Statements on Honduras Stir Skepticism in Congress : White House Apparently Fails Credibility Test

WASHINGTON — The Reagan Administration faced a key test of credibility this week when the White House announced that it was sending 3,150 U.S. troops to Honduras to counter a Nicaraguan incursion. And by all accounts, the Administration failed.

Democrats in Congress accused the White House of “crying wolf.” Even members of Congress who sympathize with President Reagan’s views on Nicaragua said that his aides inspired little confidence in their portrayal of the situation. And Administration officials, while insisting that their alarm over the Nicaraguan action was well-founded, acknowledged that they badly mishandled the affair.

Curiously, many Democrats were ready by the end of the week to agree that the Administration’s basic intelligence on the fighting in Central America was accurate and that Nicaragua’s Sandinista government had sent as many as 1,500 troops into Honduras.

But Washington’s rhetorical battles revealed that the Reagan Administration’s credibility on Central America was still close to zero in the eyes of many members of Congress--whether they agree with the Administration or not.

And it pointed up an unusual new factor in the long-running debate: Many congressmen have created their own “intelligence networks” to gather information about what is happening around the world.

“So erosive is the loss of the Administration’s credibility (that) . . . you reach the stage where people just don’t believe things,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), a conservative Democrat who largely supports the Administration’s policies in Central America.

“It goes way back to the mining of the harbors,” Nunn said, referring to the CIA’s secret operations off Nicaragua’s coast in 1984. “From that point on there’s been one case after another that’s undermined the Administration’s credibility on Central America.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), another conservative who has been a leading voice in favor of aid for the Contras, said that the Administration’s credibility gap had become “something of a problem” in assembling a majority for Contra aid. “It’s the result of the many years of confusion, sometimes misinformation, that we’ve received from the Administration,” he said.

5 Years of Misleading

At the root of the problem is a five-year record of Administration statements that misled Congress about U.S. operations in Central America, from the earliest CIA explanations that its covert aid to the Contras was aimed merely at interdicting leftist weapons shipments, to last year’s Iran-Contra hearings, which laid bare a systematic White House effort to lie to Congress.

Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan’s former national security adviser, pleaded guilty last week to charges of misleading Congress. His successor, Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter, and Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, a White House aide on Poindexter’s staff, were indicted Wednesday on charges that included lying to Congress.

“There’s some genuine skepticism when you look back at the Iran-Contra affair and other times when the Administration was not candid about what was going on,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman David L. Boren (D-Okla.), another supporter of Contra aid.

“Unfortunately, we’re paying the price for that now and it’s a real tragedy. . . . They’ve got a case to make now but unfortunately they’re paying the price (for past missteps) now that they’re right.”

Members of Congress and their aides gave relatively high marks to the CIA and other intelligence officials for their presentations on the situation in Honduras this week.

But when Secretary of State George P. Shultz and other senior officials tried to use the relatively sparse intelligence about the Nicaraguan incursion to pressure Congress toward an early vote on Contra aid, they aroused the ire of some of their supporters as well as their opponents.

“There’s no reason to dispute the pros, the analysts,” said Wilson Morris, a spokesman for House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), one of the Administration’s sharpest critics. “The problem is when the pros give their analysis to the politicos.”

“The intelligence community is doing a pretty good job, but the trouble is there’s not a lot of good information,” added a Democratic aide who attended intelligence briefings this week. “They have done the sensible thing, which was to (hedge) heavily. It’s the people who were yelling ‘invasion’ who got the Administration in trouble.”

Intelligence Called Spotty

Administration officials acknowledge that U.S. intelligence on the fighting in Honduras has been spotty. The Nicaraguan incursion came in a thickly forested region so remote that it appears as a blank space on most relief maps, under a jungle canopy that made aerial photography--a mainstay of military intelligence--almost useless.

The United States has succeeded in intercepting many Sandinista radio transmissions that gave a partial picture of military movements, officials said. But with few U.S. intelligence agents spread across a wide area of difficult terrain, the main source of intelligence has been the Contras--and their information has not always been reliable.

Part of the Administration’s problem is that, unlike Vietnam two decades ago, Central America is only a few hours from Washington by airplane. Several members of Congress have amassed their own contacts, giving them independent sources of information that they sometimes view as more reliable than the official view.

The Administration compounded its credibility problems on the fighting in Honduras by announcing urgently Wednesday that Nicaragua had staged an “invasion” and declaring that the United States was considering a military response. Then Administration officials denied to members of Congress that Reagan had decided to send troops--when, in fact, the decision had already been made.

That was a mistake, McCain said. “I don’t understand that methodology,” he added.

Wright spokesman Morris said that White House Chief of Staff Howard H. Baker Jr. personally assured the Speaker on Wednesday afternoon that the reports of troops going to Honduras were “categorically false.”

“It was almost gratuitous,” Morris said. “We didn’t even ask them the question.”

“That was a mistake,” conceded an Administration official who was involved in organizing the troop plan. “We should have just said we weren’t sure what we were going to do.”

But he defended the Administration’s portrayal of the incursion.

“We’re accused of overselling it,” he said, “but how did we oversell? We didn’t say that this was a threat to the survival of Honduras. Calling it an invasion was an overstatement, but we were stuck--Honduras had already called it an invasion. What were we going to do, say the Hondurans were wrong?”