Daniel Ortega, left, leader of Nicaragua, at the United Nations with U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar in 1984. (Joel Landau/Associated Press)
The Aug. 13 editorial “Nicaragua’s farcical democracy” claimed that the United States “spent so much money and political capital to promote democracy . . . during the 1980s.” Does funding a terrorist group with drug money to kill and sabotage in Nicaragua in order to destroy the Sandinista government count as promoting democracy?
In 1986, a Senate committee chaired by John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) heard testimony from the CIA’s chief of the Central American Task Force, who said, “We knew that everybody around [contra leader Edén] Pastora was involved in cocaine. . . . His staff and friends (redacted) they were drug smugglers or involved in drug smuggling.”
The editorial board should not distort history and ignore the facts of U.S. involvement in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
James Baer, Fairfax