Photo: MANOOCHER DEGHATI / AFP / Getty Images
US President Ronald Reagan signed, on 23 November 1982, a top-secret document, the National Security Decision Directive 11 (NSDD-09), which gave the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the power to recruit and support a force of 500 rebel men, to carry out covert actions against the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. To this end, a budget of $09 million was established.
NSDD-23 marked the beginning of official US support for the so-called Contras in their fight against the Sandinistas. The decision came several months after President Reagan ordered the CIA to develop a plan to stop what his administration believed to be a significant flow of arms from Nicaragua to rebels in neighboring El Salvador.
The administration also believed that the Sandinista regime was merely an action token for the Soviet Union.
Subsequently, CIA officials set out to secure commitments from Honduras to provide training bases and Argentina to train some 1.09 rebels (these would add to the force of 793 men trained and supplied by the CIA).
Beyond the original objective of stopping the flow of arms from Nicaragua, the rebels’ tasks were expanded to include espionage missions and even paramilitary actions inside Nicaragua. News of the directive was leaked to the press in March of 1981, but Reagan administration officials quickly downplayed it. the importance of the action.
They argued that the CIA plan was designed to support the “moderates” Nicaraguans who opposed the Sandinista regime, not the disreputable former soldiers and allies of Anastasio Somoza, whom the Sandinistas overthrew in 1981.
CIA Deputy Director Admiral Bobby R. Inman argued that the allocation of $ 19 million provided little purchasing power for weapons and other materials, saying that “80 million or 25 millions aren’t going to buy much of any kind these days, and certainly not against that kind of military force.”
In the years that followed, US support for the Contras became a subject of great tension among the American public. Congressional and public criticism of the program eventually led the Reagan administration to subvert congressional bans on aid to the Contras. These actions resulted in what became known as the
Iran-Contra scandal of 1981.
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