Reaganites Blame Each Other For Ortega’s Win

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

WASHINGTON — In the aftermath of Nicaragua’s election of the Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega, the Reagan policy team that helped force him out of power are blaming each other for their old foe’s return to the presidency.

The two factions of the Contra policy alumni effectively backed different candidates from the liberal opposition to the Sandinistas.

President Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, was the keynote speaker at an October 4 fund-raiser in Alexandria, Va., for one candidate, ex-banker Eduardo Montealegre. The Reagan administration’s first director of the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America, Otto Reich, and the National Security Council joined Ms. Kirkpatrick in supporting Mr. Montealegre.

Twenty-seven days after the Alexandria fund-raiser, a retired colonel and Reagan National Security Council staffer, Oliver North, delivered an address to Contra veterans in Managua and posed for a photograph with another candidate and former Nicaraguan vice president, Jose Rizo.

But neither Mr. Rizo nor Mr. Montealegre won the presidency this week. Instead, the victor was Mr. Ortega, who as Sandinista leader was target no.1 for a small group of policy-makers and intelligence and military officers who helped launch a secret war against the Soviet-sponsored government in Nicaragua in the 1980s.

To put it mildly, the old Reagan team — members of which faced the kind of congressional hearings and investigations now possible, with a Democratic Congress, for policy-makers associated with the Iraq war — is disappointed.

“It is very painful in a very personal way. I spent a good deal of my career on trying to achieve a democratic outcome down there,” Mr. North said.

Mr. Reich said Tuesday was “a sad day.”

The retired CIA officer who recruited and organized the Contras, Duane Clarridge, spoke of “the hurt I feel for the Contras who gave their lives in blood to get rid of Ortega.” He said the election “just sticks in my craw.”

But regret about the electoral outcome in Managua is about the only thing on which the Reich and Clarridge factions agree.

Mr. North this week blamed the State Department and some of his old colleagues for Mr. Ortega’s victory. “I don’t know of any time in history where the U.S. government’s intervention in trying to manipulate another country’s political process has ever succeeded. We supported a war opposed to the communist government in the 1980s. No one said we were picking this party or another party,” he said.

When asked to name those current and former officials who he believes split Mr. Ortega’s opposition, Mr. North was tight-lipped. “I am not here to point the figure at any one or two or a dozen people who were involved in that. It is hubris to think that from Washington anyone could manipulate the political process in another country,” he said.

Mr. Clarridge was not as discreet yesterday. “Otto Reich and Roger Noriega and possibly other former assistant secretaries of state for Latin America have been pushing the Montealegre candidacy for a couple of years, and they have been aided and abetted by Dan Fisk at the National Security Council and several officers in the Latin American bureau at State,” he said.

Mr. Clarridge added to his list —which he said comprised a “craven cabal — the American ambassador in Managua, Paul Trivelli, whom he called “trivial Trivelli.”

In an interview Tuesday, Mr. Reich referred to Mr. Clarridge’s own faction as a “cabal.”

A spokesman for the State Department, Eric Watnik, said yesterday, “I can’t support or defend what citizens of the United States are saying about these elections.”

But he did not answer directly when asked to say one way or another whether the American Embassy in Managua helped organize the independent bloc of liberals in the Liberal Constitutionalist Party coalition to support Mr. Montealegre. “The Nicaraguan electorate is responsible for choosing its leaders. We will work with those leaders based on their actions in support of Nicaragua’s democratic future,” Mr. Watnik said.

However, Mr. Reich, who himself was a central figure in the Reagan administration’s public diplomacy for the Contras, made no effort to hide his support for Mr. Montealegre. “I supported Montealegre. Those of us who supported him were correct. It turns out he was always in second place. The Rizo people have lied and manipulated polls,” he said.

Mr. Reich said Mr. Rizo was the candidate of Arnoldo Aleman, a former president who was driven out of office after a Nicaraguan court found him guilty of embezzling more than $100 million. Mr. Aleman also agreed to a power sharing arrangement with Mr. Ortega. “The people who supported Rizo, they were in effect handing the victory to Ortega,” Mr. Reich said.

But Mr. Clarridge dissented from Mr. Reich’s view yesterday. He said Mr. Aleman was found guilty by a Sandinista judge in a politicized trial, and he said Mr. Rizo was entirely independent from Mr. Aleman’s influence anyway.

Mr. Reich said of Mr. Clarridge: “Dewey really doesn’t know anything about Nicaragua.” He also accused him of “running a disinformation campaign against Montealegre.”

Michael Shifter, the vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on Latin America, said yesterday that he believed the Bush administration was trying to swing support toward Mr. Montealegre. “I think what the U.S. government was trying to do was to try to convince people that Montealegre was the best bet. He was clean. He was not associated with either one of the other candidates. He could break this corrupt system,” Mr. Shifter said.

Mr. Reich echoed Mr. Shifter’s view. He said he was proud, during his tenure as the president’s assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, to help recover Nicaraguan assets that Mr. Aleman had stolen.

“This guy Aleman comes in, he steals money, hides it away. We found it. When I was assistant secretary of state, we took away visas from his bagmen,” Mr. Reich said. “These are reprehensible people. We did not want them running Nicaragua again.”

Missing from all the recriminations are two high-ranking Bush administration officials who played a role in Reagan’s Contra policy: the Middle East director of the National Security Council, Elliott Abrams; and the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte. In the Reagan administration, Mr. Abrams was assistant secretary of state for Latin America, and Mr. Negroponte was the ambassador to Honduras, where he helped arm the Contras in Nicaragua.

The former leader of the Contras, Adolfo Calero, said he tried to send a message to the Bush administration that supporting Mr. Montealegre was splitting the liberal bloc in Nicaragua. When asked whether he reached out to Mr. Abrams, Mr. Calero said, “Elliott is very busy right now with the Middle East. He has separated himself completely from Latin America.”

Mr. Calero, who ran for the Nicaraguan parliament on Mr. Rizo’s ticket, was philosophical about the victory for Mr. Ortega. “The fact is that Ortega does not have any more votes in 1996 than he had in 2001. The stupidity was the liberal party split. Instead of fighting it out within the party, Montealegre went his own direction, with the encouragement of the U.S. Embassy and the National Security Council,” he said.

When asked whether he thought the return of the Sandinistas to power might prompt him and his old comrades to take up arms again, he said it was not a possibility. “It’s a very different world today. There is no more Soviet Union anymore, thanks to Reagan.” Mr. Calero said.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use