Word: nicaragua
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...Pentagon, moreover, maintains that the Sandinistas still want the MiGs and intend to get them. U.S. military officials also charged that five airfields are either currently receiving improvements or under construction in Nicaragua; at least one of them might be used for stopovers by Soviet long-range Backfire bombers. Bases in Nicaragua, says a Pentagon official, "would enormously facilitate Soviet reconnaissance flights over America's West Coast...
...emphasis on that argument is relatively new. In the past, the Administration has more often justified its actions in Central America by stressing that the Sandinistas were shipping arms to insurgents in El Salvador. The U.S. has also pointed to signs of creeping totalitarianism in Nicaragua, as the Marxist-led regime has curbed press freedom, expropriated the property of private entrepreneurs and built a pervasive security apparatus with the aid of Cuban and East German advisers...
...switch in reasoning seemed to reflect the Administration's recurring tendency to speak with different voices about Nicaragua. Privately, some Pentagon sources attributed the hyping of concern over the Bakuriani and its cargo to officials at the White House and National Security Council. The State Department also expressed frustration over the way the MiG issue had materialized: on his way to the OAS meeting, Shultz characterized the original leak as "a criminal act." For his part, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger coolly deplored the "hysteria" that had arisen over the incident, even as the Pentagon provided the varying rationales...
...impossible to deal with the Sandinistas. They would prefer to see the Managua regime ousted from power, although any action by the U.S. toward that end is expressly forbidden by a 1982 resolution of Congress. More moderate officials, including Shultz, believe that diplomacy can play a role in curbing Nicaragua's radical tendencies. In their view, the U.S. must show that it has the power and the will to halt the spread of Communism, but that should be balanced by a willingness to negotiate a regional settlement...
...infamous CIA manual on guerrilla warfare might have been written with the jungles of Nicaragua in mind, but its chief effect so far has been to provoke conflict in Washington. Last week skirmishes were raging not only between the Reagan Administration and Capitol Hill but within the CIA. Five middle-level agency officials, targeted to be disciplined for their part in drafting the contentious primer, said they were being used as scapegoats. Congressional critics charged that the five were victims of a cover-up designed to protect senior officials, notably CIA Director William J. Casey, who has supervised the covert...