Espionage Nicaragua

U.S.-backed Nicaraguan rebels have discovered at least 12 suspected agents of the leftist Managua government working as spies and saboteurs inside the contras' main bases, including two paramedics who may have killed contra commanders under their care, U.S. and rebel officials said Friday.

The government newspaper quoted Interior Minister Tomas Borge on Thursday as saying that a Nicaraguan journalist penetrated the CIA as a Sandinista agent in the late 1970s. The reporter was identified as Maria Lourdes Pallais Checa, a graduate of Columbia University in New York. She is a niece of the late Anastasio Somoza, the Nicaraguan dictator overthrown in July, 1979, by a popular uprising with the Sandinistas in the vanguard.

The government newspaper quoted Interior Minister Tomas Borge on Thursday as saying that a Nicaraguan journalist penetrated the CIA as a Sandinista agent in the late 1970s. The reporter was identified as Maria Lourdes Pallais Checa, a graduate of Columbia University in New York. She is a niece of the late Anastasio Somoza, the Nicaraguan dictator overthrown in July, 1979, by a popular uprising with the Sandinistas in the vanguard.

U.S.-backed Nicaraguan rebels have discovered at least 12 suspected agents of the leftist Managua government working as spies and saboteurs inside the contras' main bases, including two paramedics who may have killed contra commanders under their care, U.S. and rebel officials said Friday.