Historical Dictionary of United States Intelligence

tural Freedom became publicly known in 1967, effectively ending

this covert operation.

CONTAINMENT POLICY. Containment refers to the foreign policy

strategy of the United States in the early years of the Cold War. The

policy was first laid out in George F. Kennan’s famous long

telegram. It was then made public in 1947 in his anonymous Foreign

Affairsarticle “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” better known as the

X article.

Kennan argued that the primary goal of the United States should

be to prevent the spread of communism by “containing” it within its

borders. The Truman Doctrineincorporated containment as one of

its key principles. This led to American support for regimes, some of

them quite authoritarian and repressive, around the world to block the

spread of communism. After the disaster of the Vietnam War, Ken-

nan asserted that his ideas had been misinterpreted and that he never

advocated military intervention, merely economic support.

CONTRAS (contrarevolucionario).The Contras were the armed op-

ponents of Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinistagovernment fol-

lowing the July 1979 overthrow of Anastasio Somoza Debayle and

the ending of the Somoza family’s 43-year rule. The label was com-

monly used by the press in the United States to cover a range of dis-

parate groups.

The Contras comprised remnants of Somoza’s national guard, dis-

affected former Sandinistas, and various Amerindian groups that

were alienated by the Sandinista modernization efforts. They were

considered terrorists by the Sandinistas, and many of their attacks

targeted civilians.

The United States played a key role in the development of the Con-

tra alliance following President Ronald Reagan’sassumption of the

presidency in January 1981. Accusing the Sandinistas of importing

Cuban-style communism and aiding leftist guerrillas in El Salvador,

President Reagan on 23 November 1981 signed the top-secret National

Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the Central Intel-

ligence Agency (CIA) the authority to recruit and support the Contras.

The Contra alliance came to an end in the 1984–1985 time frame,

with each of the alliance partners making their own deal with the San-

CONTRAS•39

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