Adolfo Calero: Commander of the US-backed Nicaraguan guerrilla group the Contras
Adolfo Calero: Commander of the US-backed Nicaraguan guerrilla group the Contras
Phil Davison
Tuesday 05 June 2012
Although he was a lawyer and businessman – a former Coca-Cola executive – Adolfo Calero was also the overall commander of the so-called Contras, who launched a guerrilla war against Nicaragua's ruling communist Sandinistas in the 1980s. A good friend of the US President Ronald Reagan and of the CIA, it was Calero who lobbied successfully for tens of millions of dollars in military and other aid for the Contras – short for Counter-revolutionaries, since the Sandinistas had won power through a 1979 revolution against dictator Anastasio Somoza.
As the public face of the Contras, Calero had a major role in the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal after it emerged that US agents had secretly and illegally sold arms to Iran and funnelled some of the profits as military aid to the Contras. At the time, Calero's top contact in the White House was Reagan's national security adviser Lt-Col Oliver North, who, with the help of the CIA, devised the plan to use the money from the Iranian arms deals to support the Contras. How much Reagan knew of the illegal deals was never clear, but the US President was a staunch supporter of the Contras, convinced that the Sandinistas would spread communism north towards the US. The Contras, Reagan once famously said, "are the moral equivalent of our founding fathers." Reagan also saw US aid to the Contras as an essential balance to Fidel Castro's support for the Sandinistas. Calero would later describe Reagan as "one of the greatest personages of the 20th Century."
Mr Calero said he trusted Lt-Col North and never asked where the US funds came from. "When you're in the desert and you're dying of thirst, you don't ask if the water they are giving you is Schweppes or Perrier," he said. "You just drink the damn thing." In 1987, Calero testified at a US congressional hearing into the Iran-Contra affair, during which he said: "I used to tell Col. North, frankly, everything. I had no reservation. I had full confidence and trust in him." Amid the mutual backscratching, Calero even admitted to giving $50,000 in travellers cheques to North in a clandestine push to liberate US hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.
Calero also testified that he had set up secret bank accounts and dummy corporations to receive funds from North, some of it from Saudi Arabia after prodding by Reagan. North was later convicted on several counts, including shredding documents relating to the Iran-Contra affair, and given a suspended sentence. It was later lifted and the former US Marine officer is now a political commentator, author and military historian regularly seen on US TV.
More:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/adolfo-calero-commander-of-the-usbacked-nicaraguan-guerrilla-group-the-contras-7815077.html