A Likely Story

It looks bad enough for the United States to have an airplane packed with arms for Nicaragua’s rebels and flown by an American crew crash inside that country’s borders. It makes it look unacceptably worse to have one of President Reagan’s chief advisers on Latin America use the incident to encourage free-lance attacks against a sovereign government with which we are officially at peace.

There will be more details in the days to come on the activities of Marine Corps veteran Eugene Hasenfus, the Wisconsin man who is the sole survivor of the four-man crew aboard the C-123 transport that Nicaraguan troops shot down Sunday near the Costa Rican border. Two other U.S. citizens, and a Nicaraguan, were killed when it crashed. Hasenfus has reportedly admitted his mission was to resupply anti-Sandinista contra rebels.

The U.S. government has disavowed any official connection with the airplane or its crew, but there can be little doubt the flight was part of a pattern of covert operations, either overseen directly or encouraged indirectly by the Central Intelligence Agency, in support of the contras, who Reagan considers freedom fighters. That an Administration irrationally obsessed with Nicaragua is linked to such activities is no surprise. What is amazing is how consistently U.S. officials, and their contra allies, botch up these operations and embarrass themselves before the world.

Take the way Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams, the chief coordinator of Reagan Administration policy in Central America, praised the work of private U.S. groups that aid the contras, going so far as to call the downed plane’s crew “heroes.” They probably were brave men. But there are serious questions as to whether such activities are even legal under the Neutrality Act of 1972. Quite apart from their legality, there are millions of Americans who consider such activities improper and unwise. Even the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Minnesota’s David Durenberger, is asking whether the CIA could bring free-lance contra aid operations under control if Congress were ever to allow it to go after Nicaragua unhindered. For Abrams to go out of his way to praise that kind of activity reflects profound arrogance.

But then, ignorance and a belief that we know better than the rest of the world what to do in Central America runs through all of the Administration’s tactics and pronouncements with respect to Nicaragua. Reagan, Abrams and the rest are apparently determined to wage their war there regardless of what it costs in human lives or damaged U.S. prestige. The only way their campaign to overthrow the Sandinistas will be forced into a more constructive channel--like the Contadora negotiations suggested by our Latin American allies--will be if Congress flatly refuses to go along with it.

Congress should now delay final approval of the $100 million in contra aid it voted recently, until the Administration answers the many questions raised by the aircraft’s downing. Congress must find out if the Administration is already using the contra aid money despite the fact it has not been finally approved, or whether the CIA is using its operating funds against Nicaragua, a strategy Congress specifically banned two years ago when it was revealed that CIA operatives had mined Nicaragua’s harbors.

Congress must have a clear answer to those questions before allowing Reagan and his fellow adventurers to plunge deeper into the jungles of Central America.