Word: costa
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WASHINGTON--Former U.S. Ambassador Lewis A. Tambs testified yesterday that in 1985, while U.S. aid to Nicaraguan Contra rebels was banned, White House aide Oliver L. North ordered him to use his post in Costa Rica to help the rebels open a military front in Nicaragua...
Tambs, who was ambassador to Costa Rica from 1985 until last January and is now a history professor at Arizona State University, gave the committees the first direct evidence of a State Department official helping the rebels during the two-year congressional ban on U.S. military aid to the Contras...
...that from mid-1985 on he "forswore" any profit. Liman pressed Secord about closed-door testimony taken previously from Robert Dutton, an associate in the contra supply network. Dutton had said Secord considered selling the network's assets, which eventually included five aircraft and facilities in El Salvador and Costa Rica, to the CIA for $4 million. Wrong, said Secord: he intended, once Congress permitted a resumption of open Government military aid to the contras, as it did last October, to donate the assets to the CIA free...
...citizens like him unless those citizens used money appropriated by Congress, which Secord said they did not do. He testified, however, that his network had received extensive help from Government officials; in addition to North, who oversaw the whole operation, these included several CIA agents and former Ambassador to Costa Rica Lewis Tambs. Democratic Congressman Louis Stokes of Ohio pointed out that all drew Government salaries paid out of appropriated funds. Committee members appeared to be trying to build a record that Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh might use to indict Secord for conspiracy to violate the Boland amendment...
...official ties may be tightened as Lewis Tambs, former U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica, is asked about working with North to get Costa Rica to keep a secret contra airstrip operating. The CIA station chief in Costa Rica, recently identified as Joseph Fernandez, will be quizzed about the contras and which of his CIA superiors was aware of his activities...