Nicaragua: Shot Out of the Sky

After last week's disclosures, even Reagan's fellow Republicans felt a sense of anger and betrayal. Said Durenberger: "I've had it up to here with Nicaragua and the way the Administration uses the CIA to run its paramilitary operations." He added, "I don't know how we can run a responsible operation down there when every Tom, Dick and Harry is trying to do their own part." Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said U.S. officials were looking the other way when arms deals skirted the edge of the law. Said he: "If Americans are led to go into Nicaragua, either directly or indirectly, either by a wink or shrug, or by somehow being given the idea they have tacit approval, then we have very real problems."

Congressional concern is tempered by the fact that both houses have passed legislation appropriating $100 million in aid to the contras, including $70 million in military assistance. The money will be administered by the CIA, as was contra aid between 1981 and 1984. All that remains now is final ratification. When that happens, as is expected this week, the aid package will become law.

Four opponents of aid to the contras, three of them Viet Nam veterans, made a last-ditch effort to scuttle the legislation by holding a hunger strike on the steps of the Capitol. Two of the strikers at week's end were on their 41st day of a water-only diet. The protesters are backed by polls showing that the public opposes aid to the contras, 2 to 1.

Last week 13 liberal Senators and 37 Representatives issued a statement noting the sacrifices of the hunger strikers and pointing out the "paradoxical" gap "between the public will and public policy on the question of aid to the contras." If in the near future the secret war with Managua proves as costly to the Reagan Administration's credibility as it did last week, such gestures may create enough of a clamor to force even the President and his hard-line advisers on Central America to pay heed. --By Michael S. Serrill. Reported by John Borrell/Managua and David Halevy/Washington