CIA ROLE IN ARMING CONTRAS SEEN LARGER THAN WHITE HOUSE HAS ACKNOWLEDGED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605050010-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 19, 2013
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: January 15, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

A' Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/02/19: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605050010-8
January 170/
PACE_
CIA Rote in Arrning Contras Seen Larger
Than White House Has Acknowledged
3/ By JOHN WALcarr
And ANDY PASZTOR
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON ? Information gathered
by federal and congressional investigators
suggests the Central Intelligence Agency
played a larger role in recruiting, training
and arming Nicaraguan rebels than the
White :House or the CIA has acknow-
ledged.
Congressional and law enforcement
sources said the Federal Bureau of Investi-
gation early last year urged that a federal
grand jury begin investigating allegations
that CIA operatives were involved in hiring
mercenaries and shipping weapons to the
rebels, known as Contras, in violation of
federal laws. But the U.S. attorney's office
in Miami resisted such suggestions. and
didn't launch a grand jury investigation
until late in the year, according to law en-
forcement officials.
The new information indicates that as
early as 1985, FBI and Justice Department
investigators suspected that CIA opera-
tives may have gone far beyond sharing in-
telligence with the Contras?an activity
that Congress approved a year ago. Presi-
dent Reagan authorized the agency to
spend $13 million carrying out the intelli-
gence sharing, the Washington Post re-
ported.
Now, independent counsel Lawrence
Walsh and the Senate select committee in-
vestigating the Iran-Contra affair want to
determine what role the CIA played in sup-
porting the Contras and whether the Jus-
tice Department aggressively pursued its
earlier investigations into the rebels' sup-
ply network.
Suppression and Delay
The Justice Department's handling of
the early stages of those investigations,
"at a minimum, gives the appearance of
attempting to prevent certain information
from coming to the fore," asserted Sen.?
Joseph Biden (D., Def.), chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, in an inter-
view. At worst, Sen. Biden said. "someone
tried to actively suppress an investiga-
tion."
In recent weeks, Acting CIA Director
Robert Gates and other CIA executives
have told working-level officers that the
agency's role in the Iran-Contra affair was
"marginal." The officials tried to reassure
agency workers that the agency won't be
blamed for what top CIA officials privately
have called the Reagan administration's
amateurish and undisciplined secret diplo-
macy.
0
FBI Director William Webster has told
congressional investigators that he doesn't
believe senior Justice Department officials
acted improperly to thwart criminal in-
quiries.
To coordinate the distribution of CIA as-
sistance, State Department "hurnanitar-
ian" aid and private donations to the Con-
tras, top CIA officials called a meeting of
the agency's Central American station
chiefs, according to intelligence sources.
At the meeting, which was attended by the
head of the CIA's Central American task
force, the station chiefs were told they
could share intelligence, but were warned
they shouldn't do more.
One source, however, remembers the
discussion this way: "The word was not to
do A. B, or C. But some people got the
clear impression that meant everything
from D to Z was fair game."
Pressure on Costa Rica
One such official, intelligence sources
said, was the CIA station chief in Costa
Rica. Working closely with U.S. Ambassa-
dor Lewis Tambs and with Lt. Col, Oliver
North of the National Security Council
staff, the CIA officer pressured the Costa
Rican government to permit the construc-
tion of an airfield for the Contras and to al-
low other Contra supply operations to use
Costa Rican soil or airspace. according to
these officials and diplomatic sources.
The CIA station chief in Costa Rica. en-
couraged by agency officials in Washing-
ton. began passing information to the Con-
tras about coming supply flights, accord-
ing to intelligence sources. These activi-
ties, intelligence sources said, were re-
ported on CIA back channels, not in the
agency's routine cable traffic. But the re-
ports were directed to the attention of the
CIA's director and its operations chief.
The intelligence sources said the presi-
dent's Intelligence Oversight Board con-
ducted a preliminary review last week of
the Costa Rica station chief's activities on
behalf of the Contras and concluded that
while a number of them had been "impru-
dent," they probably didn't break any
laws.
Intelligence sources say the CIA's top
1 man in El Salvador, however, took a very
narrow view of the agency's mandate dur-
ing the station chiefs' meeting. Wary of a
repeat of the 1984 scandal over the CIA's
role in mining Nicaraguan harbors and
preparing a guerrilla manual for the
rebels, the official vowed to keep his dis-
tance from the Contras and told his col-
leagues he didn't even want to share intel-
ligence information with them. Intelligence
sources say he's kept both his job and his
word.
Expulsion From Honduras
By last March, FBI agents working in
several southern states and in Central
America were investigating whether the
CIA was involved with some of the Con-
tras' backers in the U.S. Jack Terrell, a
former mercenary who worked with an Al-
abama-based group that called itself Ci-
vilian Military. Assistance the name has
since been changed to Civilian Materiel As-
sistance), told FBI and Justice Depart-
ment investigators last March 25 that the
CIA hired him in October 1984 to form a
Green Beret-style special forces unit to
? fight for the Contras, investigators said.
During a nine-hour interview with those
investigators. Mr. Terrell said he and
other CMA leaders then met in Honduras
with Enrique Bermudez. the military corn-
mander of the largest Contra group, the
' Nicaraguan Democratic Force. Ten merce-
naries recruited by Mr. Terrell then flew
to Honduras in mid-November 1984 and re-
ported to Contra bases at La Quinta, out-
side the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa,
and at Las Vegas near the Nicaraguan bor-
der. They were expelled by the Honduran
government before seeing any action. Mr.
Terrell told FBI and Justice Department
officials.
Law enforcement officials in Miami
said they also have found that Cuban exiles
with past and present CIA ties have been
arming and training the Contras at least
since 1981. But they said it isn't clear
whether the Cubans did so at the behest of
CIA officers or other U.S. officials. And
they said it isn't known whether the Cu-
bans reported their activities to CIA
agents.
Arms Shipments in 1981
Max Vargas, a Nicaraguan exile in Mi-
ami. who has been identified by Justice
Department officials as a CIA operative,
has told investigators that he and his
brother bought two AR-15 rifles at the
Costa Gun Shop in Miami on Aug. 6. 1981,
and sent them to Contra leader Fernando
("El Negro") Chamorro in Honduras that
month. Mr. Chamorro's agent in Miami,
Raul Arana, has told investigators that he
flew several large arms shipments from
Miami to Honduras in 1981.
Justice Department officials in Miami
also have concluded that Bay of Pigs vet-
eran Rene Corvo, the leader of a Miami-
based Cuban exile group called Cariac (for
Nicaraguan Anti-Communist Aid Commit-
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tee), has raised funds and recruited mer-
cenaries in Florida for the Contras.
FBI agents have been told that Mr.
Corvo also shipped arms from the U.S. to
the Contras. Investigators said Customs
Department records show that on March 6
and June 13, 1985, Mr. Corvo chartered
planes to carry cargo from Fort Lauder-
dale, Fla., to the Ilopango military airfield
in El Salvador?which was used as a base
for COntra resupply flights. But those rec-
ords don't indicate whether any weapons
were shipped on the planes.
Ranch Used by U.S. Military
Also, the CIA station chief in Costa Rica
told law enforcement officials last year
that until March 1984, the U.S. military
used a ranch owned by John Hull, an
American living in Costa Rica, to deliver
equipment to the rebels. He told law en-
forcement officials that since then Mr. Hull
had been providing the rebels with food,
medicine, and other nonlethal supplies.
It isn't clear whether Mr. Hull was a
CIA operative, a front for the CIA, or a pri-
vate citizen with only incidental ties to the
CIA station in Costa Rica. Investigators
said Mr. Hull canceled a scheduled inter-
view with FBI and Justice Department of-
ficials last March 3, after the U.S. consul
general in Costa Rica, Kirk Kotula, ad-
vised him not to speak to the investigators
without a lawyer.
Law enforcement officials said FBI
agents worried early last year that the fail-
ure to begin a formal grand jury probe into
alleged activities of CIA operatives sup-
porting the Contras could damage the
credibility of the bureau and the Justice
Department.
Leon Kellner? the U.S. attorney in Mi-
ami, initially rejected the FBI's request
for a grand jury probe as premature, ac-
cording to investigators. But the U.S. attor-
ney's office continued to gather 'additional
information, and it began presenting evi-
dence to a grand jury in Miami sometime
last November or early December, law en-
forcement officials said.
Mr. Kellner, who has said that he re-
calls several conversations with senior
Justice Department officials about certain
aspects of the arms-smuggling investiga-
tion, has asserted that all of the earlier
leads and allegations were aggressively
pursued "without any interference from
anyone from the outside" or from head-
quarters.
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