CIA mines Nicaragua ports

I've often thought that if you're a foreign correspondent over here, perhaps the best way to cover the United States would be to live on Nob Hill in San Francisco where you get up in the morning and duck into one of the big hotels and, at the newsstand by nine o'clock, pick up the London Times of that day, since it's already 5 pm in London, the New York Times, flown in like The Times while we were all asleep, the Los Angeles Times, which is certainly either the second or third best newspaper in America, the Wall Street Journal, which is certainly either the second or third best newspaper in America and the San Francisco Chronicle. This way you already know what's troubling or engaging Britain about this country, what seems vital to New York and Washington and what is on the mind of the most informed people on the west coast.

And nowadays you slip a quarter into a vending machine on many a street corner and take out a new newspaper called USA Today – a paper quite unlike any other, about which we'll go on at length some time maybe, but for now I'll simply say that it provides a survey of all the serious news in each of the 50 states of the union and the main foreign news and a section on books and show business, another on sports, a fourth on money. It's printed by night in one city in California, switches are thrown and buttons pressed and the whole contents are flashed to a satellite cruising away up there many miles above the earth and is thereby printed simultaneously in 22 scattered American cities and then distributed by human hand – they'll correct that, no doubt – to all these thousands of street vending machines, as also to regular newsagents. Talk about Ned Ludd and the protests of the old Linotype workers!

How will the present-day compositors with their word processors in the newsroom, how are they going to feel, not to mention the truckers and railway men and airplane distributors when all newspapers decide to copy USA Today? Print everything in one city and then have their own satellite reprint it on reams of paper at the ready in a hundred cities?

Well, I got up the other morning to pick up my several hundred pages of news and comment and was stopped in my tracks at the hotel entrance by a crowd, a cheering crowd of about two thousand people. Their cheers were made louder still by having to overcome the clanging of the bells of Grace Cathedral across the way, just as the effect of piped music in a restaurant defeats its purpose by making everybody talk louder. I thought it must be VE Day, such a happy hullabaloo of carefree people cheering against the tintinnabulation of the bells.

The crowd was then seen to be forming a huge scrum around a moving object of a sort that has not been seen in San Francisco for 18 months or more. It was a cable car, but it was not yet in traction with the aid of the cables that are slotted into the centre of the roadway, it was being pulled by eight mules. That was the way the first San Francisco trams moved before the old mining cables were brought from the silver fields of Nevada and revolutionised public transport in this city. The revolution was quite simple. It made San Franciscans able, for the first time, to ride street cars up the steepest of their very steep hills.

Well, the cheering and the boisterous crowd and the clanging bells were all by way of celebrating the fact that the first new cable had been laid along the California street line. Two years ago, it was reluctantly conceded by the city fathers after several scary accidents and the threat of catastrophe that the century-old cables had worn out, but a city survey made the surprising discovery that a goodly portion of the tourist trade – and San Francisco is second only to New York City as a tourist attraction – a good number of tourists think of the cable cars as a deciding factor in choosing this city for a holiday. So, $30 million were raised. The two-year job is nearly at an end, as, indeed, it had better be before the Democrats meet here in convention in July.

For a day or two, the completion of the cable car repairs jostled the local news with sudden excited pieces about the city's mayor, the handsome dynamo known as Diane Feinstein. Of course, her name is in the local papers every day. I hope I don't have to remind too many of you that the mayor of an American city, like the speaker of any legislative assembly over here, is not a neutral or ceremonial position. It's the top administrative post. For better or worse, the elected mayor runs the city.

But now a new note has been sounded in the never-flagging Democratic race for president. The three contestants, Mr Mondale, Senator Hart and the Reverend Jesse Jackson, have been talking themselves hoarse as they moved from state to state and city to city fighting out the endless number of primary elections. So a new idea, however odd or unwise, provided it's bold, is seized on like a talisman and it was inevitable, I suppose, that a Democrat, tired of rehearsing all the crimes of Reagan and the weaknesses of his fellow contenders, should have floated the idea of a woman vice president. It may well have been some TV network reporter. Whoever it was, you may be sure that there's not a presidential candidate in the country, including Mr Reagan, who dare rebuff the idea. They were all quick to say, 'Well, of course, I'd be proud to have a woman as my running mate. I am one who believes that any American who is qualified and competent for the presidency should be welcomed regardless of race, sex, religion and so forth.'

So, since the people have been driven by the dinning rallies and speeches and quarrels that precede one primary and follow another, the media then leapt around looking for that woman vice president. Because San Francisco is the chosen city for the Democratic circus – convention, that is – and because Diane Feinstein is, as the commentators now say, a beautiful and gutsy lady, and is the energetic slam-bang mayor of San Francisco and is a Democrat, ergo, why not Diane Feinstein for vice president?

The Reverend Jesse Jackson, who has absolutely nothing to lose except the Democratic nomination, can be bolder than either Mr Mondale or Senator Hart, one of whom four months from now could be held to any rash promise he gave today. The Reverend Jackson has practically promised that he will choose a woman as his running mate. Diane Feinstein properly says that she's flattered, that it's unlikely, that she doesn't particularly want the job and that we must all bend our best efforts to put on a fine convention and pick – guess who? – the next President of the United States. Amen.

Well, you might have guessed by now that I was going to do what several American magazines and television programmes are preparing to do, to sketch a profile of Diane Feinstein, but the day after that romping ceremony with the cable car and the mules, the San Francisco Chronicle had a main, front-page story that was, the same day, on the front pages of the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and, a day later, the London Times.

The Chronicle put it quite flatly. 'CIA's Role Reported in Mining of Ports'. It was a long piece reprinted from the Washington Post, not accusing or alleging, but reporting that the CIA has played a direct role in the laying of underwater mines in Nicaraguan ports that have damaged at least eight ships from various nations including the Soviet Union and Japan during the past two months.

The sources, the Post got their story from, were not quoted in so many words. They were identified simply as congressional and administration sources, but Senator Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican, came out and said it was so. He's on the Senate committee that keeps usually secret watch on spying and bribing and subverting potential enemy agents. What we now call covert intelligence operations, a service every nation has but which no nation talks about and writes about and gets so hot under the collar about as does the United States.

Another Republican, a congressman, said Senator Goldwater had blabbed, that he had no right to reveal information he'd learned from his privileged position on that Senate committee, but other senators and congressmen were less reluctant to declare that the mining was a fact.

Last Sunday, the charge was bluntly put up to Mr Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense, when he appeared on a regular one-hour Sunday morning political interview hour. He said categorically that no, there was no mining. When he was asked if the CIA was doing it, he said he would make no comment, but nobody should infer from his silence that it was being done. To which one of the reporters said, 'Well, you've got us both ways, haven't you? You say for yourself, no, it's not being done, and then say, I'm not going to say whether the CIA is doing it or not, but don't infer the worst.' Said Mr Weinberger, 'That's exactly right!'

Well, independent sources in the intelligence services of Britain and France, to say nothing of the foreign minister of Nicaragua, have no doubts at all about who laid the mines that damaged the ships and now Nicaragua has asked the world court to declare illegal this act and also American support for the guerrilla raids on its territory.

Anticipating this move, the Reagan administration announced it would pay no attention during the next two years to any judgments of the world court. The administration says the government of Nicaragua is brutal, Marxist government and ought to be brought down for the security of the United States and should be stopped from trying to bring down the elected government of El Salvador.

The Democrats, led by their chief in the House, Speaker O'Neill, say that both the mining and the snub to the world court are unconscionable, immoral and illegal. This seems to be the beginning of a scorching debate in the Senate which could, for the time being anyway, make us pay less heed to Mr Mondale, Senator Hart, the Reverend Jackson and Diane Feinstein.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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