The response to
U.S. escalation vent a proliferation of Cuban-model states."
Warnings have begun to be raised in congress that the U.S. operations could be shown to be in flagrant violation of public discussion between the government and those politicians and in Central America Gerry FOLEY The weeks following the escalation of the U.S.-backed counterrevolutionary attacks on Nicaragua in mid-March have been a key period of political tesing in the United States.
The results so far have not been favorable for the advocates of a counterrevo-
An index of the divisions and l.esitations in the ruling circles is the extent of the big U.S. piess. They have effectively blown away what little cover Washington had managed
In its April 4 issue, Time, hardly a "liberal" publication, exposed the basic structure of the covert operation. Its information, it said, came from the main counterrevolutionary group, Front of Nicaragua (FDN). In fact, this "leak" is significant in another respect because it suggests that the contras have no interest in concealing the U.S. role but want to blackmail Washington into committing itself more to them.
This information, Time said, indicated that "the U.S. control is indirect." Formal leadership was in the hands of a "political coordinating committee" made "largely of conservative and moderate Nicaraguans who fled their country during the last three years of Sandinista
Also included is Colonel Enrique Bermudez Varela, a former member of the Somoza National Guard, who was his country's military attache in Washington until the Sandinistas took over."
The actual military command is organized in a three-tiered structure.
The first tier is made up of former Somoza National Guard officers, allegedly purged of their worst gangster elements at CIA insistence.
The second tier is members of the Honduran military, "plus Colonel Bermudez and a military representative from Argentina."
The real direction comes from the third tier "by the F.D.N. accounts an all-American body. It is composed of CIA experts and representatives of the U.S. Army's Southern Command, based in Panama. This third staff is allegedly the brains of the insurgency. Its job is to pass orders to the second staff, which in turn relays them to the contra commanders. The coordinator of the separate command group activities is said by the F.D.N. sources to be John Negroponte, U.S. Ambassador to Honduras."
ture, Time explained, was U.S. officials desire to avoid breaking the letter of the rider attached to the Defense Department appropriations bill passed unanimously by the House of Representatives in December 1981. It forbids the executive branch to allot funds for "military activities, to any group or individual, not part of a country's armed forces, for the purpose of overthrowing the government of
For provoking a military exchange between Nicaragua and Hondur-
Late in 1982, an Argentine officer, Hector Frances, deserted. Frances told the press that large scale commando attacks had been planned to start in October 1982. The schedule was set back by the effects of the Malvinas war.
The objective of the operation was to gain control of the northwest provinces and declare them "liberated zones." That was to give the U.S. and its closest allies the chance to recognize a "provisional government." After that aid to the contras could be escalated.
Along with that, terrorist groups were to be set up in 14 Nicaraguan cities. Their job was to carry out regular bombings, identify and assassinate political cadand heads of state enterprises." commanders of the security forces
On April 4, the New York Times Service cited information from a Honduran
"directly involved in planning U.S. covert activities."
The Honduran listed the following forms of U.S. involvement:
Frequent reports to the contras about the movements of Nicaraguan mil-
Arming and training the paramilitary forces, sending arms and ammunition in August 1982 to Miskito Indian units in eastern Honduras.
3. Providing underwater equipment and explosives to Argentine-trained sabotage teams that blew up the Puerto Cabezas port installations in Nicaragua
Obviously the Argentinian dictatorship were shown up by the mass demonstrations immediately before the Malvinas War, the Buenos Aires junta seemed the most reliable ally the U.S.
in the region. The Argentine army was also the most experienced in "counternsurgency, ," that is, terror.
On April 7, the New York Times revealed that Reagan approved a plan for against Nicaragua in April 1982. Its stated aim was to "prewho have raised doubts about the U.S. is getting pulled in "too deep."
It is not clear how quickly the U.S. intends to move in Central is likely, in fact, that Washington wants sponse of the Nicaraguan government and its allies and looking for political weaknesses in the camp of the Sandinistas and the Salvadoran front.
The U.S.'s major success to date is gaining a certain base among the Miskito Indians, who reportedly made up a large proportion of the contra commandos in the recent operations. It is obviously probing among the small farmers.
The problem for the Reagan government, and what undoubtedly worries its critics, is that it is difficult to keep such covert-war operations under control, especially since the U.S. is inevitably obliged to rely on rightist gangsters who put their own interests first and are capable
The logic of the U.S.'s covert war was well illustrated by the murder in early April of Melida Manaya Montes, one of the most widely respected of the leaders of the Salvadoran front. This middleaged woman, a prominent educator and leader of the Salvadoran teachers union, was murdered by commandos in Man-
The big U.S. press suggested that she could have been killed by Salvadoran rebels themselves, citing the case of the guerrilla poet Roque Dalton, who was killed by his comrades on the basis of false accusations that he was a CIA agent.
The credibility of that suggestion was destroyed by the atrocious and fessional"style of the murder. The victim was stabbed repeatedly with an ice pick, all the blows apparently being meant as torture. Her arm was broken. her throat was cut with the expertise for
U.S. Green Beret-type "professionals" have become known.
The development in the last weeks confirms the eminently political dimensions of the struggle against imperialist oppression in Central America. The political impact in the U.S. and other imperialist centers is crucial, far more even than was true in the case of the Vietnam war.
In that context, the movement against U.S. intervention in America itself, the other imperialist centers, and Latin America will be decisive.
The divisions that have surfaced in U.S. ruling circles show that the possibilities for building effective opposition to U.S. involvement in counterrevolutionary war are, if anything, better than they were at the time of Vietnam.
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