that you have received
money from the CIA." Like if this was something criminal.
I sometimes feel very tempted to say, "Look, if you feel
the CIA is a criminal, corrupt organization, why don't you
Americans write to your congressmen and ask for a bill that would
cancel the CIA? Because you feel so ashamed of the CIA, you
should cancel it."
And to me, it doesn't make sense, really. There is a
complex about the CIA.
I see CIA money as clean money because it's the money of
the American taxpayer. I have no objection for it.
MOYERS: That money hasn't reached some of the rebels
because it comes with strings attached. More than one faction of
Contras are fighting in different parts of Nicaragua, and the CIA
has been pressuring them to unite. The price for not uniting is
a cutoff in funds.
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These men say they haven't received any money for five
months because they refused to join with the extreme right-wing
forces supported by the United States. So they sit in their
camps by the river, unable to fight and barely able to feed their
troops.
MAN: We need everything. We need food, goods, clothes,
arms, everything. The main thing we need here is the real
support of the democratic governments. We need help.
MOYERS: In Washington, more help for the Contras has
been a long-running controversy between President Reagan and CIA
Director William Casey, on the one side, and the Democratic
leaders of Congress, on the other.
In years past, the White House could order covert CIA
actions without telling Congress. Then both the House and the
Senate demanded to be kept fully and currently informed of all
major CIA activities.
The House Intelligence Committee has tried to monitor
the Administration's secret war. At first, it had little quarrel
with the President's request. Republican member Bill Young of
Florida, a Reagan supporter, remembers.
REP. BILL YOUNG: The committee agreed that we would
support the Contra forces; that while we would not be attempting
to overthrow the government of Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, we
would be allowed to actually go into Nicaragua to attack targets
that would be considered military or that would be considered
supportive of their military, and it would be done for the
purpose of keeping them busy at home so that they wouldn't have
the time or the resources to bother the people of El Salvador.
MOYERS: And in your judgment, what you were told then
has been done, and there's been no exceeding what you had been
told.
REP. YOUNG: To be honest with you, there may have been
some excesses in several areas. Economic targets have been hit,
when we had intended that they not be hit.
MOYERS: As the war expanded, some members of the House
Intelligence Committee accused the Administration of failing to
inform them of the CIA activities, and they tried to limit funds
for the war.
A leading spokesman against Reagan's policy, Congressman
Wyche Fowler, Democrat of Georgia.
Is it true that the Administration tried to sell the
covert war in the beginning by saying that only four or five
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hundred Contras would be involved, four men on a patrol trying to
interdict arms?
REP. FOWLER: That is true. They sold it as an arms
interdiction program with minimum risk to the participants.
MOYERS: Have you seen evidence that arms were inter-
REP. FOWLER: Well, I think that weapons have been
captured. But they are, honestly, few and far between.
Well, there's just simply no question that the Admini-
stration, in setting its policy, chose the CIA as the instrument
to carry out a paramilitary operation against the Sandinista
government in Nicaragua. And when we found that the army
continued to grow and grow beyond any expectations or any
reporting by the Administration, that is when the Intelligence
Committee went to the United States Congress and said, "We've got
to stop this."
MOYERS: But they couldn't stop it. While the House
tried to cut off funds for the war, the Senate pressed to
continue the money, and the Contras went on to attack Corinto,
Nicaragua's largest port. In a predawn strike, they blew up fuel
storage tanks, turning most of the country's oil reserves into
flames.
Months later, the CIA directed mines to be placed in the
same harbor and two others, an act condemned around the world,
even by America's allies.
The House voted again: no more money for the Contras.
REP. FOWLER: We on the Intelligence Committee have done
everything we could, through the parameters of legislation, a
couple of thousand miles away in Washington, to limit the
objectives of the Contras and to make sure that any damage to the
economy, civilian targets was kept to a minimum, if at all. But
the truth of the matter is, we're all kidding ourselves if we
think when you arm people down there and all of a sudden they
grow and grow and grow and take on a life of their own and
leadership of their own and objectives of their own, that this
kind of thing is not going to happen.
MOYERS: What do you think we've accomplished, Con-
gressman Young, in the last three years of this war?
REP. YOUNG: We've kept El Salvador from falling behind
the Western Hemisphere's Iron Curtain. No question in my mind,
El Salvador would have fallen, Guatemala would have fallen, and I
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believe that Honduras would have fallen also by now. I think it
was that critical at the time.
REP. FOWLER: We are the one that are thrusting the flag
back to the Sandinistas and rallying that country, regardless of
the Nicaraguan citizen differences with the Sandinista regime,
causing them, in patriotic fervor, to rally against the invading
army of the United States, forcing them for more help from the
Soviet Union, forcing them to Europe and asking even our allies
to help resist these Contras that the United States is financing.
MOVERS: So we were achieving exactly what we didn't
want to accomplish.
REP. FOWLER: And the result, in my opinion, especially
after three or four years, is that we have achieved precisely
opposite of what we set out to do in Central America.
MOVERS: It's easier to start a war than to stop it.
These Contras still have plenty of ammunition, enough to last
five months, they say. But what happens then? If Congress cuts
off all the money and they're left defenseless in the countryside
of Nicaragua, they're not likely to find mercy from the Sandi-
nistas. More likely, most of the Contras would end up in refugee
camps, like this one in neighboring Honduras. Already, more than
80,000 Nicaraguans have fled their homeland for safer ground.
These people are the families and relatives of the
Contra forces. There are no jobs for them in Honduras, so they
spend their days listening to rebel broadcasts about the progress
of the war. They hope the Contras will win and they can go home
again.
Do you think that if the present policies toward
Nicaragua continue, there will be more war?
HARKIN: I have no doubt that [if] the current policy
continues, the United States eventually will intervene directly
in Central America and it will start a new type of Vietnam in the
heart of the American hemisphere.
MOVERS: What chance would Nicaragua have if the United
States invaded?
HARKIN: We are fighting in Nicaragua for an idea.
Ideas are stronger than armies. We are a small nation. We are
militarily weak, economically weak. But morally, we aer very
strong. We're strong enough to defend our country. It doesn't
matter how high will be the price we will have to pay.
REP. FOWLER: You know, if you conquer a country, you've
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got to keep conquering it. And I just don't see that there is a
possible lasting military solution. So, even if the Admini-
stration's policy was wildly successful and we somehow chased the
Sandinstas, where would they go? If they went back to the hills
and mountains of Nicaragua where they fought Somoza for ten
years, what would we have accomplished? We would have promoted
in Nicaragua what we now have in El Salvador, a bloody civil war.
MOVERS: The Sandinista army on parade. Its power
continues to grow. Most able-bodied young men have been drafted
in the campaign to stop the Contra rebels. Women and children
are encouraged to volunteer.
But the fate of their war, the future of the Sandinistas
and the Contras they're fighting depends on what happens in
Washington. The President wants to continue this not-so-secret
war. But Congress is divided.
It is by now a familiar American predicament. If we
abandon the rebels, to whom we've given encouragement, arms and
money, they will be left high and dry. It happened in Vietnam,
Cambodia, Iran, and Lebanon. Those we asked to bet on us bet on
the losing side. But if we continue to support the Contras and
they continue to war on the economy and civilians of Nicaragua,
then we will be subsidizing violence against people who happen to
be living in the wrong place at the wrong time, who have done us
no harm.
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