Guerrillas Nicaragua

An FBI forensics expert testified Tuesday in Los Angeles federal court that hair fibers found in the house where U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena was murdered matched hair samples taken from defendant Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros' head after his arrest. Matta is one of four men being tried in Camarena's abduction and murder. Matta, 45, contends that he was not at the house in Guadalajara, Mexico, where the agent was interrogated and killed in February, 1985.

A U.S.-built military base in Honduras contains cramped metal cells apparently used to torture and kill political prisoners, a top Honduran official said. The cells, along with dozens of possible grave sites, were discovered at El Aguacate air base in eastern Honduras, which the United States built in 1983 for Nicaraguan Contra rebels, who fought a U.S. proxy war against the leftist Sandinista government in their neighboring country. Forensic experts from the U.S.

A convicted drug smuggler testified Thursday that he contributed $4 million to $5 million to the Nicaraguan Contras and flew weapons to them after two rebel leaders promised in 1984 to use their CIA connections to get him out of trouble with U.S. prosecutors. George Morales, who subsequently went to prison on drug charges, told a Senate hearing that his planes were loaded with weapons in Florida, flown to Central America and then brought back with cocaine on board.

The Central Intelligence Agency had indications that about 50 members of Nicaraguan rebel organizations may have been involved in narcotics trafficking during the 1980s, but CIA personnel continued working with almost two dozen of the suspected figures, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday.

President Reagan, who urged Congress in his State of the Union speech to approve renewed aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, intends to dramatize that appeal by sending Secretary of State George P. Shultz on a peace mission to Central America, Administration officials said Monday. They said that the proposed trip marks a last-ditch effort to defuse growing congressional opposition to more Contra aid by demonstrating White House willingness to support the region's stalled peace process.

The Reagan Administration has joined forces with relatively moderate Nicaraguan rebel leaders to attempt to reduce the power of the largest and most conservative rebel group, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), U.S. and contra officials said Wednesday. But the FDN, led by Adolfo Calero, is resisting any move to end its domination of the rebel effort, they said.

Sandinista forces shot down a cargo plane after it dropped war materiel to U.S.-backed guerrillas inside Nicaragua, government and rebel officials said Sunday. The DC-6 aircraft, with eight crewmen aboard, was hit by two SAM-7 missiles in southeastern Nicaragua after dark Saturday, Lt. Col. Roberto Calderon, a senior Sandinista army commander, told reporters at the crash scene.

The Nicaraguan government and U.S.-backed Contras ended two days of cease-fire talks Friday without concrete gains, but the two sides agreed to meet again in Guatemala after Congress votes on the Reagan Administration's proposal for $36.25 million in further aid to the rebels. Both sides said a positive atmosphere prevailed in the first face-to-face meeting in nearly seven years of war. A mediator, Roman Catholic Msgr.

A former CIA station chief in Costa Rica was indicted Monday on charges of conspiracy to provide illegal aid to the Nicaraguan rebels, a sign that independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh has extended his investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal to focus on the actions of several CIA officials. Joseph F. Fernandez, 51, was charged with helping then-White House aide Oliver L. North deliver guns to the Contras in 1986, during a period when Congress had banned U.S. military aid to the rebels.

Nicaraguan rebel leaders said Tuesday they will respect an accord by Central American presidents to close their bases in Honduras but might deploy at least half their guerrillas into Nicaragua rather than disarm. The landmark agreement, signed Monday after a five-nation summit, was swallowed with bitter resignation by a Contra movement long dependent on U.S. assistance and Honduran sanctuary--and now on the verge of losing both by the end of the year.

Struggling to regroup after two resounding rejections by voters that left them with shrinking influence in the country they once ruled, the leftists of the Sandinista National Liberation Front this weekend clung to their top leaders while trying to make their party less threatening to Nicaragua's emerging entrepreneurs.

The Central Intelligence Agency said Thursday that a 17-month internal investigation has found no evidence that the U.S.-supported Nicaraguan rebels of the 1980s received significant financial support from drug traffickers. CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz, releasing the first volume of a two-part report on the drug issue, said his findings contradict widespread charges that the agency was involved in drug trafficking as a means of funding the Contras.

The Central Intelligence Agency and several congressional committees will continue investigating reports that the CIA was involved in cocaine smuggling, despite a newspaper's admission that many of its charges that sparked the inquiries could not be supported, officials said Monday.

The executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News on Sunday wrote an open letter to readers, admitting to shortcomings in the newspaper's controversial series on the crack cocaine explosion in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Jerry Ceppos said the newspaper solidly documented information that a drug ring associated with the rebel force in Nicaragua known as the Contras sold large quantities of cocaine in inner-city Los Angeles. Some of the profits from those sales went to the Contras.

Pasadena Police Chief Barney Melekian said an extensive police investigation and review of cases has found no evidence to connect the CIA or Nicaraguan Contras to the sale of crack cocaine in Pasadena during the last two decades.

Fresh from a fact-finding trip to Nicaragua, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) told an attentive audience at Cal State Northridge on Thursday that she planned to continue investigating charges that the CIA had a role in the crack boom that has crippled sections of her South Los Angeles district. "I went to Nicaragua recently and met with someone in prison," she said to the racially diverse crowd of students and teachers. "And I will go back again if I have to.

For seven years, Azucena Ferrey helped to lead Nicaragua's civic opposition of political parties and business groups that are committed to fighting Sandinista rule from inside the country and within the law. Ferrey, a leader of the Social Christian Party, was considered one of the few opposition figures who could stir a crowd, and she made her appeals to women in particular with such issues as compulsory military service.

Both the Sandinista army and the Contras gained strategic benefits from bloody battles at the Honduran border last week. As a result, each side is negotiating from an improved position in this week's peace talks, and neither side appears to be under increased military pressure to make concessions that might ease the way toward agreement. Sandinista troops struck a significant blow by driving hundreds of guerrillas out of jungle strongholds and across the Honduran border.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) will discuss the CIA and its alleged connection to the sale of crack cocaine in Los Angeles at a special lecture Thursday at Cal State Northridge. Sponsored by CSUN's Pan-African studies department as part of its Black History Month celebration, the lecture, titled "Crack Cocaine: CIA and the Contras," is free to the public.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said Thursday that she is traveling to Nicaragua today to continue her investigation of alleged links between the crack cocaine trade and the CIA-backed Contra rebels. Waters said she was scheduled to arrive today in Nicaragua for a meeting with Enrique Miranda Jaime, a former associate of Norwin Meneses, a drug dealer and Contra rebel sympathizer.