Calling The Bluff

David MacMichael began working for the Central Intelligence Agency in March 1981 on a two-year contract. A major focus of his work was gathering evidence on the alleged arms flow from Nicaragua to El Salvador. MacMichael's investigation exposed as false the primary tenet of the Reagan administration's justification for its policy against Nicaragua. His contract was not renewed.

While contemplating what to do next, MacMichael volunteered from January to March 1984 at the Washington office of Witness for Peace, located in the Sojourners magazine building. This grassroots effort keeps a permanent presence of U.S. Christians in the war zones of Nicaragua in opposition to U.S. policy. It was through his Witness for Peace involvement that we met.

On June 11, 1984, MacMichael made his first public challenge to Reagan administration policy in the New York Times. His story has since been covered in news sources including the Washington Post and Time magazine, and he has appeared on NBC-TV's "Today Show," ABC-TV's "Good Morning, America" and "Nightline," and on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." —The Editors

Sojourners: You have publicly challenged the allegations made by the United States government that have formed the basis for U.S. support and direction of the counterrevolutionary war against Nicaragua. What is the heart of your challenge?

David MacMichael: The heart of what I've been saying has to do with the charge that has been made repeatedly by the Reagan administration that the Nicaraguan government controls, directs, and supplies the insurgency in El Salvador. This charge is part of a complex argument that is advanced by what one might call the ideological directors of the Central American policy of this administration.

This argument is laid out in the so-called Santa Fe Group paper, which argues that Central America is an East-West testing ground, that there is a direct conduit from Moscow to Havana to Managua, through which revolution is exported. This theory recognizes as incidental the misery and exploitation that exist within the region. It denies completely that the insurgency in El Salvador has any true indigenous character. This argument has been the basis on which the administration has justified its policy.

The concrete charge of the administration is that the arms and ammunition with which the insurgency is being carried out in El Salvador come largely from Nicaragua. This has been the linchpin of the American policy. It is the only legal justification that has been advanced by the administration for funding the so-called covert war in Nicaragua, for organizing, directing, and supplying the contras attacking Nicaragua from bases in Honduras and Costa Rica. The alleged purpose of the contras is to interdict and prevent this arms flow.

What I've been pointing out—and I did this both within the Central Intelligence Agency when I was working there for the National Intelligence Council and since that time—is that the evidence for this arms flow is almost totally lacking. I want to make clear that nobody denies that during the period roughly from the fall of 1980 to early spring of 1981, when the political situation within El Salvador was particularly confused after the downfall of the second junta and there was no true, legitimate government within the country, that the FMLN [Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front], which had just been formed, sought arms and support for its attempt to seize power within El Salvador. Nicaragua, as well as many other countries both within and without the region, was involved in a shipment of a relatively large amount of arms into El Salvador for that purpose. Nobody denies this, including the Nicaraguan government.

After that time, however, when the insurgency in El Salvador took on the character which it now has of a prolonged popular war, the evidence for any arms flow almost totally disappeared. However, the administration continued to make the claim that the evidence existed. And the insistence on this claim, in my belief, is directed not so much toward eliminating the insurgency in El Salvador as it is directed against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

This administration, I believe, has determined as its policy that it will not live with the current regime in Nicaragua. This has led to the representation of the situation in Nicaragua, through the speeches of the president and [United Nations ambassador] Mrs. [Jeane] Kirkpatrick and others, as one of a grinding tyranny with an unpopular, illegitimate government that has violated its pledges toward democracy and reform and is extremely repressive.

The main focus of the charges has been on the so-called arms flow. In all honesty, I have to tell you that in the more than two years that I worked in the National Intelligence Council and focused on this question, I continually brought forth the fact that the evidence of this was almost totally lacking. I say "almost" because there is a large Salvadoran population which lives as a refugee population within Nicaragua. The reason these people are there is because they are attached to and supportive of the FMLN. And in the diplomatic, moral sense, the Nicaraguan government is also very supportive of the FMLN. It's impossible to believe that these people with strong family and political connections to the FMLN do not, from time to time, see to it that the odd lot of medical supplies, or some forms of military supplies get to their comrades in El Salvador.

This is a far cry from being a massive flood of arms, the so-called "lifeblood" of the insurgency in El Salvador, without which it could not survive. And it's at this point that the rhetoric of the administration, which is used to justify this brutal and bloody war the contras are waging, cannot stand. There is a point at which exaggeration becomes indistinguishable from plain lying. And that's the situation against which I'm arguing.

How long did you work with the CIA, and what did you do while you were there?

I went to work for the agency as a contract employee on a two-year contract to join the analytic group at the National Intelligence Council. The National Intelligence Council is the senior staff for the director of intelligence. It's made up of the 18 or so National Intelligence officers, who have the duty of advising the director of intelligence and also coordinating the activities of the whole intelligence community, which includes the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and others.

The analytic group was composed of a small number of supposedly highly qualified individuals from throughout the intelligence community, as well as several of us who were brought in from the outside. We were supposed to assist the National Intelligence Council by giving broad views and perspectives on developments of interest to the United States and assisting in the drafting and preparation of national intelligence estimates. Because of my own background in the region, I focused on Western Hemispheric affairs, including the developments in Central America and the Caribbean.

When you were working with the agency, how did you try to find evidence for the alleged arms flow? Members of the Reagan administration claim to have evidence that they can't release without compromising or endangering their sources. Might there be evidence that you are not aware of?

One of Damon Runyon's old stories has to do with a gambler named Rusty Charlie. Rusty Charlie is a very big, tough guy, and occasionally he drops in on the crap games. Now, he always walks away a winner, and the reason is because he throws the dice in his hat. And he is the only one who gets to look at the dice. This is an old, familiar story in dealing with the government on controversial overseas policies. It's the old "Well, if you knew what we knew (but we can't tell you), then you'd know we are right" argument.

Early on after I arrived at the agency, I began working on studies dealing with the nature of the insurgency in El Salvador. I had done in my checkered past a good deal of work on insurgency in Southeast Asia and elsewhere under government contract when I worked at SRI International—the old Stanford Research Institute.

There are certain characteristics of a popular insurgent movement, and these have to do with its mass popular base; for example, the links between that mass popular base and the armed forces of an insurgency, and the supply and support network that's developed. I was very surprised to find in the analysis of this movement in El Salvador, because of what I will call the administration's ideological preconceptions about the nature of this insurgency as being entirely a foreign import, that they almost dismissed the idea that there could exist such a mass popular base. Because of the idea that the insurgency was entirely supplied from the outside, there was practically no attempt to describe what the support and supply network within the country was. Nor was there an attempt to look beyond Nicaragua for alternate sources of supply and support from outside El Salvador, because the fixation was on this Moscow-Havana-Managua pipeline. I called attention to what I thought were weaknesses in the analysis, with a concentration on the matter of supply.

We had very accurate reporting in the form of cable traffic from not only the agency stations but also the embassy and other sources. I had access to everything except nuclear matters because of having top clearance for all other information. This type of reporting just disappeared after the spring of 1981, which is of course negative evidence. I saw such a broad sample of reporting, over such a long period of time, that I can say that essentially I saw all on which this policy was based.

By the end of the summer of 1981, any reference to this outside supply still went back to the fall of 1980 or early spring 1981. It was at that very time, when the evidence disappeared, that the decision was made to embark on the contra war, which was justified in terms of its intention to interdict the supply network.

It was at that time, at reasonably high-level interagency meetings, that I began to raise questions. I said, "Wait a minute. The United States is going to embark on this very dangerous and precarious and largely unjustifiable action, which is in apparent violation of several existing treaties as well as the United Nations charter, to interdict a flow of supplies that I don't think exists. Now let's talk about this. What kind of arms are they? Where are they coming from? What percentage of the arms for the insurgency does this make up? What are the alternate sources of supply?" I asked all the sort of things that go into a professional analysis of a counterinsurgency strategy which is designed to disrupt the supply and support system.

And it was made very clear to me in talking with professional military people who were involved in this planning that there was no information on the arms flow.

I began, on my own then, to collect all the information that I could. I went to my superiors and pointed out what I had gathered and found lacking on the supply system and asked why we were pursuing such a dangerous course. I was reassured that I was not to worry, that indeed there was a supply system.

Some months later the justification for this program was being brought to Congress, which was very skeptical. I examined the finished intelligence, and I once again found it very, very unconvincing, resting almost entirely on a description of the situation which had existed for the brief period from the fall of 1980 to 1981. I again confronted both my superiors and the drafters of the finished intelligence.

Did you offer your reporting of the facts in written form?

Yes. That's what they were paying me for. I won't say, in all honesty, that I was a crusader running up and down the halls of the building on this. I was working within the context of the Central Intelligence Agency, which by its charter doesn't make policy. I was trying, I thought, to be effective in terms of what I regard as the true interest of the United States, by pointing out that a policy based on insufficient or misinterpreted evidence is one that is bound to come to grief.

I was becoming increasingly concerned that the pursuit of this policy, largely because it was based on erroneous interpretations of the situation, had the strong probability of leading to a United States military intervention in the region. This would be a catastrophe, not only for the region, but for this country, and not only morally, but physically as well, because the potential for disaster is very great.

When I left upon completion of my contract, this was definitely still nagging at me. I made the determination that I had sufficient money to hold me for at least a year, that I was going to pursue my interest in this, and my first task was to go to Nicaragua. I wanted to see the situation on the ground, to get some feel for what kind of society it is. This I did in August and September 1983.

I traveled widely through the North and got to meet a lot of people. Nicaragua is a very open country, and I came away very much more convinced that the domestic situation described in the Reagan administration's rhetoric is totally false.

When I returned I was fortunate enough to find the Witness for Peace office here. Witness for Peace was kind enough to let me come in to work as a volunteer for several months while I figured out what to do next. I made a decision then that I was going to make one more trip down to Nicaragua to more or less get it out of my system, come back, write letters to the editor, contribute to Witness for Peace and other good efforts, get a job, and try to form part of the solidarity network here.

While I was in Managua, friends who knew my background convinced me that if I wanted to speak out publicly on the issue, if I felt strongly enough about it, I could probably get some attention for this and might be more effective in trying to change U.S. policy. So when I returned in May, that's what I did. I have been both surprised and gratified by the amount of attention that my pointing out the lack of clothing on this particular emperor has aroused in the press. And I hope, given recent events in Congress, that it's helping in some small way to change the policy, or at least to get it carefully reviewed and brought forward as a public issue.

Could you say something about the response of the CIA, your superiors and anyone else, both while you were in the agency and since?

I was always listened to. There is within the CIA a great deal of room on the analytic, side for the arguing out of ideas and different points of view. These arguments can sometimes get very heated, but things are explored, no question about that.

However, where there is a definite policy involved, and a decision has been made to pursue that policy, it takes something like an earthquake to change people's minds. Often when a piece of finished intelligence went out, the evidence would be so thin, so unconvincing, that you would have to say that the conclusions are more or less dictated by what the policy-makers want to hear.

If the CIA were really interested, from a professional intelligence point of view, in the sources of supply and arms for the FMLN in El Salvador, it would have cast its net much wider. It would have asked broader questions: Who are the sellers in the international market that the FMLN is dealing with? What's coming through Mexico? What's coming through Belize? Where is the arms bazaar, say, in Tegucigalpa, where they're buying stuff from the Honduran army? What are the procedures by which the FMLN purchases arms, which they do, from the Salvadoran army?

You'd wind up with something like a pie chart, which would show x percent coming from here, x percent coming from there, and, say, 3 percent coming from Nicaragua. But when all you're looking at is Nicaragua, that's going to skew very badly what you do in terms of intelligence. This is, from a professional perspective, what I was arguing against.

If there were a pie chart, what would it say about the flow of arms to El Salvador?

It's hard to comment on, because that's the subject that hasn't been studied. There is in preparation for possible public release another joint Department of State/Department of Defense paper on the Central American situation. They put the first one out last year on May 22,1983. This new paper will for the first time, if it's issued, shift the emphasis away from Nicaragua per se and talk about a Central American revolutionary complex. It should indicate that supplies and arms do reach El Salvador through a variety of places, and name sources in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, and elsewhere. This is significant, because it gets away from the insistence on the external character of revolution within the region, even though it doesn't address the indigenous character of the reasons underlying the resort to armed revolution within the region.

Have the contras interdicted any arms?

This is what you might call the "Where's the beef?" argument. There has not been verified interdiction of arms or anything else coming from Nicaragua into El Salvador since February of 1981. Not one thing. When you consider the technology that has been brought to bear, it is unreasonable to believe that no arms have been interdicted if you also believe there is a flood of arms.

And of course the contras themselves make no bones about the fact that they are not interested in interdicting any arms. I think it's fairly clear that the people who designed this program were not particularly interested in interdicting arms. The target is the government in Managua.

I think probably in a lot of our readers' minds is the question of how a person like you arrives at the decision to go public with this kind of information, to tell your story. What was your own journey in this regard?

You folks always ask tough questions near the end. A lot of people like me go through their lives in a state of moral ambivalence. I spent 10 years as a soldier in the Marine Corps, and I spent a dozen years working at SRI—a good deal of that time working on Department of Defense contracts. I spent a considerable amount of time in Southeast Asia involved in counterinsurgency studies.

I have been very basically liberal-progressive and much opposed to the interventionist policy of post-World War II. From my studies in the area of Latin American history and policies, I've reached the conclusion that the policies of intervention and control are both wrong and unnecessary. For instance, I thought the whole Vietnam War venture from the very beginning was a scam, a disaster. Yet I found myself working in it.

Because of a certain type of education and background, I wound up working in the Central Intelligence Agency arguing, within the limits imposed by that type of employment, against a policy that is being carried out by the administration which was paying me. And maybe they got tired of hearing my argument, and that's one reason why they chose not to offer me an extension of my contract. There is also a temptation, and those of you who read C.S. Lewis know it very well, for persons to con themselves into thinking that they can do more good by being on the inside trying to influence things, than being on the outside and just railing against things.

In terms of my journey, I decided a year ago, just a year ago this month, that the time was coming when I had to deal with some of this moral ambivalence, to try to get my personal and spiritual life back into some sort of order. I am a Catholic, though in recent years I've not really practiced my religion very much. A New York Times article referred to me as a "devout Catholic," but you know when you say "Catholic" in the press, "devout" goes with it. It's like "sprawling military reservations"; you can't be one without the other.

I attended a Catholic retreat and, much to my astonishment, the theme of the retreat was taken from the 33rd chapter of Isaiah, for those with a journey to make. And that really spoke to me because I knew that I was preparing physically to go on a journey to Central America, and the idea that this would have an ethical or spiritual dimension too was really important. On most journeys I take, I wind up taking a few wrong turns and wandering about, and I know I did that for several months after I returned from that first trip.

In my wanderings one of the really important things that happened was to be able to come up here on Otis Street and work with the Witness for Peace. The acceptance I received here was very important and made a real difference for me. The simple work I did here as a clerical volunteer put me closer to and helped me get to know people like yourselves, who are involved full-time and making a difference from outside. It was a very encouraging thing to see.

The continuing encouragement I have gotten from friends has helped enormously in trying to resolve, among other things, my old-fashioned, Irish-Catholic upbringing with some newer, more liberating currents within the church. They've opened the possibility that this road is one I can keep advancing on if I choose to.

With regard to what I'm doing now, I'm deliberately keeping a narrow focus on the evidence question. I can use a poker metaphor—that shows I'm really not saved yet, I guess. I've raised and I'm calling the administration's hand on the evidence. If they've got the cards to show that the Nicaraguan government is culpable in this, then I lose that hand.

This begs the question, and doesn't even get to the question of what the revolution in Central America is all about. But I'm deliberately accepting their terms, their definition of what is involved there, because I think I can expose the fallacy on those terms alone. And once having done that, maybe we can start re-examining what is actually happening in Central America, what the Nicaraguan revolution, the Salvadoran revolution, the regional revolution is all about. Then perhaps we will be able as a nation and as people to come to terms with that revolution in some fashion that's not based on an unexamined ideology, not to mention inflated rhetoric and exaggerated evidence.

As an analyst, how do you see things developing in the next few months, given the upcoming U.S. elections and speculation about a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua?

I think practically everyone is agreed that the real danger period comes as the U.S. election gets down to the wire. I honestly believe that the decision to further commit United States force in the region even up to the point of an open U.S. military intervention is basically going to be made on political-ideological grounds, rather than any true consideration of the national security interests of the United States, whatever they are. And that's really scary.

The most likely scenario that I see is to establish some sort of what I'd call a phony "Dien Bien Phu situation," in which our gaunt Salvadoran allies are faced with an enormous and potentially disastrous military defeat somewhere. The groundwork has already been laid for this in statements by [National Security Affairs Adviser Robert C] McFarlane that preparations are under way for a "Tet-style" fall offensive by the FMLN. At a certain juncture, the situation will be made to appear so critical for the Salvadoran armed forces that we cannot in honor refuse their request for direct assistance.

And at that time, there will probably be massive use of United States air power and a limited but substantial introduction of U.S. ground forces into the back door of El Salvador through the military bases in Honduras. This will probably also include a direct naval blockade and air interdiction against Nicaragua, that is, a cutting off of the supply routes, and a naval blockade with strong warnings to Cuba. It would be an attempt to repeat the Grenada plan at a slightly higher scale.

What do you think motivates the administration in its ideological commitment? Does Kirkpatvick, for example, believe the things she's saying, or does she know she's not telling the truth but feels there's a higher purpose involved?

I'm not that kind of analyst. But I think there are some strong ideologues who are in the direct line from the inquisitors. You identify heresy for them, and they will extricate it from the branch with any means possible. There is a great satisfaction for them in doing this.

The second aspect of it is the identification with power, one component of which is expressed through the legal system as the maximization of advantage. In this approach you, as an advocate, do not set out in the process seeking an equitable solution; you seek maximum gain and advantage for your client, and it's up to some impartial judge to do the equity. Since in international affairs there is no impartial judge and only power determines the outcome, this gets very dangerous. When you see particularly a country like the United States, which traditionally puts the conduct of its foreign affairs in the hands of a person with legal background and training, it gets very difficult because it's so easy to confuse national interest with maximum national advantage.

The administration seems to be almost paranoid about what type of government Nicaragua has. Three million impoverished people who choose to organize themselves economically and politically in a certain way and to use a certain type of rhetoric are unlikely to be of any great danger to a massive power like the United States, but people just find this intolerable.

The second component is that true power consists of being able to require others to accept your reality. The anger that people like you, especially religious people and alternative journalists, arouse in officialdom you have to see to believe. They totally reject not only what you have to say if it conflicts with the official view of reality, but they question your motives and even your reason to exist. It's frightening because to me, the essence of power for these people is that they control the vision of reality. When you put forward an alternative to that, they get very angry because you are breaking an essential monopoly.

Once people make the identity with the center of power, they get pretty extreme in what they do. And your point is also correct; many of them feel they're serving a higher purpose.

This last year has been very significant in your life, and is now culminating in the public telling of your story. Where do you go from here?

You mean after I've had my Warholian 15 minutes of fame? I'm trying, for the first time in my life, not to plan ahead. I got started on this journey, and I'm trying to stay alert and aware. I'm trying to recognize some signposts in the desert and see where they take me. I want to do the best I can with the opportunity I've been given in this area of policy. I'm hoping to change the policy, but I also want to have the sense to recognize when the contribution I can make has been made. Then I'll just continue on down the road and find whatever vocational, spiritual culmination is going to be there. I'll probably be back for some road maps from time to time.