A Lot of Show, but No Tell

By WALTER ISAACSON

The U.S. bungles its evidence of foreign subversion in El Salvador

There were briefings and consultations, complete with spy-plane pictures and closed-door revelations of secret intercepts.

It may have been the most intense national security information campaign since President Kennedy went public with graphic documentation of the Cuban missile threat 20 years ago. The purpose of the blitz was to convince skeptics of the correctness of the Administration's approach to the critical problems of El Salvador and its neighbors--namely, that the struggles in Central America are not simply indigenous revolts but rather are crucial battlegrounds in a broad East-West confrontation.

Facing a credibility gap at home and abroad, the Reagan Administration sought to prove that the fire raging in El Salvador is primarily fueled by Soviet-sponsored subversion spread by Cuban surrogates and the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. In that extreme and simple form, their case is as yet unproved, and indeed--by the very nature of these conflicts--may never be. In a lesser form--that there is significant involvement by Cuba and Nicaragua--the case is almost self-evident.

The campaign, to say the least, had its problems. In fact, the inability of the Administration to line up convincing witnesses would have seemed farcical were the matter not so serious. First there was the so-called "smoking Sandinista," grandly touted as a captured Nicaraguan commando who had helped lead the insurrection in El Salvador. But when police let him loose to show the way to one of his purported contacts, he disappeared into San Salvador's Mexican embassy, which said he was only a student and granted him asylum. Then there were two Nicaraguan air force defectors who were scheduled to bear witness to their country's involvement in El Salvador but by week's end were judged "not ready" to face the press. Finally, there was a young Nicaraguan soldier who was produced by the State Department but then promptly repudiated his previous statements about being trained in Cuba and Ethiopia and having been sent into El Salvador by his government. The U.S. did have solid evidence of a major military buildup in Nicaragua, and former high national security officials were persuaded by still secret intelligence that the Sandinistas were helping the El Salvador rebels. Nonetheless, the blunders and bad luck over the live witnesses to that subversion greatly undermined the Administration's plausibility.

Presiding over this curious series of public presentations was the prime proponent of the Administration's us-vs.-them world view, Secretary of State Alexander Haig. "This situation is global in character," he told a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee last week. "The problem is worldwide Soviet interventionism that poses an unprecedented challenge to the free world. Anyone attempting to debate the prospects for a successful outcome in El Salvador who fails to consider the Soviet menace is dealing with only the leg or the trunk of the elephant."

Haig has been out front on the El Salvador issue from the first days of the Administration. He overcame objections by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger that it did not make military sense to stake so large a claim on such an uncertain battlefield and by top White House advisers who were reluctant to detract national attention from the President's economic program. Convinced that this battle would be cleanly and quickly won, the Secretary of State designated El Salvador as the location for a U.S. showdown--not just with a band of 6,000 leftist guerrillas, who were then in disarray, but with the international Communist threat. At one of his first staff meetings, TIME has learned, Haig delivered a stemwinding speech about the need for the U.S. to stop being pushed around by Soviet proxies in the Third World. By calling for an end to the policies of accommodation that Jimmy Carter had pursued with the emerging revolutionary government in Nicaragua, Haig sought to establish quickly his hardline credentials within the new conservative Administration.

In Haig's view, accommodation with the Marxist, pro-Cuban Sandinistas was foolish because Nicaragua was already "lost." Meanwhile, the government of El Salvador, which has committed itself to land reform and fair elections, stands threatened by subversion; El Salvador's conquest by leftist rebels would have a falling-domino effect on the fragile democratic government in neighboring Honduras as well as the insurgency-threatened rightist regime in Guatemala. Haig's ultimate fear is that the entire region, from Mexico to Panama, might fall into the Soviet orbit, which would not only threaten America's vital security interests, but would also show the world that the U.S. is unable to contain the spread of Communism even in its own backyard.

This concern about the spread of Communism in the region is clearly legitimate. Thus the conflict, in its possible consequences if not its origin, is indeed part of the East-West rivalry. But a stark East-West emphasis obscures the deeper reasons for turmoil in the Central American isthmus (see following story). Much of the unrest in these countries stems from indigenous problems, most notably, as former State Department Official William Bowdler puts it, "the legacy of exploitation and abuse of the impoverished majority by the privileged few." By underplaying these factors, the U.S. often ends up backing regimes that turn out to be doomed--and perhaps deserve to be. Meanwhile, the Soviets benefit from having popular rebel movements pushed into their embraces, despite the ample record of the brutality of Communist regimes.

Another potential consequence of the Administration's heated rhetoric is that the region could eventually be divided along ideological lines, provoking a general war pitting the military establishments of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala against Nicaragua and the region's leftist insurgents. Ironically, that possibility is further strengthened by widespread talk about a negotiated settlement, one consequence of which would be to drive the right into even more desperate acts. On balance, by leaping voice first into an anti-Soviet showdown in Central America, the Administration may well have alienated many of the moderate elements it hoped to bolster.

President Reagan tried to address these problems last month, in a thoughtful and moderate speech that outlined his Caribbean Basin Initiative. That program sought to stress the economic and social needs of the region and promote a multinational approach to its problems. Last week, however, the Administration's focus shifted back to the military and strategic aspects of the Central American turmoil.

The new offensive began with a slide show for the press, in the State Department's Dean Acheson Auditorium. John Hughes, deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, accompanied by CIA Deputy Director Bobby Inman, displayed 36 declassified aerial photographs, documenting a massive military buildup by the Sandinista government since the 1979 revolution that ousted right-wing Dictator Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza. Not only was this buildup far in excess of Nicaragua's legitimate defensive needs, said Hughes, but "the fingerprints we find in every case are the Cubans'."

Hughes identified 36 new military bases that have sprung up in the past two years. The Sandinista forces have grown from a 5,000-man guerrilla band, when they first took power, into a combined army, militia and reserve force of 70,000. "Most of these garrison areas are built along Cuban design," Hughes said. "We see the Soviet-style obstacle course and physical-training area. This is the pattern we saw time and time again in Nicaragua. It's the pattern we've already seen time and again in Cuba." To prove it, he juxtaposed a photograph of a Cuban compound next to the Nicaraguan one. They matched. Hughes also pointed out a mock-up of an airfield. Said he: "This is the kind of field where you train commandos how to attack and destroy aircraft with explosive charges. This is reminiscent, of course, of the Ilopango raid in El Salvador in January. These are not for the defense of Nicaragua. They are primarily for the projection of power in an unconventional way." The construction, he said, is supervised by 2,000 Cuban military advisers in Nicaragua.

The photographs also disclosed a growing cache of Soviet materiel, including 25 aging but still potent T-55 battle tanks, twelve heavy howitzers, twelve armored personnel carriers and two attack helicopters. Runways at four airfields had been enlarged, Hughes said, to accommodate MiG-21 fighters. Fifty Nicaraguan pilots, he charged, are training in Bulgaria and Cuba. Inman summed up the implications of the slides. Said he: "The military structure being built up is clearly here to support the move on into a bastion [for exporting revolution], as we saw in Cuba. But this time there aren't the ocean barriers. It's not an island. You can move more rapidly into the other Central American countries."

The CIA's slide presentation did provide unmistakable evidence of a military buildup that Nicaragua's leaders have hitherto minimized. Nonetheless, Sandinista leaders were quick to dispute many of the charges. "There is not a single foreign soldier in Nicaragua," insisted Sergio Ramirez, a member of the country's three-man ruling junta. "How could we hide 2,000 Cuban soldiers in a country this size?" Agriculture Minister Jaime Wheelock, who was in the U.S. for his own publicity offensive, called the Hughes briefing, a bit redundantly, a case of "excessive hysteria"; he noted that the airport expansion program was actually begun by Somoza at U.S. insistence. They justified the military buildup as necessary in the face of American belligerency. Said Bayardo Arce, a member of the Sandinista nine-man national directorate: "Your leaders are forcing us to take dramatic measures. We expect an invasion any day. Look at these declarations of Haig! After words might come action."

Sandinista fears of American intervention were unfortunately given credibility by two stories--clearly based on leaks--that appeared in the U.S. press last week. In a piece by Bob Woodward (of Watergate fame) and Patrick Tyler, the Washington Post said that President Reagan had approved a $19 million CIA plan to create a 500-member paramilitary force of Latin Americans to "disrupt" the Nicaraguan regime. The next day, the New York Times said that the U.S. was providing the money for covert support of individuals and organizations within Nicaragua, in an attempt to bolster that country's moderate elements, but had rejected any paramilitary action. The Times story quoted Inman's dismissal of the Post's allegations about more provocative activities: "I would suggest to you that $ 19 million, or $29 million, isn't going to buy you much of any kind these days."

"Everything in the Post story was true," Republican Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who heads the Senate committee, told TIME. "They didn't have everything, but everything they had is true." At a meeting of the National Security Council last November, Reagan approved approximately $19 million to recruit, train and supply a small military force, in conjunction with certain right-wing governments in Latin America, including Argentina. Some of the money was earmarked for support of groups inside Nicaragua that are opposed to a Sandinista dictatorship. Both the House and Senate Intelligence committees were informed late last year of the Administration's covert plan to weaken Nicaragua.

During the Carter Administration, there was high-level interest in organizing pro-Somoza exiles in Florida and elsewhere into a counterforce that would "keep the Sandinistas off guard and on the defensive," as one of TIME'S sources puts it. That idea was abandoned fairly early during the Reagan presidency, after CIA station chiefs weighed in with persuasive arguments that it would be against U.S. interests in Central America to appear to be associated with a Somoza restoration movement. With Administration approval, the agency has apparently concentrated on recruiting disgruntled Sandinistas and other anti-Somoza Nicaraguans for the paramilitary group. But recruitment has proceeded slowly, in part because exile communities in Florida have been heavily infiltrated by Cuban agents. According to one source, the principal goal of the paramilitary group is to unsettle Nicaragua by such subversive acts as blowing up bridges and power plants. Another source said that the purpose of the group was slightly more benign: the CIA simply wanted to have "assets" in place if the Sandinista government collapsed on its own because of domestic unrest caused by food shortages and the deterioration of public services.

Stories that the U.S. is financing covert operations in Nicaragua play directly into the hands of the Sandinistas. They contribute to the widespread impression that the U.S. is as ham-fisted as ever in its approach to Central America, discourage Washington's remaining friends in the area and seem to justify the Sandinistas in seeking Cuban (if not Soviet) protection. Thus, the publicity may require the Government to review the feasibility of the operation, even though it could be validly considered a proper adjunct to U.S. diplomatic goals. Complained one high Administration official: "The leak was devastating." Indeed, the consequence of a pattern of such leaks would be to cripple U.S. intelligence action anywhere in the world.

The evidence of Nicaragua's military buildup was only the first step in what was supposed to be a justification of the Administration's policies in Central America. The second--and crucial--step was to establish a firm link between that buildup and Sandinista support for, and even direction of, the rebel effort in El Salvador. But Haig decided to avoid any discussion of El Salvador in the State Department's briefing because there were not enough declassified data available to make a compelling case for the link. The Administration insists that its evidence of outside arms shipments to the El Salvador rebels is based partly on information gathered by undercover agents, and cannot be discussed without compromising confidential sources.

Some of this material, however, was presented by Haig and CIA Director William Casey in a classified briefing to a bipartisan group of 26 former security officials and advisers. Although these experts did not wholeheartedly endorse the Administration view that the Salvadoran guerrillas are actually controlled by Cuba and Nicaragua, they agreed that external forces were playing an important role in the Salvadoran struggle. Said Sol Linowitz, one of the negotiators of the Panama Canal Treaty: "We found it sobering and reason for concern. We found what we were shown to be credible and quite persuasive." Added Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski: "Disturbing." William Rogers, Richard Nixon's first Secretary of State, called the case "overwhelming" and added that it was the "duty of patriotic Americans to support their government when its position is sound."

Administration critics in Congress remained skeptical. Even Senate Republicans chided Haig for the absence of proof when he appeared before the Appropriations Subcommittee. "Your policy is being questioned by the American people, and abandoned by friend and foe alike," said Wisconsin's Robert Kasten. "If you have any evidence of outside interference in El Salvador, it is imperative it be brought forward. We want to support Administration policy, but we find it difficult to do so." Said Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy: "We are having trouble with your contradictory statements. This is hard on those of us who must make policy, and hard on the American people who want to get behind that policy."

Despite its doubts about Administration policy, a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee voted last week to postpone action on a bill that would have prohibited any military aid for El Salvador. Still pending on Capitol Hill are a host of other inhibiting resolutions. One calls on the El Salvador government to negotiate a settlement with the rebels; an even stronger one would cut off military aid to El Salvador unless negotiations are started. The most comprehensive bill of all was proposed on Friday by Democratic Senators Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts and Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, two of the Administration's leading critics. It would require prior congressional consent for any military aid or covert action in Central America. In practice, this would make covert action all but impossible. Said Tsongas: "We're on the verge of a kind of 1950s intervention policy. The domino theory does work, but we're going to be the ones to knock down that first domino" by driving Central American countries into the "Cuban embrace."

The skepticism on Capitol Hill is partly a reaction to the Administration's overblown talk about outside influences threatening El Salvador. Yet it is also a cause of such rhetoric. With its increased but scatter-brained role in foreign affairs, Congress has tended to become a troublesome partner for the White House, undermining the ability of any Administration to sustain a coherent program. Haig believes that the only way to avoid a paralysis of policy is to persuade Congressmen that the fate of the Western world depends on their action.

Congress has been bolstered in its skepticism by the attitude of American friends abroad. In London last week, Denis Healey, the pro-American shadow Foreign Secretary of Britain's Labor Party, warned: "There is a growing feeling in Europe that the U.S. is drifting into a very dangerous posture in Central America. Armed intervention by American forces in these countries would be a historic blunder." Actually, of course, armed intervention is politically close to impossible, which is one reason why tough Administration rhetoric does not get anywhere.

France has maintained friendly relations with Nicaragua out of the conviction that such sympathy will help keep the country from moving into the Soviet orbit. Despite U.S. dismay, it has even sold "defensive" weapons to the Sandinista government. Reagan raised this issue when President Franc,ois Mitterrand visited Washington last week. Said Reagan: "We discussed all facets of it." Mitterrand said that the warm and cordial meeting was too short to resolve any disputes over Central America. Explained Mitterrand later: "Our analysis is different from the start. I think these people must come out of the economic misery in which they are held by the oligarchy. This requires comprehension from the West, or these countries will seek support elsewhere."

President Jose Lopez Portillo of Mexico feels that tension in the region could be reduced through direct discussions between Washington and Havana. Said he last week: "I am absolutely certain that Cuba is willing to negotiate all the questions worrying the security of the U.S." Haig and Cuban Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodriguez met secretly last November in Mexico City, and Haig indicated in his Senate testimony last week that there have been other secret discussions. Said the Secretary: "I can assure you the President has never rejected the concept of exploring every conceivable means possible. Discussions have involved all the contributors to the crisis, Cuba and the Soviet Union as well."

For all that, the Administration still fears that negotiations would only provide a screen for an eventual left-wing victory. Moreover, the Administration keeps insisting, perhaps unnecessarily, that the key to its case must be whether it can provide clear evidence that the Nicaraguans, and their Soviet and Cuban mentors, have in fact played a controlling (rather than just a shadowy but significant) part in the El Salvador civil war. To his critics, Haig is still a long way from making that case convincing. A "white paper" issued by the State Department in February 1981 cited "proof that rebel arms were being channeled by Cuba and the Soviet Union through Nicaragua; the evidence was sloppily presented and exaggerated in some cases, opening the Administration to charges of fraud. Last week the State Department had problems producing the two defectors from the Nicaraguan Air Force who were supposed to tell of their involvement in the Salvadoran insurrection. At the last minute, the appearance of the defectors was postponed because, as a senior official quaintly put it, "the new material is not ready to meet the press." Privately, officials acknowledged some worry that the evidence might not be strong enough.

But what followed was worse. On Friday, the State Department proudly trotted out 19-year-old Orlando Tardencilla Espinoza, a Nicaraguan who had been captured in El Salvador by government forces. While in their custody, Tardencilla had confessed that he had been sent to fight in the civil war by the Sandinistas after having received military training in Ethiopia and Cuba. After interviewing him in El Salvador last week, and attempting to verify his story, the State Department flew Tardencilla to Washington to meet the press.

Once TV cameras were turned on him at a press conference in the office of State Department Spokesman Dean Fischer, Tardencilla sang a different tune. While officials from State watched in embarrassment and dismay, he repudiated his previous confession, which he said had been obtained through torture. Speaking through an interpreter, he said, "They have tried through certain psychological coercion to force me to say things about what is happening in El Salvador. In fact, an official in the U.S. embassy told me that they needed to demonstrate the presence of Cubans in El Salvador. They gave me an option: I could come here, or face certain death."

Tardencilla admitted that he had served in the Sandinista army, but insisted that he had gone to El Salvador--where he became a guerrilla commander--out of personal conviction and not because he had been sent by Nicaragua. He went on to say that "I am the only foreigner I know of [who was] fighting in El Salvador." His outpouring was too slick, too full of revolutionary rhetoric, to be very convincing, but it certainly did not help the Administration's case. This weekend he was released and allowed to return to Nicaragua. Said a State Department official: "It's the first smart thing we've done with this young man.''

--By Walter Isaacson.

Reported by Johanna McGeary and Strobe Talbott/Washington

With reporting by Johanna McGeary, Strobe Talbott

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.