Word: sandinistas
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Covert operations go better when they remain covert. Yet U.S. funding and CIA direction of the contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua have long been among Washington's most openly debated topics. It has been no secret either that the CIA has been funneling arms and supplies to the fighters in Afghanistan who have been battling the five-year-old Soviet occupation. The clandestine supply route through Pakistan has been widely reported. The U.S. Senate even voted unanimously last Oct. 3 to approve a resolution declaring that "it would be indefensible to provide the freedom fighters with only...
...fighting between the Sandinista government and the U.S.-inspired contra guerrillas sputters along Nicaragua's northern border, skirmishes between Washington and Managua continue to rage on broader battlefields: in newspapers, at fund-raising offices, in college classrooms and along the corridors of Congress. Through legal challenges, diplomatic maneuvers and public relations jabs, Nicaragua's Marxist-led government and the Reagan Administration have been fighting for the hearts and minds of the international diplomatic community. In this not-at-all-secret war of words, the U.S. last week suffered an embarrassing setback. The 16 judges of the World Court...
...situation in Nicaragua is less hopeful, and the choice for Washington painfully limited. There is no serious prospect that, by themselves, the counterrevolutionaries, or contras, could overthrow the Sandinista regime, much as that would be in the American national interest. But they have proved important as an instrument to make the regime more malleable; there is little evidence to support the opposite view, that they solidified the regime. By cutting off aid to the contras, Congress irresponsibly deprived the U.S. of an important bargaining counter...
...Sandinista buildup is indeed impressive. Nicaragua's regular army and mobilized reserves now total 62,000, more than the armies of nearby El Salvador and Honduras combined. The U.S. estimates that Nicaragua has 150 tanks and 200 other armored vehicles, 200 antiaircraft guns and 300 missile launchers, in addition to perhaps 18 of the fearsome Hinds. By contrast El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras combined have 53 tanks and 104 armored vehicles; none of them has any advanced missile system. Neighboring Costa Rica has only a poorly equipped 9,800-member civil guard...
...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 assistance to anti-Sandinista contras...