Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Brown tells it as it is

Friday, Nov. 17, 2000 | 9:39 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

The United Nations representative got out of his helicopter and looked like he wanted to leave immediately and return to his expensive house in Tegucigalpa. The one person he didn't want to see sitting on a rock waiting for him was me with my camera. Two days earlier he and other United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees officials had made it clear the press wouldn't be allowed to watch the removal of 900 women, babies, disabled and elderly Nicaraguan Resistance refugees from their Pista Nueva camp in the jungles of Bocay, Honduras.

Little did those U.N. officials realize that on an early May 1990 morning I would later follow them to the barren camp near Las Vegas, Honduras, where they were dumping the refugees. They didn't want more pictures of 1,500 refugees living in 37 tents without walls and few supplies. The refugees had been living much better in the jungles.

So why did these people allow themselves to be taken to a dusty field near Las Vegas? Because the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees gave them three choices. They could stay where they were and starve, attempt the 20- to 30-day hike through the jungles into a safe area in Nicaragua, or go to the refugee camp near Las Vegas. The first two choices would have meant certain death for babies and little children because the trek is at least 15 days for a healthy combat soldier.

This was the beginning of a high-level investigation that, despite all of the sugarcoating, resulted in some action by the U.S. State Department. What seemed to bother both U.N. and U.S. officials more than the condition of the refugees was how I had made my way into both Bocay and Las Vegas that day.

If I had wanted to answer them it would have been about a fellow Nevadan named Tim Brown. Brown, a graduate of UNR, was on special assignment in the diplomatic service where he spent 27 years following 10 years as a U.S. Marine. He and a couple of close associates, who are still in the State Department, were assigned as liaisons with the Nicaraguan Contras operating out of Honduras.

Nevada's Sen. Harry Reid and I met with Brown and other diplomats a couple of years earlier and were impressed with his knowledge. Later, during several trips into the jungle to meet with different groups of Contras in combat, my evaluation of Brown went even higher. The Contras trusted him then and they still do.

"When the AK-47s Fall Silent" is a book just published by the Hoover Institution Press at Stanford University. It's edited and translated by Brown and tells the firsthand stories of "Revolutionaries, Guerrillas, and the Dangers of Peace." Without a doubt, this man, now living back in Northern Nevada, has written a true and exciting history that everybody should read. I can't imagine a university course about Central America not including it as required reading.

Former mayor of Mexico City and international political figure Cuauhtemoc Cardenas has written the foreword for Brown's book. Essays by diplomats, military leaders and politicians with differing points of view make it great reading.

Three years ago I again traveled into Northern Nicaragua with Brown as he interviewed the people who fought in the jungles. They gave him records and told stories that will only be made public when his future books are published. After all of these years he is still the person they trust the most.

Brown's book is not only good history, it's also good reading.