WHEN IT WAS REPORTED IN OCTOBER
that 5,000 contras had fled Honduras for Miami,
financing the trip by selling their rifles and handguns to
the FMLN, it seemed the war might finally be coming to
an end. Now we have a former director of central intel-
ligence as president. And, after eight years of covert
operations, we have the vast constellation of right-wing
forces which waged the war on Nicaragua-the ex-CIA
operatives, the active and retired U.S. military person-
nel, the foreign governments, the big-time drug dealers,
and the evangelical missionaries.
According to common wisdom, it was Reagan’s de-
termination to buck Congressional and popular opposi-
tion which brought this international league of the Right
into existence and placed it at the cutting edge of his
foreign policy. Some would maintain that it is a passing
phenomenon, the fluke result of one president’s single-
minded zeal to overthrow the Sandinista Revolution.
For this Report, we set out to question common wis-
dom.
I N “BEYOND THE SECRET TEAM,” JANE
Hunter, editor of Israeli Foreign Affairs and co-au-
thor of The Iran-Contra Connection, examines two key
players in the war on Nicaragua-“private” operatives
and foreign governments-and finds them still in the
business of covert warfare. Ironically, Hunter argues,
the private and foreign networks which so blatantly vio-
lated U.S. and international law came into being as a
consequence of restrictions placed on the CIA in the
1970s. When the Agency was reined in, foreign govern-
ments seeking leverage with Washington moved to fill
the gap. When covert operatives were dismissed, they
put their contacts and skills to profitable use in the
“private sector.” Thus, with the not-so-veiled encour-
agement of elements of the national security establish-
ment, covert action grew far beyond the reach of Con-
gress and even the White House.
With the exception of Oliver North’s gun-running
“Enterprise,” these networks were virtually untouched
by the Iran-contra scandal. In fact, the Congressional
hearings, calculated more to reassure the public than to
reveal wrongdoing, refused to examine the broader
criminal context in which the “Enterprise” operated.
Congress confirmed the propriety of covert warfare and
made it clear that the punishment for violating the law is
minimal.
Besides going private and international, CIA covert
warfare took a third step over the past decade to circum-
vent Congressional and Executive restraint. In “Over-
seeing the Overseers,” Hunter shows how “Congres-
sional oversight of the CIA invited CIA counter-over-
sight of Congress, to ensure that key legislators re-
mained on the Agency team.” She paints an incestuous
relationship which fatally compromises the already lim-
ited jurisdiction exercised by the oversight committees
and the Congress at large.
C ONGRESS ALSO FAILED TO SCRUTINIZE
the Christian Right’s role in the war on Nicaragua.
U.S. “missionary” operations in Central America con-
tinue unhampered-ranging from running anti-Sandin-
ista schools, to filling El Salvador’s airwaves with pro-
government propaganda, from preaching about the or-
dained right to kill communists, to providing material as
well as spiritual aid to the contras.
“The introduction of Christian Right activists to
counterinsurgency warfare established a very danger-
ous precedent,” writes Sara Diamond in “Holy Warri-
ors.” Their skill at manipulating theology and ideology
and their enthusiasm for the task have proven quite
effective in the psychological operations characteristic
of low intensity conflict.
Evangelicals turned to Central America when their
domestic social agenda was largely frustrated, asserts
Diamond, whose book, Spiritual Waifare, will be pub-
lished by South End Press in 1989. That George Bush is
less enamored of the religious Right than Ronald Re-
agan will surely reinforce their overseas bent.
Like the CIA’s foreign and private collaborators, the
broadcasters, ideologues and hands-on counterinsur-
gency operatives of the Christian Right are out of the
reach of Congressional control and may well become
valuable assets in the foreign adventures of the Bush
Administration. For the rogues’ gallery of the Right, the
show goes on.
