New York Times Fabricated Reports of Nicaragua arms to Salvadoran Rebels

Horhey · May 8, 2012

[video=youtube_share;TwnIidSerlY]http://youtu.be/TwnIidSerlY[/video]

For the World Court's decision on evidence of Nicaragua arms to Salvadoran Rebels, see:

International Court of Justice: Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America)

Reports of Judgments, Advisory Opinions and Orders

Judgment of June 27, 1986

The evidence is insufficient to satisfy the Court that, since the early months of 1981, assistance has continued to reach the Salvadorian armed opposition from the territory of Nicaragua on any significant scale, or that the Government of Nicaragua was responsible for any flow of arms at either period.

Evidence of military aid from or through Nicaragua remains very weak. This is so despite the deployment by the United States in the region of extensive technical resources for tracking, monitoring and intercepting air, sea and land traffic and its use of a range of intelligence and information sources in a political context where, moreover, the U.S. Government had declared and recognized surveillance of Nicaragua as a "high priority."

The Court cannot of course conclude from this that no transborder traffic in arms existed, although it does not seem particularly unreasonable to believe that traffic of this kind, had it been persistent and on a significant scale, must inevitably have been discovered, in view of the magnitude of the resources used for that purpose. The Court merely takes note that the allegations of arms-trafficking are not solidly established; it has not, in any event, been able to satisfy itself that any continuing flow on a significant scale took place after the early months of 1981.
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The Court also ruled (pp. 126-128, especially paragraphs 249 and 252) that, as a matter of law, even if such an arms supply existed, it would not constitute "armed attack" justifying a U.S. response, as the U.S. government had claimed.

For James LeMoyne's story on Nicaragua arms supplies to El Salvador, see:

The New York Times: Latin Pact Seen as Helpful to Duarte

By JAMES LeMOYNE, Special to the New York Times
Published: August 13, 1987

The rebels deny receiving such support from Nicaragua, but ample evidence shows it exists, and it is questionable how long they could survive without it.
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On New York Times Executive Editor Lelyveld's letter to F.A.I.R., see:

Extra! Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting: LIE: The Sandinistas seek to export their revolution by arming Salvadoran guerrillas

October/November 1987

Lelyveld acknowledged that LeMoyne's terminology was "imprecise," but "even our best correspondents -- and James LeMoyne is one of our best -- are not perfect".
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For repetitions of the arms flow falsehood in the New York Times, see for example, statements and assumptions in George Volsky, "Contras Agree to Attend Truce Talks," New York Times, January 18, 1988, p. A6; Stephen Engelberg, "Salvador Rebel Arms: Noriega Link?," New York Times, December 18, 1987, p. A8; Bernard Trainor, "Contras' Future: Crippled as Warriors," New York Times, April 3, 1988, section 1, p. 16.

For LeMoyne's final story on the topic, almost one year later, see:

The New York Times: Salvador Rebels: Where Do They Get the Arms?

By JAMES LeMOYNE; the writer recently completed a four-year assignment as the correspondent of The New York Times in San Salvador
Published: November 24, 1988

The charges are extremely difficult to prove. Evidence of Sandinista support for the rebels is largely circumstantial and is open to differing interpretations. It includes accounts of deserters who could lie or exaggerate.
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Horhey · May 8, 2012

Noam Chomsky explains what happenned here.

UNDERSTANDING POWER, THE INDISPENSABLE CHOMSKY BY NOAM CHOMSKY

Journalism LeMoyne-Style: A Sample of the Cynical Aspect

As you know, for years it was necessary for the U.S. government to maintain the pretense that the contras in Nicaragua were a guerrilla force, not a U.S. proxy army. Now, it’s perfectly obvious that they were not a guerrilla force—there are no guerrillas in history that have had anything remotely like the degree of support we gave the contras: there are no guerrillas in his-tory that had three supply ﬂights a day bringing them food and supplies andweapons, and who complained that they didn’t have enough airplanes, and that they needed more helicopters. I mean, the whole thing was completely ridiculous: these guys had armaments that some units of the American army didn’t have, they had computer centers, they had communications equipment. And they needed all of that, because Nicaragua was under constant surveillance by high-performance American reconnaissance aircraft to determine where Sandinista troops were being deployed, and the contrashad to have some way of receiving that information.

But the point is, it was necessary for the propaganda system to pretend that the contras were like the F.M.L.N. in El Salvador—just a regular indigenous guerrilla force opposing the government. And part of the methodfor claiming that these two forces were equivalent was to say that the F.M.L.N. guerrillas also had outside support from a foreign government—in other words, from the government of Nicaragua—and that was the onlyreason they could survive. Well, it’s conceivable that the F.M.L.N. was get-ting outside support, but if so, it would have been some kind of a miracle—because it was undetectable. I mean, it’s not that the United States is aprimitive, stone-age society: there are technological means around to discover evidence of such things, but they never were able to detect any sup-port coming from Nicaragua at all. According to the State Department propaganda, the main arms ﬂow from Nicaragua to the F.M.L.N. was across the Gulf of Fonseca.

Well, David MacMichael, who was the C.I.A. analyst in charge of analyzing this material in the early 1980s and then quit the Agency, testiﬁed at the WorldCourt and pointed out what this meant. He described the situation: the Gulf of Fonseca is thirty kilometers wide; it’s completely patrolled by the U.S. Navy; there’s an island in the middle of it which had a super-sophisticated U.S. radar system that could pick up boats up and down the Paciﬁc Coast; there were U.S. Navy S.E.A.L. teams running all around theplace—yet they never even picked up a canoe. So if Nicaragua were sendingarms across the Gulf of Fonseca, they had to have had some super-sophisticated methods.

I mean, the Nicaraguans had no problem whatsoever detecting the U.S. arms ﬂow to the contras—they told reporters exactlywhere it was coming from; it was unreported in the United States, becausethe reporters chose not to report it, but the Nicaraguans had no problemdetecting it.

Anyway, that was the propaganda line that had to be maintained in the American press, that was the official story. Now we come backto James LeMoyne.The United States government opposed the Central American peace ac-cords that were signed in 1987 [Esquipulas II, the so-called “Arias plan”],so it was therefore necessary to demolish them. And one of the ways of demolishing them was to increase aid to the contras. The press committed it-self with great passion to helping this effort along; LeMoyne was right upfront. Right after the accords were signed, LeMoyne published an article inwhich he wrote: there is “ample evidence” that the Salvadoran guerrillasare being supplied with arms by Nicaragua in violation of the peace ac-cords, and without that support the guerrillas couldn’t survive.

Alright,that had always been the necessary story, but just then it was especially important to drive it home—because right then the United States was triplingits supply ﬂights to the contras in response to the accords, and of course inviolation of the accords.

So the press wouldn’t report that we were escalating our support for the contras, but they kept reporting that the Nicaraguans were illegally arming the F.M.L.N. in El Salvador—and now James LeMoyne says that there is “ample evidence” of it. Well, when that story appeared, F.A.I.R. wrote a letter to the New YorkTimes, asking them to please have James LeMoyne enlighten their readers about the “ample evidence” of this arms ﬂow to the F.M.L.N.—since theWorld Court couldn’t ﬁnd it, and no independent investigator’s been able toﬁnd it, and the guys who worked on it in the C.I.A. didn’t know about it:could they please do that? Well, the Times didn’t publish their letter, but F.A.I.R. did get a personal response back from the Foreign Editor, Joseph Lelyveld, who said, yes, maybe LeMoyne’s report was a bit imprecise this time, it didn’t meet his usual high standards, and so on.

Then followed a period in which the Times had plenty of time to correctthe “imprecision”—but instead article after article appeared by LeMoyne,George Volsky, Steven Engelberg and others, repeating exactly the same falsehood: that there was ample evidence of an arms ﬂow from Nicaragua. But F.A.I.R. just kept after them, and ﬁnally they got another letter backfrom Lelyveld, the Foreign Editor—this was around March now, their ﬁrst letter was in August. Lelyveld said he had recently assigned LeMoyne to doa major story on the arms ﬂow to the F.M.L.N., to really nail the thing downonce and for all, and that they should wait for that story. Okay, they waited. Nothing happened. Six months later, they ﬁgured nothing was going to hap-pen, so they published this interchange of letters with Lelyveld in theF.A.I.R. newsletter, and said: we don’t see the story, what’s going on?

Two months after that, a story did ﬁnally appear in the Times—I think itwas LeMoyne’s last story before he left the Times, or whatever he did, tooka leave or something. This is now ﬁfteen months after his original story about the “ample evidence,” nine months after he was assigned to do thefollow-up. And if you take a look at the article the Times ﬁnally published,you’ll discover that the “ample evidence” had turned into no evidence. LeMoyne said: well, there really is no direct evidence of any supply of arms from Nicaragua; some people say this, some people say that, but there’s nothing concrete, there’s nothing to point to. So that’s the end of the story: it turns out the “ample evidence” is no evidence.

Now, that’s no joke—this is fabrication in the service of the state that hasled to tens of thousands of people being killed, because maintaining this pretense over the years has been one of the ways in which the U.S. government has supported the terror in El Salvador and extended the war against Nicaragua. It’s not a small point. This is serious lying, very serious. And it’s just one of thousands of cases demonstrating that the media in the United States serve the interests of state-corporate power, they are organs of propaganda, as in fact one would expect them to be.
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New York Times Fabricated Reports of Nicaragua arms to Salvadoran Rebels

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New York Times Fabricated Reports of Nicaragua arms to Salvadoran Rebels

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