With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua

by Christopher Dickey

Overview

From Simon & Schuster, With the Contras is Christopher Dickey's book about a reporter in the wilds of Nicaragua.

An account of the "secret" war in Central America concentrates on the people involved, from "Suicida," a sergeant in the Samozoan National Guard, and his guerrillas caught in the daily violence, to CIA operatives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439140079
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	09/17/2008
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Christopher Dickey, Newsweek's award-winning Paris bureau chief and Middle East editor, reports regularly from Baghdad, Cairo, and Jerusalem, and writes the weekly "Shadowland" column — an inside look at the world of spies and soldiers, guerrillas and suicide bombers — for Newsweek Online. He is the author of Summer of Deliverance, Expats, With the Contras, and the novel Innocent Blood. He lives in Paris.

Editorial Reviews

In this stimulating report on the Nicaraguan conflict, Dickey, Washington Post correspondent for Central America, focuses on a peril-filled year he spent with a CIA-supported Nicaraguan counterrevolutionary patrol. With admirable clarity, he identifies the many groups and individuals that make up the contra forces, among them former Somoza supporters, veteran commandos from earlier CIA operations, and ex-Sandinistas disillusioned by the regime's Marxist complexion. The Reagan administration's controversial ``secret war'' not only goes far beyond its avowed purpose of preventing arms shipments to Salvadoran Communists, charges Dickey, but is a disastrously ill-conceived, incompetently executed operation no longer covert, rife with scandal and atrocities on both sides. This war, the author concludes, has scarred the CIA, has been costly in money and livesof guerrillas, peasants and Americansand has further jeopardized the U.S.'s international reputation. January 31

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly