In 1989 he oversaw the dismantling of Contras which were based in Honduras.

Perpich opposed the Reagan proxy war against Nicaragua in the 1980's and was one of several governors who objected to sending their state national guard units to train in US bases in Honduras, where the US backed Contras were based.

Under Reagan ( 1981 – 1989 ) the role of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, USMC, in the facilitation of funding to the Contras in Nicaragua, in explicit contravention of a United States Congressional ban, has been highlighted as an example of a " junior courtier's " ability to act, based on his position as a member of a large White House staff.

Two years before his assassination by the Sandinistas in Managua, contra military commander Enrique Bermúdez, during a meeting in Tegucigalpa, asked Johns to author his autobiographical essay, " The Contras ' Valley Forge ," which is based on extensive discussions between the two and received substantial global media coverage in The New York Times, The Washington Post and elsewhere.

The Contras operated out of camps in the neighboring countries of Honduras to the north and Costa Rica ( see Edén Pastora cited below ) to the south.

In 1987, due to a stalemate with the Contras, the Esquipulas II treaty was brokered by Costa Rican President Óscar Arias Sánchez.

This was a plan intended to promote democracy and peace on the Central American isthmus during a time of great turmoil: leftist guerrillas were fighting against the governments in El Salvador and Guatemala, which were backed by the United States under the auspices of the Cold War ; the Contras, supported by the United States, were fighting an insurgency against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua ; Honduras, only recently wresting political power from its military, was caught in the middle as a base for U. S. military forces ; and on Costa Rica's other border, Panama faced the oppression of Manuel Noriega's military dictatorship.

Upon the conclusion of the civil war, 7, 500 Guardsmen were taken prisoner – with many former Guards suspected of violating human rights being held in detention by the Sandinistas –, while another 4, 500 officers and enlisted men fled to neighbouring Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala to form the nucleus an armed opposition force to the new Nicaraguan government, which would later become known as the Contras

Senator John Kerry's 1988 Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra drug links concluded that " senior U. S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras ' funding problems.

Edgar Chamorro, a former Contra and member of the FDN's political directorate who later became a critic of the Contras, stated that during his time with the Contras, he frequently received reports about atrocities committed by Contra troops against civilians and against Sandinista prisoners: " As time went on, I became more and more troubled by the frequent reports I received of atrocities committed by our troops against civilians and against Sandinista prisoners.

" Earlier, in December 1984, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs had issued a report condemning the Contras and the United States government as being among the worst human rights violators in Latin America: " The CIA directed forces are among the worst human rights violators in Latin America, responsible for systematic brutality against a civilian population.

Mutual exhaustion, Sandinista fears of Contra unity and military success, and mediation by other regional governments led to the Sapoa ceasefire between the Sandinistas and the Contras on March 23, 1988.

" The alleged violations included attacks on Nicaraguan facilities and naval vessels, the mining of Nicaraguan ports, the invasion of Nicaraguan air space, and the training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying of forces ( the " Contras ") and seeking to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government.

Regarding human rights violations by the Contras, " The Court has to determine whether the relationship of the contras to the United States Government was such that it would be right to equate the Contras, for legal purposes, with an organ of the United States Government, or as acting on behalf of that Government.

There is no clear evidence that the United States actually exercised such a degree of control as to justify treating the contras as acting on its behalf ... Having reached the above conclusion, the Court takes the view that the Contras remain responsible for their acts, in particular the alleged violations by them of humanitarian law.

Despite the clear electoral victory for the Sandinistas, the Contras continued their violent attacks on both state and civilian targets, until 1989.

After the initiation of full-scale U. S. military involvement in the Nicaraguan conflict the CDS was empowered to enforce wartime bans on political assembly and association with other political parties ( i. e. parties associated with the " Contras ").

Senator John Kerry's 1988 U. S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on links between the Contras and drug imports to the US concluded that " senior U. S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras ' funding problems.

After the United States Congress turned down continued funding of the Contras in April 1985, the Reagan administration ordered a total embargo on United States trade with Nicaragua the following month, accusing the Sandinista government of threatening United States security in the region.

The elections of 1990, which had been mandated by the constitution passed in 1987, saw the Bush administration funnel $ 49. 75 million of ‘ non-lethal ’ aid to the Contras, as well as $ 9m to the opposition UNO — equivalent to $ 2 billion worth of intervention by a foreign power in a US election at the time, and proportionately five times the amount George Bush had spent on his own election campaign.

The CIIR report also questioned the independence of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights, referring to an article in the Washington Post which claims that the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization funded by the US government, allocated a concession of US $ 50, 000 for assistance in the translation and distribution outside Nicaragua of its monthly report, and that these funds were administered by Prodemca, a US-based organization which later published full-page adverisments in the Washington Post and New York Times supporting military aid to the Contras.

* August 18 The San Jose Mercury News publishes Gary Webb's three-part series on the Reagan CIA's role in crack cocaine importation to fund the Contras.

She disagreed with Schultz most notably on the Iran-Contra affair, in which she supported skimming money off arms sales to fund the Contras.

The ICJ held that the U. S. had violated international law by supporting the Contras in their rebellion against the Nicaraguan government and by mining Nicaragua's harbors.

In 1981 he went to Honduras to train Contras who were fighting Nicaragua's Sandinista government, which was supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union ; the Army of El Salvador ; and the Honduras death squads.

In 1987 and 1988, President Reagan was furious at what he felt to be House Speaker Jim Wright's " intrusion " into the negotiations between Nicaragua's Sandinista government and the Contras for a cease-fire in the long civil war.

Americas Watch – which subsequently became part of Human Rights Watch – accused the Contras of:

Large modifications to the plan were devised by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council in late 1985, in which a portion of the proceeds from the weapon sales was diverted to fund anti-Sandinista and anti-communist rebels, or Contras, in Nicaragua.

When Ronald Reagan took office, he augmented the direct support to an anti-Sandinista group, called the Contras, which included factions loyal to the former dictatorship.

and Milpistas, former anti-Somoza rural militias, which eventually formed the largest pool of recruits for the Contras.

Oliver North came into the public spotlight as a result of his participation in the Iran-Contra affair, a political scandal of the late 1980s, in which he claimed partial responsibility for the sale of weapons via intermediaries to Iran, with the profits being channeled to the Contras in Nicaragua.

A 1983 report from the same source documented allegations of human rights violations against the Miskito Indians, which were alleged to have taken place after opposition forces ( the Contras ) infiltrated a Miskito village in order to launch attacks against government soldiers, and as part of a subsequent forced relocation program.

Videla's junta, which participated in Operation Condor, supported various neo-fascist and right-wing terrorist movements ; the SIDE supported Luis García Meza Tejada's Cocaine Coup in Bolivia and trained the Contras in Nicaragua.

In 1985 Reagan authorized the sale of arms in Iran in an unsuccessful effort to free U. S. hostages in Lebanon ; he later professed ignorance that subordinates were illegally diverting the proceeds to the Contras, a matter for which Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, an aide to National Security Advisor John M. Poindexter, took much of the blame.

Much of the game's popularity came from its two-player simultaneous gameplay, which was an uncommon feature in video games at the time of Contras release.

He once again began military operations in southern Nicaragua, loosely federated with northern forces which, composed mostly from highly paid former National Guard members and some Miskito Indians, were collectively referred to as the Contras.

They in turn diverted large quantities of fuel into the director's newly established company Sol Petróleo, a dummy corporation used by Suárez Mason and his appointees for embezzlement as well as to divert funds to the Contras and the fascist organization P2 ( to which the director belonged ).

Means announced his support for the Miskito group MISURASATA ( later known as YATAMA ), which was allied with the Contras.

Ronald Reagan is credited with increasing spending on national defense and diplomacy which contributed to the end of the Cold War, deploying U. S. Pershing II missiles in West Germany in response to the Soviet stationing of SS-20 missiles near Europe, negotiating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty ( INF ) to substantially reduce nuclear arms and initiating negotiations with the Soviet Union for the treaty that would later be known as START I, proposing the Strategic Defense Initiative, a controversial plan to develop a missile defense system, re-appointing monetarists Paul Volcker and ( later ) Alan Greenspan to be chairmen of the Federal Reserve, ending the high inflation that damaged the economy under his predecessors Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, lowering tax rates significantly ( under Reagan, the top personal tax bracket dropped from 70 % to 28 % in 7 years ) and leading a major reform of the tax system, providing arms and other support to anti-communist groups such as the Contras and the mujahideen, selling arms to foreign allies such as Taiwan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq ( see Iran – Iraq War ), greatly escalating the " war on drugs " with his policies and Nancy Reagan's " Just Say No " campaign, ordering the April 14, 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation for an April 5 bombing of a West Berlin nightclub frequented by U. S. servicemen, in which the Libyan government was deemed complicit, and signing the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which compensated victims of the Japanese American Internment during World War II.

* 1987 – American engineer Ben Linder is killed in an ambush by U. S .- funded Contras in northern Nicaragua.

The contras ( some references use the capitalized form, " Contras ") is a label given to the various rebel groups opposing the Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction government in Nicaragua that were active from 1979 through to the early 1990s.

* 1991 – Nicaraguan Contras leader Enrique Bermúdez is assassinated in Managua.

While President Ronald Reagan was a supporter of the Contra cause, the evidence is disputed as to whether he authorized the diversion of the money raised by the Iranian arms sales to the Contras.

Thus, it is not universally accepted that the majority of Contras resorted to terroristic tactics.

* Edgar Chamorro, Professor of Spanish and Latin, is a former leader of the Nicaraguan Contras and outspoken critic of the CIA's involvement in Latin America.

Chamorro's presidency is primarily known for the peace her election allowed for war-ravaged Nicaragua, as the US was expected to continue funding the Contras ( and maintain the embargo ) if she did not win.

On March 3, 1986 on Nicaraguan television d ' Escoto gave a speech publicly insulting and condemning Bishop Obando y Bravo for not siding with the Sandinista regime against the Contras: " There is no word uttered by human mouth, no adjective that we could use to truly describe the horror produced by this brother of ours.

Jalapa, which is located on the border of Honduras, was the location of two failed attempts of the CIA funded Contras to overthrow the city and install a provisional government, in late 1982 and December 1983, in which the CIA informed the contras would be immediately recognized by the United States Government.