The New York Review of Books

To the Editors:

Bob Leiken uses conjecture, hearsay and simple invention when writing about Nicaragua [NYR, December 5, 1985]. At one dinner he and I both attended, in Managua in 1985, he was confronted by a group of eight journalists who asked him where he found his “information.” “I’m not a journalist,” he replied smugly, “I don’t have to support everything I write with facts.”

Unfortunately, when your correspondents have confronted him with his lies in your columns, he has been less frank and has chosen instead to attack their credentials. Thus in your June 26, 1986 issue he claims I misrepresented myself. In July 1986 I wrote offering proof that I was indeed a correspondent for the London Guardian. You were evidently embarrassed: “Of course you must respond to the personal attack,” you told me over the phone last month. At the same time you asked me to cut my response in half. But my first letter was made lengthy, not by a personal defense (Leiken is the only person to have ever questioned my objectivity in four years reporting from Central America for the BBC, The Guardian and The Economist, inter alia), but by the much more crucial effort to correct just some of Leiken’s outrageous distortions about Nicaragua. Very well, here is an abbreviated rebuttal, but both you and he know that I have plenty more evidence to unmask Leiken’s misuse of your columns for his pro-contra propaganda effort.

Since Bob raised the question of misrepresentation it is now fair to scrutinize his own credentials. But this is not tit-for-tat muckraking. Part of Leiken’s undue influence on the Nicaraguan debate in Washington has been the perception that he is politically trustworthy; in testimony to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on March 4th he described himself as “an independent witness in a scholarly capacity.” “Democratic,” “liberal,” “intellectual,” “well-respected” have been just some of the adjectives used by publications such as The New Republic and Time magazine to describe Leiken. If he is all of these things, we are led to assume, his views must be reasonable and accurate.

But throughout his life Bob has espoused a succession of idiotic political theories. In the late Sixties he was a Stalinist; Professor John Womack of MIT describes Leiken as “one of the few people I know who has ever urged his friends to read Stalin.” By the end of the Seventies he was flirting with Maoism and chummy with the October League. And this wasn’t a young student’s hot flush; he was nearly forty at the time.

As a failed academic Leiken has always tried to justify his political lunacy with pseudo-scholarly writings. As evidence I have already sent you a copy of a tract on Mexico which he offered for publication a few years ago. Of course you don’t have the space to print the whole diatribe so for the benefit of your readers let me summarize the main conclusion: Latin American workers are about to rediscover the virtues of Leninism, therefore Argentina, Mexico and Brazil can be added to Italy, France and England “as the likely constituents of the next stage of world revolution”!

It was this history of untrustworthy political judgement that led Leiken to team up with the far right on the Nicaraguan issue. He is a political and intellectual nitwit, who brings the fanaticism and tunnel vision of the recent convert to his assessment of the Sandinistas. When the facts don’t fit his overblown prose he simply invents them. That his past nitwittery was of the loony left does not magically validate his critique of a left-wing regime. That he recently advocated “world revolution” does not make him a reliable critic of the Sandinista revolution. Or does The New York Review want its readers to trust the word of a man who in his middle age went gaga over Stalin and Mao?

As for his trumpeted independence on the Nicaraguan question: long before Bob achieved notoriety for his views he was an informal assistant to Arturo Cruz, now one of the top three leaders of the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionary movement, UNO. He also helped Cruz’s son, Arturito, and through him the onetime contra leader Eden Pastora. Far from being independent he is a very committed and active lobbyist who has lately become deeply involved with the largest CIA-organized contra army, the FDN, in an effort to sanitize it and help it win the popular support which it has lacked thus far. In June his activities caused three top FDN commanders to publicize a signed statement in which they complained of his interference in FDN affairs.

Leiken knows his credentials are weak, so he deceitfully claims the endorsement of respected liberals such as Patt Derian, who was President Carter’s Assistant Secretary for Human Rights. “I find Leiken’s efforts to incorporate me, as an expert to validate his views, a slippery technique,” says Derian. She complains that he alludes to events that occurred in her presence and then indiscriminately tacks on descriptions of other events or personal opinions of which she has no knowledge, in order to make it appear that she can confirm his information or that she agrees with his conclusions.

For example, Leiken has consistently lied about events at an opposition rally that occurred in the Nicaraguan town of Chinandega in 1984. He was not at the rally, I was. I accompanied a TV crew who recorded most of the event. Backed by this evidence I have, elsewhere, exposed Leiken’s description as a tissue of lies. Nevertheless Leiken claims that his version was confirmed, in front of Derian and others, by several Chinandegans during a visit to that town earlier this year. But Derian says, “I cannot confirm anything except that one doctor told us that Arturo Cruz came into town and along the main street in a car, and not in a parade or on foot, as Leiken has said.” In other words Derian will not endorse the Leiken version and specifically exposes one lie which he has now repeated on several occasions.

In a similar way Leiken has tried to discredit the Nicaraguan elections by quoting anonymous “party leaders” hinting darkly at the possibility of electoral fraud. To boost his shaky evidence in his piece he “quoted” Adolfo Evertsz, a leader of the Socialist Party (for, by inference, if the Socialists who are Sandinista allies condemn the elections we know they must have been rigged). But Evertsz says he has no recollection of ever having met Leiken; he denies the statements Leiken attributes to him and suggests that Leiken mistranslated a speech he made which was broadcast on Nicaraguan television and used the mistranslated comments as if they had been made in an interview. The statement Leiken puts into Evertsz’s mouth speaks of Sandinista efforts “to confuse and frighten people” and of threats of reprisals against nonvoters. Evertsz says “these statements are ridiculous” and refutes other “quotes” Leiken attributes to anonymous Socialist Party officers.

As part of the effort to establish his credentials as a scholar Leiken claims a virtual monopoly on the facts; he says his critics should “distinguish false speculations from factual claims.” Yet even on matters as simple as the names of political parties Leiken gets his own facts all wrong; as I detailed in my earlier letter he garbles the history of the various Nicaraguan conservative parties. His purpose is subtle: to prove that one conservative faction “was awarded official status by the Sandinista courts,” implying that the courts are pliant to government pressure. To anyone who has studied the Nicaraguan legal system this charge is ridiculous.

Nicaragua still uses, virtually unaltered, the pre-revolutionary legal code, while many judges are non-Sandinistas and distrustful of police evidence. It was partly for this reason, and to boost the rate and speed of convictions, that the government created the so-called Anti-Somocista Popular Tribunals—the kangaroo courts which try wartime Public Order offenses and which closely parallel Northern Ireland’s Diplock courts.

But all civil and criminal cases still go through the normal judicial system. The case to which Leiken refers was heard by the seven members of the Supreme Court, of whom two were self-proclaimed conservatives and a third was a member of the Independent Liberal Party. Shortly afterwards, in a public display of judicial independence, the head of the Supreme Court threatened to resign unless Sandinista authorities executed his court orders. The news was trumpeted delightedly on the front page of the opposition newspaper, La Prensa. Even the bitterly anti-Sandinista lawyer, Enrique Sotelo Borgen, whom Leiken has quoted at length in his own defense, describes the Supreme Court as “impartial.”

I could go on like this forever, unmasking Leiken’s lies, slurs and mistakes, but you won’t let me…

Tony Jenkins

Managua, Nicaragua

To the Editors:

Robert Leiken has been engaged, for a number of years, in a series of disputes concerning articles he has written about the Sandinistas and the contras. One of them concerns events surrounding a political rally held in Chinandega, Nicaragua in 1984. After twenty-eight years in politics, I have learned that the who-shot-John details of what took place at a long ago political event are virtually of no interest to me and that I am unwilling to invest any time in this.

I now found myself inexplicably embroiled in just such a tangle. Anthony Jenkins, who was present at the Arturo Cruz rally in question, and Mr. Leiken, who was not, are the principal protagonists and each has cited me; neither is well known to me. Mr. Jenkins has written a letter excoriating Mr. Leiken and quotes me, accurately. One of the editors of The New York Review, who called to check the quotes, suggested that Mr. Leiken was trying to get in touch with me. Mr. Leiken then sent me a three-page letter. At this point, it seemed prudent to write my own.

It is apparent that an article in The New York Review provoked a storm of correspondence questioning many of the assertions of facts made by Mr. Leiken. Mr. Leiken was stung by the accusations and endeavored to use a human rights mission to buttress his position.

This mission conducted by the International League for Human Rights left Washington February 9, 1986. Mr. Leiken, before that day completely unknown to me, was at the onset a member of the small delegation. (On the second morning, his status changed and he became our second Spanish interpreter and “resource” person. This change took place in part because it was obvious that Mr. Leiken’s preoccupation with validating his claims was absorbing time that we could not spare. For instance, we were delayed at La Prensa for nearly an hour while he conducted a chaotic and fruitless search for a picture of Mr. Cruz surrounded by turbas.)

Mr. Leiken in a lengthy reply to letters in The New York Review [June 26, 1986] names me among those present at a meeting where “several Chinandegans confirmed to the visiting group each of the points I have noted above as they were published in The New Republic [of October 8, 1984].” I cannot confirm that. This is what took place: Mr. Leiken arranged a meeting in Chinandega. When we arrived one person was present. While others were being assembled Mr. Leiken questioned him. Until I realized that we were back at the ‘84 rally, I took notes. About five AM on the morning of the rally a group of people assembled to construct a platform. Around 6:30 “around three state cars” containing “about twenty-four people armed with sticks and knives” arrived and “intimidated and chased away” the builders. A doctor then entered. Mr. Leiken asked him if “before the meeting Cruz came in a car, like a parade.” The doctor said, “I saw Arturo Cruz enter the city in a car. I saw him on Calle Centrale. I was walking.” If the doctor was correct in his memory, it is quite a stretch to call a man riding in a car a participant in a “march.”