Trying to Hide $250 Million

Covert operations go better when they remain covert. Yet U.S. funding and CIA direction of the contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua have long been among Washington's most openly debated topics. It has been no secret either that the CIA has been funneling arms and supplies to the fighters in Afghanistan who have been battling the five-year-old Soviet occupation. The clandestine supply route through Pakistan has been widely reported. The U.S. Senate even voted unanimously last Oct. 3 to approve a resolution declaring that "it would be indefensible to provide the freedom fighters with only enough aid to fight and die, but not enough to advance their cause of freedom."

Still, the actual amount of the clandestine funds was not meant to be made public. Last week, however, the New York Times reported that Congress had approved the spending of $280 million to help the Afghan insurgents in the current fiscal year and that this was more than twice what was spent a year earlier. An intelligence source told TIME that the more precise level is $250 million. This is more than ten times the $24 million spent last year on the Nicaragua operation.