U.S. ‘Deceptions’ on Salvador Aid Alleged by 3 Congressmen

A new report on U.S. involvement in El Salvador, prepared by the staffs of three members of Congress, accuses the Reagan Administration of “deceptions (that) remind us of what happened in Vietnam.”

“Congress and the American people simply are not getting the facts about our involvement in this Central American civil war,” said a statement from the three congressmen--California Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) and Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The report will be presented today to the congressional Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, of which Leach is the chairman.

The report makes three main charges:

--That the number of U.S. military trainers in the Central American nation is probably double the 55-person ceiling that the Administration says it observes. The report says that the limit--which originally included all personnel except embassy guards and defense attaches--now also excludes 11 to 16 military figures overseeing military aid and advising Salvadoran officers, 23 trainers of battlefield medical skills and an undisclosed number of trainers on temporary duty.

--That the Administration hid from Congress its plan to supply four AC-47 gunships to El Salvador and that the Salvadorans’ air war against leftist guerrillas has grown, despite Reagan Administration assertions to the contrary. The report says Pentagon figures show that American-built UH-1H helicopters and A-37 strike airplanes spent 220 more hours aloft each in February, 1984, than in July, 1983.

--That only 15% of U.S. aid is used for economic reform and development programs and that twice that amount goes for military purposes. This accounting disputes the Reagan Administration’s statement that the United States gives three times as much economic aid as military aid to El Salvador.

Of the approximately $1.7 billion in aid to El Salvador over the last five years, according to the report, $523 million has been authorized for military supplies. Another $267 million--or about 15%--was authorized to pay for reform programs involving agriculture, the judicial system, education and Agency for International Development projects “intended to improve the quality of life.”

The rest has gone for what the group considers indirect war-related assistance--aid to persons displaced by the fighting, for example--and for food aid. The Administration’s position that such items are economic aid would, according the report’s figures, lift economic aid to 70% and leave military aid at 30%.

Col. Richard Lake, a Pentagon spokesman, said the Defense Department will have no comment on the report until it has a chance to study it.