Retreating on Rebel Aid

By William R. Doerner

In his dealings with Congress over the past four years, Ronald Reagan has been a kind of Music Man. With careful timing and precision planning, the President has usually been able to march into River City and razzle-dazzle a majority of legislators into joining his parade. Only last month he won funding for 21 new MX missiles from a highly skeptical Congress, largely by convincing lawmakers that their assent was crucial to the U.S. bargaining stance at newly opened arms talks with the Soviet Union. Last week all 76 of the Administration's trombones were blaring in Congress's direction yet again, but this time the notes went sour. The Music Man had to offer major legislative concessions to stand a chance of rounding up a winning parade.

At stake was Reagan's determination to resume U.S. aid, both humanitarian and military, to the Nicaraguan contras who are trying to overthrow the Marxist Sandinista regime that has ruled since 1979. Faced with growing opposition in Congress to his plan, which even some Republicans view as unwise, the President went on a personal crusade for $14 million in assistance to the rebel forces. Reagan compared the disparate guerrilla factions, whom he calls freedom fighters, to America's Founding Fathers, and took to picturing their cause in terms little short of apocalyptic. Said Reagan: "We cannot have the U.S. walk away from one of the greatest moral challenges in postwar history."

In the end, however, the President was forced to settle for less than he wanted. Though the measure was not scheduled to come up for a final vote until this week, by last Friday the White House had agreed to exclude weaponry and ammunition from the aid package for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30. There is a chance, moreover, that House Democrats will succeed in passing an even more limiting measure, one that would restrict expenditures to purely humanitarian aid like food and medicine for the benefit of noncombatant Nicaraguan refugees living elsewhere in Central America. (Any funds, of course, would be helpful to the contras, since they would free other money for arms.) The final package, however, was certain to lack the Regan had hoped to use as a bargaining chip in dealing with the increasingly hostile and pro-Soviet Sandinista regime.

Funding for the 15,000-man contra force was provided more or less covertly through the CIA starting in 1981. It was effectively cut off by Congress last summer, following revelations that the intelligence agency had participated in the mining of Nicaraguan harbors. The U.S. has managed to keep pressure on the Sandinistas in a variety of other ways, including the staging of large-scale "training exercises" with Nicaragua's pro-U.S. neighbor Honduras. Convinced that a resumption of U.S. aid was needed not only to bolster the contras 'morale but also as a gesture of U.S. resolve, Reagan three weeks ago tied the funding request to a new Nicaraguan "peace initiative." If the Sandinistas would agree to hold negotiations with rebel leaders under the auspices of Nicaragua's Roman Catholic hierarchy, he proposed, the U.S. would temporarily limit its aid to nonmilitary items. If no progress was forthcoming in the talks after 60 days, however, Washington would again start providing the contras with firepower.

That strategy committed the Reagan lobbying machine, already engaged in trying to move a controversial deficit-reducing budget through Congress, to a second major hard sell. The double load, admitted one presidential aide, "clearly divides our time and effort." Even though Reagan defended the front-end peace provision as a legitimate bargaining prod, many lawmakers viewed it as a disguised two-month waiting period that would inevitably lead to a resumption of military assistance.

Reagan scarcely helped his cause by making claims of international support that were misleading at best. The President announced that he had received "a verbal message . . . from the Pope, urging us to continue our efforts in Central America" and later amplified that to "all our activities." A Vatican spokesman promptly denied that Pope John Paul II had sent any specific message to Reagan, and the papal Ambassador to Washington, Archbishop Pio Laghi, declared that the Pope would never endorse a plan with "military aspects." At another point Reagan claimed the support of the leaders of all four members of the Contadora group (Mexico, Colombia, Panama and Venezuela), which has sought to mediate a regional settlement in Nicaragua. In fact, while they issued cease-fire and church-supervised negotiations, none of the four backed a resumption of U.S. military aid to the contras. That, said Colombian President Belisario Betancur, would be "no longer a peace proposal but a preparation for war."

House Speaker Tip O'Neill, long an opponent of U.S. military involvement in Central America, could not have agreed more strongly. "I don't believe the President of the U.S. will be happy until troops are in there," he charged extravagantly. "I want to do everything in my power to prevent that." Well aware that in the past, Reagan has created momentum for controversial measures by sending them first to the Republican-controlled Senate, the Speaker rushed the bill seeking contra aid through committee. He then scheduled it for a full floor vote on Tuesday, the same day the upper chamber was due to consider it, thus depriving the Administration of any time to build on a Senate victory.

Congressional enthusiasm for Administration policy in Nicaragua was not exactly buoyed by FBI Director William Webster's acknowledgment that his agents have conducted "interviews" with about 100 U.S. citizens returning from recent visits there. Webster insisted that "there was a legitimate counterintelligence purpose for every interview," some of which were instigated by the CIA and the National Security Council. He declined for security reasons to elaborate on why those agencies wanted to question the recent visitors to Nicaragua. Democratic Congressman Don Edwards noted that some of the travelers have been openly critical of U.S. policy in Nicaragua, making them dubious sources of freely given intelligence.

Even with these difficulties, the Administration seemed to make some headway with a p.r. blitz directed by White House Communications Director Patrick Buchanan. It included a full-page advertisement in the New York Times, paid for by Resistance International, a Paris-based anti-Communist group, appealing for renewed U.S. aid to the "Nicaraguan Resistance." The ad was signed by a distinguished array of 89 European statesmen and intellectuals, among them French Author Jean-Franc,ois Revel and former NATO Secretary-General Joseph Luns.

Much in evidence through the week was newly minted Republican Jeane Kirkpatrick, who caustically labeled Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra "a new Caudillo, " Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco's title. She predicted that the aid decision "will have a profound effect on the place of the U.S. in the world in the next decade." Kirkpatrick appeared with Reagan in an Oval Office plea for the bill's passage, joining former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger.

But as usual the Administration's most effective advocate was Reagan himself, especially in his less hectoring moments. Referring to the Sandinista regime's clampdown on some religious groups, the President told visiting sectarian leaders at the White House, "It occurs to me anew that you can judge any new government, any new regime by whether or not it allows religion to flourish. If it doesn't, you can be sure it's an enemy of mankind, for it is attempting to ban what is most beautiful in the human heart." Reflecting on the $14 million in aid at stake, Reagan mused plaintively, "It is so little, yet such an important symbol of our resolve."

Reagan has mostly himself to thank or blame for making the aid issue into such a symbol. As his rhetoric grew in intensity, so did the doubts of opponents. Democratic Congressman Peter Kostmayer of Pennsylvania contended, for example, that the re-establishment of military aid could lead to open-ended U.S. involvement in Nicaragua, much like the nation's experience in Viet Nam. Wisconsin Democrat David Obey argued that the contra ranks contain some elements no more savory than those of the Sandinistas, including members of the notorious National Guard of the late dictator Anastasio Somoza. (The contras have also won over more than a few former Sandinistas, disillusioned by the direction of the revolution.)

Others were convinced that encouraging contra subversion would actually prove counterproductive to U.S. interests. The Sandinista regime, they predicted, would respond to such attacks by becoming even more dependent on the Soviets. And for many opponents, the keenest argument involved a fundamental conclusion that any nuisance value gained by contra aid was outweighed by the moral sanctity of rule by law. Said Maryland Senator Charles Mathias, a Republican: "The U.S. has come close to advocating the overthrow of the current Nicaraguan government by force of arms."

Reagan and others argue just as strongly that equally compelling sanctities are at stake in Nicaragua, including basic personal freedoms that are denied routinely by the Sandinistas. Supporters of military assistance will have a chance to make their case again before the new fiscal year begins in October, when another aid package must be approved. For the time being, the contras will probably have to bide their time with whatever moral encouragement can be read into this week's congressional votes. They seem well enough stocked with arms to keep fighting until year's end. Looking on the bright side, Republican House Whip Trent Lott declared that White House strategists were right to compromise. "They did not want the very negative sign to go out that Congress was not willing to do anything," he said. "That would be the worst of both worlds." --By William R. Doerner. Reported by Neil MacNeil and Barrett Seaman/Washington

With reporting by Reported by Neil MacNeil, Barrett Seaman/Washington