Battling over a Not-So-Secret War

By George Russell

A court fight, a belated apology and pessimism in Washington

It began in late 1981 as a minor campaign of covert harassment aimed at disrupting Communist subversion in the Western Hemisphere. But last week it was difficult to tell who was more inconvenienced as a result of the Administration's not-so-secret war in Central America, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua or the Reagan Administration.

In The Hague, U.S. legal representatives appeared before the 15-member International Court of Justice to argue against a Nicaraguan demand for an end to "all financial, military and other support" for the CIA-backed contras, who are fighting a guerrilla war against the Sandinistas. The Administration had hurriedly declared on April 6 that it would not recognize the court's jurisdiction over the issue, which arose after revelations that the CIA had actively helped mine Nicaraguan harbors. But Washington's lawyers joined in the legal fray after the court refused to dismiss the Nicaraguan plea. Whatever else might ensue, the Nicaraguans seemed to have won an initial propaganda victory by forcing the U.S. to appear before the United NationsŸsponsored body.

On Capitol Hill, the Reagan Administration was engaged in some belated fence mending with Congress following the furor raised three weeks ago by legislators who charged that they had been inadequately briefed on the minings. In two hours of closed-door hearings, CIA Director William Casey conceded that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had not been "adequately informed in a timely manner." Casey assured Senators that the mining operation had been halted, and that both the Senate and House intelligence committees would be notified of any similar operations in the future. His efforts mollified Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, who withdrew his resignation as vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. Casey and the Senate committee also agreed on the need for "more thorough and effective oversight procedures, especially in the area of covert action."

In northern Nicaragua, the war simmered on. Units of the contra army known as the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (F.D.N.) continued to launch raids from their Honduran base camps into Sandinista territory. The extent of contra successes remained difficult to determine. The rebels claim to control nearly 6,000 sq. mi. of Nicaraguan territory, with strong support from the peasantry, and to operate freely in an additional 2,700-sq.mi. area. But one of the F.D.N.'s leaders, Edgar Chamorro Coronel, declared to TIME last week that "to achieve a victory we would need not 8,000 fighters, but 25,000, and people to rise up in greater numbers." Nonetheless, the contras can cause trouble for the Sandinistas so long as the U.S. continues to supply covert aid. In Nicaragua's northern Nueva Segovia department, numerous peasants collaborate with the guerrillas, providing food, shelter and information on Sandinista troop movements in the heavily militarized region. While the F.D.N. is unable to occupy settlements for more than a few hours, the contras roamed with relative freedom, despite the presence of thousands of uniformed Sandinista defenders.

A new element in the Central American debate emerged last week as the Pentagon confirmed that a U.S. destroyer and frigate had begun a "coastal surveillance exercise" off the Gulf of Fonseca, which borders Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador. The mission is to disrupt the flow of arms from Nicaragua to the Marxist-led guerrillas in El Salvador. Pentagon officials stressed that the U.S. ships would remain outside Nicaraguan waters, pro viding only radar assistance to Salvadoran and Honduran naval patrols that attempt to intercept the arms smugglers. Nonetheless, congressional staffers in Washington decried the exercise as "yet another step" toward direct U.S. involvement in a Central American conflict.

A more serious but highly unlikely accusation also took wing briefly last week: that American reconnaissance aircraft, including AC-130 Spectre gunships, are flying regular spying missions over Nicaragua. A U.S. military man in Honduras, claiming access to classified material, told several journalists that the spy flights have been going on for several months under the direction of both the CIA and the US. military, and that the U.S. aircraft regularly penetrate about 100 miles into Nicaraguan airspace. He further claimed that most of the flights originated at Howard Air Force Base in Panama or at military bases in the U.S. But some of the aircraft, he said, embark from the Honduran military base at Palmerola, about 50 miles northwest of the country's capital, Tegucigalpa. Palmerola is the temporary home of some 300 members of the U.S. 224th Military Intelligence Battalion and of about a dozen unarmed U.S. military reconnaissance aircraft. The mission of the top-secret 224th is known to include spy flights over parts of neighboring El Salvador, which provide information for the Salvadoran armed forces in their war against antigovernment guerrillas.

In Washington, military intelligence officials vehemently challenged the accusations. Not only were such flights not occurring, they are unnecessary. The U.S. eavesdrops on Nicaragua very effectively by using reconnaissance satellites as well as side-looking radar installed on aircraft that steer clear of Nicaraguan territory. In addition, a Pentagon official declared that AC-130 gunships are "the last thing we'd want to fly over Nicaragua," since the aircraft are less well equipped for reconnaissance missions than other spy planes and because use of the gunships would be a major provocation for the Sandinistas.

With the Administration's Central American policy in trouble in Congress, senior officials began warning last week that Cuba was planning to increase the shipment of supplies to the estimated 10,000 guerrillas in El Salvador. According to information from within Cuba, they said, the latest arms buildup is in preparation for a major guerrilla offensive this fall, most likely in September. The increase is said to have been accompanied by a stepped-up guerrilla recruitment campaign, intended to raise their forces to about 14,000. The Administration's fear is that the guerrillas are planning a Salvadoran equivalent to the 1968 Tet offensive in Viet Nam, which heightened popular opposition to a war in the midst of a U.S. presidential election campaign.

Skeptics could not help noting the timing of the Administration's latest revelations, which bolstered the case for additional military spending in the region. But more than congressional tactics are involved: in recent weeks, the Administration has become notably more pessimistic in its assessments concerning Central America, an attitude that is in sharp contrast to the White House's enthusiasm after the successful invasion of Grenada.

Washington's flagging spirits may receive a boost next Sunday, when El Salvador's voters go to the polls for the presidential runoff election between Christian Democrat Jose Napoleon Duarte and Roberto d'Aubuisson of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA). Almost unnoticed amid the clamor over Washington's covert-action policies, the two rivals have been waging a venomous replay of the first-round campaign that ended on March 25, when Duarte won 43.4% of the 1.5 million votes cast, and D'Aubuisson 29.8%.

A victory by the ultrarightist D'Aubuisson would undoubtedly lead Congress to cut off U.S. military support for El Salvador, but his chances seemed to be diminishing. When Francisco Jose Guerrero, who won 19.3% in the March 25 election, refused to throw his support to D'Aubuisson, Christian Democratic pollsters began to predict that Duarte could win as much as 60% of the runoff vote. Duarte appeared to gain a tactical advantage last week when El Salvador's provisional President, Alvaro Magana, vetoed an ARENA-sponsored proposal for changing the May 6 voting procedure. The change would have scrapped the country's computerized voting lists, a central feature of the oversophisticated, U.S.-designed balloting system that may have kept as many as 200,000 Salvadorans from voting in March but that also served as a guarantee against deliberate fraud. Another encouraging sign for Duarte came when the country's 30,000-member armed forces issued a declaration last week that they plan to "uphold the will of the people" in the runoff election, meaning that the military will steer clear of any interference with the voting result.

Congress is likely to wait until the Salvadoran ballots are counted before deciding on the fate of $62 million worth of proposed U.S. military aid for El Salvador, and of $21 million intended for the contras. Indeed, some of the urgency of those decisions dissipated last month when the Administration released $32 million in discretionary credit to the Salvadoran military for ammunition and spare parts. The credit expires in 120 days. One of the few certainties about U.S. policy in Central America is that the interval between crises is never long. --By George Russell. Reported by Ricardo Chavira with the contras and Barrett Seaman/Washington

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira, Barrett Seaman