No `regular ordinary person'

OPINION Commentary No `regular ordinary person' Ron Arnold 07/06/1987 The San Diego Union-Tribune UNION; 1,2,3,4,5,6 Page B-7 (Copyright 1987) Benjamin Ernest Linder, 27, mechanical engineer formerly of Portland, Ore., is dead. He was the first American killed in Nicaragua in a guerrilla attack by the insurgent capitalist revolutionaries. For his death we all feel sorrow and regret. For the left-wing activists who use his death as a propaganda tool against American foreign policy, we all feel outrage. Leftists who manipulate this human tragedy to stir up anti-American feelings are beneath contempt. But the propaganda was to be expected, for Ben Linder himself was a left-wing activist. And that is a dimension of the Linder tragedy the liberal press has assiduously ignored. Time magazine said, "Linder was killed while working, without wages, on a rural-electrification project in Nicaragua's north-central Jinotega province." Time did not say why Linder wanted to help consolidate the power of a Marxist-Leninist regime in a Soviet client state -- or that California's San Carlos Foundation paid Linder $4,500 to "volunteer." Ben's father, David Linder, a retired hospital pathologist in Portland, said of his son. "He's just a regular ordinary person." With all due respect to Ben's parents -- who are active in Portland's sister-city program with Corinto, Nicaragua, and other left-wing causes -- Ben Linder was no "regular ordinary person." Ben Linder was not a neutral party caught in the crunch. He worked as an agent of the Sandinista regime on a government power project. He was carrying a Soviet AK-47 automatic rifle when killed and often wore a Sandinista uniform. His anti-capitalist allegiances were sworn in advance. Linder was no stranger to Marxist ideology. He deliberately chose a project in the village of El Cua for his American-funded "volunteer" work -- "the most dangerous area in Nicaragua" according to American Embassy spokesman Alfred Laun. Linder often talked about dying in Nicaragua. Ben Linder was a 1983 mechanical engineering graduate of the University of Washington. The New York Times said, "While at the University of Washington, Mr. Linder became involved with Central American politics on the campus and was a founder of a campus group called Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES)." The Times didn't say what CISPES is. Conservative activist Brett Bader of Kirkland knows about CISPES. Today, at 26, he's president of the Bellevue-based political consulting firm, the Madison Group. In 1982 he was a student at the University of Washington, editor of the conservative newspaper, the Washington Spectator, and sat on the committee that oversaw student organizations. He examined the sheaf of paperwork submitted by CISPES founders and he knew Ben Linder . Bader said, "CISPES is a national organization, and Linder was instrumental in bringing it to the UW campus. Our committee made sure CISPES officers were actually students and certified the group." "CISPES supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. A primary activity was inviting radical leftists to speak on campuses. One leading speaker was Rafael Cancel-Miranda, a Latin American terrorist who shot up the House of Representatives in 1954, wounding five congressmen." CISPES' origins are revealed in The Revolution Lobby, by analysts Allen C. Brownfeld and J. Michael Waller of the Council for Inter-American Security, a Washington-based think tank: Documents captured from the communist guerrillas show that CISPES was founded in 1980 with the aid of the Communist Party USA and organized by Farid Handal, brother of Jorge Shafik Handal, general secretary of the illegal Communist Party of El Salvador. In 1982 the Washington Post reported on CISPES' ties to Communist Party fronts. Bader commented, "Being on the staff of the conservative campus newspaper, we didn't need any documents to tell us what kind of left-wing extremists had founded CISPES. We reported on them handing out Marxist leaflets and arranging anti-American protest demonstrations. Ben Linder was one of the founders of the UW chapter of CISPES. Did this intelligent young engineering student not know what his organization stood for? Hardly. Linder was no "regular ordinary person." After Alvaro Jose Baldizon, chief investigator of the Nicaraguan Ministry of the Interior, defected to the United States, he noted in 1985 that Interior Minister Tomas Borge routinely scoffed at friendly visiting Americans after they departed. He called American idealists tontos utiles -- useful fools -- considering them "temporary allies." Hard-line Marxist Borge -- an experienced user of fools -- warned his cohort never to trust idealistic tontos utiles "because such persons are ideologically weak and might one day betray the Sandinista Revolution." Ben Linder went in harm's way and lost. His tragic death conclusively demonstrated one thing: He was not ideologically weak. Arnold is a Bellevue, Wash., writer and media consultant.