Ingeniously, he had smuggled out a request for external help in restoring law and order.... The
detailed hour-by-hour plan was circulated to everyone at the meeting. There was also a short
discussion of the War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to get approval of Congress
if he intends to deploy U.S. troops in combat for more than sixty days. There was little question
that U.S. combat forces would be out before that time.... The president had participated and asked
questions over the speaker phone; he made his decision. The U.S. would answer the call from our
Caribbean neighbors. We would assure the safety of our citizens.@s1@s 1Clearly, there was no perceived need to follow the U.S. Constitution and leave the
question of whether to make war up to the Congress. After all, President Reagan had
concurred, from the golf course, with Acting President Bush's decision in the matter. And
the British nominee in the target country had requested Mr. Bush's help!
November 3, 1983:Bush aide Donald Gregg met with Felix Rodriguez to discuss `` the general situation in
Central America. ''@s1@s2
December 1983:Oliver North accompanied Vice President Bush to El Salvador as his assistant. Bush met
with Salvadoran army commanders. North helped Bush prepare a speech, in which he
publicly called upon them to end their support for the use of death squads. '' North later testified that Bush's speech was one of the bravest things I've seen for anybody [sic].
''@s1@s3
Attack from Jupiter
January 1 through March 1984:The Wall Street Journal of March 6, 1985 gave a de- romanticized version of certain
aquatic adventures in Central America:
Armed speedboats and a helicopter launched from a Central Intelligence Agency `` mother ship''
attacked Nicaragua's Pacific port, Puerto Sandino on a moonless New Year's night in 1984. A
week later the speedboats returned to mine the oil terminal. Over the next three months, they laid
more than 30 mines in Puerto Sandino and also in the harbors at Corinto and El Bluff. In air and
sea raids on coastal positions, Americans flew--and fired from--an armed helicopter that
accompanied the U.S.-financed Latino force, while a CIA plane provided sophisticated
reconaissance guidance for the nighttime attacks. The operation, outlined in a classified CIA
document, marked the peak of U.S. involvement in the four-year guerrilla war in Nicaragua. More
than any single event, it solidified congressional opposition to the covert war, and in the year since
then, no new money has been approved beyond the last CIA checks drawn early [in the] summer
[of 1984].... CIA paramilitary officers were upset by the ineffectiveness of the Contras.... As the
insurgency force grew ... during 1983 ... the CIA began to use the guerrilla army as a cover for its
own small `` Latino '' force.... [The] most celebrated attack, by armed speedboats, came Oct. 11,
1983, against oil facilities at Corinto. Three days later, an underwater pipeline at Puerto Sandino
was sabotaged by Latino [sic] frogmen. The message wasn't lost on Exxon Corp.'s Esso unit
[formerly Standard Oil of New Jersey], and the international giant informed the Sandinista
government that it would no longer provide tankers for transporting oil to Nicaragua. The CIA's