Ben Linder

Benjamin Ernest Linder (July 7, 1959 — April 28, 1987), born in California, was a young American engineer who was killed in an ambush by a group of CIA-funded Contras while working on a small hydroelectric dam that was to bring electricity and running water to a village in the middle of Nicaragua's war zone. Linder's death made front-page headlines around the world and polarized opinion in the United States.

While in College at the University of Washington, Linder enjoyed juggling, and was often seen around Seattle riding a 5-6 foot tall unicycle. He graduated in 1983 with a degree in mechanical engineering. He left his Oregon home that summer and moved to Managua. In 1986, Linder moved from Managua to El Cuá, a village in the Nicaraguan war zone, where he helped form a team to build a hydroplant to bring electricity to the town.

On 28 April, 1987, Linder and two Nicaraguans -- Sergio Hernández and Pablo Rosales -- were killed in the Contra ambush while working at the construction site for a new dam for the nearby village of San José de Bocay. The autopsy showed that Linder was first wounded by a grenade, then shot at point-blank range in the head. The two Nicaraguans were also murdered at close range, Rosales by a stab wound in the heart.

Linder's electrification project was typical of Contra targets. Near El Cuá, the agricultural cooperative of El Cedro had been attacked three times resulting in a number of deaths. On March 19, 1987, shortly before Linder's death, four coop members tried to fend off a Contra attack, providing cover for residents as they escaped. Two of them were killed, one a close friend of Linder's. The health clinic at the coop, its food supply center, and a house were burned to the ground.

The massacre of Linder and the Nicaraguans was a deliberate strategy on the part of the Contras to undermine support for the Sandinistas by engaging in a campaign of sabotage against the nation's economy, and demonstrating the cost to the people if they continued to support their government.

Controversy

Linder's death was bitterly debated in the United States, both in the media and in Congress. Opponents of Washington's policy in Nicaragua called him a "national hero" and a martyr of the Left, while supporters of Washington's policy questioned whether he was providing aid to the Sandinista government against the Contras.

U.S. embassy officials in Nicaragua admitted that they never investigated the incident and had no interest in doing so.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater was quoted in The New York Times as saying that US citizens working in Nicaragua "put themselves in harm's way". Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, an ardent defender of the Contra War, said Linder simply should have known better than to be in a combat zone.

During a congressional hearing in May 1987, some defenders of U.S. policy in Nicaragua on the House Western Hemisphere Subcommittee launched personal attacks on Linder's family and other witnesses who came to testify on behalf of Linder and his work. One congresswoman accused Linder's family of turning his death into a political issue. The Village Voice reported one exchange between Linder's mother Elizabeth, who had just given testimony to her son's work and motivations, and Congresswoman Connie Mack (R) of Florida. Said Mack:

I guess what really has me upset is that I just cannot understand how you can use grief that I know you feel, use it to politicize this situation. Or to allow yourself to be used to politicize this situation.... I guess the reason I find this so difficult is that I don't want to be tough on you, but I really feel you have asked for it.

CBS News correspondent Dan Rather expressed an opposite view of Linder's death and the ongoing war:

Benjamin Linder was no revolutionary firebrand, spewing rhetoric and itching to carry a rifle through the jungles of Central America. He was a slight, soft-spoken, thoughtful young man. When, at 23, he left the comfort and security of the United States for Nicaragua, he wasn't exactly sure what he would find... But he wanted to see Nicaragua first-hand, and so he headed off, armed with a new degree in engineering, and the energy and ideals of youth... This wasn't just another death in a war that has claimed thousands of Nicaraguans. This was an American who was killed with weapons paid for with American tax dollars. The bitter irony of Benjamin Linder's death is that he went to Nicaragua to build-up what his own country's dollars paid to destroy -- and ended up a victim of the destruction... The loss of Benjamin Linder is more than fodder in an angry political debate. It is the loss of something that seems rare these days: a man with the courage to put his back behind his beliefs. It would have been very easy for this bright, young man to follow the path to a good job and a comfortable salary. Instead, he chose to follow the lead of his conscience.

The murder of Linder and the growing distaste in the U.S. for the covert war in Nicaragua finally led to the U.S. Congress prohibiting military aid to the Contras. But the Contra attacks, conscription into the army, the complete U.S. economic embargo on the impoverished country, and the Sandinista response of eliminating civil liberties in the mid-1980s all combined to cause the defeat of the FSLN in February 1990 elections.

In July 1995, Joan Kruckewitt, an American journalist who lived in Nicaragua from 1983 to 1991 and covered the war between the Sandinistas and the Contras for ABC Radio, located and interviewed one of the men who killed Ben Linder. The story became the basis for an article in The New Yorker and was later expanded into a book, The Death of Ben Linder.

See also

• Bill Stewart, an ABC reporter killed a decade earlier in Nicaragua.

External links

• The Death of Ben Linder (http://www.sevenstories.com/book/index.cfm/GCOI/58322100362040), by Joan Kruckewitt ISBN 1583220682
• The Death of Ben Linder (http://www.scripter.net/backpages/blinder.htm) (excerpt)
• The death of a dreamer (http://www.rtfcam.org/martyrs/fullness_of_life/ben_linder.htm) on the website of the Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico
• Ben Linder explains the functions of the small scale hydro-electric facility in El Cuá, Nicaragua (http://www.stanford.edu/~joank/vid/Ben_explains.html) requires RealAudio
• Ben Linder (http://www.yachana.org/reports/nica2001/ben.html) Marc Becker's site
• Ben Linder as a unicyclist (http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/albuo32)