Sharing Know-How With the Contras
BY 1980, THE ARGENTINE MILITARY junta considered its "dirty war" a success, and was ready to export its expertise to new trouble spots. The external security component of their National...
...Under Argentine tutelage, the rebels began kidnapping "suspects," questioning them under torture and then killing them...
...Reagan lacked congressional authorization and was also concerned with his international image...
...New York Times, December 1, 1981...
...On his first visit he was guest of Gen...
...Several key Reagan officials were guests of the Argentine military government: Ambassador-at-Large and former deputy director of the CIA, Ret...
...In addition, since 1980 the Argentines had been providing funds, materiel, training, security and intelligence assistance to military and paramilitary forces in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras...
...on his way back the Argentine general stopped over in Panama, Bolivia and Peru...
...That same year, Argentina's military junta supplied as many as 100 veterans of its own dirty war to train the contras in urban terror tactics and guerrilla warfare...
...Stung by his defeat by the British, Gen...
...7. O.R...
...Leopoldo Galtieri...
...7 But the armed forces were not simply content with waging war against 'communist subversion' at home and throughout Latin America: on April 2, 1982, five months after Galtieri's last trip to Washington and within weeks of a visit to Buenos Aires by Thomas Enders, then under-secretary of state for inter-American affairs, Argentina invaded the Malvinas islands...
...Equally worrying was Argentina's somewhat erratic foreign policy and strong commercial ties to the Soviet Union.' W ASHINGTON'S NEW SIGNALS TO the hemisphere did not go unnoticed by the amStung by the Malvinas defeat, the military withdrew bitious Argentine defense minister, Gen...
...After the fall of the Nicaraguan dictator, they were quick to establish links with Somocista National Guard officers, most of whom had fled to Honduras, and to begin training dissident Miskitos...
...President Reagan clearly intended to upgrade it, appointing William Casey, a master of covert warfare, as CIA director...
...While firmly committed to a peaceful and negotiated settlement in Central America, Alfonsin continued to sell weaponry to several regimes in the region as late as 1984, including $2.5 million in arms to Honduras earmarked for the contras.' In 1985, Argentina joined Brazil, Peru and Uruguay in forming the Contadora Support Group...
...In 1981 and 1982, $15 million was allocated for the program, and in March 1981 the first contingent of Nicaraguan trainees arrived in Buenos Aires.' At the instigation of the CIA, the FDN was formed in August 1981 as an umbrella for all the different contra factions...
...But Argentine involvement in Central America predated these shifts...
...4. Adriana Fresco, "Argentina: Guardian of Latin America...
...W ASHINGTON HAD WON AN IMPORtant ally in its crusade against "Soviet-Cuban interference in the hemisphere," and in protecting vital sea lanes in the South Atlantic...
...Some other contra leaders, such as Ricardo Lau (former head of intelligence) and JULY/AUGUST 1987 25The Ties That ABind The Ties That Bind Emilio Echeverry were also trained in Argentina, as was the Honduran Defense Minister and later president, Col...
...Viola and Videla had made trips to Washington earlier that same year, all three seeking to unleash U.S...
...Vice-Adm...
...military sales and assistance to Argentina in 1978...
...Galtieri, who visited the United States in August and November 1981...
...Nicaraguan Perspectives, Winter 1982, no.3...
...Galtieri was the most successful...
...Argentine methods quickly took root among the contras...
...Galtieri, thought of itself as the "spoilt child of the Americans...
...5. New York Times, May 3, 1987...
...Reflecting a shift from the hawkish duros to the relatively softer blandos, power was passed between 1979 and 1981 from Gen...
...later Gen...
...6 Despite some tension in the field, the Argentine-Contra-CIA axis was firmly established by the beginning of 1982, as was evidenced by the first serious attacks on Nicaraguan territory...
...6. See Dickey, With the Contras, pp.166-171, for an account of the brutal assassination, by Argentine-trained contras, of Maria and Felipe Barreda, a middle-class Esteli couple who volunteered to pick coffee...
...Osvaldo Ribeiro, a veteran of counterinsurgency campaigns in Argentina...
...T. Bigley of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (November 1981...
...Before their Argentine training, the contras immediately killed their captives...
...the Argentines would provide military and intelligence advice and training, and the Hondurans the territory from which contra campaigns would be staged...
...Cardoso, R. Kirschbaum and E. von der Kooy, Malvinas-La Trama Secreta (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana-Planeta, 1985), p. 30...
...Jorge Videla to Gen...
...Enrique Bermtidez, a graduate of the Argentine Military Academy...
...Sharing Know-How With the Contras 1. See Paul Horowitz and Holly Sklar, "South Atlantic Triangle," Report on the Americas, Vol.16, no.3, p.3...
...As head of the Army, Galtieri had offered to train troops in El Salvador.' Reagan's plan to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government was spelled out in a 1981 presidential order, which directed the CIA to wage its covert war "primarily through non-Americans" and "with foreign governments as appropriate...
...There were several reasons for this "contracting out" strategy...
...From its inception it has been dominated by Somocista Col...
...In November, he and Director Casey outlined Argentine involvement with the contras and the CIA in more detail.' Washington continued to court Argentina throughout 1981...
...Galtieri resigned in June 1982, making way for the civilian government of Rall Alfonsin...
...Vernon Walters (February 1981...
...Rebuilding collective security in the Hemisphere and re-establishing military links with regional allies required Reagan to embrace a number of regimes which had been relegated to pariahs during the Carter years...
...In the mid- to late-1970s, security agents were tracking down Argentine ERP and Montonero guerrillas, who had allegedly teamed up with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua...
...UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick (August 1981...
...Roberto Viola, and finally on to U.S.-trained Gen...
...The head of the CIA-financed Argentine training mission in Honduras in 1981 was Col...
...Edward C. Meyer (April 1981...
...The Argentine junta was once again receiving military assistance from the United States, and, in the words of its president, Gen...
...The external security component of their National Security Doctrine could finally be implemented...
...The outcome of these overtures was the arrangement known as the "Tripartita": the United States would fund the covert war against the Sandinistas...
...8. Washington Post, June 10, 1984...
...And the Reagan Administration, lacking an important surrogate in its covert war against Nicaragua, sought other foreign partners and creative financing solutions, digging itself into the morass now known as Contragate...
...And the civilian government clearly had different priorities, terminating official Argentine involvement with the contras in 1983, yet mercenaries remained in Honduras...
...While the Americas had solidly backed Argentina in the war, Washington sided with its more important NATO ally, leaving Argentines disillusioned...
...Gens...
...Edward C. Meyer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and they discussed Central America and Bolivia...
...The new administration was simply not ready to match its intentions toward Nicaragua with its covert war capabilities...
...During Somoza's final days, the Argentine military government desperately sought to reverse his loosening grip on power through financial and other forms of support...
...Citing its apalling human rights record, Washington had placed an embargo on U.S...
...Washington was abandoning President Carter's human rights policy in favor of a campaign against terrorism designed to counter the Soviet threat...
...Christopher Dickey, With the Contras (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 1 1 2; Johnathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott and Jane Hunter, The Iran Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era (Boston: South End Press, 1987), p. 1 0 . 3. See Marc Edelman, "The Other Super Power: The Soviet Union and Latin America, 1917-1987," Report on the Americas, Vol.21, no.1, January/February 1987, pp.29-36...
...military sales and assistance...
...Discredited by the "dirty war" against its own population and its extravagant military adventure in the South Atlantic, the Argentine military is now confined to the barracks, without the legitimacy or power to pursue its domestic political ambitions, let alone foreign ones...
...Gustavo Alvarez "Che" Martinez...
...But Gen...
...2. New York Times, April 8, 1983...
...Political "disappearances" began in Honduras and rural Nicaragua, as civilians involved in the Sandinista project-heads of cooperatives, medical workers, judges, teachers, administrators-were assassinated...
...Since the debacle in Southeast Asia, the CIA's covert action apparatus had been under siege...
...The timing was good...
...Argentine geopolitical pretensions, coupled with Reagan's resolve to make Central America a test-case for his counterrevolutionary strategy, helped forge a brief marriage of convenience...
Vol. 21 • July 1987 • No. 4
