Free Republic

More than 200 political prisoners were released by Nicaragua this morning. The 222 prisoners were put on an early morning flight to Washington and will arrive in the next few hours. On state television a judge said the government had decided to "deport" the prisoners, saying they had been declared traitors and can never again serve public office. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said Nicaragua made the decision "unilaterally," but that the United States had "facilitated the transportation" and the political prisoners would be admitted into the United States for "humanitarian reasons." Ever since anti-government protests erupted in Nicaragua in...

The Wall Street Journal The most credible aspect of Mr. Reed's book is that it was not written with Whitewater in mind. He wrote the book Compromised Compromised is the true story of the Faustian pact that Bill Clinton made as governor of Arkansas. It tells how his unbridled political ambitions and his pledge to create jobs for Arkansas led him to compromise his ideals in exchange for support for his presidential candidacy in 1992. By selling out politically to the Reagan-Bush administration, by giving the Agency free rein to operate a secret training base near the tiny western Arkansas...

“Those Cuban-CIA men (Bay of Pigs vets) were as tough, dedicated and impetuous a group of soldiers as I’ve ever had the honor of commanding,” wrote legendary anti-communist mercenary “Mad Mike” Hoare, commander of the “Wild Geese,” in his book Congo Mercenary. ''This is the history of a failure,'' said the oddly frank opening lines of Che Guevara’s Congo Dairies. “I stood above Che Guevara, my boots near his head, just as Che had once stood over my dear friend and fellow 2506 Brigade member, Nestor Pino. ‘We're going to kill you all," Che said to Pino.’ Now, the situation...

Old Friends Recount Memories Of The Presidential Hopeful Before His Political Success (AP) The way Sohale Siddiqi remembers it, he and his old roommate were walking his pug Charlie on Broadway when a large, scary bum approached them, stomping on the ground near the dog's head. This was in the 1980s, a time when New York was a fearful place beset by drugs and crime, when the street smart knew that the best way to handle the city's derelicts was to avoid them entirely. But Siddiqi was angry and he confronted the bum, who approached him menacingly. Until his skinny,...

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals. The sources say the plans have been pitched to the White House as a means of countering “deep state” enemies in the intelligence community seeking to undermine Donald...

Moments after the story hit the wires that Gary Webb had been found dead of an apparent suicide, the radical left began hinting that the former San Jose Mercury News reporter who broke the Nicaraguan Contra-Crack Connection story had met with a more sinister fate. Alex Walker, of the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, got the conspiracy ball rolling with the help of single quotation marks and a bit of idyllic prose: They are calling it a 'suicide.' What an amazing 'coincidence' that this happens just when Our Dear Great Dumb 'Intelligence Community' is under scrutiny again. Also...

Mike Allen reported over the weekend that "Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton's impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by resident-elect Barack Obama". Believe it or not, the time Craig spent shilling for Clinton may have been his most honorable days of work ... In the early 1980s, [Craig] was an attorney for John Hinckley, the man who shot President Reagan and three others. Craig helped put together an insanity defense that led to Hinckley's acquittal. Nine years later, he advised Ted Kennedy in the Palm Beach rape case involving the senator...

Few remember Enrique 'Kiki' Camarena, the DEA agent killed in the line of duty almost 30 years ago, when the War on Drugs was the talk of Washington. "On February 7, 1985, Special Agent Camarena was kidnapped by the traffickers," then First Lady Nancy Reagan somberly told a room full of anti-drug advocates. "He was tortured and beaten to death." Camarena's killer was sentenced to 40 years in jail. Now, he's free after serving only 28 years. And those who knew the agent and became close to his family are fighting to see that his story is not forgotten. "I...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — The classical definition of a hero is a person who puts himself at risk for the benefit of others. That certainly describes Adolfo Calero, who died June 2 at the age of 80. The obituaries of this remarkable man hardly do justice to his courage, perseverance, faithfulness and humility. Here is the Adolfo Calero I knew, admired and called a friend for nearly three decades: A graduate of Holy Cross High School in New Orleans and the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., he was a devout Roman Catholic and educated to be a...

Adolfo Calero, who led the largest force of U.S.-backed rebels against Nicaragua's Sandinista government in the 1980s and found himself entangled in the Iran-Contra scandal, has died at age 81. Calero died Saturday of lung problems in the Nicaraguan capital of Managua, his aide Julio Romero confirmed on Sunday.

Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WedxY61d60

MIAMI - At the end of Nicaragua's civil war, Juan Gregorio Rodriguez traded his life as a Contra rebel for that of auto mechanic in Florida. He kept in touch with other rebels and supported their political efforts, but mostly from afar. That changed in 2006, when the Contras' nemesis, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, was elected president, 16 years after his Soviet-backed government lost power in a vote that ended the guerrilla conflict in which some 30,000 people died.

Translator - AltaVista/Babelfish: SANGTIAGO DE CHILE. - The United States had to pay 50,000 million dollars to Nicaragua by their support in the decade of 1980 to the "cons", maintained Central American president Daniel Ortega during XVII the Latin American Summit. "the United States must pay to Nicaragua a compensation of 50,000 million dollars by the sanction that applied in 1986 the Court the International to him of Is It", it affirmed Ortega Saturday in an extensive speech in which it reviewed to American interventions in the world. Ortega indicated that There is condemned It to the United States by...

Daniel Ortega, the former leader of the Left-wing Sandinistas in Nicaragua and one of the United States' most reviled Cold War enemies, appears to be on the brink of making a spectacular comeback.Twenty years after his Sandinista government fought a bitter civil war against American-funded ''Contra" rebels, he is leading in the polls for the presidential elections on Sunday. But now he has ''found God" and talks of ''peace and love" not Marxist-Leninist ideals. In a final frenzy of campaigning, the podgy, balding 60-year-old, is spreading what he calls a "spiritual revolution", "full of love and hope" around this country,...

Wake up and smell the Contras! Fair-trade coffee’s not just for lefties. Now the Contras are in on the action, says Mike Power Nicaraguan coffee has been a staple of any good liberal's shopping basket since the 1980s. But now misty-eyed Reaganites can get their hands on the fair-trade action as well, with Contra Coffee. Gourmet coffee grown by former Contras – the US-supported militia who tried to topple Nicaragua's socialist Sandinista government in the 1980s – is now available and offering customers a chance to "Wake up with freedom fighters!" according to company founders Tom Kilroy and Ryan Myers,...

The "layers of editors" at the NYT, better known as the "rusty sieve of editors," has let another one get by it - claiming that Oliver North worked against the Contras. In 1985, The Times reported that a Marine colonel in the White House was overseeing the secret war against the Nicaraguan contras. The newspaper withheld the name of the colonel because the White House said printing it might endanger his life, recalled a former Times reporter, Joel Brinkley. The Post named Oliver North the next day. "There was absolutely no reason not to print his name," he said.

LEON, Nicaragua (Reuters) - After years of setbacks, many Nicaraguans from Leon, the cradle of the 1979 Sandinista revolution, believe their aging former guerrilla leaders could soon return to power in elections that could also prove a diplomatic nightmare for Washington. "We need a change. It's been bad, bad, bad," said 60-year-old war Sandinista war veteran Daniel Sauro, referring to 16 years of pro-Washington governments that took power after Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega's electoral defeat in 1990. Sauro lives in a city where colonial churches and dilapidated houses are still splattered with aging bullet holes from 1970s street battles between...

Trade: The House's cliffhanger 217-215 passage of the Central America Free Trade Agreement is a decisive victory for free markets and democracy. It's also Ronald Reagan's final triumph. This victory is President Reagan's legacy. Because CAFTA, by slashing duties and giving free markets a boost, makes Reagan's Caribbean Basin Initiative permanent. As such, CAFTA creates a vast permanent bulwark against totalitarianism that will benefit the U.S. and its southern neighbors. Central America now has a bright future based on the one thing that makes democracies strong and nations viable — free markets. Reagan knew that in the struggle against tyranny,...

Nicaragua: the Ortega former president will briguera the presidency in 2006 MANAGUA - the former president of Nicaragua and historical leader of the Face sandinist of national release (FSLN, left) Daniel Ortega was designated Sunday like candidate for the presidential one of 2006. This nomination is disputed by the renovating wing of the party. Daniel Ortega imposed his candidature. Herty Lewites, another historical head sandinist, however claimed the behaviour of primary elections. Herty Lewites, very popular in Nicaragua and better placed than Daniel Ortega, according to surveys', was even excluded from the Face to have announced its presidential aspiration....

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) - A U.S. government delegation worked Tuesday to convince Nicaragua to destroy about 1,000 surface-to-air missiles left over from the 1980s Contra war. In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher confirmed that a U.S. team was in the Nicaraguan capital to renew efforts to have the portable SAM-7 missiles destroyed. The team's leader, Rose Likins, the acting assistant secretary for political and military affairs, did not comment as she arrived in Nicaragua. U.S. officials have been trying to convince Nicaragua to give up the missiles, which were supplied by the Soviet Union when the former Sandinista government...