A CIA link. Iran-contra documents show that the propaganda campaign's chief architects were the late CIA director William J. Casey and Walter Raymond Jr., a veteran of CIA clandestine media operations overseas. In 1982, Casey detailed Raymond to the NSC staff where he set up the "public-diplomacy" machinery. One U.S. official described Raymond in an interview as the CIA's leading propaganda expert; Raymond told congressional investigators he was recommended for the NSC staff by another CIA veteran, Donald Gregg, national security adviser to Vice President George Bush.

Casey's role. Despite bars on CIA domestic operations, Casey appears to have been the guiding hand behind the propaganda campaign, as he was behind the contra war and North's secret contra-resupply network. As the public-diplomacy apparatus took shape in August 1983, Casey summoned advertising specialists to the Old Executive Office Building to brainstorm about how "to sell a `new product'-Central America-by generating interest across-the-spectrum," according to an NSC summary of the meeting. Sensitive to the bars on executive-branch propaganda and Casey's participation, Raymond noted in one August 1983 memo that "the work done within the administration has to, by definition, be at arms length." Raymond added that he hoped "to get {Casey} out of the loop." Yet Casey remained active through 1986.

The most visible arm of the propaganda machinery was the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean, known by the initials S/LPD. The office was directed initially by Raymond's choice, [Otto Reich]. It was housed at the State Department but actually reported to the National Security Council, Raymond said in an Aug. 7, 1986 memo for Casey. (Reich and Raymond have since denied that the office "reported" to the NSC. But files obtained by the General Accounting Office show that Reich provided activity reports directly to the president's national-security adviser, his budgets were cleared by the NSC and Raymond arranged personnel for Reich's office.)