Another touchy moment came after I went to work at Newsweek in 1987. The following year, the Reagan administration was trying to resume U.S. backing for contra raids on Nicaragua, in part by claiming that the Sandinista government was persecuting the Catholic Church without reason.
However, in my reporting on contra funding, I learned that the CIA had been using Nicaragua's Catholic Church and Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo to funnel money to groups inside Nicaragua seeking to undermine the Sandinista government politically while the contras operated militarily.
Ultimately I had more than a dozen sources inside the contra movement or close to U.S. intelligence confirming these operations, which I was told carried an annual budget of about $10 million. I also discovered that the CIA's support for Obando and his Catholic hierarchy went through a maze of cut-outs in Europe, apparently to give Obando deniability.
But one well-placed Nicaraguan exile said he had spoken with Obando about the money and the cardinal had expressed fear that his past receipt of CIA funding would come out.
The CIA funding for Nicaragua's Catholic Church was originally unearthed in 1985 by the congressional intelligence oversight committees, which insisted that the money be cut off to avoid compromising Obando. But Oliver North's operation simply picked up where the CIA had left off.
In fall 1985, North earmarked $100,000 of his privately raised money to go to Obando for his anti-Sandinista activities.
But what was the right thing for an American journalist to do with this information?
Here was a case in which the U.S. government was misleading the American public by pretending that the Sandinistas were cracking down on the Catholic Church and the internal opposition without any justification. Plus, this U.S. propaganda was being used to make the case in Congress for an expanded war in which thousands of Nicaraguans were dying.
However, if Newsweek ran the story, it would put CIA assets, including the cardinal, in a dicey situation, possibly even life-threatening.
A Cardinal on the Run
When I presented the information to my bureau chief, Evan Thomas, I made no recommendation on whether we should publish or not. I just laid out the facts as I had ascertained them. To my surprise, Thomas was eager to go forward.
Newsweek contacted its Central America correspondent Joseph Contreras, who outlined our questions to Obando's aides and prepared a list of questions to present to the cardinal personally. When Contreras went to Obando's home in a posh suburb of Managua, the cardinal literally evaded the issue.
As Contreras later recounted in a cable back to the United States, he was approaching the front gate when it suddenly swung open and the cardinal, sitting in the front seat of his burgundy Toyota Land Cruiser, blew past.
As Contreras made eye contact and waved the letter, Obando's driver gunned the engine. Contreras jumped into his car and hastily followed. Contreras guessed correctly that Obando had turned left at one intersection and headed north toward Managua.
Contreras caught up to the cardinal's vehicle at the first stop-light. The driver apparently spotted the reporter and, when the light changed, sped away, veering from lane to lane. The Land Cruiser again disappeared from view, but at the next intersection, Contreras turned right and spotted the car pulled over, with its occupants presumably hoping that Contreras had turned left.
Quickly, the cardinal's vehicle pulled onto the road and now sped back toward Obando's house. Contreras gave up the chase, fearing that any further pursuit might appear to be harassment.
