Contras

• 1. Introduction

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  The Contras materialized out of the wreckage of a regime. In July 1979, President Anastasio Somoza Debayle abandoned the Nicaraguan presidency and fled. The Sandinista National Liberation Front, the FSLN, had fought for weeks to take the capital, Managua, and they now controlled it. Within a year, scattered opponents of the new government had begun meeting and organizing. By 1980 they had a name: the Contras, short for contrarrevolucionarios. What assembled under that name was not a single army. It was a coalition of very different people, united mainly by their opposition to Sandinista rule. Over the decade that followed, their guerrilla war would entangle the CIA, the Reagan White House, arms dealers, and drug traffickers. The insurgency attracted not only former soldiers of the old regime. It also drew men and women who had backed the revolution and felt the Sandinistas had betrayed it. When Nicaragua sued the United States in the International Court of Justice in 1984, the filing named a covert war as its central grievance.

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• 2. Three Faces of Rebellion

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  The largest Contra organization had its roots in the defeated National Guard. Remnants of that force initially formed small units, among them the Fifteenth of September Legion and the Anti-Sandinista Guerrilla Special Forces. In September 1981, the CIA and Argentina's intelligence agency pushed several groups to merge into the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, known as the FDN. Military command fell to Enrique Bermudez, a former National Guard colonel. Political leadership went to Adolfo Calero Portocarrero, a Nicaraguan businessman who had opposed Somoza. Based in Honduras, the FDN recruited, trained, and began raiding across the border into Nicaragua.

  Not every Contra was a friend of the old regime. Jose Francisco Cardenal had served briefly in Nicaragua's post-revolution Council of State. He later left and founded the Nicaraguan Democratic Union, or UDN, an exile organization based in Miami. Edgar Chamorro, who sat on the FDN's political directorate, later became one of the most prominent critics of Contra tactics. In the northern mountains, a peasant militia called MILPAS emerged in 1980 and 1981. Composed largely of campesino highlanders, they also went by another name: chilotes, the Spanish term for green corn. Their founder, Pedro Joaquin Gonzalez, went by the nickname Dimas.

  A third current arose among indigenous communities on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast. In December 1981, the Miskito, Sumo, and Rama peoples clashed with Sandinista authorities after the government moved to nationalize Indian land. At least 10,000 people were forcibly removed to relocation centers in the interior; some of their villages were burned. The resulting movement, Misurasata, split in 1983. One faction, the Misura group of Stedman Fagoth Muller, aligned with the FDN. The other eventually reached a ceasefire with the Sandinistas in a December 1984 agreement called the Bogota Accord. An autonomy statute in September 1987 largely ended the remaining Miskito resistance.

  Standing apart from all three of these currents was Eden Pastora, known as Comandante Cero. A celebrated hero of the Sandinista revolution, he resigned abruptly from high government posts in 1981, believing power had corrupted the movement. In April 1982, he organized a rebel force called ARDE and declared war on the Sandinistas from Nicaragua's southern region. He operated exclusively in the south until the 30th of May 1984, when a bomb exploded at a press conference he was holding. After that, he withdrew from the Contra struggle entirely.

  The CIA took direct charge of the Contra operation by December 1981. What started as support for scattered exile groups became the most ambitious paramilitary operation the CIA had mounted in nearly a decade.

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• 3. The Reagan Doctrine

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  On the 4th of January 1982, President Ronald Reagan signed a top-secret directive: National Security Decision Directive 17, or NSDD-17. It gave the CIA formal authority to recruit and support the Contras with $19 million in military aid. Reagan accused the Sandinistas of importing Cuban-style socialism and supplying arms to leftist guerrillas in El Salvador. His administration continued to view the Nicaraguan government as undemocratic even after international observers generally declared the 1984 Nicaraguan elections fair. The Contra program was one component of the Reagan Doctrine, a strategy of supporting anti-communist movements opposing Soviet-backed governments.

  Congress approved $24 million in Contra aid for fiscal year 1984. But the tide was shifting. The first Boland Amendment, passed in December 1982, had prohibited U.S. assistance aimed specifically at overthrowing the Nicaraguan government, while permitting other aid. In October 1984, Congress expanded the restriction to cover all U.S. government agencies. Opinion polls showed that a majority of Americans no longer supported the Contras. A report from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research found Reagan's claims of Soviet influence in Nicaragua to be exaggerated. Congress cut off all Contra funds in 1985.

  Otto Reich ran the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean on behalf of the National Security Council. The office produced and distributed pro-Contra publications and arranged press conferences. It also placed what it called "white propaganda" in newspapers: articles by paid consultants with undisclosed government ties. Oliver North helped Carl Channell's organization, the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, raise $10 million. North arranged White House briefings and private photo sessions with Reagan for large contributors. More than $1 million of that fund went to television advertisements targeting congressional swing votes on Contra aid.

  On the 1st of May 1985, Reagan declared Nicaragua an extraordinary threat to U.S. national security and announced a trade embargo. Kermit D. Johnson, a former Chief of U.S. Army Chaplains, published a 1997 study arguing that American hostility was not primarily about security. Johnson drew on a phrase from the relief organization Oxfam: "the threat of a good example." Within months of the Sandinista revolution, Nicaragua had gained international recognition for rapid progress in literacy and public health. That, Johnson argued, demonstrated what a socialist government could accomplish where a U.S.-backed dynasty had failed for decades.

  The Contras' continued operations were not just a political challenge for Washington; they were a physical reality for Nicaraguan civilians in the war zones. What was being done in those zones would eventually reach congressional committees, international courts, and the front pages of major newsmagazines.

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• 4. Terror as Policy

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  Edgar Chamorro, who served on the FDN's political directorate, described what happened when CIA advisers handed commando knives to Contra soldiers. He recalled fighters saying they wanted a knife "to kill people, to cut their throats." The CIA's role in the Contra war extended far beyond that moment. The agency supplied funds and equipment, coordinated training programs, and delivered intelligence and target lists to Contra commanders. It also blew up refineries and pipelines and mined Nicaraguan ports.

  In a secret 1984 briefing before the House Intelligence Committee, CIA officer Duane Clarridge admitted the Contras were routinely killing civilians in Nicaragua's provinces. His list of those being killed included nurses, doctors, judges, and heads of cooperatives. Clarridge argued that this did not violate President Reagan's executive order prohibiting assassinations. The agency's reasoning: these were killings, not assassinations. "After all, this is war, a paramilitary operation," Clarridge said. The Global Terrorism Database has recorded more than 1,300 terrorist attacks attributed to the Contras over the course of the conflict.

  Tayacan, the CIA training manual for the Contras, gave doctrinal shape to these methods. It instructed Contra units to gather local populations for public tribunals to "shame, ridicule and humiliate" Sandinista officials. It also recommended assembling communities to witness and take part in public executions. Chamorro eventually testified about the instructions he had received from CIA handlers. He said they told the Contras that the only way to defeat the Sandinistas was to "kill, kidnap, rob and torture." The Reagan administration maintained publicly that Contra tactics did not include deliberate attacks on civilians.

  Americas Watch, the organization later absorbed into Human Rights Watch, published a detailed accounting of Contra abuses. Its list covered targeted killings of health care workers, kidnapping and torture of civilians, and the execution of prisoners including children. Rape and the burning of civilian homes also appeared in the accounting. A 1989 Human Rights Watch report described the Contras as "major and systematic violators of the most basic standards of the laws of armed conflict." In April 1987, Contra fighters killed Benjamin Linder, an American aid worker building a hydroelectric project in Nicaragua.

  Linder's death came months before the Central American Peace Accord was signed in August 1987. Meanwhile, behind the policy debates in Washington, a secret network had been quietly supplementing Contra operations for years.

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• 5. The Enterprise

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  With Congress having banned all federal funding, the National Security Council took over the Contra operation. Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North ran the program from his NSC office. Between 1984 and 1986, the effort raised $34 million from third countries and an additional $2.7 million from private sources. North built a parallel organization called The Enterprise. It maintained its own airplanes, pilots, an airfield, a ship, field operatives, and secret Swiss bank accounts. The Enterprise operated entirely outside the accountability required of official U.S. government activities.

  Eugene Hasenfus, alleged to have been a Contra air-supply operative, was shot down and captured by the Nicaraguan army in October 1986. His capture brought public attention to what U.S. journalists in Central America had reportedly known for some time. The full picture emerged as the Iran-Contra Affair of 1986-1987. Contra funding had been flowing through proceeds from secret arms sales to Iran. The scandal also drew attention to Oliver North's personal contact with Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian military leader later convicted on drug charges.

  Senator John Kerry's 1988 Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra drug connections reached a pointed conclusion. Its finding: senior U.S. policy makers were "not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems." In August 1996, Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News published a series titled "Dark Alliance." It alleged the Contras had contributed to the rise of crack cocaine in California. The major national newspapers subsequently moved to discredit Webb's reporting. An internal CIA report titled "Managing a Nightmare" showed the agency coordinating with journalists to counter what it called "a genuine public relations crisis." A separate Department of Justice investigation found the central allegations were not substantiated.

  All of this played out as the Sandinista government was pressing its legal case against the United States. A judgment against the United States had already been handed down in 1986.

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• 6. The World Court Verdict

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  The International Court of Justice, in its 1986 ruling, found the United States in violation of international law and a 1956 treaty. The court determined that Washington had unlawfully supported the Contra insurgency and mined Nicaragua's harbors. Nicaragua had argued before the court that the Contras were entirely a creation of the United States. The court rejected that claim. It found, however, that the evidence of a close relationship between the U.S. and the Contras was overwhelming and incontrovertible.

  The Contras' CIA manual, Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, became central evidence in the court's human rights analysis. The United States had encouraged violations of humanitarian law by producing and distributing that manual. It advised on how to rationalize killings of civilians and recommended hiring professional killers for specific tasks. In Spanish the manual was called Operaciones sicologicas en guerra de guerrillas. The court stopped short of holding the United States directly liable for all Contra atrocities. Legal accountability would have required proof that Washington exercised effective control over the specific operations that caused the violations. That level of control was not established.

  The United States refused to participate in the merits phase of the proceedings. Washington argued that the court's jurisdiction did not supersede the U.S. Constitution. It also accused the ICJ of failing to weigh Nicaragua's alleged support for guerrilla forces in El Salvador. American ICJ judge Stephen Schwebel dissented, concluding the United States had acted lawfully in collective self-defense on El Salvador's behalf. The U.S. then blocked enforcement of the judgment through a veto in the United Nations Security Council, preventing Nicaragua from receiving compensation. Under the post-Sandinista government of Violeta Chamorro, Nicaragua withdrew the complaint in September 1992. The withdrawal followed a repeal of the law requiring Nicaragua to seek damages.

  The Chamorro government that later withdrew the ICJ complaint came to power in an election held on the 25th of February 1990. Its outcome surprised nearly everyone, including many who had predicted a Sandinista victory.

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• 7. The Road to 1990

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  By 1989, the war had cost Nicaragua 30,865 lives. Years of fighting and economic isolation had devastated the economy. A united bloc of 14 political parties organized as the National Opposition Union, or UNO, backed by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy. UNO's presidential nominee, Violeta Chamorro, was received at the White House by President George H.W. Bush. With both sides under pressure from five Central American presidents, the Contras and the Sandinistas agreed on a voluntary demobilization. They set the start date for early December 1989, specifically to allow time for free and fair elections the following month. The Reagan administration had pushed to delay Contra disbandment, without success.

  A Canadian observer mission reported 42 people killed by Contras in what it termed election violence in October 1989. By mid-December 1989, the Puebla Institute reported seven opposition leaders murdered, twelve disappeared, twenty arrested, and thirty assaulted. In late January 1990, the OAS observer team reported that a convoy of UNO supporters had been attacked with bayonets and rifle butts. In November 1989, the White House had announced that the U.S. economic embargo would continue unless Violeta Chamorro won.

  Chamorro won with 55 percent of the presidential vote. Daniel Ortega received 41 percent. Of the 92 seats in the National Assembly, UNO took 51 and the FSLN won 39. Chamorro assumed the presidency from Ortega on the 25th of April 1990. Many observers concluded that Nicaraguans had voted mainly to end the war and the economic suffering, not primarily to endorse Chamorro personally. A June 1988 survey in Managua had already captured the mood. The Sandinistas still had three times as many identifiers as all the opposition parties combined. But 85 percent of those surveyed in that same poll opposed any further U.S. aid to the Contras.

  The Contra name has continued to echo in unexpected places. In January 2010, the indie rock band Vampire Weekend released an album called Contra that debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200. The band described the album title as a thematic allegory and a complex reference to the Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries.

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