The simple questions are, Will we support freedom in this hemisphere or not? Will we defend our vital interests in this hemisphere or not? Will we stop the spread of communism in this hemisphere or not? Will we act while there is still time? Ronald Reagan, televised address
I am a Contra. Ronald Reagan
As long as there is breath in this body I will speak and work, strive and struggle, for the cause of the Nicaraguan freedom fighters. Ronald Reagan
You have the sale of armaments to terrorist groups ... You have the doing of this by members of the armed forces. A very scary thing ... You have constitutional abuses that are enormous. Professor Edwin Firmage, Constitutional Law
The Iran/Contra affair was immensely damaging to America’s reputation throughout the world. But it was equally damaging within the United States because it raised issues of trust. Martin Bell, BBC war correspondent
Ronald Reagan’s message was clear: find some way, any way, to help the Contras. The Contras: Ronald Reagan compared them to our founding fathers; in reality Ronald Reagan and CIA director William Casey were their founding fathers. Two months after his inauguration the President approved the funds which Casey used to create the Contras. Their ultimate goal was the violent overthrow of the Nicaraguan government, a government the United States legally recognises. So the war had to be carried out covertly as a campaign of terror. Bill Moyers, Our Secret Government: Constitution in Crisis, 1987
Were there Contras who relied on the profits of narcotics in order to buy arms and survive? Yes. Senator John Kerry
Bush Pardons 6 in Iran Affair, Averting a Weinberger Trial, Prosecutor Assails Cover-Up. The New York Times article
The thinking was that if you could control the perceptions of the American people about events, that that would help you bring them on board. If they thought something was a huge threat to them, they perceived it that way, then they would react a certain way. They would act in support of a more aggressive policy. Well, you try to convince the American people that these folks are out to get you. So we had extreme suggestions that the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, who were a rather pathetic force, having been to Nicaragua and seen them, that they would be threatening Texas, they would be threatening the Panama Canal. You can take small threats and make them look huge threats. You can make the Sandinistas look as if they are going to conquer the United States. Robert Parry, press association reporter in Nicaragua 1980s
The Neo-Conservatives were beginning to believe that their ideal of freedom was an absolute. And that this then justified lying and exaggerating in order to enforce that vision. The end justified the means. Although they portrayed the Contras as freedom fighters, it was well known that they used murder, assassination and torture. And also were allegedly using CIA-supplied planes to smuggle cocaine back into the United States. And to finance the Contras, the Neo-Conservatives were even prepared to deal with America’s enemy – the leaders of the Iranian revolution. In 1985 those running the Nicaragua operation held a series of secret meetings with Iranian leaders in Europe. They arranged to sell the Iranians American weapons; in return the Iranians would release American hostages held in Lebanon. Then the money from these sales would be used by those running Project Democracy to fund the Contras. The only problem was that this was completely illegal. And the President knew it. Adam Curtis: The Trap III: We Will Force You to be Free, BBC 2007
The other part of Project Democracy was to use military force in secret operations to overthrow foreign regimes that stood in the way of freedom. The main target was the government of Nicaragua, the Sandinistas. The Sandinistas were Marxist revolutionaries who had seized power in 1979; but since then they had held elections and had been democratically elected. The Reagan administration dismissed this though as a sham. And an operation was set up to enforce the right kind of democracy by overthrowing the Sandinistas if necessary. The man in charge was a leading Neo-Conservative Elliott Abrams. ibid.
The Americans started funding and training a counter-revolutionary army called the Contras. But there was enormous political opposition in the United States. And to get round it the leaders of Project Democracy set out to frighten the American public. An agency called The Office of Public Diplomacy was set up that disseminated what was called White Propaganda. It produced dossiers and fed stories to journalists that proved that Soviet fighter planes had arrived in Nicaragua to attack America. Another story from ‘intelligence sources’ said that the Soviets had given stockpiles of chemical weapons to the Sandinistas. President Reagan appeared on television with maps to show how quickly such a chemical attack could be launched on America itself. It was only a matter of time. ibid.
Nicaragua dealt with the problem of terrorism in exactly the right way. It followed international law and treaty obligations. It collected evidence, brought the evidence to the highest existing tribunal, the International Court of Justice, and received a verdict – which, of course, the US dismissed with contempt. Noam Chomsky
Contra aid: during this time the New York Times and the Washington Post – the two major national newspapers - they ran no less than 85 opinion columns … they were divided over Contra aid, but of the 85 columns, all 85 were critical of the Sandinistas. Noam Chomsky, The Massey lecture 1988, ‘Necessary Illusions’, Youtube
In Nicaragua, the tyranny that had served as the base for US power in the region for decades was overthrown in 1979, leaving the country in ruins, littered with 40,000 corpses, the treasury robbed, the economy devastated. Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy
It was never seriously in doubt that congressional liberals and media doves would support measures of economic strangulation and low-level terror guided by these principles until Nicaragua achieved ‘democracy’ – that is until political power passed to business and landowning elites linked to the United States, who are ‘democrats’ for this reason alone, no further questions asked. ibid.
The 1984 elections were intolerable to the United States because they could not controlled. Therefore Washington did what it could to disrupt them, and they were dismissed and eliminated from history by the media, as required. ibid.
Thus if the liberal model prevails, Nicaraguans might look forward to economic strangulation; terrorist attacks to destroy industrial installations, blow up civilian aircraft, sink fishing boats, and bombard hotels; the spreading of epidemics to destroy livestock ... all happily forgotten here. ibid.
In August 1988, Senate doves implemented legislation providing renewed aid to the Contras – in violation of international law and the Accords. ibid.
Nicaragua alleged that during its nineteen-month ceasefire, over 730 soldiers and civilians had been killed in Contra attacks, with the pace increasing through October 1989. ibid.
Ortega probably does not comprehend the psychotic streak in the dominant intellectual culture, in particular the doctrine that no-one has a right to defend themselves from US attack. ibid.
By the norms of the political culture, it would be an unspeakable scandal for Nicaragua to attempt to defend itself from US-run terrorist operations. ibid.
It took no great genius to perceive that the US would continue to torture Nicaragua, with elite support across the spectrum, until it restored US clients in power. This renewed display of the traditional fear and contempt for democracy among US elites, which reached new peaks in the 1980s, could hardly be understood in respectable circles here, however. ibid.
It was apparent from the outset that the US would never tolerate free and fair elections. The point was underscored by repeated White House statements that the terror and economic war would continue unless a ‘free choice’ met the conditions of the Enforcer. It was made official in early November when the White House announced that the embargo would be lifted if the population followed US orders. ibid.
Nicaragua had in fact elections in 1984 but those elections were not an ‘inspiring example of democracy’; the reason is they couldn’t be ‘controlled’. Noam Chomsky, lecture Deterring Democracy, Youtube 2.09.17, 1992
‘The latest in a happy series of democratic surprises as democracy bursts forth in Nicaragua: the method was to wreck the economy and prosecute a long and deadly proxy war until the exhausted natives overthrow the unwanted government themselves at a cost to us that is minimal leaving the victim with wrecked bridges, sabotaged power stations and ruined farms and thus providing the US candidate with a winning issue ending the impoverishment of the people of Nicaragua’. ibid. Time magazine
The world court condemned the US for unlawful use of force in Nicaragua and the US was carrying out a major terrorist war in the region. Noam Chomsky, lecture 1999, ‘ Case Studies in Hypocrisy: US Human Rights Policy, Rhetoric and Practice’
Nicaragua, 2001: The United States radically intervened in the election and warned Nicaragua that the Untied States would not accept the wrong outcome … all of this passes without comment. Noam Chomsky, lecture The History and Hypocrisy of the War on Terror, New York 2002
Nicaraguans were thus informed very explicitly that only a vote for the US candidate would end the US terror and the illegal economic warfare. The Intellectual class in the United States and Britain and other places went along continuing to suppress the US version of the peace process with the diligence that’s required on important affairs of state. Noam Chomsky, 500 Years of Western Imperialism, lecture London 1993
There was just unconstrained joy at the grand success in subverting democracy. ibid.