NICARAGUAN AID TO GUERRILLAS CITED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000202320010-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 20, 2010
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: August 9, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000202320010-3
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON ?ACE j
WASHINGTON POST
9 August 1984
Nicaraguan Aid to Guerrillas Cited
Administration Reveals New Documents, Film as It Presses se
By Joanne Omang
wuhingwn Port Blatt Writer
The Regan administration, pressing its case against
Nicaragua as a supplier of arms to guerrillas in El Sal-
vador, yesterday made public new captured documents
and aerial intelligence film that it said demonstrate the
need for continued U.S. aid to El Salvador.
The fuzzy videotape.,translated documents and crude
waterspotted maps were "substantially the same" as
material provided in secret Presentations to the House
and Senate intelligence committees earlier this-year,
Gen. Paul F. Gor t, head of theU.S_Southern Com-
mand, told reporters at a State Department briefing.
Gorman said the material was declassified at the re-
quest of several committee members and demonstrates
"the validity of President [Jose Napoleon] Duarte's
judgment that his country is the victim of a pernicious
form of aggression by Nicaragua."
U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Thomas R. Picker-
ing said no single piece of evidence was "a smoking gun
or a silver bullet," but that together it indicated a con-
tinuing arms flow. He is visiting members of Congress
this week warning them that failure to aid El Salvador
now would "seriously undermine" Duarte, who was
elected in May in part on his promise to bring in more
U.S. help.
Duarte "cannot long endure without U.S. assistance,"
Gorman said. "A guerrilla offensive is imminent."
Gorman said military operations that obtained the
new material show? that Salvadoran mi-btary leaders are
better able to respond to U.S. intelligence ts, to gath_
er their own intelligence"vssound-andby that I mean
humane-use of guerrilla defectorrisonersand doc-
ument and to control their troops. U.S -
_military train-
ers have long been critical of the Salvadoran armed
forces in all those areas.
Gorman, outlined four cases of materiel movement
into El Salvador. Without citing a source for his ac-
count, he traced a shipment of assorted munitions from
its arrival April 28 at El Espino beach in southeast El
Saivador through its transport in backpacks and then by
mule toward the provincial capital of San Miguel, where
a major battle occurred May 6. Bulgarian-made ammu-
nition and a Vietnamese mortar sight captured there
"probably" arrived April 28, Gorman said.
A guerrilla deserter helped Salvadoran troops' iii
overrunning a large guerrilla camp May 25, and a criide
hand-drawn map was captured that showed "safe
routes" near those previously described, Gorman said.
This map has previously been made public.
He then showed an aerial videotape, taken the night'.
of June 10 from U.S. AC130 surveillance planes at an-,
altitude of 6,000 to 12,000 feet over the same are -.
The narration said the moving white "hot spots" on the,
heat-sensitive tape were a 75-foot mother ship pretend-,.
ing to be a shrimper, unloading crates into small boats.,
half a mile offshore. The boats then sped to land at;d,
were unloaded by 150 people who packed the cargo,
onto mules, the voice said.
The "home movie quality" tape, in which all moving
objects were small white blobs, is only about 60 percent
of what the aircraft crews can see with night-vision "
goggles, other State Department officials said.
In another case, U.S.-made weapons in a cache un-
earthed July 27 near the guerrilla stronghold at the
Guazapa volcano in central El Salvador were traced
primarily to Vietnam, Gorman said. A June 21 count of
214 newly captured U.S.-made M16 rifles found that
156 of them, or 73 percent, had been sent to Vietnam,
and only 40, or 19 percent, had been sent to the Sal-
vadoran armed forces.
Pickering said previous estimates from Undersecre-
tary of Defense Fred C. Ikle that guerrillas buy or cap-
ture 50 percent of their arms from Salvadoran forces
had been retracted and that the current estimate - is
Captured Chinese-made rocket and grenade launch-
ers carried serial numbers that were close to those
found on launchers captured when U.S. troops invaded
Grenada to oust a Marxist government there last year,
Gorman said. "It seems reasonable to conclude that the
rocket launchers ... are from the same shipment," he
said.
.The guerrilla front is ludicrous in insisting that .it
gets no ordnance from abroad. External support.....
continues to be a mainstay of the guerrillas," Gorman
said. He acknowledged, however, that Salvadoran
forces had not captured any of it. 'We have yet to in-
tercept one of these crates," he said. "We know the
stuff is coming; we have yet to get our hands on it."
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000202320010-3