Nicaragua
"The arms sales to Nicaragua were illegal because they violated Congressional limits on the amount of American aid that could be given to the contras."
-The New York Times
During the 1980's, Nicaragua was a communistic country run by a group called the "Sandinistas." One group rebelled against the Sandinistas called the "Contras." The US intervened and tried increasing democracy by aiding the Contras. However, many Nicaraguan citizens opposed the influence the United States had on the country, for they thought the United States' efforts caused more good than bad.
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"Approximately thirty million dollars were recorded as received from the Iranians; however, only about twelve million of this ended up in the proper hands. This lead to great suspicion in Washington — where did the rest of the money go? As it turned out, the money that was gained from selling the arms to Iran was used to support American contras in Nicaragua who were fighting the Sandinistas: a leftist political party founded by Augusto Cesar Sandino, a former insurgent leader. Reagan’s goal was to help the contras against a power that he deemed as a Communist threat. The funding and the process used to get it were in clear defiance of Boland Amendment. The Reagan administration had gotten around the laws of the amendment by using the National Security Council, whose actions were not restricted by the terms of the amendment."
-Cold War Museum
-Dir. Alan Lowery, Nicaragua: A Nation's Right to Survive, 1983
"President Reagan became convinced that the Sandinistas' 1979 victory in Nicaragua could spark off revolution throughout the region and threaten the security of the United States."
-BBC News
"Well, if one looks at the basic political thought that was behind all that, the theory was that Communism was a terrible evil ...and if we could encourage any one of the resistance groups that was fighting anywhere to bring down one of those regimes, if not Afghanistan, then Cambodia, or Angola, or Nicaragua, then the world would be a better place. And since they were going to fight them anyway we ought to be in the business of helping them and that greater good would ultimately come with a democratic outcome"
-Oliver North in an interview with author, Ann Wroe
The ContrasThe Contras were criticized for human rights violations since they kidnapped and murdered civilians. Congress disapproved of this, so Congress limited funds to the Contra Rebels to $14 million.
"From the early 1980s, two groups of armed opponents to the Sandinistas remained active. Based in Costa Rica to the south, former members of the National Guard made forages into Nicaragua.Initially numbering only 2000, they recruited small farmers disaffected by the Sandinistas' programme of agrarian reform. At the same time, a disillusioned Sandinista commander, Eden Pastora, set up an opposition base in Honduras to the north. Both groups became known as the 'contras'" "Within a year of the Sandinistas’ capture of power.... In the summer of 1980, crude organizations of fighters were seeking to start a counterrevolution. These disparate groups comprised former National Guardsmen, ex-Sandinista soldiers critical of the new regime, and peasants and farmers upset with “intrusive” Sandinista land policies. Nicaraguan exiles, including former guardsmen and members of the Conservative Party, gathered in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Miami and discussed the prospect of both unarmed and armed opposition to the Sandinistas." |
the Sandinistas"In 1961, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, or Sandinistas) was founded by Silvio Mayorga, Tomás Borge, and Carlos Fonseca. The group took its name from Augusto Cesár Sandino, who led a Liberal peasant army against the government of U.S.-backed Adolfo Díaz and the subsequent Nicaraguan government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Inspired by Fidel Castro’s and Che Guevarra’s Cuban Revolution, the group sought to be “a political-military organization whose objective is the seizure of political power through the destruction of the bureaucratic and military apparatus of [Somoza’s] dictatorship.” "Made unpopular by the need to fight a long and costly war against the US-backed contras, Sandinistas were unexpectedly voted out of office in elections in February 1990." |
"In the early years, Reagan quite openly allocated funds to the Contras and to the CIA for the purpose of destabilizing the Sandinista regime. But, in time, opposition to this funding grew among the US public." -BBC News |
"Congress prohibited contra aid for the purpose of overthrowing the Sandinista Government in fiscal year 1983, and limited all aid to the contras in fiscal year 1984 to $24 million." |
The Contras Rebels were supplied with arms and money by Israel, who were supplied by the United States of America. The Contras raised money themselves by trafficking cocaine and weapons selling, which caused Congress to limit their aid from the US.
"In 1987, the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations...launched an investigation of allegations arising from reports of contra-drug links...an effort to divert drug money from a counternarcotics operation to the contra war. On July 28, 1988, two DEA agents testified before the House Subcommittee on Crime regarding a sting operation conducted against the Medellin Cartel. The two agents said that in 1985 Oliver North had wanted to take $1.5 million in Cartel bribe money that was carried by a DEA informant and give it to the contras. DEA officials rejected the idea."
-The National Security Archive