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Rep. Rohrabacher: Cut Nicaragua Off If Ortega Wins Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., has just written to Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, warning of the seemingly imminent return to power in Nicaragua by Daniel Ortega and his infamous terrorist-supporting FSLN party. "Under the unprecedented election rules in Nicaragua, a presidential candidate rejected at the polls by 65 percent of actual voters can be declared the winner. As a result, the election of a pro-terrorist government is a contingency for which we must be prepared," the chairman of the House International Relations Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation wrote.
Ortega currently holds a lead in the presidential election according to two surveys that give the former president 34.4 percent and 33.8 percent support, just shy of the minimal 35 percent needed to secure the presidency in the first round.
Since the collapse of its principal backer, the Soviet Union, the FSLN has been unsuccessful in its attempts to return to power in Nicaragua. With the 35 percent rule, the balance has shifted dramatically.
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If Ortega is successful in his third comeback attempt after being voted out in 1990, argues Rohrabacher, it "would mean the U.S. government would have no reliable counterpart to satisfy legitimate national security concerns, especially those regarding the threat posed by pro-terrorist groups and the possible funding of those groups." Under Rohrabacher's analysis, an Ortega victory would mean a radical termination of the conditions that have permitted the unregulated movement of an estimated $2.5 billion over the last five years in remittances from the U.S. to Nicaragua. In a special report attached to the Chertoff letter, Rohrabacher notes the context of excellent relations and close cooperation the U.S. government presently enjoys with Nicaragua – a status quo he strongly believes would be reversed overnight with an Ortega victory. "The current government of Nicaragua has shown itself to be a reliable and trustworthy counterpart regarding U.S. national security," the report notes. A 1989 report from the Heritage Foundation, referenced in the report, describes the pro-terrorist origin of the FSLN: "The Sandinistas (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional, or as they are more popularly known, FSLN) have had international terrorist connections since the movement was founded in the early 1960s. In 1966, Fidel Castro brought to Havana more than 500 representatives of radical international leftist groups for the Tri-Continental Conference." There the Sandinistas, the PLO, and others met to formulate a strategy for what the called the "global revolutionary movement." Three years later, Tomas Borge, now Nicaragua's Interior Minister, was one of the 50 to 70 Sandinistas training at PLO camps in Libya. President Ronald Reagan sounded a clarion call about the cabal in 1985: "Consider for just a moment that in addition to establishing strong international alliances with Cuba and Libya, including the receipt of enormous amounts of arms and ammunition, the Sandinistas are also receiving extensive assistance from North Korea." The late former president went on to emphasize that both Daniel and Humberto Ortega had paid official and state visits to North Korea to seek additional assistance and more formal relations. Reagan also noted that in the same time frame, the Prime Minister of Iran visited Nicaragua bearing expressions of solidarity from the Ayatollah for the Sandinista Communists. Clear Terror Connections In 1993, the Washington Post and other media reported that one of the terrorist suspects arrested by the FBI for the first World Trade Center bombing carried five authentic, albeit fraudulent, Nicaraguan passports, apparently issued by officials in that country. The FSLN, Rohrabacher emphasizes, is today strongly backed by the anti-American regimes of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. Terror acts backed by the FSLN have targeted and killed American citizens, including four United States Marines, the lawmaker warned. When Daniel Ortega and the FSLN party were last in power, then Attorney General Edwin Meese III, declared that they had turned Nicaragua into "a terrorist country club." A FSLN-sponsored murder campaign began with the 1981 assassination in El Salvador of U.S. Navy Lt. Cdr. Albert Schaufelberger and continued at least through 1989. Even before the ballots are counted in the Nov. 5 elections, Rohrabacher wants Homeland Security, in conjunction with Treasury Department, "to prepare in accordance with U.S. law, contingency plans to block any further money remittances from being sent to Nicaragua in the event that the FSLN enters government." Rohrabacher concluded that he and other concerned lawmakers fear a return to insurgency against the U.S. in the western hemisphere should Ortega and the Sandinistas creep back into power.
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