CIA Collaborator Hull Turns Up in Nicaragua

John Hull, an American CIA collaborator whose Costa Rican ranch was a base for Contra raids into Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua, has turned up here on a self-described mission to aid the country’s postwar recovery.

But the 70-year-old expatriate’s presence has raised a storm of protest from his old Sandinista enemies, threatening to open more wounds than he can heal. They have demanded his arrest as a fugitive from Costa Rica, where he faces war-related criminal charges.

Costa Rican Foreign Minister Bernd Niehaus announced Thursday that he is “carefully studying” the possibility of seeking Hull’s extradition. Nicaragua’s pro-American government said it would comply with such a request but has no case of its own against Hull or any reason to capture him in the meantime.

However, the rancher’s landlady says he left home Tuesday and hasn’t been back.

Nicaragua has changed dramatically since the Sandinistas lost national elections last February and gave up power, prompting the Contras to exchange their U.S.-supplied weapons for amnesty and resettlement aid. But Hull’s arrival here has surprised Nicaraguan officials, Sandinistas and former rebel leaders, who never imagined the idea of national reconciliation could be stretched so far.

“John Hull, the CIA farmer, in Nicaragua?” asked an incredulous onetime Contra leader Eden Pastora. “My God! Does this mean Ronald Reagan could come tomorrow and live peacefully in Nicaragua?”

Hull, a bit player in the Iran-Contra scandal, was jailed in Costa Rica in January, 1989, on charges of waging “hostile acts” against Nicaragua and letting gun-running Contra pilots smuggle cocaine to the United States from airstrips on his property. Freed on $37,500 bail, he fled Costa Rica in July of that year and returned to his native Indiana.

A Costa Rican court later dropped the drug charge but added a murder indictment accusing Hull of plotting a 1984 bomb attack on Pastora, who was then at odds with the rebels’ CIA mentors. Three journalists died in the blast at a Pastora news conference in Nicaragua near the Costa Rican border.

Costa Rica was preparing an extradition request for the United States when Hull turned up in this southern Nicaraguan provincial capital last August in a 1982 Chevrolet Suburban pickup that he said he drove from Indiana. He entered Nicaragua on a tourist visa, rented a small house here for $75 a month and befriended Mayor Isaac Deleo, who helped him get a Nicaraguan truck license.

While keeping a low profile, Hull has impressed this poor, war-battered community with his largess. Through associates in the United States, he brought in medical supplies for the local hospital and tons of seeds for Contras-turned-farmers. He told government officials he hoped to invest in citrus and cattle-breeding ventures that could employ hundreds of former rebels.

In an interview with two American reporters last Saturday, Hull said he came to Nicaragua for “humanitarian” reasons, at the invitation of “friends” he wouldn’t name.

“Can you think of any place that needs (my help) worse?” he asked.

Hull denied running drugs or plotting to kill Pastora and said Costa Rica’s government in the early 1980s knew about and tolerated his help for the Contras. He claimed to have quit collaborating with the CIA in 1986--an assertion the U.S. Embassy in Managua said it could not confirm.

“I don’t know if I could be extradited, but there’s been an amnesty here,” he said. “Nobody is supposed to be prosecuted for any acts during the war. . . . Here you have a case of the Costa Ricans trying to put me in jail for violent acts against Nicaragua and the Nicaraguans saying they have nothing against me.”

People interviewed in Juigalpa last weekend seemed to accept Hull, even if they suspected his motives. Police chief Arnoldo Pastran, a Sandinista, said Hull was “respected like any other citizen.” Mayor Deleo said Hull’s past was nothing he wanted to know about.

But Hull’s welcome has faded since Monday, when Managua-based Sandinista news media discovered his presence and launched a crusade to have him arrested.

“John Hull is not exactly an ordinary ‘foreign investor,’ ” the Sandinista newspaper Barricada said. “His mercenary money is stained with Nicaraguan blood. His only link to the country is associated with war and destruction.”