Word: nicaraguan
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...more restrictive measure proposed by Democrat Thomas Harkin of Iowa. Harkin's rider would have banned U.S. support of any "military activities in or against Nicaragua"; the CIA argued that this would prevent necessary covert actions aimed at reducing the flow of arms supplied by the Nicaraguan government to Marxist-led guerrillas in El Salvador. So the House accepted, 411 to 0, a rider offered by Massachusetts Democrat Edward P. Boland, chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, that merely repeated language written into an earlier appropriations bill. It forbade aid to guerrilla groups "for the purpose...
...counts, the officials maintained, is not the intentions of the contras but those of the U.S. And the contras' hope of overthrowing the Sandinista government is a delusion of grandeur; they lack the numbers, training and equipment to do it. All they can accomplish is to harass the Nicaraguan government, and all the U.S. hopes to do by aiding them is to demonstrate to that government that it cannot aid insurrection in El Salvador without suffering reprisals at home...
...other hand, Congress faces a dilemma too. Suspicious of the Administration as many of its members are, they are also aware of the danger of seeming to take the side of the angrily anti-American Nicaraguan government. Says one congressional staffer: "No member of Congress wants to be looked on as soft on Commies. The Administration has been playing that card on all fronts, and on this issue it's having a powerful impact...
...south] could follow. I feel the heat of war crossing our border too. If it does, it's goodbye to all of us." This fear that conflict may engulf the whole region might seem overblown, both because of the limited military capabilities of the contras and because Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto specifically disavows any current idea of attacking Honduras in retaliation for contra activities, but it is strongly felt nonetheless...
...convincing too many people that a Marxist-Leninist victory would amount to self-government, that guerrillas are always supported by the majority, that no civilian casualties are caused by the rebels and that leftist victories are always inevitable . . . We don't think that the declarations of the Nicaraguan junta, Soviet press agencies and Fidel Castro should go unexamined by the press...