CLUES LINK MANAGUA, TRY ON PASTORA'S LIFE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880040-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 15, 2010
• Sequence Number: 40
• Publication Date: June 11, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880040-4
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE All
WASHINGTON TIMES
11 June 1984
.Clues link Managua,
-try on Pastora's.ii,e
By Roger Fontaine
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Twelve days after the attempted
assassination of anti-Sandinista
leader Eden Pastora, administra-
tion officials believe a growing web
of circumstantial evidence indi-
cates the attempt-was planned by
the Nicaraguan government using
an international terrorist, probably
a Basque, as its agent.
Some American officials are so
confident of their intelligence that
they privately are stating their
belief in Managua's involvement.
From the beginning, administra-
tion officials were suspicious of
such a link, but had nothing solid
until it was learned that a man
attending the Pastora briefing as a
Danish journalist disappeared
shortly after the bombing.
The passport he used had been
missing for four years, and
belonged to a Danish architectural
student who had never been to Cen-
tral America. Furthermore, the
man spoke poor Danish and knew
little about Denmark, according to
a Swedish journalist who met him
in Costa Rica. "Europe Seven:' the
Paris-based photo agency the
mystery man claimed to work for,
also proved a phoney.
t. Last week, the bogus reporter
was 'identified by Costa Rican
police as a Spanish Basque, Jose
.Miguel Lujua Goriostiola, and a
member of the Euzkadi Ta
Askatasuna, a Basque terrorist
:organization.
Photos of Mr. Lujua and the
"journalist" carried last Thursday
in the Costa Rican press showed the
;same man, according to U.S.
embassy sources in San Jose.
By the weekend, however, the
Costa Rican assistant interior min-
ister, Manuel Carballo, began rais-
ing doubts about the fake
journalist's identity and French
police were reported to be holding
Mr. Lujua under house arrest since
January.
U.S. officials in Washington and
San Jose remain confident, how-
ever, that Mr. Lujua or someone like
him with similar terrorist connec-
tions was involved in the incident.:
Costa Rica officially has
requested help from the United
:States and other countries in the
investigation, and according to
sources, the United States has
agreed.
If there is a Basque connection,
administration officials emphasize
that ETA is more than a separatist
organization. Professedly 'Marxist-
Leninist since 1970, the ETA, the
officials point out, has forged a
working relationship with the
Soviet Union and especially Mos-
- cow's client states, as well as other
terrorist organizations like the
Irish Republican Army and the
Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine.
Reagan administration officials
also point to the fact that Basque
ETA operations already have
jumped the Atlantic. Last Septem-
ber, Costa Rican police. arrested an
admitted Basque terrorist,
Gregorio Jimenez Morales. Caught
in the act of drawing plans of Mr.
Pastora's residence, he was
charged with plotting to kill him
and other leaders of the Revolution-
ary Democratic Alliance. ARDE.
:U.S. officials say that last June,
two Nicaraguans posing as Sandin-
ista defectors attempted to assassi-
nate ARDE leaders in San Jose,
Costa Rica, but failed when their
briefcase filled with plastic explo-
sives went off prematurely while
they drove to the meeting, killing
one of the Nicaraguans.
The surviving assassin, later
jailed by the Costa Rican govern-
ment, admitted they had been sent
by Managua to liquidate the ARDE
leadership. '
Administration officials also cite
a U.S.' embassy report from
Managua describing the handling
of the Pastora assassination
attempt in the Nicaraguan media.
According to the cable, the offi-
cial Radio Voz de Nicaragua early
on the morning following the explo-
sion blamed it on the CIA because,
according to Voz, the agency alone
had access to plastique, a powerful
explosive that had been used in the
attempt. . -
Plastic explosives, in fact, are
widely available, and more impor-
tant, its use in the Pastora assas-
sination attempt had not yet been
.disclosed by investigating
authorities, according to U.S. offi-
cials. -
Officials also refer to a similar
method used earlier by Basque ter-
rorists operating elsewhere in Cen-
tral America.
Two months before the Pastor
bombing, a Salvadoran guerrilla
defector told U.S. intelligence offi-
cials t at ETA agents working with
-
the Cuban and Nicaraguan govern
ments made two assassination
attempts in October 1981 and e
ruary 1982 at the request o one
group within the insurgent coali-
tion, the People's evo ution a rr
Army, ERR
Alejandro Montenegro, a former
ERP commander, said the Basque
target was Jose Guillermo Garcia,
then El Salvador's minister of
defense. The ETA terrorists had
posed as journalists from a Euro-
pean magazine seeking an inter-
view with Gen. Garcia.
Their plastic explosives were
hidden in video cassettes and
stored in metal trunks supposedly
filled with camera equipment. The
first attempt failed when the bomb
exploded in the terrorists' hotel
room, and the -second resulted in
explosives being placed under Gen.
Garcia's desk with a timer device,
but the bomb did not gd off.
On a trip to Cuba, Mr. Montene-
gro also disclosed that he saw ETA
members in Havana "waiting for
their documents to be put in order
so they could enter El Salvador."
Such a process normally involves
forgery and other sophisticated
deception methods carried out by
the highly professional Cuban intel-
ligence services.
recently up to 100 Basque terror-
ists living in Managua.
While U.S. officials say they can-
not confirm that figure, they point
out that Nicaragua long has been a
haven for a wide variety of terrorist
and guerrilla organizations from
such countries as Argentina, Chile,
C,ninued
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880040-4