CIA CALLS SHOTS AGAINST NICARAGUA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201090058-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 58
• Publication Date: April 17, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201090058-0
L T I C ---
c:; - -
2?rAIC F _ER
17 APRIL 1983
1A Calls Sh~
Against Nicar
By ALFONSO CHARDY
And JUAN O. TAMAYO
? American agents pinpoint tar-
gets for the rebels. plot how and
when the targets should be attacked
and debrief raiders when they re-
turn to Honduras from Nicaragua.
? CIA officials are asking Con-
gress for an additional $20 million
- perhaps as much as $25 million
- to continue the operation well
into 1984.
? "Thousands" of CIA-ordered
listening devices and metal detec-
tors are being deployed along Hon-
duran-Nicaraguan border areas be-
lieved to he supply routes for arms
to Salvadoran guerrillas.
? U.S. spy planes - as many as
five of them - their fuselages bris-
tling with antennas, regularly
sweep the border, as well as air and
sea lanes between Cuba and Nicara-
gua.
According to CIA officials at
briefings for congressmen, the
thrust of the U.S. campaign con-
tinues to be to interdict the flow of
weapons to El Salvador and to gath-
er intelligence on Sandinista and
Cuban activities in Nicaragua.
"We are being told that, every
day. Americans remind the rebels in
Honduras what the purposes of the
missions are, and not to exceed
their orders," said a skeptical con-
gressional intelligence source who
asked to remain anonymous. "They
tell us that preserving U.S. control
of the operation is now more of a
priority than deniability."
Liberal congressmen argue, how-
ever, that the scope of covert war
already exceeds levels approved by
the House and Senate Intelligence
Oversight subcommittees. They call
for an end to the operation.
Congressional sources said Presi-
dent Reagan signed a "presidential
finding" in November 1981 certify-
ing the need for a covert CIA cam-
paign to stem the unrest that he ac-
cused Nicaragua and Cuba of sow-
ing throughout Central America.
Herald Sta'n' Writers
CIA officials have told Congress
that the intelligence agency has as-
sumed virtual day-to-day control
over guerrillas fighting the Nicara-
guan government, pinpointing their
targets and plotting their attacks,
according to congressional sources.
The CIA defends its increased
control over the Nicaraguan guer-
rillas by contending that it guaran-
tees the "secret war" will remain
,within congressionally approved
guidelines.
Congressional intelligence
sources say, however, that they
doubt the CIA's claims and fear the
covert operation may be out of con-
trol - and in violation of U.S. laws.
New evidence of the increased
scope of American involvement
emerged last week as Congress
began questioning whether the CIA
had exceeded its authority. By law,
that authority is limited to using the
Nicaraguan rebels to interdict al-
leged weapons shipments from Nic-
aragua to guerrillas fighting the
U.S.-backed government in El Sal-
vador.
Sources in Washington and in
Honduras say the CIA role shifted
within the past month from arm's
length contacts with the guerrillas
to face-to-face and daily direction
of a force whose avowed intention
is to overthrow Nicaragua's leftist
Sandinista government.
The sources, some of them
briefed by CIA officials on the na-
ture of American involvement, said
the CIA had provided the following
examples of its activities:
? CIA and U.S. military intelli-
gence operatives now confer daily
with leaders of the 4,000 to 6,000
anti-Sandinista rebels operating in-
side Nicaragua and on the Hondu-
ran side of the 400-mile border.
The finding was accompanied by
a $19.9-million budget, much of it
to expand U.S. intelligence-gather-
ing operations curtailed during the
CIA upheavals of the mid-1970s,
the sources said.
Other' congressional sources said
only $1.5 million to $3 million went
to train and arm the Nicaraguan
Democratic Front (FDN), at the
time largely made up of Nicaraguan
National Guardsmen who fled to
Honduras after the Sandinistas top-
pled President Anastasio Somoza in
1979.
$20-million request
CIA Director William Casey
asked Congress in January for
about $20 million to continue fund-
ing the covert campaign into the
fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, con-
gressional intelligence sources
added.
To preserve Washington's "deni-
ability," the early U.S. money was
channeled to the FDN through Ar-
gentine military intelligence offi-
cers drawn to Central America as
counterweight to the Argentine
leftists who flocked to Managua
after the Sandinista triumph.
But Argentina reportedly recalled
most of its agents after the United
States sided with Britain during the
Falklands; Malvinas war last year.
Only a handful of Argentines re-
mained with the FDN by year's end,
among them Col. Carmelo Gigante,
who was awarded a Honduran
army medal in February.
CIA officials, in secret briefings
with congressmen, reported that
I the U.S. intelligence contingent in
Honduras was forced to expand to
take up the Argentines' slack, con-
gressional sources said.
Late last year, according to the
CIA briefers, the agency ordered
the FDN to shut down its Honduran
training bases and move into Nica-
ragua to increase the pressure on
the Sandinistas to stop shipping
weapons to El Salvador.
The congressional sources say
that by then. the "secret war" was
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201090058-0
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201090058-0
aW
being run by a three-tiered com-
mand system made up of one level
composed entirely of Americans, a
Nicaraguan rebel "high command"
and a "logistics" section made up
largely of Honduran Army officers.
Although FDN sources described
the 100 to 150 Americans in Hondu-
ras as the "top bosses" of the opera-
tion, some U.S. and Honduran
sources described it more in terms
of a "brain trust."
Largely made up of CIA and Pen-
tagon intelligence- analysts and led
by U.S. Ambassador John D. Negro-
ponte. the group's main job is to an-
alyze the raw data flowing in from
spy operations directed against Nic-
aragua.
Missile threats
The congressional sources said
the spying part of the campaign
took on an urgent character last
month. when the Soviets threatened
to station nuclear missiles in Nica
ragua if Reagan based new missiles
in Western Europe.
"We are waiting for that fateful
day when we'll discover such a
weapon in the aerial photographs
and wind up with a Nicaraguan
missile crisis," said one source.
The congressional sources say
CIA officials have told them that
high-flying SR71 spy planes are fly-
ing over Nicaragua, while U.S.
technicians monitor radio transmis.
sions inside Nicaragua.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Mi-
chael Burch confirmed in a Wash-
ington briefing Thursday that Air-
borne Warning and Control System
(AWACS) aircraft "have operated"
in the Caribbean and Central Amer-
ica "and may operate there in the
future."
Honduran military sources in Te-
gucigalpa said at least three and
perhaps four smaller Beechcraft
Queen Air aircraft, owned by the
U.S. military and loaded with so-
phisticated monitoring equipment,
also patrol the Honduran-Nicara.
guan border, as well as air and sea
lanes between Nicaragua and Cuba.
A Honduran pilot who regularly
sees the twin-engine planes at the
Tegucigalpa International Airport
said the pilots were Americans in
civilian clothes. Two of the planes
he has seen were painted in the U.S.
Army white and green, and one or
two others wear the grey and white
colors of the U.S. Air Force, the
pilot said.
"They had so many antennas
sticking out of the top of their fuse-
lages that they looked like sailfish,"
said the pilot.
Other intelligence information is
gathered by U.S. Navy destroyers
patrolling Nicaragua's Pacific coast
and by U.S. intelligence operatives
inside Nicaragua, the sources said.
One congressional source said
still more information comes from
sound and metal detectors seeded
along a sector of the Honduran-Ni- -
caraguan border allegedly used to
smuggle guns to El Salvador.
"Thousands of these gadgets
went down from electronics com-
panies in the United States," the
source said.
`Paige Electronics'
Reporters in Tegucigalpa earlier
this month met two American men
who identified themselves only as
"consultants" 'working for "Paige
Electronics." There is no firm by
that name, but during the Vietnam
war Paige Communications Engi-
neering of Vienna, Va., worked
under a CIA contract to build elec-
tronic detection devices and deploy
them along the famed Ho Chi Minh
Trail.
A spokesman for the firm, now
named Continental-Paige Communi-
cations, Wednesday said, "We have
no one working for us in that area
(Honduras] and we are unaware of
anyone masquerading as our em-
ployes in the area."
Honduran police early this month
announced they had killed two Ni-
caraguan gunrunners in southeast-
ern Honduras carrying notebooks
stuffed with information on their
routes. Honduran army officers
later claimed they had plotted the
villages and farms named in the
notebooks and showed reporters a
pin-pocked map marking a 10-mile
wide infiltration "corridor" strad-
dling the border.
CIA briefers have told congress-
men that the raw intelligence data
gathered are collated with the goal
of finding ways to stop the arms
flow to El Salvador.
Congressional sources quoted
CIA officials as saying the U.S. in-
telligence analysts zero in on areas
allegedly used by the Sandinistas to
train Salvadoran rebels with the
help of Cuban advisers; Nicaraguan
villages alleged to be part of the
arms infiltration corridor; Sandinis-
ta military units patrolling delivery
routes; and units delivering the
weapons.
CIA officials have told congress-
men that a separate group of U.S.
operatives then selects likely tar-
gets for FDN attacks, decides how
and when to hit them and passes on
the plans to FDN leaders through
go-betweens who car. be American,
Argentine, or Honduran. U.S. intel-
ligence operatives debrief the raid-
ers when they return to Honduras,
the sources added.
Praise for FDN
The congressional sources said
CIA officials credit the FDN with
severely pinching the flow of weap-
ons to El Salvador and sending back
"a mass of information" on Sandi-
nista and Cuban deployments inside
Nicaragua.
FDN leaders themselves have
never made such a claim. In their
public comments, they stress that
they are fighting to topple the San-
dinistas and that they have no par-
ticular concern about the flow of
arms to El Salvador.
CIA officials told Congress that
FDN guerrillas "by and large"
obeyed the guidelines for their at-
tacks, the sources said, although
they acknowledged the rebels also
carried out other raids in pursuit of
their own political goals.
Congressional sources said that
although most of the American
agents in Honduras are intelligence
analysts, they also include 50 or 60
U.S. military officers - all in plain-
clothes and many of them of Puerto
Rican or Cuban descent - in
charge of daily contacts with the
FDN rebels.
Intelligence is passed along to the
Honduran army, which is con-
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201090058-0
3.
cerned about Nicaragua's Soviet-
backed military buildup, as well as
to Salvadoran military leaders, the
sources added.
The information that goes to the
FDN, according to the sources, is
handed over to a six-man guerrilla
"high command" led by Enrique
Bermudez, a former National Guard
colonel who served as Somoza's
military attache in Washington for
several years.
CIA briefers have told Congress,
the sources said, that most of the
FDN guerrillas were trained by for-
mer guardsmen, although some
were trained by Argentine and
Honduran military advisers in spe-
cial skills such as demolitions.
The CIA has assured congress-
men that no Americans accompany
the FDN guerrillas into Nicaragua,
sources said. although the agency
briefers added that some Honduran
officers may have joined them.
Arming the rebels
The CIA briefers. the sources
said, also reported that most of the
logistics involved in the U.S. cam-
paign were controlled by the Hon-
duran military, commanded by Gen.
Gustavo Alvarez.
Although Alvarez has ordered all
his troops to cooperate with the
FDN, he has also detailed a small
group of his brightest officers to
serve as liaison with the Americans
and the Nicaraguans, the sources
said.
The sources said CIA officials
told Congress that the Honduran
army initially armed the FDN from
supplies of old weapons and muni-
tions - after Washington had
promised to replace the materiel.
FDN sources said they bought
other weapons in the black market,
most of them in Miami, with money
donated by "certain sectors" in
Panama Venezuela and Colombia
that oppose the Sandinistas' Marx-
ist bent.
But CIA officials told congress-
men that as the FDN grew, the U.S.
operatives began arranging ship-
ments of newer and more powerful
weapons, the congressional sources
said.
New American weapons deliv-
ered by the United States to the
Honduran army wound up in FDN
hands. Soviet weapons captured by
the Israelis in Lebanon and by anti-
Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan
were shipped to Honduras, the
sources quoted the CIA as saying.
Most of the best weaponry -
RPG7 rocket launchers, 60mm mor-
Aars, FAL and AK47 assault rifles
- went to the FDN and gave it
firepower beyond all proportion to
its reported 2.000 to 3,000 fighters.
The older weapons, including
World War II-era M1 carbines,
went to the reported 2,000 to 3,000
Miskito Indians fighting the Sandi-
nistas in the eastern portion of Nic-
aragua, FDN sources said.
The involvement of Americans,
Nicaraguans and Hondurans in the
covert operation has created some
confusing and bizarre situations.
One Honduran air taxi pilot
banking his twin-engine aircraft
over a grass airstrip near the border
with Nicaragua aborted a landing
when he noticed that someone had
just mowed the grass.
"I am not landing there," he told
his charterer. "A month ago the
grass was tall and 1 don't know
who cut it - the CIA, the counter-
revolutionaries or the Honduran
Army."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201090058-0