The policy on Nicaragua began to favor support for the anti-Sandinist Contras, because most of the people involved in the United States,. Intelligence operations, including that of Richard Nixon, feared that the defeat of the rebels would likely lead to a violent Marxist guerrilla movement in Mexico and other Central American countries. Politics between Boland I and Boland II After “Boland I”, Contra attacks in Nicaragua continued to grow. Despite the summary executions of Sandinista soldiers and other brutal measures, the Contras often found support among rural people.
The number of Contra soldiers also continued to grow. To counter this threat, the Sandinistas received operational support from a Cuban military general and weapons from the Soviet Union. The CIA began transporting supplies by air to the Contras, who carried out “spectacular guerrilla attacks” against their target. During the second half of 1983, with the help of the CIA, the Contras carried out air attacks against Sandino Airport, near Managua, and other targets.
In 1983, CIA-led commandos fired oil storage tanks at the port of Corinth, destroying fuel, medicines and other supplies and forcing more than 25,000 residents to evacuate. Setting dangerous precedents for terrorist actions, CIA-supplied planes bombed Nicaragua's international airport in Managua in 1983 and CIA agents mined Nicaraguan ports in 1984,8 The Contras initially took credit for the mining, but The Wall Street Journal reported that it had been the work of the CIA a few months later. In addition, it was discovered that Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, of the United States. UU.
Marine, who worked on the National Security Council in the Reagan White House, knew about the operation and had recommended it. Post-Boland political framework Boland's second amendment certainly forced the administration to change some of its policies, even as it tried to have the amendment repealed. Draper identifies two ways in which the Administration tried to circumvent Boland. The first was to get private U.S.
citizens and third countries to donate money to the Contras, as Boland did not explicitly prohibit these parties from funding the Contras. The second was controlling EE. Against the policy and support of the National Security Council (NSC), which is “the president's primary forum for considering national security and foreign policy issues with his top national security advisors and cabinet officials.”. This option was based on the fact that the NSC was not explicitly mentioned in Boland and that, since the NSC deals with policy making, it could be said that it is not an “intelligence agency or entity” involved in “intelligence activities”.
Air supply operations: The Second Boland Amendment prohibited the CIA from providing the Contras with the operational support it once had. To circumvent this restriction, North and others created a “miniature CIA”, in Draper's words, to deliver weapons to the Contras. In July 1985, North asked Secord to “build and oversee an air supply operation for the Contras.”. Much of the money raised for the Contras by private citizens and other countries went to this operation, and an airstrip was built in Costa Rica for the use of the operation.
However, due to lack of equipment and other problems, there were no deliveries of weapons until April 1, 1986, and the initial deliveries only supplied the Contra forces in Honduras. By May, according to Draper, the Contras in both northern and southern Nicaragua were receiving airdrops, although Kagan cites an agent from the supply effort as saying that the operation was not “viable” until mid-September. On October 5, 1986, one of the supply planes was shot down by the Sandinistas and crew member Eugene Hasenfus was captured. Although this fact did not prompt Congress to immediately conduct extensive investigations into the U.S.
The participation in the supply of the Contras, North and other members of the administration decided to end the operation. The discovery of the media and the reaction of Congress As early as June 1985, the media began to publish articles about the United States. North's name first appeared in an article on June 24, 1985 in the Miami Herald in which Edgar Chamorro was interviewed. Other newspapers, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, also began to publish the story.
As a result, Congress questioned McFarlane and North. The two, along with Poindexter, “deceived and obstructed Congress,” according to Draper. Therefore, Congress did not carry out any type of oversight at this time, although the answers that all three of them gave to Congress later served as the basis for their criminal charges. In 1986, the media again drew attention to North's activities.
A Sandinista helicopter was shot down in December 1985 and, in January, the Miami Herald reported that the missile used in the attack was obtained by Singlaub. In April, the newspaper again referred to North and stated that he may have broken the ban on helping the Contras. The media continued with the news throughout the summer, amid denials from the White House. Therefore, according to Draper, “in mid-1986, U.S.
Clandestine support for the Contras was an open secret. Congress again requested information about these activities, but Poindexter blocked Congress and North was deceptive, as he later admitted. Therefore, Congress again did not exercise a real oversight function over the NSC and, moreover, it did not do so when Hasenfus's plane was shot down. It wasn't until the Iranian side of things was exposed that the Iran-Contra affair turned into a political crisis of such magnitude.
In this 1978 video, presenter Jim Lehrer pressures a commander of the Nicaraguan National Guard to face accusations of human rights abuses by the Nicaraguan military. .
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