A Confession about the Army in Nicaragua and Political Espionage

Comments on the Army’s statement denying its involvement in political espionage activities

By Luis Carrion Cruz  (Confidencial)

HAVANA TIMES – The Nicaraguan Army has issued a statement to deny the content of a compromising video with comments from the former Minister of the Interior, Ana Isabel Morales, which acknowledges the involvement of Military Intelligence in political espionage activities. However, after some verbal juggling and obscure phrases the Army was unable to clear up the situation. Let’s have a look.

To begin with, the statement omits the name and position of Mrs. Morales because it is precisely what gives credibility and relevance to her statement. Because of the position she held for many years, she knows exactly how the mechanisms of coordination between the Army and the Police work are in cases such as the one she refers to and the type of collaboration that is established between them.

Morales is someone in the position to speak with knowledge of the cause. On the other hand, it is clear from the video that she does not show any reservation nor recommend discretion to the audience when she refers to the Army’s involvement in political espionage, because clearly for her that is normal, even though she surely knows the laws that forbid it.

The communiqué rejects and categorically disavows her comments and any other persons in the same sense, and links what Morales said with alleged slanderous campaigns against the Army.

But many of us know that Mrs. Morales is an Ortega follower at heart and is close to Rosario Murillo. Under no circumstances would she try to manipulate information or slander the army, or any of the institutions of the regime, on the contrary, she made those statements with great security because she never thought that her words would be made public, words that she has surely repeated many times on other occasions.

The Army, says the statement, rejects these comments which they say are trying to “place them where they have never been.” The wording of that phrase is quite peculiar but above all it is unclear as to what they are rejecting.

The former Minister of the Interior clearly asks her audience to provide operational support to the Military Intelligence when they arrive in the neighborhoods to establish control points for keeping tabs on the opposition.

She does not mention any place where the Military Intelligence has been, she does not “locate” them anywhere, but refers to what they come to do in neighborhoods in general. The communiqué therefore denies what has not been affirmed.

But more important than what it denies is what it doesn’t deny. It does not explicitly and categorically deny that Military Intelligence is involved in illegal political espionage activities nor does it deny that they collaborate with the Police Intelligence in those same activities.

Suspicions have existed for quite some time about these illicit activities of the Military Intelligence, particularly in the context of the current crisis, but the video of Morales confirms them through the mouth of a trusted person close to the highest levels of Ortega’s power, that send it to guide its members on how they should collaborate with the Army and the Police in the espionage and political control of the opponents.

The citizens would have been clearer of the position of the Army if they had said that the military intelligence does not seek, directly or indirectly, information about citizens opposed to the regime and neither does any of its officials; that it does not share with the Police information that for any reason unrelated to its own activity has become of its knowledge about the position and political activities of citizens; that no official of the Military Intelligence provides advisory services or any type of collaboration to the police intelligence bodies related to obtaining political information from citizens; and that they do not seek information about the political position of the members of the Army or the police. This is what they needed to say to dispel any doubt.

Now, as the Army says in its communiqué, they do what they say and say what they do, maybe they cannot say it.