REPORT ON INSURGENCY IN EL SALVADOR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84B00049R001800110003-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 9, 2007
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: March 9, 1982
• Content Type: REPORT

TOP SECRET
Approved For Release 2007/05/10: CIA-RDP84BOO049RO 1800110003-3 DCI
`it S doJrlc 9 March 82
All of you are aware of the great human cry of the press demanding that
the Government produce evidence that the insurgency in El Salvador is being
supplied and directed from Cuba and Nicaragua. Today we will show you the
detailed evidence that we have gathered on this and you will see that to
make this evidence available to the public would cause loss of sensitive
So
intelligence sources we haveepainstakingly built up. Last week I presented
this evidence to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and the Chairmen
of the two Committees have issued statements that the evidence presented to
them was compelling and overwhelming. We intend to show you that evidence
this afternoon, but before going into the detailed picture we have assembled
I think it may be helpful to give you a little background to develop for you
the perception that the war in El Salvador is externally supported and directed
is not a new discovery.
During the summer the Intelligence Community produced a National Intelligence
Estimate on Central America. Its key judgments were:
-- The principal objectives of Cuba and the USSR in Central America are
to consolidate the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, and to use
Nicaragua as a base for spreading leftist insurgency elsewhere in the
region.
-- A continuation of the present trends could result in victory for the
extreme left in El Salvador, and such a victory would heighten prospects
for the revolutionaries in Guatemala.
-- This would bring the revolution to Mexico's border, thereby raising
the risks of internal destabilization and infiltration by radical
leftists.
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Since that time the military buildup in Nicaragua, support for insurgency
in El Salvador and Guatemala, and the resulting economic attrition in those
countries have become significantly more ominous.
The fact that these insurgencies were supported externally is not a new
discovery:
-- March 1980, unclassified testimony of the Defense Department to
the House of Representatives stated that Cuban support for the
extreme left in El Salvador and Guatemala includes "advice,
propaganda, safe haven, training, arms" and "men and material which
transit Honduras, aircraft landings at remote haciendas" with weapons
from Cuba.
-- On 17 January 1981 in approving lethal military aid for El Salvador
the Carter Administration stated that its purpose was to "support
the Salvadoran government in its struggle against left-wing terrorism
supported covertly with arms, ammunition and training and political
and military advice by Cuba and other communist nations."
-- 15 January 1981, then US Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White was
quoted as making the same accusation in The New York Times.
For 14 months I have been seeing reports and photos showing a flow of
supplies and trained men from Cuba and Nicaragua into El Salvador and Guatemala.
They came by road in large trucks through Honduras, by small plane from Nicaragua
to small landing fields in El Salvador, by sea from Nicaragua to El Salvador
mostly across the Bay of Fonseca.
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TOP SECRET
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Enough US weapons, whose serial numbers show them to have been left behind
in Vietnam, have equipped about 1/3 of the guerrilla forces. Russian hand
grenades, Chinese grenade launches, and German G-3 rifles came in.
In February of 1981, the State Department put out a White Paper detailing
how Castro had brought diverse Salvadoran guerrilla factions into a united
front and together with Nicaragua delivered large amounts of weapons and
equipment to them. You will recall that the media did a lot of nitpicking
on the details of this White Paper, but in of 1981 Castro told
Q sj Q-N Yaw vulCds~ C'/
Wischnewski, tbo-4~-re 7r of the German Socialist Democratic Party,
that the State Department White Paper was essentially accurate.
Leaders of dissident factions in Guatemala and Honduras were brought to
Havana where they were urged to unify and /promised support and arms, training
v-o 254' +0- kGr .
and money if they would do so. We can the Guatemalan insurgency-l?d
u to 4,500 men.
The planning for the operation of.propaganda we have seen worldwide during
1981 came to us in a report of a meeting in Havana in June 1980, in which the
Salvadoran insurgent command and a strategy for an international political
campaign was laid down. The propaganda theme and the channels through which
it was to be communicated worldwide were laid down in detail. We saw all this
unfold in 48 meetings throughout Europe, Latin America and even Australia
t %o~)
conducted between the 13th of June ^and the 10th of March of 1981 ranging from
8 people in Wellington, to 40 people in Sydney, to 75 people in Edinburg, to
200 people in Toronto, to 800 people in Bern, to 1,500 people in Vienna,
to 10,000 people in Mexico, to 15,000 people in Frankfurt, and so on.
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