Reed Irvine - Editor
|
|
|
On August 1, 1980, syndicated columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak reported that two convoys of ships carrying Soviet arms from Cuba had been secretly unloaded in Marxist Nicaragua. They said that these weapons were being added to the growing arsenal being prepared in Nicaragua for the coming battle for El Salvador. They said that while U.S. intelligence officials did not know precisely what was in the crates, they were described as carrying "heavy equipment." The columnists said that arms already delivered to Nicaragua included Soviet tanks and long-range artillery pieces.
Two weeks earlier, on July 18, the Miami Herald published a lengthy article about the arms supply lines to El Salvador that run through Costa Rica and Panama. This article said that a large-scale arms traffic from these countries to the El Salvadoran leftwing terrorists had been exposed as a result of the crash of an arms- laden Panamanian plane at a secret airfield in El Salvador on June 15. That crash had led a Costa Rican named Daniel Lorenzo to come forward with information about the arms traffic. Lorenzo's revelations resulted in the resignation of Costa Rican Security Minister Juan Jose Echeverria, who was implicated in the transactions.
Lorenzo, who had served as a captain in Costa Rica's civil guard, revealed that about 5,000 Belgian-made FAL rifles had been left in Costa Rica after the Nicaraguan conflict ended. They had been put to use by the civil guard until Echeverria ordered them gathered up without explanation. Lorenzo said that he had suspected that the rifles were being shipped out of the country and that this suspicion was confirmed when the Panamanian plane laden with arms crashed at that secret airfield in El Salvador. The Herald said it had been established that the plane was one of two that took off from Chiriqui Province in Panama. It stopped at Playa Tamarindo on Costa Rica's Pacific coast to load the arms and ammunition, and then flew on to El Salvador. The pilot of the plane that crashed was rescued by the second plane, which flew him back to Panama where he was hospitalized. The injured pilot, identified as Cesar Rodriguez, told the doctors that he had the protection of a high-ranking Panamanian intelligence official, according to the Herald. E! Salvador officials said that the plane belonged to the Panamanian National Guard, but the Panamanian Government asserted that it had been stolen from "the custody" of the National Guard.
The Costa Rican newspaper, La Republica, reported that the Office of Judicial Investigation had found that this was one of at least 16 clandestine arms flights that passed through the Tamarindo area of Costa Rica since last December.
This is a re-run of the arms operations that were ultimately successful in bringing Nicaragua under Marxist control. Panama was a major transshipment point for the arms that supplied the Sandinista rebels. Last year, the Panamanian consul general in Miami was implicated in the purchase of arms and their illegal export on Air Panama planes out of Florida. Col. Noriega, the head of Panamanian intelligence, had claimed that the arms were being acquired for the Panama National Guard. Panama's President, Aristides Royo, denied that at a Washington press conference on May 11, 1979. Royo said, "I would say that if I am going to smuggle arms as head of government, we have planes in the Panamanian Air Force. We will use other means which exist in this world to take arms."
Panamanian Air Force planes have now been pressed into service to smuggle arms to the Salvadoran Marxists. At that 1979 news conference, Royo offered to give asylum to the El Salvadoran terrorists who were then occupying the embassies of France and Costa Rica in San Salvador. He declined to say whether or not Panama supported the terrorists, but he refused to condemn their occupation of the embassies. President Royo had no compunction about declaring his support for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, however. Even though both Defense and State Department officials took the position that a Sandinista victory in Nicaragua would be bad from the U.S. point of view, the Carter Administration turned a blind eye to Panama's arms smuggling operations for the benefit of the Sandinistas. They were equally blind to the fact that Cuba was a major source of those arms, even though the intelligence files were replete with reports to that effect.
But it was not only the Carter Administration that refused to see the significance of Cuban, Panamanian and Costa Rican support of the Marxist revolutionaries in Nicaragua. Big media showed no interest in exposing that support. In June 1979, some frustrated soul within the government gave the Chicago Tribune a secret CIA memo which spelled out the deep Cuban involvement in the Nicaraguan rebellion, as well as Cuba's plans for similar rebellions in El Salvador. Guatemala and Honduras. The Tribune ran that story under a banner front-page headline on June 27, 1979, but it was given no attention by network news and little by other papers. The Washington Post has not reported the story to this day!
The same behavior is now evident in the treatment of what is going on in El Salvador. The Evans and Novak charges of shipments of heavy arms to Nicaragua for use in El Salvador brought the same kind of response from the State Department that we used to get from them when we asked them about shipments of arms from Cuba and Panama to the Sandinista rebels. They claim to know nothing. The media reported briefly on the crash of the Panamanian plane in El Salvador, but apart from the Miami Herald and the Spanish-language Diario de las Americas, the scandal in Costa Rica over the arms traffic seems to have gone unnoticed by our media.
The overthrow of the Somoza government in Nicaragua was a significant victory for the communists, since it gave them a valuable base for support of subversion and insurrection in neighboring countries.
This, of course, was clear from the beginning. That is why Gen. Dennis McAuliffe, commander of the U.S. Army's Southern Command, said that a Sandinista victory in Nicaragua would be a disaster. But the Carter Administration and most of the reporters and editors responsible for informing the American people about what is transpiring in Central America seem to think the best way to handle the disaster is to pretend that it hasn't happened.
Rather than admit that it has presented Castro with his long-sought Central American base, the Administration is desperately seeking to avert what has already happened. It deludes itself with the notion that if it gives the Marxist-Leninists who now rule Nicaragua enough American dollars they will betray their lifelong loyalty to the communist cause and permit democracy and freedom to flower in Nicaragua. In this it has had the support of the same media organizations that cheered the Sandinistas to their victory.
The notion that the Sandinista regime has moderate inclinations is refuted by the simple fact that it has moved far faster to show its Marxist colors than Fidel Castro did when he took over Cuba. During his first year in power, Fidel Castro tolerated the existence of several free newspapers, three of which were vocal in their criticism of his policies. The last of these papers, Diorio de la Marina, was not silenced until May 11, 1960. nearly a year and a half after the Castro takeover. It was seized by its employees, like the other papers that had dared criticize the government. Sandinist Nicaragua had only two critical papers to contend with, one a Trotskyite publication called El Pueblo and Lo Prensa, the paper that bad been a vigorous critic of the Somoza government. El Pueblo was closed down and its editor and publisher jailed within six months of the Sandinista takeover. Shortly thereafter La Prenso was seized and closed down by its employees. It has since reopened, but it speaks with a timid voice and lives a perilous existence.
Here are some comparisons of the time elapsed between the takeovers and certain significant events in Cuba and Nicaragua.
The Missing Picture
Our government and our media have failed to give the American people an honest and accurate picture of the growing danger of the Nicaraguan infection and its spread to other Central American countries. The following are items culled from Diario de los Americas, the Miami Spanish-language daily, in the past few months. They have received little or no attention in our Big Media.
May 24 Nicaragua announces that it expects to enroll 50.000 neighborhood spies, modeled after the Cuban Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, by the first anniversary of the takeover. May 28 Col. Jaime Abdul Guttierrez. chief of the Armed Forces of El Salvador, charges that 1,500 Nicaraguans have infiltrated El Salvador to fight with the leftist rebels. June 1 The archdiocese of Mexico City issues a report on Nicaragua which states that every- thing indicates that the regime in Nicaragua will end up with definite communist characteristics under strong Cuban influence. It listed five important signs of "Cubanization," including the following: (a) Cuban-style militarization with constant propaganda and slogsneering designed to influence the youth; (b) the formation of the neighborhood "people's militia" or neighborhood spy corps, directed by Marxists; (c) the indoctrination of the young people in the Marxist ideology under the guise of a campaign against illiteracy led by 2,000 Cuban teachers; (d) the nationalization of education and enlisting all the press, radio and TV in revolutionary publicity, extolling new heroes and values; and (e) the centralization of power in the hands of a few, with no signs of democratization on the horizon.
June 3 Release of Congressional testimony of Jose Francisco Cardenal. president of the Association of Builders in Nicaragua, who resigned his post as vice president of the Sandinist Council of State and fled the country. Says the Sandinistas have betrayed the revolution and that Nicaragua is being governed by a group of known Marxists. Says the tendency of the press to favor Nicaraguan government has led to the suppression of news about the torture of thousands of prisoners and to the failure of the press to publicize the fact that hundreds of Nicaraguan guerrillas are now fighting in El Salvador. June 9 House majority Leader Jim Wright of Texas pays goodwill visit to Nicaragua, saying the government there has ideas such as ours on liberty, justice and human dignity. On the same day junta member Tomas Borge was visiting communist North Korea, where he said: "The Nicaraguan revolutionaries will not be content until the imperialists (the Americans) have been overthrown in all parts of the world." June 11 President of Colombia expresses concern about the movement toward a complete Marxist-Leninist ideology in Nicaragua. June 24 Julian Otero, a leftwing guerrilla leader who defected in El Salvador, exposes guerrilla training camps in Nicaragua and the flow of arms into El Salvador from Cuba and Nicaragua. June 26 The neighborhood spies all over Nicaragua burned copies of Lo Prensa because it had reported on the revelations of Julian Otero. La Prensa noted that the official campaign against it had made many people wonder how long Lo Prensa would last and how long liberty would last in Nicaragua. June 26 Aeroflot, the Soviet airline, begins regular flights between Moscow and Nicaragua. July 2 Nicaraguan government arrests 900 persons to clean" Managua of "anti-social" elements prior to the anniversary of the Sandinista victory. July 2 Maj. Roberto D'Aubuisson, a leader of the Salvadoran anti-communists, charges in a Washington press conference that U.S. Ambassador Robert White is acting as a "pro-counsel" and is the real president of El Salvador. Charges that a coup that would move El Salvador farther to the left is being planned and that the U.S. won't oppose it. July 3 Maj. D'Aubuisson charged with having entered U.S. illegally, since State Department had previously revoked his visa. Kicked out of the country. July 5 House of Representatives approves $75 million in aid to Nicaragua by vote of 198 to 196. July 8 Junta member Daniel Ortega denounces Lo Prensa. charging that it is carrying on a "lawless" campaign against national reconstruction. La Prensa had criticized revolutionary excesses and had protested the mistreatment of supposed" counter-revolutionaries." July 10 Archbishop Obando y Bravo of Managua says Sandinistas are following a Marxist line and maintain close relations with Havana, with Nicaraguans traveling to Cuba by a direct route every day. July 17 Nicaraguan leaders discount possibility of elections in Nicaragua in the near future. July 19 Nicaraguan foreign minister, Fr. Miguel D'Escoto. welcomes Castro saying, "We could not have had a better gift than the arrival of our dearest brother, Fidel Castro." July 21 Castro the center of attention at anniversary celebration in Managua, while the U.S. delegation is booed. July 23 Representatives of an El Salvadoran organization, the Revolutionary Democratic Front, which has close ties to the leftwing terrorists in El Salvador, visit Washington. Hosted by several labor unions, including the American Newspaper Guild. The visitors call for armed struggle against the U.S.-backed government in El Salvador. but State Department did not react to them as it did to Maj. D'Aubuisson, saying they had valid visas.
The grave danger that now confronts El Salvador ought to wake up the Carter Administration to the fact that the American underbelly is being softened up. Evans and Novak in their August I column quoted an unnamed high-level official as saying: "The Russians and the Cubans are testing, testing. If Carter allows this newest test to pass unchallenged, no Caribbean country up to and including Mexico can fail to get the message: 'It's up for grabs and they're doing the grabbing.'"
That official was speaking from a point of view that lost favor in the Carter Administration--the idea that our national security interests ought to play a dominant role in our Latin American policy. This idea was strongly attacked in a document titled "The Southern Connection," issued by the leftwing think-tank, the Institute for Policy Studies, in February 1977.
It is significant that one of the authors of this report, Robert Pastor, became the National Security Council expert on Latin America in the Carter Administration. Mr. Pastor and his collaborators on "The Southern Connection" called for a 180 degree turn in U.S. policy toward Latin America. They recommended abandoning the idea that we had the right and duty to try to keep the countries in our hemisphere in line with our own political and economic philosophy. They argued that we had been wrong in using our military muscle, our covert intelligence, foreign aid, and diplomacy to try to keep the Latin American countries in the camp of free enterprise, if not in the camp of democracy.
The theme of the report of Mr. Pastor and his friends was that we should accept "ideological pluralism in both economic and political affairs" in the hemisphere. This had a nice ring to it, because we pride ourselves on our acceptance of pluralism in our own society. But what Pastor 8, Co. had in mind was not the encouragement of pluralism in Latin America, but rather our acceptance of societies that rejected pluralism and sought to force their people into a totalitarian mold.
It was not that the authors really accepted the idea that one form of government is just as good as any other. They clearly did not accept that. They had no use for the government of Chile, which they described as "a military government with a program of virulent anti- communism and of national development based on the free play of market forces (that) has proven itself to be one of the most oppressive in the history of Latin America." Cuba, on the other hand, was described as a "challenging development experiment." They recommended that we quit trying to "thwart" Cuba's revolution, and adopt a positive policy to improve relations with Cuba.
What we are seeing in Central America is not the result of the inept execution of our traditional policy of safeguarding our national security interests and resisting the expansion of communism, but rather the implementation of the policy outlined in "The Southern Connection" and fathered by the Institute for Policy Studies. This explains why U.S. diplomats in Central America. according to Evans and Novak. have been under orders that amount to "a warm embrace for the left, a cold shoulder to the right."
The media in general have done a poor job of informing the public about the crisis in Central America and the danger it poses for the U.S. They have done even less to expose the origins of the policies that have brought this about--"The Southern Connection." Use this report {we will supply extra copies on request) to bring the facts to editors, educators and others in a position to disseminate information.
PUBLIC MISLED ON ALASKA OIL RESOURCES
As a debate rages in the Senate on legislation that will determine whether or not certain areas of Alaska will be declared off-limits to oil exploration, the news media have failed down on the job of informing the public about just what is at stake. The first gun in the debate was fired on July 10. when the Department of the Interior released a study analyzing the potential for oil discoveries in the Arctic Wildlife Range. This is an area in the northeast corner of Alaska that the environmentalists would like to see declared off-limits for oil exploration.
A number of influential senators had requested the Interior Department to use a computer model the Department had developed to give them some idea of just what the oil potential in the Arctic Wildlife Range is. They thought that before we lock up the area, we ought to know a lot more about the resource potential. The Interior Department produced the study. It showed that based on the inadequate data available, there is one chance in 20 that oil and gas equal to 20 billion barrels of oil lies under the Arctic Wildlife Range. That would be worth around $600 billion at today's prices--and a lot more, no doubt, ten years from now when we may be feeling the oil squeeze even more. There is a chance that the find might be far greater than that. The possibility that this might be another super-giant field such as the one at nearby Prudhoe Bay cannot be excluded.
This good news that we might have a huge amount of oil in the Arctic Wildlife Range was not hailed in the press. A UPI story on the report played down the good news. comparing the potential of the Wildlife Range unfavorably to the potential in the area to the west known as the National Petroleum Reserve.
The UPI story was simply following the Department of the Interior press release, which quoted Secretary of Interior Andrus as advising those looking for oil to go west, not east. The release also said that scientists had speculated that only 20 to 25 percent of the oil in the Wildlife Range might be recoverable because it might be heavier than normal crude oil.
AIM raised some questions about all this with the Department of the Interior. We learned that the Interior Department had been less than honest in its handling of this study. It turned out that there was no basis for the speculation about the low recovery rate. In comparing the Wildlife Range with the National Petroleum Reserve. Interior was comparing an area of 3,000 square miles with an area ten times as large. Since the Wildlife Range was far smaller and is estimated to have about the same potential, it would appear to be a good target for exploration.
The General Accounting Office was asked to look at Interior's study, and it reached the same conclusion that we did. The GAO issued a report that said the Interior Department's press release "appears contrary to the data developed by the Survey and included in the Department's own report." The GAO confirmed that there was no basis for the claim that the recovery rate might be lower in the Wildlife Range, it found that Interior's computer study had suggested that the oil and gas potential in the Wildlife Range was as great as that of the far larger National Petroleum Reserve and that it would be more economic because the pools were expected to he larger. The GAO concluded: "Overall, we feel the data developed do not support a decision to close the Range to oil and gas exploration. On the contrary, the analysis would seem to support a decision for exploration to acquire more data before reaching any decisions."
This was a searing indictment of the Interior Department for manipulating and misrepresenting data on a matter of grave national interest. It seems to have been virtually ignored by the media outside Alaska.
NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF By Reed Irvine
"THE RUSSIANS AND THE CUBANS ARE TESTING, TESTING. IF CARTER ALLOWS THIS NEWEST test to pass unchallenged, no Caribbean country up to and including Mexico can fail to get the message: 'It's up for grabs and they're doing the grabbing.'" That is a quote from a recent Evans and Novak column that we used in the lead story in this AIM Report. Judging from a couple of wire service stories out of Cuba, it appears that Mexico may already have gotten that message. Mexico's president, Jose Lopez Portillo, arrived in Havana on July 31 for a three-day visit. The first night he was there, he warned that his country "will not stand for anything to be done to Cuba, because we will feel it is being done to us." According to the Associated Press, Mexican and Cuban officials "interpreted his remarks as a warning to Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan." At the end of his visit, the Mexican president signed a communique which "reiterated the support of the people and government of Mexico in the fight of the Cuban people to obtain the unconditional return of the territory occupied against their will by the Guantanamo Naval Base." This communique also called for an end to the U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba and supported the right of the Salvadoran people to "decide their own destiny without foreign intervention." It also called for unconditional withdrawal of all Israeli troops from all Arab territories occupied since 1967.
THE PANDERING OF THE MEXICAN PRESIDENT TO THE CUBAN DICTATOR GOT LITTLE ATTENtion in our media, coming as it did at the height of interest in "Billygate." It is important as an indication of the softness of our underbelly. I was a little surprised that Mexico would pay homage to Castro so soon after the bankruptcy of his regime was exposed by the mass exodus of refugees. There was a lot of talk during that exodus of what a black eye it was giving to Castro. The fact that the president of Mexico would honor him with a visit suggests that the stain on his reputation did not last long. I believe that it shows that the Free World has almost zero capacity to use information and ideas to help the cause of freedom and to weaken the enemies of freedom. We have evidently done a very poor job of persuading other people that Castro's "experiment" has failed miserably in Cuba and that the flight of his people proves that beyond any shadow of a doubt.
HOW OUR JOURNALISTS CONTRIBUTE TO THAT FAILURE IS ILLUSTRATED BY THE UPI STORY on the joint Cuban-Mexican communique. The story was by Thomas H. Brown and was filed from Mexico City. Commenting on the communique statement on El Salvador, Brown wrote: "The Central American nation has been wracked by violence between extremists struggling for power. The United States has single-handedly propped up the ruling junta, widely blamed for supporting repression by government troops." He said nothing at all about Cuba's supplying of arms to the communist terrorists trying to overthrow the government. Commenting on the demand for the unconditional return of Guantanamo, Brown said: "The Guantanamo naval base has been occupied by U.S. troops since Castro toppled former President Fulgencio Batista in 1959." That is a strange way to describe a U.S. military base that has been in our possession ever since Cuban independence.
IN OUR AUGUST I, 1980 ISSUE WE HAD A DISCUSSION OF THE INSTITUTE FOR POLICY Studies. The IPS crops up again in this issue with a discussion in the lead article of a very influential report that it issued in 1977 called "The Southern Connection." We point out that one of the authors of this report, which recommended abandonment of our traditional policy of resisting the spread of communist governments in this hemisphere, was Robert Pastor. Mr. Pastor is listed as one of the seven members of the "Ad Hoc Working Group on Latin America" of the Transnational Institute, the group that prepared the report. A note states that Mr. Pastor did not participate in the preparation of the final draft of the report "due to his commitments while serving as executive director of the Linowitz Commission and his successive appointment to the staff of the National Security Council (January 1977)." Another note says the report represents the personal views of the individuals who worked on it, and that includes Robert Pastor. The coordinator of this project was Roberta Salper, a former columnist of the communist Guardian and member of the U.S. Zone (Central) Committee of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party. The PSP is Marxist-Leninist.
ROBERT PASTOR TOOK THE IDEAS IN "THE SOUTHERN CONNECTION" WITH HIM WHEN HE JOINED the National Security Council and became the White House adviser on Latin America. In implementing those ideas, he had help from Mark Schneider, one of the several individuals thanked for his comments while the report was being prepared. Schneider, then an aide to Senator Edward Kennedy, took a job with the State Department where he was influential in implementing the human rights policy of the Carter Administration. That policy was a key element in undermining the Somoza government in Nicaragua. All military and economic assistance was cut off from Nicaragua under Somoza on the ground that he was violating human rights. When he was replaced by a "pre-communist" regime that was an infinitely greater violator of human rights than was Somoza, our aid was not only restored but vastly increased. Another person whose help with this report was acknowledged by the authors was Orlando Letelier, the former cabinet officer in the Marxist Allende government, who was assassinated in Washington in 1976. Letelier headed the Transnational Institute at the time of his death. Documents found in his briefcase showed that his goal was to establish a Castroite regime in Chile and that he was getting paid regularly out of Havana. If the FBI had been able to examine Letelier's files at his home after his assassination, they would no doubt have found even more interesting documents than those that he was carrying with him in his briefcase. Neither the FBI nor the police were permitted to enter the home. They were barred by Kennedy aide Mark Schneider, who rushed out to offer his assistance to the widow. Since both Letelier and his wife had been serving as foreign agents, unregistered, the authorities should have demanded to see their records. That was never done.
THE STRONG DISLIKE OF THE PRESENT CHILEAN GOVERNMENT THAT CAME THROUGH IN "THE Southern Connection" has been clearly reflected in the Carter Administration policies toward Chile. American aid has, of course, been denied to Chile, but a friend of mine had a very strange conversation with Robert Pastor which makes one wonder if Pastor and his friends were not doing more than that to make life difficult for General Pinochet. Winston Guest, a prominent American, had some information about certain things that were going on in Latin America that he thought ought to be called to the attention of President Carter. He was asked to give his information to Robert Pastor, which he did. One of his reports concerned the smuggling of weapons to terrorist groups operating in Chile. Mr. Guest says that when he gave that information to Pastor, he was told: "I want you to forget all about that and never mention it to anyone." I tried to call Pastor to check this story out. I was not able to get through to him. He has recently resigned from the National Security Council and has taken a job with Brookings Institution.
THE INDEX TO THE AIM REPORTS FOR 1979 IS NOW AVAILABLE, THANKS TO THE EXCELLENT work of our volunteer indexer, Mrs. Elizabeth Mudge. The index makes your file of AIM Reports a much more valuable reference tool. If you have contributed $50 or more to AIM this year, we will send you a free copy on request. For others the price is $3.00, postpaid. Just send your name and address with the words "1979 Index."
Reed Irvine can be reached at ri@aim.org