CENTRAL AMERICA: By the Dark of the Moon

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The U.S. last weekend ordered jet fighters to the Panama Canal Zone, where no jets have been based for the past six years. The move was aimed at stopping a projected invasion of Costa Rica by disgruntled Costa Rican émigrés, mightily helped by Nicaragua's tough strongman, Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza.

Tacho makes no bones about hating Costa Rica's dictator-hating President José ("Pepe") Figueres, whom he blames for a trying experience last April, when Nicaraguan exiles entering from Costa Rica tried to kill him after a party at the U.S. embassy. About every dark of the moon since then, some kind of anti-Figueres plot has popped up. In July the U.S. got Somoza cooled off only after he had sent a mile-long convoy of armored cars and trucks to the Costa Rican border. But the current plot looked more like the big show than any of the warmups.

The way insiders heard it, the invaders were going to seize five ports, border towns and airfields near them. From these bases, planes would bomb Costa Rica's defenseless capital, San José. Women in the capital would be stirred up by fifth columnists to parade hysterically to the presidential residence and demand that Figueres resign, to spare his country. His enemies hoped that he would then lose his nerve and turn over his government to a rebel junta.

In this or any future plot, warplanes were obviously the key. Washington heard last week that Tacho Somoza had finally swung a deal to buy 25 U.S.-made F51 Mustangs from Sweden. When they arrive, he will have far and away the most potent air force of any Central American nation: the F51 was a hot plane in its day. But with deadly U.S. jets only 30 minutes away, Tacho may find that there is not money enough in Nicaragua to tempt any air soldier of fortune to risk combat in a World War II propeller job.