Suspected Spy in Managua Is Congressman’s Brother

Officials here said Sunday that they are studying possible espionage charges against a U.S. congressman’s brother arrested for trespassing at the country’s largest air base with a military map in his sock.

Both state-controlled newspapers trumpeted the arrest of Sam Nesley Hall with banner headlines calling the 49-year-old traveler from Dayton, Ohio, a “captured spy.” He is the brother of Rep. Tony P. Hall (D-Ohio).

The leftist Sandinista government seemed eager to use the case as a political weapon against the Reagan Administration, as it did with that of another American, Eugene Hasenfus. Hasenfus, 45, was the cargo handler captured Oct. 6 after his plane was shot down while trying to drop weapons to the U.S.-backed contras fighting the Sandinistas in the countryside.

Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto said Hall might be tried by the same kind of People’s Revolutionary Tribunal that convicted and sentenced Hasenfus to 30 years imprisonment Nov. 15.

Hall was reported seized Friday at Punta Huete, the air force base 30 miles northeast of Managua that U.S. officials say is being readied to receive long-range Soviet reconnaissance aircraft.

He was a Democratic member of the state House of Representatives in 1964 and 1965. In 1960, he won a silver medal in diving at the Rome Olympics. His father, the late David Hall, was mayor of Dayton.

In Washington, Rep. Hall, who voted this year against aid for the contras, said he wanted to discuss his brother’s situation with the State Department before taking any action.

Escoto, in announcing Hall’s arrest Saturday evening, said the American concealed in his sock a hand-drawn map of Nicaragua showing the locations of airstrips, bridges and other strategic points of military interest.

He said Hall admitted working for a private network called the Phoenix Battalion that gathers military intelligence “of interest to the U.S. government” and having advised Nicaraguan Indians fighting among the contras’ ranks.

“This incident helps confirm information we have gathered from many sources about a U.S. plan to attack Nicaragua around this time,” the foreign minister told reporters. “The map contained technical data that would be of interest only to someone who had evil intentions.”

“We don’t know if he is some kind of nut or exactly what he is, but the whole thing is worthy of consideration and further exploration,” D’Escoto said.

Held Incommunicado

A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Miriam Hooker, said Sunday the State Security Police, who are holding Hall incommunicado in Managua, have accused him only of trespassing in a restricted military zone but are investigating other possible charges, including espionage.

The U.S. consul general, Donald Tyson, asked the Foreign Ministry in writing late Saturday for clearance to see the prisoner but had received no reply by late Sunday, according to a U.S. Embassy spokesman, Alfred Laun. Hooker said she had no information about the request.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Bruce Ammerman recalled that Nicaragua held Hasenfus for several days after his arrest and showed him at a press conference before allowing any consular access at all.

“They (Nicaragua) don’t have this real strong thing about granting consular access,” Ammerman said. “I don’t know what the next step is. We still hope they will grant us consular access.”

Under international law, a nation’s consular officers are entitled to interview nationals of that country held by the legal authorities of another country, Ammerman noted, but there is no way to enforce the law if the other country refuses to honor it.

U.S. Intervention

Hall’s arrest coincided with attempts by the Sandinistas to convince Nicaraguans and outsiders that the Reagan Administration is plotting U.S. military intervention to topple their seven-year-old revolutionary regime.

Nicaraguan officials have said that the uproar in the United States over Washington’s funneling to the contras of profits from secret U.S. arms sales to Iran will weaken American support for President Reagan’s program of aiding the five-year anti-Sandinista rebellion.

At the same time, President Daniel Ortega has warned publicly that Reagan “is obsessed with destroying the Sandinista revolution before his presidency is up” and might therefore order a U.S. invasion like the one that ousted a leftist regime in Grenada three years ago.

Nicaraguan opposition leaders, in interviews last week, dismissed such warnings as attempts to shore up waning domestic support for a regime beset by economic failures that are officially blamed on U.S.-directed aggression.

Loyalty Called Fragile

“The weakening of the contras could be a problem for the Sandinistas,” said a Conservative Party leader. “The element of loyalty to the revolution is very fragile. It has to be maintained in a very primitive way, with the specter of aggression from the power to the north.”

D’Escoto gave no details of other evidence the government has on U.S. military planning. Last week, President Ortega denounced the bombing of civilian and military targets by Honduran warplanes in northern Nicaragua as a U.S.-directed attack to provoke war between two neighbors and justify U.S. intervention.

Hall’s connection with the Reagan Administration, if any, remained unclear, and U.S. Embassy officials here declined to comment on his background.

In a June, 1985, interview, Hall told the Associated Press that he was a self-employed military adviser teaching commando tactics to Miskito Indians who had left Nicaragua’s Caribbean coastal region to join the contras’ base camps in Honduras.

At the time, he said in the interview, he worked in Flint City, Ala., for Civilian Military Assistance, a private organization aiding the contras. D’Escoto said Hall’s passport showed visas for travel to Israel, El Salvador and South Africa.

Behavior Not Discreet

Hall’s behavior in Nicaragua was anything but discreet.

According to D’Escoto, he arrived Thursday on a commercial flight from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and checked into Managua’s downtown Inter-Continental Hotel.

The hotel’s reservation manager, Antonio Soloza, said Hall, wearing blue jeans and a checkered shirt, asked him in English the next morning to get him a taxi to the Punta Huete air base.

Punta Huete, one of Nicaragua’s most strategic installations, has been under construction since 1982. U.S. defense specialists say its 12,500-foot runway, when completed early next year, will give the Soviet Union the capability of covering the West Coast of the United States with TU-95 Bear reconnaissance planes, as Cuban-based Bears now sweep the U.S. East Coast. Nicaraguan officials deny any plans to allow Soviet planes to operate at Punta Huete.

Spoke Little Spanish

Soloza said he arranged Hall’s trip with Antonio Lopez, a taxi driver at the hotel, because the American spoke little Spanish. He said that Hall told him he needed the taxi for about two hours.

Lopez’s son said the driver was taken into police custody with Hall and apparently was still being questioned.

D’Escoto said that Hall first identified himself to security forces at the base as a free-lance writer.

“He tried to play innocent as many people do, underestimating the level of intelligence of these ‘Nicaraguan Indians,’ as they think of us,” the foreign minister said. “Then came this thing from his sock.”