Car Found Smuggling Nicaragua Arms, U.S. Says

The State Department, stepping up its effort to convince Congress of the need for more aid to the Nicaraguan rebels, said Thursday that it has produced concrete evidence of Nicaraguan arms smuggling to anti-government guerrillas in El Salvador.

Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams said that Honduran officials earlier this month seized a small Soviet-made car that contained hidden cash, ammunition, radios and coding equipment.

Displaying a videotaped film of the car at a news conference, Abrams acknowledged that he hopes the discovery will help persuade Congress to support continued aid to the U.S.-backed rebels who are fighting Nicaragua’s leftist government. Congress’ $27-million appropriation of “non-lethal” aid to the rebels, known as contras, expires March 31.

Abrams, smiling broadly, said that the “smoking Lada” mini-car crashed Dec. 7 while being driven from Managua through Honduras on the way to El Salvador with a 450-pound cargo. The car, licensed in Costa Rica, hit an embankment or a bridge abutment, injuring both occupants and severely damaging the vehicle, he said.

Dismantled Car

Honduran police investigating the accident found wires protruding from the air conditioner that proved to be wires from blasting caps, Abrams said. They later dismantled the car, recording the process on videotape, and found six compartments containing more blasting caps, grenades, M-16 rifle and machine-gun ammunition, walkie-talkie radios, medicine and $27,400 in $100 bills.

“This would have supported 250 to 300 guerrillas in the field for a week,” Abrams said. “If the accident hadn’t happened, they would have been in El Salvador in an hour.”

Abrams said that the car’s driver had admitted that he was a member of the Marxist Popular Vanguard Party of Costa Rica, had received training in Cuba and had made a previous courier run.

Asked how the cargo could be linked definitely to Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, which has steadfastly denied it is sending arms to the Salvadoran guerrillas, Abrams said the modification of the car to serve in the smuggling of arms was carried out at a special shop in Managua known to U.S. intelligence.

Given the tightly controlled nature of society under the Sandinistas, he said wryly, the operation could only have been carried out by the government or the “tooth fairy.”

First Such Interception

This was the first interception of such a car, he said, although a pickup truck loaded with secret cargo was apprehended at the Salvadoran border in 1982. He said there is no way of knowing how many such cars might have been driven from Nicaragua to El Salvador because a casual inspection would give police no clue of the hidden contents.

Abrams said that the Lada carried instructions addressed by name to nine local commanders of the Armed Forces of Liberation (FAL), the military wing of the Salvadoran Communist Party and one of the five guerrilla forces making up the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the umbrella organization unifying the rebels. Abrams said the shipment came from the communications section of FAL headquarters in Managua.

An unusual item discovered in the car was a letter, written in Russian, to a Salvadoran guerrilla, Abrams said. He said the letter appeared to be from the Soviet wife of the guerrilla, who must have spent enough time in the Soviet Union to learn Russian.