Word: manuals
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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After an 89-page CIA manual that instructed rebels in Nicaragua on terrorist tactics surfaced last month, the White House promised that any official involved in its development or approval would be dismissed. But in a letter to members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees that was made public last week, CIA Director William Casey insisted that the thrust of the manual had been misinterpreted, and he attempted to justify its overall purpose. "The emphasis is on education," Casey wrote, "not on turning a town into a battlefield...
...manual violated the spirit of U.S. policy by advocating that the contras should "neutralize" local officials of the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Casey, however, explained that the passage, along with one that advocated "shooting" informers, should be considered in context. "It is important to note," his letter read, "that these passages are in the context of occupying a community and dealing with a situation in which actual or potential resistance remains...
President Reagan, campaigning Saturday at John Wayne's birthplace in Winterset, Iowa, took the Administration defense one step further. Said he: "I think you're going to find that it was all a great big scare and that there was nothing in that manual that had anything to do with assassinations or anything of that kind." A misunderstanding arose, he said, when the word remove was translated as "neutralize" in the Spanish version. Asked how a person is removed from office without violence, Reagan said, "You just say to the fellow that's sitting there...
Reagan also was mistaken about a CIA manual giving advice to contra guerrillas battling the Sandinista government of Nicaragua on how to assassinate Sandinista officials, hire "criminals" to kill contras who would then be presented as martyrs, and stir up mob violence. The President said the manual had been written by a CIA contract employee "in Nicaragua" (he hastily corrected himself to say "in that area," meaning Central America) and censored in Washington, but "some way or other" about a dozen copies with the offending passages got out to the contras. He wrongly remembered what briefers had told him just...
Reaction to the CIA manual, the existence of which was first revealed by the Associated Press last Monday, was fast and furious. Walter Mondale demanded the resignation of CIA Director William Casey, and questioned Reagan's role. "Did he know this was going on?" asked Mondale. "I don't know which is worse-knowing this was going on or having a Government where no one is in charge." Congressman Edward Boland, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, fumed that the document was "repugnant to a nation that condemns such acts by others. It embraces the Communist revolutionary...