Ex-Officers Accuse Contra Chiefs of Siphoning Off U.S. Aid Money
By DAVID K. SHIPLER, Special to the New York Times
June 21, 1986
Several former officers of the Nicaraguan rebel forces assert that their top military leaders are siphoning off large amounts of money received from the United States, to enrich themselves at the expense of their troops.
Furthermore, some of these former officers said, American officials have been warned about the abuses for years, ever since the Central Intelligence Agency began financing the rebels clandestinely in the early 1980's, but have continued to back the rebel leaders who are believed to be involved.
A total of $27 million has been appropriated by Congress for nonmilitary aid in the current fiscal year, and a request by President Reagan for $100 million, including $70 million in military aid, depends on approval by the House next week.
'A High Life'
Interviewed in the Miami area in the last few days, the former officers of the contras, as the rebel forces are called, said their assertions of corruption were based mostly on their experiences in the field. They described the use of phony receipts, black market currency deals, the substituting of inferior goods and other techniques.
As a result, they charged, their men have been deprived of adequate supplies while their leaders were ''living a high life,'' in the words of Gerardo Martinez. Mr. Martinez said he had commanded an 800-member group known as Task Force Jeane Kirkpatrick until, he said, he was dismissed last January for complaining about corruption.
''I think the entire leadership is corrupt,'' said Mr. Martinez, a sinewy, 32-year-old fighter who goes by the nom de guerre Chaco. He described his task force, named after the former chief United States delegate to the United Nations, as poorly fed and ill equipped as it made forays from Honduras into Nicaragua.
'Clean Boots and Dirty Hands'
He and the other former officers said the leadership demonstrated an unwillingness to get close to combat zones. ''They have clean boots and dirty hands'' is a phrase that some officers use as a slogan to describe the leaders.
''They don't want to win - it's too profitable,'' said Javier Gomez Ortega, who resigned as commander of another task force last March because, he said, he was ''disappointed and fed up.'' Of the contra military leaders, he said: ''They don't want to see it end. They're doing too well.''
Alberto Suhr, a former intelligence officer for the contras who presented a plaque to President Reagan at a ceremony in Washington last year, recalled seeing a receipt for 5,000 rifles at $600 apiece, when they had actually been bought for $160 each, according to paperwork to which he said he had access.
''The rifles weren't any good,'' he said. ''They didn't have any clips. They were so old they didn't make ammunition for them any more.''
An American official involved in the effort acknowledged that he had heard such assertions, believed they might be true and realized that the monitoring system of the State Department, which administers the current financing, was inadequate. Officials were now looking into some of the charges, he said.
Publicly, the Administration has denied charges of corruption by the contras.
''What we know is that goods paid for are getting to the troops in the field,'' said Robert W. Kagan, spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. ''We know this through a variety of means, including intelligence. We have absolutely no information that money is being misspent.''
Except for Mr. Suhr's first-hand descriptions, much of the other officers' evidence was circumstantial. But it dovetailed with findings made public last week by the General Accounting Office in Washington that millions of dollars had disappeared without any certainty that they had been spent on supplies for the contras.
Some had gone into individuals' accounts in offshore banks, the accountants reported, and some to the armed forces of Honduras, including a $450,000 payment to the Commander in Chief of the Honduran military.
In addition, in some cases the accounting office's figures for the quantities of items said to have been purchased were so high that when the former officers were told about them, they reacted with snickers and smirks.
62,120 Belts, 50,000 Canteens
During four months from last October to February, for example, a total of 62,120 belts was listed, along with 6,000 sets of suspenders, 50,000 canteens and 53,576 pairs of boots. According to the Administration's official figures, there are 15,000 to 20,000 contras.
Mr. Suhr, who left the field in January 1985 and now works in the Miami clinic of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the contras' main military command, said he had acquired a picture of the corruption by infiltrating the black market in Honduras at the instructions of his superior, who thought the position would give him access to useful information.
Several methods of fraud were used by the contra leadership, Mr. Suhr asserted. One was to present bills for the best grades of rice, beans, corn and sugar while actually buying lower grades.
As a result, he said, No. 3 grade rice, which sold in 1984 for about 10 Honduran lempiras - then worth about $5 - for a 100-pound bag, would be billed as if it were No. 1 grade rice, which was priced at the equivalent of $13.50 to $14. Similarly, corn was bought at the equivalent of $8.50 to $9 per sack, he said, and was billed at $11 to $11.50.
In the case of beans, a staple in the Central American diet, ''the old crop of beans is worth less when the new crop comes out,'' Mr. Suhr said. The old crop, known as ''hard beans,'' was purchased at the equivalent of $7.50 to $10 for a 100-pound bag, he said, and was billed at the price for the new crop, or about $20 to $22.50.
Currency Dealings Reported
Additional profits were made in currency exchange, Mr. Suhr asserted. Dollars were changed to lempiras at the black-market rate of about 2.60 to 2.65 to the dollar, he said, while the accounting was done at the official rate, then about 2.00 to the dollar, the rate at which Washington was billed for supplies. Hence, a 30 percent profit was being made on each transaction.
The Reagan Administration has financed the rebels, whom Mr. Reagan calls ''freedom fighters,'' in their struggle against the Sandinista Government since shortly after Mr. Reagan took office in 1981.
At first, some contra officers explained, the money was funneled by the C.I.A. to the Argentine military, which trained and advised the guerrillas until direct C.I.A. involvement began in 1981 or 1982. At least $80 million, and perhaps as much as $200 million, is believed to have been provided before Congress voted to end C.I.A. financing in 1984.
Support for More Aid
The dissident officers fault their own commanders more than the United States, and they make no criticism of President Reagan, who they insist is being kept in the dark about the problems. His request for $100 million in aid to the rebels is scheduled to be voted on in the House of Representatives next Wednesday.
''I'm for the $100 million,'' Mr. Martinez said. ''I want it approved. I also want it to be well administered.''
Even as United States aid has risen and fallen, the task force commanders said, their supplies remained steady and inadequate. ''There was a certain rhythm that seemed pretty constant to me,'' Mr. Martinez said. ''It didn't go up or down for us. We always had a shortage of everything, whatever the period was.''
The shortages of food grew so severe in 1983, while the C.I.A. was still providing funds, that about a dozen field commanders and three general staff officers complained first to Enrique Bermudez, the military commander of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, and then directly to American agents, according to several of the former officers.
This became one of a series of efforts over the years by middle-ranking contra officers to have Mr. Bermudez removed or his authority curbed. These officers say the efforts were quashed by the C.I.A.
Efforts were made to reach Mr. Bermudez by telephone at his command headqarters in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where a spokesman said the commander would not be available to comment until next Thursday or Friday. Dispute Over Paying for Cows
According to Marlon Blandon Osorno, a 29-year-old task force commander known as Gorrion who came to Miami last December, the rebel troops were down to one meal a day when they were operating in Nicaragua.
''We went two months without rice and beans,'' he said. He was issued no money, he said, so he bought two cows on credit from a farmer for the equivalent of $400.
''When I went back to the base I went up to Bermudez'' to ask for the funds, he said. ''He said, 'Who told you to sign for cows? You pay it,' '' Mr. Blandon recalled. ''I paid it out of my own pocket. It took me six months to pay it back.''
Mr. Bermudez told the field officers that the C.I.A. had cut the funds, the officers explained, but when some of them then went to a ''Colonel Raymond,'' an American officer coordinating contra activities for the C.I.A. in Honduras, he said funds had actually been increased.
''He got mad,'' said a former senior contra officer who asked not to be identified. ''He showed me the records, that more and more money was coming in,'' the officer said. He said field commanders were called in to tell Colonel Raymond about their shortages.
A Separate Command
''The C.I.A. told us that the general staff was taking the money that belonged to us,'' Mr. Blandon declared.
As a result, a separate command was set up for contra units in the Honduran-Nicaraguan border area, the officers said, with a separate supply system. ''Things worked fine; things got through,'' Mr. Blandon said. He also discovered that he had been carried on the payroll as receiving $400 a month during the previous two years, when he had not been paid, he recalled. He finally began getting his money. The former senior officer said that Mr. Bermudez and his staff complained vehemently to Washington about the separate command and that as a result, the C.I.A. dissolved it after about two months, over the objections of the local C.I.A. operatives.