Explosion over Nicaragua

By George J. Church.

The physical damage wrought so far by the mines that contra guerrillas took responsibility for sowing inside the harbors of Marxist Nicaragua would hardly be noticed in a declared war. The highest reported tally: six Nicaraguan vessels and six ships of five other nations damaged but none confirmed sunk; ten sailors seriously injured but no one killed.

The political damage caused by the mining and by subsequent revelations that the American CIA had directed and supervised it from a mother ship off Nicaragua's Pacific coast is on another order of magnitude altogether. A troublesome rift has opened in the nation's alliances, symbolized by a French offer to help sweep the mines from Nicaraguan waters. The U.S. has been put on the defensive in world forums, first casting a veto in the

United Nations Security Council against a complaint by Nicaragua's Sandinista government about the mining and other U.S.-financed contra activities, then declaring last week that the U.S. will not accept the jurisdiction of the World Court on protests filed by Nicaragua.

But the loudest and by far most serious detonation of all went off in Congress. Enraged by a feeling that they had been misled about the Administration's Central American policy, and deeply worried about where that policy is leading, the Senate passed by a landslide vote of 84 to 12 a nonbinding resolution demanding that no U.S. money be used to mine Nicaraguan waters. Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater voiced his colleagues' anger and dismay in an astonishingly pungent letter to CIA Director William Casey. Said Mr. Conservative: "I am pissed off ... The President has asked us to back his foreign policy. Bill, how can we back his foreign policy when we don't know what the hell he is doing? Lebanon, yes, we all knew that he sent troops over there. But mine the harbors of Nicaragua? This is an act violating international law. It is an act of war. For the life of me, I don't see how we are going to explain it."

The fury of the response was startling.

The mining was anything but secret, suspicions of CIA involvement were worldwide, and Administration briefings had offered Congress at least the opportunity to confirm them before the press did. Nonetheless, though Goldwater inexplicably voted against the antimining resolution, which was offered by Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy, 42 of the Senate's controlling Republicans, including even Reagan's friend and campaign chairman, Paul Laxalt of Nevada, voted for it. Crowed California Democrat Alan Cranston: "The President asked for a bipartisan foreign policy. He's now got it." Reagan supporters closed ranks to make a House vote on an identical resolution closer and more partisan, but still it passed, 281 to 111. Said Daniel Ortega Saavedra, coordinator of the Sandinista junta: "We appreciate the efforts the United States Congress has made against the undeclared war the United States is waging against Nicaragua."

If the congressional rebellion stopped there, the White House could live with its consequences. Administration officials insisted that the mining had ceased more than a week before the Senate vote, and it would not have been resumed in any case. Reagan's supporters even struck a deal with Kennedy, under which the Senator withdrew a motion condemning U.S. refusal to accept World Court jurisdiction on Central American questions, and the White House in return made no effort to defeat the antimining resolution.

But many Senators and Representatives are determined to go further and cut off all U.S. aid to the Nicaraguan contras, crippling if not ending the guerrilla war they are waging inside Nicaragua. There the fighting intensified last week, with the contras launching coordinated attacks from across the Honduran border in the north and along the swampy Costa Rican border to the south. Fighting was especially fierce at the southern town of San Juan del Norte, where the rebels were hoping to establish a provisional government. Contra commanders told TIME that they received American sea support for their operations at San Juan del Norte, a claim vehemently denied by U.S. officials in Washington (see following story).

Supposedly, covert U.S. financing of the contra campaign has long made Congress uneasy, but up to now a fragile coalition has accepted the Administration's arguments for it. These are, in essence, that aid to the contras'war is both justified to punish Nicaragua for supporting the leftist insurrection in neighboring El Salvador, and necessary to harass the Sandinistas into giving up their ambitions of fomenting Communist revolution throughout Central America. Only two weeks ago, the Senate tacked $21 million for the contras onto an appropriations bill for famine relief in Africa, which was slated for quick approval.

Critics in and outside Congress, however, charge that Reagan's real purpose is to overthrow the Sandinista regime by force, and that to do it he is willing to bankroll a reckless contra campaign that could end by dragging the U.S. into a Viet Nam-style war in Central America. The mining has deepened their skepticism, and shaken the faith of Reagan supporters in the Administration's repeated assurances that its prime aim in backing the contras is to stop the flow of Communist weapons into Nicaragua and from there into El Salvador. Said Republican Senator William Cohen of Maine, explaining his vote last week for the antimining resolution: "We know that mines cannot distinguish between commercial vessels and those laden with Soviet and Cuban weapons ... With the destruction of each economic target in Nicaragua or in its harbors, our policy and its rationale become more tortured and tenuous."

When Congress reconvenes next week, after a ten-day Easter recess, the African famine-relief bill, which was passed by the House with no funds for the contras, will go to a House-Senate conference to have differences reconciled. Leaders of the Democratic-controlled House have instructed their conferees to demand that all money for the contras be stricken from the bill, and they will have some Republican support. The mining, says Silvio Conte of Massachusetts, ranking G.O.R member on the House Appropriations Committee, is a "stupid, stupid thing." On the more general subject of aid to the contras, he vows, "They're not going to get a nickel, not a nickel!"

Military aid to the embattled government of El Salvador may be slashed deeply too. The Senate added $62 million in aid to the African famine-relief bill, but House Speaker Tip O'Neill claims that he has the votes to cut that sum in half. After the mining uproar, he very well may have.

Administration officials contend that the Salvadoran army is running low on ammunition to stave off Communist guerrillas who might try to disrupt the nation's runoff presidential election scheduled for May 6. At week's end Reagan extended $32 million of emergency help to El Salvador under standing authority conferred by the Arms Export Control Act. If Congress votes no new money for the contras, however, U.S. funding for them will run out in a matter of weeks and their guerrilla war will have to be drastically scaled down. The White House would consider that equivalent to notifying Nicaragua that it could serve as a base for Soviet and Cuban penetration of Central America.

In attempting to make that case, the Administration is hampered by poisonous suspicions about its motives and strategy that have spread far beyond Congress. Just as the Senate was preparing to vote on the antimining resolution, the White House felt obliged to issue an extraordinary statement in the names of Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, CIA Director Casey and National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane. Said they: "We state emphatically that we have not considered, nor have we developed, plans to use U.S. military forces to invade Nicaragua or any other Central American country." They were responding to press accounts that the Administration had drawn up contingency plans to use U.S. combat troops in Central America after this year's presidential election. Such plans in fact exist, but in no more detail than the plans the armed forces have drawn, as they must, to deal with an outbreak of war in virtually any region of the world.

Scarcely had that statement been issued than the Pentagon had to deal with another press story, this time that American military trainers have flown with Salvadoran pilots on combat missions against the leftist guerrillas. Said Pentagon Spokesman Michael Burch: "We know of no missions in which U.S. pilots have been involved in combat operations."

Whatever the Administration may be able to salvage from Congress in the next few weeks, the uproar over its Central American policy will reverberate throughout the fall presidential campaign. Added to the debacle in Lebanon and the icy state of relations with the Soviet Union, the mining episode has revived an image of Reagan as both trigger-happy and inept in foreign policy. That is just the image the Democrats intend to build up. Cried Walter Mondale on the stump last week: "Ronald Reagan's misguided and counterproductive policies in Central America are widening, militarizing and Americanizing the conflicts, and it's gotten worse every day. For months, I've predicted that if Mr. Reagan continues this blundering course, ultimately American troops could well be fighting in Central America." It was a fair sample of the oratory voters will be hearing until November, whether the Democratic nominee is Mondale or Gary Hart.

The Shultz-Weinberger-Casey-McFarlane statement gave a strong hint of Ronald Reagan's probable response. "The real issues," it said, "are whether we in the United States want to stand by and let a Communist government in Nicaragua export violence and terrorism in this hemisphere and whether we will allow the power of the ballot box to be overcome by the power of the gun." In other words, are those who want to stop funding the contras and diminish aid to El Salvador willing to take the risk of having Communism spread throughout Central America, and if not, how do they propose to stop it? That is not a question Democrats find easy to answer. Mondale and Hart have confined themselves largely to denouncing Reagan's policy; others talk vaguely of a "carrot and stick" approach (military pressure plus negotiations) toward Nicaragua, but are unable to define it.

Unfortunately, Reagan's policy toward Nicaragua is also anything but a model of clarity. From the start, U.S. backing of the contras has been marked by ambiguities as to purpose, scope and methods. The CIA began secret arming and training of Nicaraguan exiles in Honduras under the authority of National Security Decision Directive 17, signed by Reagan in December 1981. NSDD 17 specified the purpose as interdicting the flow of arms from Nicaragua to the Communist-led rebels in El Salvador. Hit-and-run raids by the contras could not accomplish that, however, and so, by April 1982, the goal of U.S. backing for the contras was redefined. It became to "harass" the Sandinistas so greatly that they would find the export of Marxist revolution too painful to continue and therefore would give it up.

The intelligence committees of Congress were informed, and assented, but from the first, members of the House Intelligence Committee worried lest the contra campaign cause a widening war in Central America that could eventually involve the U.S. directly. They wrote into law a provision that no American money could be used "for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua."

The contras now number perhaps 14,000 and have expanded their operations from sporadic raids to a campaign that aims at disrupting the economy by cutting roads, blowing up power stations and ambushing government convoys.

Reagan continues to insist that he is scrupulously observing the letter of his own security directives and of the law. In his most recent press conference, on April 4, he asserted, in response to a question about mines in Nicaraguan ports: "Our interest in Nicaragua is one and one only." After running through the charge about Nicaragua's "exporting revolution to El Salvador," he said, "As long as they do that, we're going to try and inconvenience that government of Nicaragua until they quit that kind of action." In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, made public on the same day in a successful effort to win Senate votes for aid to the contras, the President repeated that the U.S. "does not seek to destabilize or overthrow the government of Nicaragua."

Even if these assertions are taken at face value, critics point out, they lead to an unresolved dilemma.

Suppose the Sandinistas do buckle under contra pressure and agree to leave El Salvador alone? That would not satisfy the contras; their aim is very openly to destroy the Sandinista regime. If the U.S. remained true to its avowed purpose, it would have to abandon the contra bands it had trained, armed and encouraged. Alternatively, it would have to negotiate some kind of amnesty under which the contras could lay down their arms and participate in the political life of Nicaragua. That would imply an internal transformation of the Sandinista regime far more sweeping than any pledge to keep its hand off its neighbors.

Reagan has further muddied the waters by talking at times as if he cannot imagine any U.S. deal with the Sandinistas. At a July 1983 press conference, he was asked whether he thought "if the present faction remains in power alone in Nicaragua there cannot be a satisfactory settlement." Reagan replied, "I think it would be extremely difficult, because I think they're being subverted, or they're being directed by outside forces." Other

Administration officials say the Sandinistas must end press censorship and hold free elections, both of which are well beyond bringing a halt to the export of Marxist revolution.

At least some Administration insiders confide that these demands mirror a real conflict among Reagan's lieutenants and possibly in the President's own mind. State Department officials insist that their aim really is simply to pressure the Sandinistas into negotiation with their neighbors and the U.S. But a faction in the Pentagon and the CIA cherishes hopes of ousting the Sandinistas, unlikely as it seems that the contras can ever accomplish that. The Nicaraguan army, including militia, totals 75,000. The President, at minimum, would be delighted to see the Sandinistas disappear. In theory, at least, the contra campaign could ultimately accommodate either goal: pressuring the Sandinistas to behave or turning them out of power.

Uneasy though Congress has been about supporting the contras, the Administration last fall talked it into approving an appropriation of $24 million, which runs out in June. Money in hand, the Administration decided to step up the pressure on the Sandinistas. Just who first suggested mining Nicaraguan harbors is impossible to determine: now that the move has backfired, State Department and CIA officials each whisper that the other agency originated the idea.

What is known is that an inter-agency committee representing State, Defense and the CIA by the end of 1983 agreed on a package of measures including mining. The President approved the package, without much specific attention to mining and little discussion of details. Laments one senior State Department official: "There was just not enough attention paid to this."

That seems remarkable. It should have been obvious that sowing mines would escalate the conflict to a dangerously higher political plane. Mining harbors is generally considered under international law to be equivalent to imposing a blockade, and a blockade is regarded as an act of war. Moreover, as one member of Congress observes, once the mines were sown, the contra campaign was no longer a matter of "Nicaraguans fighting other Nicaraguans inside Nicaragua"; ships of other nations were bound to be struck.

Though the U.S. involvement was kept secret--Washington has not officially acknowledged it even now--the contras announced as early as Jan. 8 that "we are mining all Nicaraguan ports [in fact, mines were sown in only three] to prevent the arrival of weapons from Cuba and the Soviet Union." The rebels warned all ships to stay away "because if they hit our mines, they will sink." Nobody paid much attention. On Feb. 25 three Nicaraguan fishing trawlers hit mines while entering the Atlantic port of El Bluff; the Sandinistas promptly issued a proclamation "to the world" blaming the U.S., and the CIA specifically. That statement was not widely noted either. But then mines began going off in the Pacific ports of Corinto and Puerto Sandino, damaging a Dutch cargo vessel, Panamanian, Japanese and Liberian freighters and, on March 20, a Soviet tanker. Moscow had no doubt who was responsible; it accused the U.S. of "piracy."

U.S. allies began registering deep disapproval. In a supposedly confidential letter to some Latin American countries that promptly leaked in Colombia, French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson offered, "in cooperation with one or more European countries," to help sweep the mines from Nicaraguan ports. It was a clumsy play intended to prod Washington into adopting a less bellicose policy in Central America. No European country expressed interest in his proposal. But the concern the letter indicated was real. Said Cheysson last week: "If one accepts it [mining] in one part of the world, there is no reason not to accept it in the Strait of Hormuz as well." He was referring to the waterway through which most Persian Gulf oil bound for the West passes. Iran has threatened to mine the strait as part of its war against Iraq; Reagan has pledged to keep the passage open by any means necessary.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher protested the mining in the strongest terms to Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., who was in London. Privately, her ministers explained that they fear Reagan is heading toward a showdown with the Sandinistas that will make it all the harder to justify U.S. foreign policy to a European public already highly uneasy about placement of American nuclear missiles in Britain and on the Continent. Said a British government minister: "Grenada, Lebanon and now Nicaragua, again. These gung-ho displays really do not help us in defending American behavior." Said Kirkpatrick, replying to allied criticism generally: "Can we, who make a very large commitment to the security of Europe, count on ment to the security of Europe, count on some reciprocal concern by Europe for our security?"

The Sandinistas on March 30 introduced a resolution in the U.N. Security Council denouncing the U.S. for "the escalation of acts of military aggression brought against" Nicaragua. Among America's friends, France and The Netherlands voted in favor and Britain abstained; the U.S. had to cast a veto. Nicaragua then announced, at the beginning of last week, that it had filed a case against the U.S. in the World Court in The Hague. The U.S. told that tribunal in advance that it would not recognize any World Court jurisdiction over Central American matters for two years. State Department Spokesman John Hughes explained that Washington felt it could not get a fair hearing because among other reasons it could not defend itself adequately against Nicaragua's charges without disclosing secret intelligence information. A Government statement added: "We do not wish to see the court abused as a forum for furthering a propaganda campaign."

Although there are precedents for the American stand (see box), it became a painful embarrassment for the Administration. Wyoming Republican Malcolm Wallop, one of Reagan's strongest defenders in the Senate, contends the U.S. mishandled the case. He believes it should have filed a countercomplaint in the World Court accusing Nicaragua of exporting revolution to El Salvador.

Through most of this turmoil, U.S. supervision of the mining was a matter of conjecture and supposition. It was quite obvious supposition to be sure, since the contras could hardly have placed the mines on then" own. Then, a bit more than a week ago, word leaked that the CIA had stowed the mines aboard a mother ship and dispatched them into Nicaraguan harbors aboard small, fast boats manned by CIA-recruited and -trained commando teams. Indeed, some members of the House Intelligence Committee now contend they have been told by the CIA that the contras'role in the operation was primarily to serve as front men; most of the commandos were Salvadorans.

The stories were not denied, because they were true. Their appearance was a telltale sign of division within the Administration, at subordinate if not senior levels. Such leaks almost always come from officials seeking to torpedo a policy they regard as disastrously mistaken.

To Congress members already troubled by the foreign concern, the flap over the World Court and their own previous misgivings about the contra campaign, the press stories were the last straw. Many lawmakers sounded almost as outraged by what they contended was an Administration failure to inform them as they were offended by the policy. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Goldwater in his angry letter to Casey specifically accused the CIA director of failing to give the committee "the information we were entitled to receive; particularly, if my memory serves me correctly, when you briefed us on Central America just a couple of weeks ago."

In fact, members of the House Intelligence Committee say Casey told them about the CIA involvement as far back as

January, and Goldwater's memory of the Senate briefings was imperfect. Casey last week read back to the Senate Intelligence Committee remarks he had made about the mining that are contained in transcripts of briefings from March 8 and 13. That certainly did not end the dispute. Since the briefings were secret, the transcripts were also, so there was no way to check exactly what Casey said. The recollections of Senators who attended the briefings differ so sharply that they might be describing different meetings.

Republican Senator Wallop says that Casey supplied "all sufficient details for anybody to draw correct conclusions." He charges that some of his colleagues are expressing outrage now to hide their embarrassment at failing to appreciate the significance of Casey's testimony and to ask the CIA director probing questions.

A Democrat on the committee, on the other hand, asserts that "Casey did mention mining but in the midst of a list of other actions the contras were taking. At no time did he say the CIA was directly involved in mining or that President Reagan had authorized it." New York Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan is pedantically precise. Says he: "The reference on March 8 consisted of one sentence of 27 words, and the word mines appeared once. On March 13, there was another sentence of 26 words and the word mines appeared once. We are not meant to pick up the veiled references." Moynihan plans to resign as vice chairman of the committee in protest. Since the mines were already exploding at the time of the briefings, however, it seems strange that the Senators did not question Casey persistently about them.

Be that as it may, the congressional reaction to the mining has been so intense that the Administration is bracing itself for another heavy defeat. There is a chance that tempers will cool during the ten-day recess and Congress will after all approve new funding for the contras. In an election year, no legislators like the idea of voting against a measure portrayed as necessary to contain Communism. But the outcome is so uncertain that the CIA is already preparing to wind down aid to the contras by the end of June, when the last of the current appropriation will be gone. Private financing by wealthy Nicaraguan exiles in the U.S., Costa Rica and Venezuela could keep some kind of contra campaign going after that, but it would be a shadow of the present effort.

If the contras' funds are cut off, it is hard to see what alternative policy toward Nicaragua the U.S. might adopt. Critics often charge that the Reagan Administration has favored force over negotiation, and in particular that it has given no more than lip service to the efforts of the Contadora group of countries (Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama) to work out a regional agreement that would ban cross-border movements of arms and troops in all Central American nations. The Contadorans last fall agreed on a list of 21 principles that the Sandinistas said they could accept; Washington expressed pleasure but is waiting to see what specifics Nicaragua might offer.

The U.S. might have missed an opportunity to deal, but it is hard to tell: the Sandinistas have been evasive even toward the Contadorans. After hailing the group's 21 principles, Nicaragua put forward four draft treaties that ignored some of the Contadoran points and contradicted others. Lately, the Sandinistas have pledged to hold elections this fall; the Administration regards the plan as a fraud, because it provides only limited freedom for opposition candidates to campaign and the Nicaraguan press to report their activities. In any case, the Administration believes the Sandinistas have made even these gestures only because they are feeling a pinch from the contras 'campaign. If that were severely curtailed, it is difficult to see what would induce Nicaragua to become any more accommodating.

Another standard argument of the Administration's opponents is that the U.S. should concentrate less on military force to stop the spread of Communism in Central America, and more on alleviating the poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease that win recruits for Marxist insurrection. But when the Administration embraced the January recommendation of a bipartisan commission headed by Henry Kissinger for a fiveyear, $8 billion program of economic aid to Central America, some of Reagan's liberal critics in Congress grumbled that the money would disappear down a rat hole. Faced with the need to cut domestic programs to reduce the federal deficit, Congress is not about to approve large sums for Central America.

Presidential campaigns are just about the worst atmosphere in which to conduct a debate on policy alternatives. Political contests encourage the shouting of simplistic slogans, as is already happening this year. But some principles clearly should guide consideration of the mining and its aftermath.

One concerns the nature of covert operations. They cannot be dispensed with in a hard world where dedicated enemies resort to them freely. But they are extraordinarily difficult to conduct successfully, and not only because in a democracy they cannot long be kept secret. That, to be sure, is a major problem, internally as well as externally. Partial stories leak; wild rumors fly; the Government is unable to explain fully what it is doing and why; public distrust grows.

Another trouble, though, arises because in the early stages, at least, covert operations are secret. Planning for any kind of successful policy must define realistic objectives, set limits on what is to be attempted, consider whether the means available match those required, carefully weigh potential benefits against likely costs. All that is much easier to achieve when a proposal is subject to wide debate than when, even inside the Government, it can be discussed only under hush-hush conditions by a tightly limited group of officials. Sloppy planning too often slips by in those circumstances. An inordinate number of covert operations seem in hindsight either to have been doomed to failure, like the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, or to have inherent drawbacks that far outweigh any potential gains, as in the Nicaraguan mining. The very secrecy of covert operations thus requires that those officials who are in on the planning give them the most minute scrutiny.

More specifically, whether the contra campaign continues or not, the U.S. cannot let the situation in Central America drift. The risks of Marxist revolution spreading through the isthmus are real. Ultimately that could lead to a destabilized and unfriendly Mexico on the nation's southern border, a flood of refugees across American frontiers and even, at a not inconceivable extreme, Soviet bases next door. Military strengthening of El Salvador and other countries threatened by leftist insurrection is an indispensable part of any strategy to prevent that nightmare from coming true. But the U.S. has overemphasized military measures, even though its direct military presence in Central America is quite small: about 2,000 people currently in Honduras and El Salvador. It must aim at a mix of military force, greatly expanded economic aid and a negotiating policy combining willingness to talk to anyone and a clear set of objectives. Rightly or wrongly, the

U.S. has too often given the impression that it is looking for reasons to avoid negotiations.

In dealing with Nicaragua specifically, the Reagan Administration or any successor must first make up its mind whether it really wants to deal at all, and if so, what kind of Nicaraguan regime it could live with. Unremitting opposition, by force if need be, to Nicaragua's attempts to foment rebellion outside its borders, combined with a standing offer to negotiate verifiable security guarantees for both Nicaragua and its neighbors and a determination actually to do it if the chance arises, is a fully justifiable policy that can work, though it might take a long time. Democratic reform inside Nicaragua leading to a free press and elections is a goal devoutly to be wished, but it is not essential to the safety of Nicaragua's neighbors and is probably beyond the ability of the U.S. to bring about--certainly by military pressure alone. Dreams of overthrowing the Sandinistas by force fail every test of a sound policy.

In the nearer term, though, the U.S. has got into a position where it must continue two aspects of present policy: aid to El Salvador and to the contras. Cutting off assistance to El Salvador would invite the very catastrophe the U.S. is seeking to avoid: a democracy, however weak, becoming a potentially hostile leftist state. The contras must not be allowed to stand in the way of a settlement with Nicaragua, should one become possible, and American aid to their cause should not extend to such stupidities as mining Nicaraguan ports. But the contras are fighting for an ideal, and the U.S., after arming, training and encouraging them, cannot suddenly abandon them to their fates.

--By George J. Church. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett, Neil MacNeil and Ross H. Munro/Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett, Neil MacNeil and Ross H. Munro/Washington, with other bureaus