EDITOR'S NOTE
Rothschild, Matthew
EDITOR'S NOTE Matthew Rothschild La Penca and Beyond When Martha Honey called us up a few months ago and proposed a story on Guatemalan hit squads operating in the United States, I instantly took...
...And it has led—uncomfortably for some on the American left—inside the door of the Sandinista government...
...EDITOR'S NOTE Matthew Rothschild La Penca and Beyond When Martha Honey called us up a few months ago and proposed a story on Guatemalan hit squads operating in the United States, I instantly took an interest...
...The La Penca press conference ended with a bomb explosion...
...We'reJH looking into it...
...To this day...
...I'm grateful to Martha Honey and Rij cardo Miranda for their courageous rej porting on this story...
...Honey got involved in Se Guatemala hit-squad story sln^y after the bombing of the car^S-longing to Jose Pertierra, the lawyerl|ir Jennifer Harbury...
...Pastora escaped with injuries to both legs...
...Is Honey concerned about her safety^ "I haven't been threatened," she saysj "But certainly Ricardo's been threatened...
...On May 30, 1984, Avirgan went to cover a press conference held by Eden Pastora, the Sandinista-turned-contra, at Pastora's camp in La Penca, Nicaragua, a few feet from the Costa Rican border...
...We don't know what the mix is...
...For another, the caller was Martha Honey...
...Honey credits the Fund for ConstitUj tional Government with providing crucial support for their project...
...Honey and Avirgan teamed up with the Christie Institute and sued many individuals in Oliver North's network—including Rob Owen, John Hull, Richard Secord, Albert Hakim, and Thomas Clines—for bearing responsibility for the La Penca bombing and other illegal acts...
...So it was natural for Honey and IPS to take up the case...
...The skin on three fingers of one hand was blown off, and he had shrapnel wounds all over his body...
...But Honey and Avirgan have refused to abandon their search for truth, no matter where it might lead...
...I'd heard about Ricardo," she explains...
...So I called him, and we had a lot of friends in common, so we decided to cooperate...
...Ricardo probably can't go back to Guatemala because of this story and othej work he's been doing...
...For one thing, the subject matter itself seemed vitally important...
...Avirgan was seriously injured...
...Honey and Avirgan have been investigating the La Penca bombing...
...But three journalists were killed...
...We were sorry about the way it was handled...
...For more information about theBa Penca bombing, you might want to chfflk out Honey's fine book Hostile Acts:l£ Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s...
...SB{ the CIA was certainly involved inw cover-up...
...We're not sorry we brought it...
...We had two parallel trails," Honey says...
...We believe there's some intertwiJB1, of forces, Honey says...
...We still havgH body of evidence that points to the M. and the North network," she says...
...As it happens, Honey had already be|n working with Harbury and Sister Diaima Ortiz (see Page 27) on a number of man-rights cases throughout Latin America...
...We would have liked the case run much differently," Honey says...
...Honey and Avirgan identified the bomber as a leftist Argentinian who was working for a unit of Tomas Borge's Interior Ministry, with the assistance of Cuban intelligence...
...Honey herself had planned to attend the press conference but had canceled at the last minute...
...Still, Honey and Avirgan are not prepared to exonerate the CIA and the North network...
...I remembered Honey from her days in Central America in the 1980s, when she and her husband, Tony Avirgan, found themselves in the thick of international intrigue...
...Honey's employer, the Institute for Pot icy Studies, was keen on investigating the bombing, since it was so reminiscent of die 1976 bombing on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C., which claimed the lives of two members of the Institute, Ronni Mof| fitt and Orlando Letelier, Chile's former foreign minister under Salvador Allende...
...On some level, there's an ijjB-est for all of these parties to cover it...
...We had a meeting with Pertierra at IPS three days after the bombing and oft fered our services to do an investigation, which turned out to be basically me)," Honey says...
...If journalists can] ferret out the truth in Washington, DM without fearing for their lives, then we'rj further down the slope than I'd like to imagine...
...He's gotten awards in Guatemala for his human-rights reporting, and he'd come up hereto Washington...
...For a while, the CIA trail seemed the most promising...
...One was the CIA, and the other was coming out of Managua...
...But Honey soon signed up her coauthor, Ricardo Miranda...
...Honey and Avirgan lost the suit, and have since had a falling out with Daniel Sheehan, the Christie Institute lawyer who handled their case...
...It blew a tennis-ball-sized hole in his side," recalls Honey...
Vol. 60 • June 1996 • No. 6
