CONTRAS AND CIA: A PLAN GONE AWRY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706780027-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 20, 2011
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: March 3, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706780027-8
coritras and
A Plan
G',ze Awry
By R03ERT C. TOTH
a.-.d DOYLE McMANTJS,
Times Sta W ens -
O L,* in Control
WW'ASHIYGTON-His code name
was "I:laro'li" and he seemed an
implausible figure for the fateful
rcle he played. "Too fast and loose
for an operations man," says a
ccngres-T.. an who knew him then,
guy for colorful stories and
flanbv clothes-polyester plaids
and Must,-rd colors and loud jackets
that mace you wonder what race
track he'd just come from."
'A cowboy, dumb and danger-
ous,"-complains a veteran intelli-
gence officer, using CIA slang for
an efficer considered too quick on
the trigger,_ faster to act than to
think." A amboyant guy, a
salesr:an, not the ideal man for
congressional hearings," acknowl-
edges even one of his admirers.
Yet Dewey "Maroni," a long-
time CIA officer whose full name
remains *-'rotected under federal
law, was operations man, congres-
sional hearings man and a great
deal more: He was the executive
officer chosen by the Reagan Ad-
ministration four years ago to take
charge of Nicaragua's ragtag bands
of anti-Sandinista guerrillas and
weld the:- into a secret instrument
of U.S. foreign policy.
And toray, as President Reagan
presses Congress to renew support
for the anti-Sandinistas and steps
up the pressure on Nicaragua's
leftist regime, the story of how
neagan and a handful of senior
offic:als carne to set Maroni in
m:ion-and the events that fol-
Ic ec -dramatize the contradicto-
r' ,T_ c:ve and at times deceptive
wa ' policy in Central America
e .o' ved.
ret:ngs ir, Miami, in "safe-
rc'--=Cs' i:, Honduras and in jungle
ca: _ _ jus: north of the Nicaraguan
'.idre:a and his agents lec-
LOS ANGELES TIMES
3 March 1985
tured the anti-Sandinista insur-.
gents, known as contras, on the
principles of guerrilla war and
Prodded them to show a more
attractive political face to Congress
and the American public. Eventu-
aliy.he turned them into a 16,000_
mar, fighting force that would send
tremors through the Sandinista
regime-all at the bargain-base-
ment price of a dollar a day a man.
'An Impossible Mission'
Indeed, some Reagan Adminis-
tration officials still marvel at how
much he accomplished. "Dewey
was given an impossible mission: a
checkbook without much in it and
the job of making a real insurgency
out of a mixed bag of good and bad
apples," a State Department official
said. "In those terms, it is a success
story: a working insurgency with
16,000 men."
Maroni carried out his orders so
well, however, and officials in
Washington managed U.S. policy
so haphazardly, that the action in
Central America soon moved ahead
of policy guidelines set in the
Wnite.House. Indeed, action on the- -
ground came to drive the policy,'
instead of the other way around
Regardless of whether Maroni is
considered a hero or a goat, the
program, when it was publicly
revealed, would ultimately embar-
rass the Reagan Administration
before the world and sow bitter
division at home.
The operation, initially autho-
rized by the President as a low-
budget effort to pressure the San-
dinistas and forestall a "second
Cuba," gradually slipped away
from U.S. control. Administration
offi
i
l
c
a
s for a long time disagreed
among themselves on whether the
U.S. goal was only to stop the flow
of arms from Nicaragua to rebels in
El Salvador or to overthrow the
Sandinistas in Managua.
In the vacuum that resulted,
squabbling but determined guerril-
la leaders in Nicaragua's distant
jungles pushed ahead with their
own agendas while hasty tactical
decisions by U.S. officials from
Reagan to Maroni as well as by the
contras turned out to have unfore-
seen and destructive consequences.
Moreover, the Administration's
lack of candor about its goals
revived old suspicions and spawned
a new wave of mistrust of the CIA
among its congressional watch.
dogs. While the Administrtion in-
sisted in Washington that its goal
was only interdiction of arms ship-
ments through Nicaragua to El
Salvador, American officials were
telling contra leaders that the true
goal of U.S. Policy was toppling the
Sandinistas. And, as Congress be-
came aroused over what many
members saw as executive branch
duplicity, lawmakers
creasir.g1 moved in-
y to hobble Administra-
tion policy-making in foreign af-
fairs.
Nor has the process ended The
policy launched by a handful' of
Administration _officials, then im-
plemented and later reshaped b
Dewey illaroni, y
continues to exert
its powerful allure. The Adminis-
tration is bent on winning new
funding for its now far from secret
covert-aid program, and the con-
tras now too large a force to be
easily sacrificed by Washington,
have chalked up just enough suc-
cesses to whet the Administration's
appetite for total victory.
As Reagan, who four years ago
insisted his only goal was halting
the flow of arms to El Salvador's
insurgents, put it in a Feb. 20 press
conference, U.S. policy today is
aimed at making the Sandinistas
say uncle."
J7
Maronj, who had carried the
nickname Dewey since school days,
had an unlikely background for a
' cowboy." His education was Ivy
League, his accent New England.
He looked to some of the contras
like Walter F. Mondale.
Born in Nashua, N.H., in 1932,
Maroni attended the Peddie School
in Hightstown, N.J., a prep school
then known for sending athletes to
Ivy League colleges. There he is
best remembered for his athletic
skills. "His barbells served Dewey
well," says his yearbook.
He had hoped to go to Dartmouth
but instead attended Brown, where
he majored in American civiliza-
tion, played freshman football and
was a member of the Vigilance
Committee-sophomore athletes
who enforced freshman rules. His
yearbook refers to Dewey's ,ta-
ble-hopping" in the Delta Phi fra-
ternity.
MZaroni aimed next at jaw school
but wound up instead in the P.us-
sian Institute at Columbia Un:ver-
1~iiui~::
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706780027-8
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved
or his master's degree in
international affairs in 1955, he
;'r cte a 112-page thesis on the
uct:v::ties of the World Federation
of deUnions inAsia after. World
V Jar II. His paper, accepting the
the'orv that the Soviet Union pur-
s=ued a strategy of Communist sub-
er=:cn of emerging nations, con-
cluded, with admittedly
inadequate evidence," that Moscow
i :- ected the federation.
According to an old State De-
Part:r.ent Biographic Register, Ma-
:,on: :hen went into the Army for
t'Y years. At that time, CIA re-
cruits were routinely inducted into
the Army as cover and took basic
training but then spent the rest of
their hitch preparing for a career
with the agency. For the next 15
years, Maroni was in U.S. diplo-
* :auc missions in India and Turkey,
apparently as a CIA operative
under cover.
in mid-1981, when Maroni was
CIA station chief in Rome, William
J. Casey, Reagan's new CIA direc-
tor, returned from a meeting of
station chiefs in Western Europe
'.v th a highly favorable impression
of him. "He's a real doer, a real
take-charge guy," Casey told asso-
ciates.
About three months later, at the
end of August, Maroni arrived in
Washington to take over as chief of
covert operations in Central Amer-
ica, a post he was to hold until early
'-984.
13
'When Maroni took over, the U.S.
government had already mounted a
covert action once against the
Sandinistas,, who had ousted the
rightist government of President
Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
The Administration of President
Jimmy Carter had grown frustrat-
ed that its $75-million economic aid
program to the Nicaraguan gov-
ernment-more than the Somoza
government had received in 20
years-had failed to turn the new
r'gime away from Marxism and
Cuba. So, in 1980, it had earmarked
something approaching $1 million
for secret aid to the anti -Sandinista
political center in Nicaragua.
As Adm. Stansfield Turner, then
CIA director, is quick to point out,
"The Carter Administration had no
program of covert action that
would have permitted any paramil-
itary support to the contras." But
the fact that Carter had initiated
covert activity of any kind made
the next step-Reagan's paramili-
tary operation-more palatable to
congressional Democrats.
The focus of American concern
in the region, however, was El
Salvador, where leftist rebels
threatened to topple the fragile
new Salvador government and cre-
ate a second Marxist-oriented re-
gime in Central America.
Two Advisers Killed
During Carter's closing days in
office, two U.S. land reform advis-
ers in El Salvador were murdered
and leftist rebels proclaimed a
"final offensive" against the gov-
ernment. In one of his last acts as
President, Carter renewed military
aid to El Salvador, which he had
cut off on human rights grounds.
When the Reagan Administra-
tion took office, Secretary of State
Alexander M. Haig Jr. wanted to
"go to the source"-to take on the
Soviet:, Cubans and particularly
the Nicaraguans who were "organ-
izing, training and arming the (Sal-
vadoran) guerrill as," he wrote in
his book, "Caveat"
The White House resisted, how-
ever, so Haig ordered Robert C.
McFarlane-then State Depart.
ment counselor and now Reagan's
national security adviser-to. -ex-
amine other policy options in Cen-
tral America.
In preparing his report, "Taking
the War to Nicaragua," McFarlane
examined the possibility of shoot-
ing down small Cuban aircraft,
sinking small Cuban boats, smug-
gling arms and even instituting a
naval blockade of Nicaragua and
Cuba. But only Haig favored such
overt pressure.
"I think Casey might have
leaned in my direction," Haig said
in an interview. But Defense Sec-
retary Caspar W. Weinberger, the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Vice President
George Bush and Reagan's closest
advisers in the White House were
opposed.
2- Way Proposition
Thomas 0. Enders, assistant sec-
retary of state for inter-American
affairs, went to Nicaragua in Au-
gust, 1981, to ask the Sandinistas to
stop aiding Salvadoran guerrillas
and halt their military buildup. In
response, he said, the United States
would renew economic aid, declare
a nonintervention policy in the
area and crack down on Nicara-
guan exiles training in Florida and
California. He sought no internal
changes in Nicaragua.
The Sandinistas rejected the pro-
posal, according to a fully knowl-
edgeable source, and "the CIA was
2
asked by Enders to develop de-
tailed options on the covert side"
against Nicaragua.
"The dominant figure pushing to
proceed this route was Enders,"
this official added. Casey "More than
But of course, :k,nce the
decision was made, C sey took-
center stage."
Casey began that same mcnth to
prepare the agency to take on
covert tasks by replacing Nestor
Sanchez, a 30-year CIA veteran, as
the covert operations - chief for
Central America. r
"When the option paper was
being pulled together. Sanchez was.
reluctant to plunge in," 5ne source'
said
said.
Casey had been arguing strenu-
ously-and successfuli3 as' rhea-,
cured by budget increases for intei.0'
ligence-against White Houce.
views that the CIA *as, full of,
liberals who had lost their taste?for'i
covert action, and he ditd not waft
the anti-Sandinista covert opera- J
tions to be headed by Someone as
unenthusiastic as Sanchez.
So Sanchez was shil4ped to tne~
Defense Department, where, ironic
callY, he later became'one of four"'
Officials who oversawt:the contra
operation. The other 'three were-d
Enders, Col. Oliver North of -thgo
National Security Council staff and
Maroni, Sanchez's replacement'
the CIA r
r For two months following !fa i
roni's arrival _in__ Washington,
thiough""September and October,
the National Security Council's
Senior Interagency Group on Cen-
tral America met intensively to
examine the options collected by
McFarlane. As one possibility after
another fell away, Haig became
reconciled to covert action.
"In the end, the decision to go
covert was a decision almost by
default," he said "It was a failure of
the policy-making apparatus."
But Haig insisted that paramili-
tary support for the contras must
be managed by a third party so that
the United States could deny re-
sponsibility if the operation were
exposed. He said he felt exposure
was inevitable because the opera-
tion would be "too large to hide."
The CIA "went back to the
drawing boards," one source said,
to scale down the large paramili-
tary program it had first proposed
and to work out a scheme for
channeling the U.S. program
through, alit would turn out, the
Argentines.,
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000706780027-8
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/20: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0706780027-8
arY, 1982 that "economic tar
ets"
:rv:sLea on, Most contras then were
former Somoza National Guards-
rner., many; of then products of
ser..ur staff =colleges in Argentina,
who had slipped across the Hondu-
ran border after the Sandinista
revolution. Argentina, whose mili-
tary junta was vigorously opposed
to Communist gains in the Hemi-
sphere, had already been identified
as active in training contras in
Honduras.
Birth of the Program
Casey mett with Argentine Gen.
Leopoldo F. Galtieri, then chief of
staff and later president, in Wash-
ington around Nov. 1. "The two hit
it off very well," a source said.
The Argentines said they'd be
happy to manage a U.S. interdiction
operation with U.S. money, weap-
ons, uniforms." And the program
was born.
A few weeks later, President
Reagan decided to ask Congress for
$19.95 million to support 500 con-
tras who would infiltrate Nicara-
gua in four-man squads to interdict
arms going to Salvadoran rebels.
He signed National Security Deci-
sion Directive 17 on Nov. 23 and
also signed a "finding" for Con-
gress-a highly. classified docu-
ment describing his decision and
the rationale for it.
The secret "finding," along with
NSDD 17, was immediately trans-
mitted to both the Senate and
House intelligence committees.
In Honduras, the contras were
overjoyed by the CIA's green light
and the Dace of action picked up
rapidly on the ground: Miskito
Indians rose in insurrection on
Nicaragua's Carribbean coast in
December after the Sandinistas
attempted to relocate some of their
villages. Contra units began to
attack transports and power sta-
tions in Nicaragua in early 1982.
But in Washington, CIA officials
met with some opposition when
they appeared before closed ses-
sions of the House and Senate
intelligence committees in early
December, 1981, to detail the pro-
gram. Committee members ex-
pressed suspicion of Casey general-
ly and of the broad language in the
"finding," which did not say arms
interdiction was the sole purpose of
the operation.
Committee members were also
concerned over press reports that
conflicted with CIA assurances.
Althougn they were told in Febru-
g
such as agricultural cooperatives
were off-limits to the contras, for
example, the U.S. press reported
contra strikes against cooperatives
the following week. And the CIA's
explanations were not entirely sat-
isfying.
"We'd have Dewey up for a
meeting," a Democratic congress-
man recalled, "and he'd say, 'We
didn't do it. That was another rebel
outfit, not ours.' It was always
another outfit."
Even CIA officials were uneasy
with some of Maroni's activities.
They wondered whether the U.S..
aim of interdicting the flow of arms
to El Salvador could be successful-
lY grafted onto the goal of the
contras, who sought the outright
overthrow of the Sandinista re-
gime. And they doubted that the
CIA could control the half a dozen
or more squabbling factions of
contras, led by prima donnas of
both the far left and the hard right.
In its official line, the Adminis-
tration constantly proclaimed that
its goal was a political settlement in
which Nicaragua could keep its
Marxist government if it would quit
aiding the leftist guerrillas in near-
by El Salvador. On the ground in
Central America, however, some
U.S. officials were at times explicit-
that the ultimate goal was the
overthrow of the Sandinista regime
in Nicaragua.
Edgar Chamorro, then a contra
leader, said CIA officials left no
doubt about their real goal. "In
private," he said in an interview,
"they always told us the objective
was to overthrow the government
in Managua.... They always said
the President of the United States
wants you to go to Managua."
Most worrisome to some senior
CIA Officials were Maroni's negoti-
ations with the former Sandinista
hero, Eden Pastora, who was lead-
ing an opposition force in Costa
Rica on Nicaragua's southern bor-
der. Not only was Pastora.operat-
ing far from the arms-smuggling
routes from Nicaragua to El Salva-
dor-the interdiction of which was
ostensibly the reason for U.S. in-
volvement with the contras-but
his avowed goal was to topple the
Nicaraguan government.
"I'll lay odds that Dewey and
Eden Pastora discussed overthrow
of the Sandinista government,"
said an intelligence source. "There
was nothing going on down there
that could be called arms interdic-
tion."
Moreover, only four or five per-
sons in the entire U.S. government
knew about Maroni's approaches to
Pastora, rather than the 25 or 30
senior American officials who
would normally be privy to such
sensitive activities, one source said.
"Congress was not told until
much later about the contacts with
Pastora," said one source. "It is a
serious question whether the (in-
telligence) committees were kept
adequately informed," as required
by law.
Qualms about such things had no
effect on the onrushing train of
events in Central America, howev-
er.
"No problem," Maroni liked to
say. He reported only to Casey
throughout, bypassing several sen -
ior officers in the intelligence com-
munity's chain of command, and he
and. Casey overrode whatever ob-
jecons cropped up.
One veteran agency officer said
at the time that Maroni saw himself
as another Richard M. Helms or
William E. Colby. Both had become
CIA directors after running spec-
tacular covert operations, in Iran
and Vietnam, respectively.
"Dewey's a cowboy right out of
the old CIA days," the officer
remarked- "You can smell them a
mile away."
In the end, however, questions
about Maroni are less important
than the questions his work raises
about the potential for even the
most important foreign policy is-
sues to slip out, of control
NEXT: How the United States
became entangled in a distant Jun-
gle war, with allies It could not
control.`-
William J. Casey
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/20: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0706780027-8