Contra Returns Amid Tight Security; Science Center Audience Videotaped

Five weeks after an unruly Harvard audience pelted him with eggs and shouted him out of Boylston Hall, a Nicaraguan contra Wednesday pressed the rebel case in a return appearance.

And the University went to great lengths to ensure that this time Jorge Rosales, a spokesman for the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), could be heard.

Videotape cameras were trained on the audience as a peace-keeping force of 15 Harvard police officers, 20 student marshals and several top Harvard administrators, including Dean of Student Archie C. Epps III and Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57, patrolled the Science Center.

Speaking to an audience of nearly 200 in Science Center D, Rosales called on Americans to support the contras' plea for $100 million in military aid from Congress.

About a third of the audience expressed their opposition to the contras by standing up, turning their backs to him, and walking out 10 minutes into his speech.

The contra representative, who has met mixed receptions on other area campuses, said that the aid would furnish the Honduras-based rebels with equipment sorely needed if they are to overthrow the leftist Sandinista regime that took power in Nicaragua in 1979.

In response to a student's question, Rosales acknowledged that rebel fighters and their commanders have committed atrocities against civilians and opposition forces.

But holding up what he called a handbook of principles based on the Geneva Convention, he said the contras have a strict code of conduct. One commander whom the contras found to have committed atrocities was "punished to a maximum punishment," he said.

Rosales denied accusations that most contra leaders served as national guardsmen under Nicaragua's former dictator Anastasio Somoza, whom the Sandinistas overthrew, although critics of the contras charge otherwise.

Twenty-three percent of the contra fighters are former Sandinistas, 27 percent were Somoza supporters and 50 percent of them are unrelated to either regime, Rosales said.

Before Rosales took the podium, Epps read from Faculty of Arts and Sciences' Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities, a policy statement on freedom of speech and movement. He admonished the audience not to disrupt the speech.

Students "are required to obey the instructions of officers of the University," Epps told the audience, instructing them to "desist in shouting" or "leave the room."

Several students hissed as Epps spoke and others broke into laughter.

The University videotaped the audiencethroughout the 90-minute event so that "in case ofa disturbance, the perpetrators could then beidentified," according to Kris W. Kobach '88, thepresident of the Republican Club, whichco-sponsored the speech with the ConservativeClub.

Conservative Club President Saied M. Kashani'86 and two other students took still photographsof people in the audience during the speech inorder "to catch disruptors in the act and havehard evidence to give to the Ad Board or theC.R.R.," Kashani said.

Immediately before Rosales was to speak,Kashani said he saw a student "collecting spit inhis mouth" for the purpose of spitting it atRosales. Kashani said he pointed the camera at himand said, "Just swallow." The student "swallowedand smiled," Kashani said.

Outside the auditorium, officials searchingbags and checking for Harvard College or GraduateSchool of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) identificationcards confiscated a plastic bottle full of a"sticky red liquid" which one man had apparentlybrought to throw at Rosales, Kashani said.

Admission was restricted to students in theCollege and the Graduate School. Epps had earliersaid that graduate students would be excluded, butthat decision was reversed.

The demonstrators who threw eggs and fake bloodat Rosales on April 2 and prevented him fromgetting beyond the third sentence of his speechidentified themselves as members of loosely-boundpolitical group and are not believed to haveincluded Harvard students.

Before Wednesday's event, nearly 75 protesters,most of whom were members of the Harvard studentgroup called the Committee on Central America(COCA), marched in a circle outside Science CenterD. The protesters shouted "U.S.A., C.I.A. out ofNicaragua," and distributed a flyer describingalleged contra atrocities.

Contra Says

The contras, who President Reagan describes as"freedom fighters," consist of three majorfighting units, including the FDN. The bill togrant aid to the contras was defeated in the Houseof Representatives but passed the Senate. It isagain pending debate in the House