Preemptive Strikes at Latin Terrorists Approved

President Reagan is prepared to take violent, preemptive action against terrorist strongholds in Central America, provided it can be done without harming innocent bystanders, a senior Administration official said Wednesday.

The official, who spoke to reporters on condition that he not be identified, also said that U.S. intelligence officials have collected enough evidence to firmly establish a pattern of Nicaraguan support for terrorists throughout Central America--including evidence he characterized as the “smoking gun.”

And he did not deny recent press reports that Reagan Administration officials recently considered--but rejected--a retaliatory air strike against alleged Nicaraguan training sites for Salvadoran rebels in response to the slaying of four U.S. Marines in San Salvador on June 19.

“We don’t foreclose acting against clearly established centers of terrorism anywhere, and in Central America those centers exist in Nicaragua and El Salvador,” the official said. “The President’s view is that you must act when you can identify, unambiguously, active terrorists’ infrastructure. And to do so, (you must be) able to deal with it discreetly, without inflicting harm on innocent bystanders.”

Locations, Tactics

He continued: “I know that there is a growing body of knowledge in our government about the locations, the tactics, the geography of the terrorist infrastructure in Central America, and when that reaches the stage that meets our several criteria, we will act.”

Also, he said, there is “growing confidence” within the Administration that the criteria can be sufficiently satisfied to justify an attack by the United States.

The official elaborated on testimony earlier in the day by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “If we can identify to our satisfaction the existence of a base where terrorist acts are being planned, I don’t have any heartburn about trying to do something about it.”

The Administration warned Nicaragua last week in a bluntly worded diplomatic note that it had evidence of plans for a program of terrorist attacks on U.S. citizens in Honduras and would hold the Sandinista regime in Managua responsible if any such attacks are carried out.

The President’s policy calls for preemptive as well as retaliatory action, the official emphasized. Indeed, he said the Administration already has acted in a nonviolent manner to preempt attacks on Americans but declined to provide any details on the grounds it would hamper the government’s ability to take similar actions in the future.

In the past, Shultz has said that U.S. intelligence has permitted the Administration to preempt some 60 planned acts of terrorism against the United States. While none of these were thwarted by violence, the official said, the United States is not opposed to taking lethal action in the future.

Part of the Strategy

“We do not foreclose preemption--in fact, that must be part of the Reagan strategy,” the official declared. “Nor is it to say that violence is ruled out. It certainly is not.”

The official said it has been “firmly established” that the group that carried out the attack on U.S. Marines in El Salvador last month had material support from the Nicaraguans. In addition, he said, there is evidence that planning is under way in Nicaragua “to engage in attacks in neighboring countries against Americans.”

“The record established by U.S. intelligence collection of Nicaraguan support for Salvadoran insurgents in terms of hardware, training, materiel--nonlethal and lethal support to the Salvadoran struggle--is very clear, and it’s continuing,” he added.

The Sandinista government has strongly denied these charges, and President Daniel Ortega said in a speech last week that the Nicaraguans were “victims of United States terrorism” because of American support for rebels fighting the Managua regime.

Asked about reports--which first appeared in the Miami Herald on July 4--that the United States had considered an air strike against a rebel camp near Santa Julia on Nicaragua’s northwestern Cosiguina peninsula, the official replied that the Administration’s focus was not entirely Nicaragua.

“We were focused on the generic problem in Central America--where we can respond to it--but it wasn’t just Nicaragua,” he said.