Explosion over Nicaragua

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The physical damage wrought so far by the mines that contra guerrillas took responsibility for sowing inside the harbors of Marxist Nicaragua would hardly be noticed in a declared war. The highest reported tally: six Nicaraguan vessels and six ships of five other nations damaged but none confirmed sunk; ten sailors seriously injured but no one killed.

The political damage caused by the mining and by subsequent revelations that the American CIA had directed and supervised it from a mother ship off Nicaragua's Pacific coast is on another order of magnitude altogether. A troublesome rift has opened in the nation's alliances, symbolized by a French offer to help sweep the mines from Nicaraguan waters. The U.S. has been put on the defensive in world forums, first casting a veto in the

United Nations Security Council against a complaint by Nicaragua's Sandinista government about the mining and other U.S.-financed contra activities, then declaring last week that the U.S. will not accept the jurisdiction of the World Court on protests filed by Nicaragua.

But the loudest and by far most serious detonation of all went off in Congress. Enraged by a feeling that they had been misled about the Administration's Central American policy, and deeply worried about where that policy is leading, the Senate passed by a landslide vote of 84 to 12 a nonbinding resolution demanding that no U.S. money be used to mine Nicaraguan waters. Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater voiced his colleagues' anger and dismay in an astonishingly pungent letter to CIA Director William Casey. Said Mr. Conservative: "I am pissed off ... The President has asked us to back his foreign policy. Bill, how can we back his foreign policy when we don't know what the hell he is doing? Lebanon, yes, we all knew that he sent troops over there. But mine the harbors of Nicaragua? This is an act violating international law. It is an act of war. For the life of me, I don't see how we are going to explain it."

The fury of the response was startling.

The mining was anything but secret, suspicions of CIA involvement were worldwide, and Administration briefings had offered Congress at least the opportunity to confirm them before the press did. Nonetheless, though Goldwater inexplicably voted against the antimining resolution, which was offered by Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy, 42 of the Senate's controlling Republicans, including even Reagan's friend and campaign chairman, Paul Laxalt of Nevada, voted for it. Crowed California Democrat Alan Cranston: "The President asked for a bipartisan foreign policy. He's now got it." Reagan supporters closed ranks to make a House vote on an identical resolution closer and more partisan, but still it passed, 281 to 111. Said Daniel Ortega Saavedra, coordinator of the Sandinista junta: "We appreciate the efforts the United States Congress has made against the undeclared war the United States is waging against Nicaragua."

If the congressional rebellion stopped there, the White House could live with its consequences. Administration officials insisted that the mining had ceased more than a week before the Senate vote, and it would not have been resumed in any case. Reagan's supporters even