HOUSE ACTIONS ON AID: 'DUARTE SI! CONTRAS NO!'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000100380011-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 15, 2010
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: June 6, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/15: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100380011-4
GUARDIAN (?U S)
6 June 1984
House actions on aid:
Dua
rte Si! Contras no!
By JACK COLHOUN
Guardian Correspondent
WASHINGTON, D.C.-The civil war in El
Salvador grows steadily wider while protests
against U.S. involvement in it continue to
mount. But those factors do not prevent Con-
gress from shoveling more and more funds into
that Vietnam-like quagmire.
On May 24, for example, the Democratic-
controlled House approved more military aid to
the Salvadoran government for the second time
in two weeks. By a 267-154 margin, the law-
makers cleared a :662 million, no-strings
emergency package clamored for by the
Reagan administration. The size of the majority
reflected the defection of moderates from a pre-
viously broad Democratic bloc opposed to
White House policy in El Salvador. The May
'4 vote also brings to $126.6 million the
amount of military aid for El Salvador ap-
proved by Congress so far this year, compared
to $81.3 million in 1983.
Moments later, however, the House once
again balked at financing the CIA-directed war
against Nicaragua. The 241-177 vote rejecting
$21 million in aid for the contras was the most
decisive of the three rollcalls in the House dur-
ing the past year that have gone against the CIA
operation. Twenty-four Republicans joined
217 Democrats to defeat the military assistance
package sought by the administration.
The House also voted May 23 by an over-
whelming 341-64 margin to bar the dispatch of
combat troops to El Salvador or Nicaragua un-
less there is a "clear and present danger" to the
U.S., its embassies or its citizens. Rep. Henry
Hyde (R-Ill.) called the vote "blatantly cow-
ardly," and other Republicans claimed it was
an unconstitutional restraint on the President's
authority to make war. The next day the House
amended the measure to include all of Central
America.
DUARTE LOBBIES CONGRESS
The heavy tally in favor of more aid for El
Salvador was meanwhile seen as a vote of con-
fidence in President-elect Jose Napoleon
Duane. His 4-day lobbying tour of
Washington just prior to the House vote was
hailed as "triumphal" by the Washington Post,
which wrote that Duane "swept through Con-
gress like a conquering hero." The new presi-
dent made it respectable for many skeptical
lawmakers to vote for more aid by insisting that
he is committed to democratic reforms in El
Salvador (see story, page 15). Tht: propitious
timing of events in El Salvador also had a great
deal to do with the House vote (see story, page
1).
Despite last week's House action, the 1984
aid bill for El Salvador remains bottled up in
Congress because it is still tied to the contra
funding proposal. The Republican-controlled
Senate, which has already passed both arms
packages, will not act on the matter until it re-
turns from recess June 4. The Senate Intelli-
gence Committee, in a secret session May 23,
meanwhile approved a full S28 million CIA re-
quest for the contras for the 1985 fiscal year.
Unlike the vote on El Salvador. where he
broke with Speaker Tip O'Neill (D-Mass.),
House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Tex.)
helped lead the fight against financing the con-
tras' war. But it was Rep. Lee Hamilton of In-
diana, a senior Democrat on the Intelligence
Committee, who best expressed the majority
sentiment in the House. "Let's end this war
that just keeps escalating'.. . the war that has
not worked . . . the war that is against the law
... the war that hurts the CIA and hurts the
U.S. . . . the war that brings no peace,"
Hamilton urged his colleagues.
SEEK OTHER CONTRA FUNDING
Republicans backing more funds for the
Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries argued that
cutting off the aid would undermine the Duarte
regime's attempts to consolidate power in El
Salvador. The White House had at first
threatened to veto the entire Central America
aid package if aid for the contras were turned
down by the House. As the vote neared, the
veto threat was abandoned, but the administra-
tion is still seeking ways to restore the $21 mil-
lion in supplemental funding for 1984.
Earlier this year, administration officials
warned that funding for the contras would run
out this spring if emergency aid were not ap-
proved. But now the CIA is saying that the con-
tras have enough resources to keep on fighting
until Oct. 1, when the 1985 fiscal year starts.
Some officials argue that if Congress allows the
funding for the CIA operation to merely dwin-
dle down, but does not officially terminate it,
the contras could be financed by shifting Penta-
gon accounts to the CIA.
During_ the House's deliberations over the
war against Nicaragua, the Washington Post re-
ported, based on interviews with unnamed
U.S. officials, that the CIA already was funnel-
ing aid to the contras through Israel. Alarmed
by this report, Rep. Hamilton called on the CIA
to make a full accounting of its assistance to the
anti-Sandinista guerrillas. ^
STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/15: CIA-RDP90-00845R000100380011-4