Calero gave $90,000

Press, 22 May 1987, Page 8

Calero gave $90,000

By

JIM WOLF

of Reuters

NZPA Washington A Nicaraguan contra leader, Adolfo Calero, said yesterday that he gave the former White House aide, LieutenantColonel Oliver North, SUS9O,OOO in traveller’s cheques to help in a bid to free United States hostages in Lebanon. In testimony to a joint House of Representatives and Senate panel investigating the Iran-contra arms scandal that rocked the Reagan presidency, Calero said he did not ask Colonel North to sign receipts and did not ask how the money was used.

“I had trust he would use that for the furthering of freedom’s cause,”

Calero said. Colonel North was dismissed from President Reagan’s National Security Council on November 25 when his role in diverting funds to the contras from the sale of arms to Iran was disclosed.

Calero, aged 62, heads the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the largest group of guerrillas fighting the Leftist Sandinista Government.

He was responsible for distributing most of the private funds received by the contras, including about SUS 32 million from Saudi Arabia and more than SUSI million arranged by Carl “Spitz” Channell, a fund-raiser who pleaded guilty on April 29 to tax conspiracy. Calero said Colonel

North told him in the spring of 1985 that “there was a private effort going to liberate the American hostages.

“I reacted immediately, saying Nicaraguan hostages of the Sandinistas, American hostages of these groups — they were one and the same,” he said.

He said his first contribution was SUSIS,OOO or $U525,000 in traveller’s cheques drawn on a Cayman Islands bank. Further donations followed on three or four occasions.

Calero added the contras considered North a hero and had discussed erecting a statue of him if they achieved victory against the Sandinistas.