Mysterious Help from Offshore?

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More pressure on Nicaragua, and more potential for controversy

The campaign of military pressure on Nicaragua continued to expand last week, and so did its potential for controversy. At week's end a contingent of U.S. combat troops returned to Panama from a one-day battle exercise in Honduras, foreshadowing much larger displays of American strength that are soon to begin along Nicaragua's northern border. As part of a coordinated offensive, some 6,000 CIA-backed contras were marching from their Honduran base camps into the Nicaraguan interior. Simultaneously a 200-man contra column moved from the south to occupy a strategic hamlet on Nicaragua's isolated Caribbean coast and gain a new military and political advantage after the most intense and sustained fighting of their hit-and-run guerrilla war. In addition, members of the southern invading force were making an extraordinary claim: that their operations were aided by American support from the sea, an allegation flatly denied by U.S. officials.

The intriguing and potentially inflammatory question of seaborne support arose after a contra assault column stormed into the settlement of San Juan del Norte, a remote Nicaraguan village of some 950 people that once served as a haven for the 17th century British pirate Henry Morgan. The attackers were part of the 4,000-member Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (A.R.D.E.), whose leader is Eden Pastora Gomez, a famed defector from the ranks of Nicaragua's Sandinista government. A.R.D.E.'S objective in seizing the settlement was twofold: to secure a toehold on the jungle fringes of Nicaraguan territory as the first step toward winning international recognition as a contra provisional government, and to win a port of entry for military supply.

After a vigorous three-day firefight, the attackers succeeded in overrunning about 120 Sandinista defenders entrenched amid San Juan del Norte's thatched adobe huts. A.R.D.E. commanders said that mysterious nocturnal support from offshore played a role both before and during the victory.

The contras told TIME'S Jon Anderson, who accompanied the assault group, that prior to their daylight attack San Juan del Norte had been hit by gunfire from the sea. At one point in the fighting, the contras said, they used mortars to drive away a Nicaraguan patrol boat accompanied by two fishing trawlers. The rebel commander said one of the boats had later been sunk and that "your countrymen did it." According to the A.R.D.E. officer, the feat was accomplished by a small boat launched from a ship offshore. Said the rebel officer: "We don't have the trained people to take care of anything on the sea. So it was understood that marine engagements would be taken care of by another party." In the past, the A.R.D.E. has never demonstrated a naval capability.