CIA Activities in Nicaragua

Your editorial spends a lot of hand-wringing time justifying one of the most shameful acts ever committed by a Speaker of the House. Critics of Wright can take heart at the length of your fretful piece because all your vexing reveals a knowing fear that Wright has once again acted in an irresponsible and thoughtless way.

Whether or not Wright’s statement on CIA activity in Nicaragua is true is not the point. Hopefully there are CIA agents in Nicaragua, just as there are KGB agents in the United States. But does anyone credibly believe there would be no opposition sentiments and activities in a repressive society unless the CIA instigated it? The problem is there with or without the CIA.

The real point in the Wright affair is whether the Speaker as a representative of the United States government acted appropriately.

In rationalizing the effect Wright’s comments will have, The Times indifference to the plight of democratic forces within Nicaragua is made painfully clear. To say “the Sandinistas have always assumed that the CIA was behind their opposition, and they have hardly been reluctant to act on those assumptions,” implicitly ignores the ultimate justification for repression Wright has handed the Sandinistas on a silver platter. Wright can fight aid to the resistance. He can question the judgment and tactics of the Reagan Administration. And he can bring his message to the American people as often as he likes. But to literally aid and abet a Marxist-Leninist Soviet client state in its repression of people is completely untenable and a miscarriage of democracy. And he should resign.

ROBERT MILTENBERG

San Diego