Lucky Catch

Maintaining the hard line

In the Reagan Administration's uphill struggle to win congressional approval for its controversial actions in Central America, the meeting counted as a decisive victory. After several hours of closed-door sessions with the Senate Intelligence Committee, CIA Director William Casey and Secretary of State George Shultz emerged with what seemed to be a strong endorsement of one of the Administration's most hotly contested policies: providing aid to guerrilla opponents of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua as a means of checking that country's efforts to aid leftist insurgents in El Salvador. The proposal must now go before a far more hostile House of Representatives, but the Senators' warm response raised White House hopes that it would eventually be approved.

The tough Administration line was emphasized by details of a new, classified Defense Department planning memorandum leaked last week. It called for expanded U.S. operations in South America and Central America, which may include more U.S. advisers and training bases in the area. In addition, the Joint Chiefs of Staff will lead a review of "force structure and basing requirements" in the region.

As a further signal of the Administration's determination to maintain a hard line against Central American leftists, the State Department last week denied a visa to Ruben Zamora, a relatively moderate member of the F.D.R.-F.M.L.N. coalition that is fighting the Salvadoran government. Zamora, who has made frequent visits to Washington to woo members of Congress and has met in the past months with U.S. Special Envoy Richard Stone, had been invited to speak in the U.S. The Administration's excuse was that Zamora had publicly welcomed the killing of a U.S. military adviser in El Salvador last May. In fact, Zamora had only said, "If the United States was not so deeply involved in El Salvador, such incidents would not happen."

Meanwhile, the Administration could be heartened by the results of some investigative reporting in Nicaragua. Newsmen visiting an island near a small fishing village on the northwestern Zamora coast, just 40 miles from the Salvadoran border, uncovered the remains of what appears to have been a depot for smuggling arms to guerrillas in El Salvador, including a Sandinista army banner, rifle shell casings and a radio antenna. The discovery buttressed U.S. claims that Nicaragua routinely supplies the Salvadoran rebels by boat across the Gulf of Fonseca. . This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.