William Blum
Killing Hope
U.S. Military and CIA
Interventions Since
World War II
William Blum
Zed Books London
Killing Hope was first published outside of North America by Zed Books Ltd, 7
Cynthia Street, London NI 9JF, UK in 2003.
Second impression, 2004
Printed by Gopsons Papers Limited, Noida, India
www.zedbooks.demon.co.uk
Published in South Africa by Spearhead, a division of New Africa Books, P0 Box
23408, Claremont 7735
This is a wholly revised, extended and updated edition of a book originally published
under the title The CIA: A Forgotten History (Zed Books, 1986)
Copyright © William Blum 2003
The right of William Blum to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted
by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover design by Andrew Corbett
ISBN 1 84277 368 2 hb ISBN 1 84277 369 0 pb
Spearhead ISBN 0 86486 560 0 pb
2
Contents
Introduction 6
1. China 1945 to 1960s: Was Mao Tse-tung just paranoid? 20
2. Italy 1947-1948: Free elections, Hollywood style 27
3. Greece 1947 to early 1950s: From cradle of democracy to client state 33
4. The Philippines 1940s and 1950s: America's oldest colony 38
5. Korea 1945-1953: Was it all that it appeared to be? 44
6. Albania 1949-1953: The proper English spy 54
7. Eastern Europe 1948-1956: Operation Splinter Factor 56
8. Germany 1950s: Everything from juvenile delinquency to terrorism 60
9. Iran 1953: Making it safe for the King of Kings 63
10. Guatemala 1953-1954: While the world watched 71
1 1 . Costa Rica mid-1950s: Trying to topple an ally, part I 82
12. Syria 1956-1957: Purchasing a new government 84
13. The Middle East 1957-1958:
The Eisenhower Doctrine claims another backyard for America 88
14. Indonesia 1957-1958: War and pornography 98
15. Western Europe 1950s and 1960s: Fronts within fronts within fronts 103
16. British Guiana 1953-1964: The CIA's international labor mafia 107
17. Soviet Union late 1940s to 1960s: From spy planes to book publishing 113
18. Italy 1950s to 1970s:
Supporting the Cardinal's orphans and techno-fascism 119
1 9 . Vietnam 1 950- 1 97 3 : The Hearts and Minds Circus 1 22
20. Cambodia 1955-1973:
Prince Sihanouk walks the high-wire of neutralism 133
21. Laos 1957-1973: LArmee Clandestine 139
22. Haiti 1959-1963: The Marines land, again 145
23. Guatemala 1960: One good coup deserves another 146
24. France/Algeria 1960s: L'etat, c'est la CIA 148
25. Ecuador 1960-1963: A textbook of dirty tricks 153
26. The Congo 1960-1964: The assassination of Patrice Lumumba 156
27. Brazil 1961-1964:
Introducing the marvelous new world of death squads 163
28. Peru 1960-1965: Fort Bragg moves to the jungle 172
29. Dominican Republic 1960-1966:
Saving democracy from communism by getting rid of democracy 175
30. Cuba 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution 185
31. Indonesia 1965:
Liquidating President Sukarno ... and 500,000 others
East Timor 1975: And 200,000 more 194
32. Ghana 1966: Kwame Nkrumah steps out of line 199
33. Uruguay 1964-1970: Torture — as American as apple pie 201
34. Chile 1964-1973:
A hammer and sickle stamped on your child's forehead 207
3
35. Greece 1964-1974:
"Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution, "said the
President of the United States 215
36. Bolivia 1964-1975:
Tracking down Che Guevara in the land of coup d'etat 22 1
37. Guatemala 1962 to 1980s: A less publicized "final solution" 229
38. Costa Rica 1970-1971: Trying to topple an ally, part II 239
39. Iraq 1972-1975:
Covert action should not be confused with missionary work 242
40. Australia 1973-1975: Another free election bites the dust 244
4 1 . Angola 1975 to 1980s: The Great Powers Poker Game 249
42. Zaire 1975-1978: Mobutu and the CIA, a marriage made in heaven 257
43. Jamaica 1976-1980: Kissinger's ultimatum 263
44. Seychelles 1979-1981: Yet another area of great strategic importance 267
45. Grenada 1979-1984:
Lying — one of the few growth industries in Washington 269
46. Morocco 1983: A video nasty 278
47. Suriname 1982-1984: Once again, the Cuban bogeyman 279
48. Libya 1981-1989: Ronald Reagan meets his match 280
49. Nicaragua 1978-1990: Destabilization in slow motion 290
50. Panama 1969-1991: Double-crossing our drug supplier 305
51. Bulgaria 1990/Albania 1991:
Teaching Communists what democracy is all about 314
52. Iraq 1990-1991: Desert holocaust 320
53. Afghanistan 1979-1992: America's Jihad 338
54. El Salvador 1980-1994: Human rights, Washington style 352
55. Haiti 1986-1994: Who will rid me of this turbulent priest? 370
56. The American Empire: 1992 to present 383
Notes: 393
Appendix I: This is How the Money Goes Round 452
Appendix II: Instances of Use of US Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-1945 454
Appendix III: U.S. Government Assassination Plots 463
Index: 465
About the Author: 470
4
Author's Note
The last major revision of this book appeared in 1995. Since that time various minor
changes have been made with each new printing. The present edition contains some
revisions to the Introductions which appeared in the first two editions and these two
earlier Introductions have been combined into one. The major change to be found in the
present volume is the addition at the end of a new chapter, "The American Empire:
1992 to present", which offers a survey of US interventions during the 1990s and up to
the present, and attempts to describe the evolution of US foreign policy from
intervention ism to the openly proclaimed goal of world domination.
—May 2003
5
Introduction
A Brief History of the Cold War and Anti-communism
Our fear that communism might someday take over
most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-
communism already has.
— Michael Parenti 1
It was in the early days of the fighting in Vietnam that a Vietcong officer said to
his American prisoner: "You were our heroes after the War. We read American books
and saw American films, and a common phrase in those days was "to be as rich and as
wise as an American". What happened?" 2
An American might have been asked something similar by a Guatemalan, an
Indonesian or a Cuban during the ten years previous, or by a Uruguayan, a Chilean or a
Greek in the decade subsequent. The remarkable international goodwill and credibility
enjoyed by the United States at the close of the Second World War was dissipated
country-by-country, intervention-by-intervention. The opportunity to build the war-
ravaged world anew, to lay the foundations for peace, prosperity and justice, collapsed
under the awful weight of anti-communism.
The weight had been accumulating for some time; indeed, since Day One of the
Russian Revolution. By the summer of 1918 some 13,000 American troops could be
found in the newly -born Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Two years and thousands
of casualties later, the American troops left, having failed in their mission to "strangle at
its birth" the Bolshevik state, as Winston Churchill put it. 3
The young Churchill was Great Britain's Minister for War and Air during this
period. Increasingly, it was he who directed the invasion of the Soviet Union by the
Allies (Great Britain, the US, France, Japan and several other nations) on the side of the
counter-revolutionary "White Army". Years later, Churchill the historian was to record
his views of this singular affair for posterity:
Were they [the Allies] at war with Soviet Russia? Certainly not; but they shot
Soviet Russians at sight. They stood as invaders on Russian soil. They armed the
enemies of the Soviet Government. They blockaded its ports, and sunk its
battleships. They earnestly desired and schemed its downfall. But war — shocking!
Interference — shame! It was, they repeated, a matter of indifference to them how
Russians settled their own internal affairs. They were impartial — Bang! 4
What was there about this Bolshevik Revolution that so alarmed the most
powerful nations in the world? What drove them to invade a land whose soldiers had
recently fought alongside them for over three years and suffered more casualties than
any other country on either side of the World War?
The Bolsheviks had had the audacity to make a separate peace with Germany in
order to take leave of a war they regarded as imperialist and not in any way their war,
and to try and rebuild a terribly weary and devastated Russia. But the Bolsheviks had
displayed the far greater audacity of overthrowing a capitalist- feudal system and
proclaiming the first socialist state in the history of the world. This was uppityness writ
incredibly large. This was the crime the Allies had to punish, the virus which had to be
eradicated lest it spread to their own people.
6
The invasion did not achieve its immediate purpose, but its consequences were
nonetheless profound and persist to the present day. Professor D.F. Fleming, the
Vanderbilt University historian of the Cold War, has noted:
For the American people the cosmic tragedy of the interventions in Russia does
not exist, or it was an unimportant incident long forgotten. But for the Soviet
peoples and their leaders the period was a time of endless killing, of looting and
rapine, of plague and famine, of measureless suffering for scores of millions —
an experience burned into the very soul of a nation, not to be forgotten for many
generations, if ever. Also for many years the harsh Soviet regimentations could
all be justified by fear that the capitalist powers would be back to finish the job.
It is not strange that in his address in New York, September 17, 1959, Premier
Khrushchev should remind us of the interventions, "the time you sent your
troops to quell the revolution", as he put it. 5
In what could be taken as a portent of superpower insensitivity, a 1920 Pentagon
report on the intervention reads: "This expedition affords one of the finest examples in
history of honorable, unselfish dealings ... under very difficult circumstances to be
helpful to a people struggling to achieve a new liberty." 6
History does not tell us what a Soviet Union, allowed to develop in a "normal"
way of its own choosing, would look like today. We do know, however, the nature of a
Soviet Union attacked in its cradle, raised alone in an extremely hostile world, and,
when it managed to survive to adulthood, overrun by the Nazi war machine with the
blessings of the Western powers. The resulting insecurities and fears have inevitably led
to deformities of character not unlike that found in an individual raised in a similar life-
threatening manner.
We in the West are never allowed to forget the political shortcomings (real and
bogus) of the Soviet Union; at the same time we are never reminded of the history
which lies behind it. The anti-communist propaganda campaign began even earlier than
the military intervention. Before the year 1918 was over, expressions in the vein of
"Red Peril", "the Bolshevik assault on civilization", and "menace to world by Reds is
seen" had become commonplace in the pages of the New York Times.
During February and March 1919, a US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee held
heatings before which many "Bolshevik horror stories" were presented. The character of
some of the testimony can be gauged by the headline in the usually sedate Times of 12
February 1919:
DESCRIBE HORRORS UNDER RED RULE. R.E. SIMONS
AND WW. WELSH TELL SENATORS OF BRUTALITIES OF
BOLSHEV1KI— STRIP WOMEN IN STREETS— PEOPLE OF
EVERY CLASS EXCEPT THE SCUM SUBJECTED TO
VIOLENCE BY MOBS.
Historian Frederick Lewis Schuman has written: "The net result of these hearings
... was to picture Soviet Russia as a kind of bedlam inhabited by abject slaves
completely at the mercy of an organization of homicidal maniacs whose purpose was to
destroy all traces of civilization and carry the nation back to barbarism." 7
Literally no story about the Bolsheviks was too contrived, too bizarre, too
grotesque, or too perverted to be printed and widely believed — from women being
nationalized to babies being eaten (as the early pagans believed the Christians guilty of
devouring their children; the same was believed of the jews in the Middle Ages). The
story about women with all the lurid connotations of state property, compulsory
7
marriage, "free love", etc. "was broadcasted over the country through a thousand
channels," wrote Schuman, "and perhaps did more than anything else to stamp the
Russian Communists in the minds of most American citizens as criminal perverts".
This tale continued to receive great currency even after the State Department was
obliged to announce that it was a fraud. (That the Soviets eat their babies was still being
taught by the John Birch Society to its large audience at least as late as 1978. ) 9
By the end of 1919, when the defeat of the Allies and the White Army appeared
likely, the New York Times treated its readers to headlines and stories such as the
following:
30 Dec. 1919: "Reds Seek War With America"
9 Jan. 1920: '"Official quartets' describe the Bolshevist menace in the Middle East as ominous"
11 Jan. 1920: "Allied officials and diplomats [envisage] a possible invasion of Europe"
13 Jan. 1920: "Allied diplomatic circles" fear an invasion of Persia
16 Jan. 1920: A page-one headline, eight columns wide:
"Britain Facing War With Reds, Calls Council In Paris."
"Well-informed diplomats" expect both a military invasion of Europe and a Soviet
advance into Eastern and Southern Asia.
The following morning, however, we could read: "No War With Russia, Allies To Trade With
Her"
7 Feb. 1920: "Reds Raising Army To Attack India"
11 Feb. 1920: "Fear That Bolsheviki Will Now Invade Japanese Territory"
Readers of the New York Times were asked to believe that all these invasions
were to come from a nation that was shattered as few nations in history have been; a
nation still recovering from a horrendous world war; in extreme chaos from a
fundamental social revolution that was barely off the ground; engaged in a brutal civil
war against forces backed by the major powers of the world; its industries, never
advanced to begin with, in a shambles; and the country in the throes of a famine that
was to leave many millions dead before it subsided.
In 1920, The New Republic magazine presented a lengthy analysis of the news
coverage by the New York Times of the Russian Revolution and the intervention.
Amongst much else, it observed that in the two years following the November 1917
revolution, the Times had stated no less than 91 times that "the Soviets were nearing
their rope's end or actually had reached it." 10
If this was reality as presented by the United States' "newspaper of record", one
can imagine only with dismay the witch's brew the rest of the nation's newspapers were
feeding to their readers.
This, then, was the American people's first experience of a new social
phenomenon that had come upon the world, their introductory education about the
Soviet Union and this thing called "communism". The students have never recovered
from the lesson. Neither has the Soviet Union.
The military intervention came to an end but, with the sole and partial exception
of the Second World War period, the propaganda offensive has never let up. In 1943
Life magazine devoted an entire issue in honor of the Soviet Union's accomplishments,
going fat beyond what was demanded by the need for wartime solidarity, going so far as
to call Lenin "perhaps the greatest man of modern times". 11 Two years later, however,
with Harry Truman sitting in the White House, such fraternity had no chance of
surviving. Truman, after all, was the man who, the day after the Nazis invaded the
Soviet Union, said: "If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if
Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as
possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious in any circumstances." 12
8
Much propaganda mileage has been squeezed out of the Soviet-German treaty of
1939, made possible only by entirely ignoring the fact that the Russians were forced
into the pact by the repeated refusal of the Western powers, particularly the United
States and Great Britain, to unite with Moscow in a stand against Hitler; 13 as they
likewise refused to come to the aid of the socialist-oriented Spanish government under
siege by the German, Italian and Spanish fascists beginning in 1936. Stalin realized that
if the West wouldn't save Spain, they certainly wouldn't save the Soviet Union.
From the Red Scare of the 1920s to the McCarthyism of the 1950s to the Reagan
Crusade against the Evil Empire of the 1980s, the American people have been subjected
to a relentless anti- communist indoctrination. It is imbibed with their mother's milk,
pictured in their comic books, spelled out in their school books; their daily paper offers
them headlines that tell them all they need to know; ministers find sermons in it,
politicians ate elected with it, and Reader's Digest becomes rich on it.
The fiercely-held conviction inevitably produced by this insidious assault upon
the intellect is that a great damnation has been unleashed upon the world, possibly by
the devil himself, but in the form of people; people not motivated by the same needs,
feats, emotions, and personal morality that govern others of the species, but people
engaged in an extremely clever, monolithic, international conspiracy dedicated to taking
over the world and enslaving it; for reasons not always clear perhaps, but evil needs no
motivation save evil itself. Moreover, any appearance or claim by these people to be
rational human beings seeking a better kind of world or society is a sham, a cover-up, to
delude others, and proof only of their cleverness; the repression and cruelties which
have taken place in the Soviet Union are forever proof of the bankruptcy of virtue and
the evil intentions of these people in whichever country they may be found, under
whatever name they may call themselves: and, most important of all, the only choice
open to anyone in the United States is between the American Way of Life and the
Soviet Way of Life, that nothing lies between or beyond these two ways of making the
world.
This is how it looks to the simple folk of America. One finds that the
sophisticated, when probed slightly beneath the surface of their academic language, see
it exactly the same way.
To the mind carefully brought to adulthood in the United States, the truths of anti-
communism are self-evident, as self-evident as the flatness of the world once was to an
earlier mind; as the Russian people believed that the victims of Stalin's purges were
truly guilty of treason.
The foregoing slice of American history must be taken into account if one is to
make sense of the vagaries of American foreign policy since the end of World War II,
specifically the record, as presented in this book, of what the US military and the CIA
and other branches of the US government have done to the peoples of the world.
In 1918, the barons of American capital needed no reason for their war against
communism other than the threat to their wealth and privilege, although their opposition
was expressed in terms of moral indignation.
During the period between the two world wars, US gunboat diplomacy operated
in the Caribbean to make "The American Lake" safe for the fortunes of United Fruit and
W.R. Grace & Co., at the same time taking care to warn of "the Bolshevik threat" to all
that is decent from the likes of Nicaraguan rebel Augusto Sandino.
By the end of the Second World War, every American past the age of 40 had been
subjected to some 25 years of anti-communist radiation, the average incubation period
needed to produce a malignancy. Anti-communism had developed a life of its own,
independent of its capitalist father. Increasingly, in the post-war period, middle-aged
9
Washington policy makers and diplomats saw the world out there as one composed of
"communists" and "anti-communists", whether of nations, movements or individuals.
This comic-strip vision of the world, with righteous American supermen fighting
communist evil everywhere, had graduated from a cynical propaganda exercise to a
moral imperative of US foreign policy.
Even the concept of "non-communist", implying some measure of neutrality, has
generally been accorded scant legitimacy in this paradigm. John Foster Dulles, one of
the major architects of post-war US foreign policy, expressed this succinctly in his
typically simple, moralistic way: "For us there are two sorts of people in the world:
there are those who are Christians and support free enterprise and there are the others." 14
As several of the case studies in the present hook confirm, Dulles put that creed into
rigid practice.
The word "communist" (as well as "Marxist") has been so overused and so abused
by American leaders and the media as to render it virtually meaningless. (The Left has
done the same to the word "fascist".) But merely having a name for something — witches
or flying saucers — attaches a certain credence to it.
At the same time, the American public, as we have seen, has been soundly
conditioned to react Pavlovianly to the term: it means, still, the worst excesses of Stalin,
from wholesale purges to Siberian slave-labor camps; it means, as Michael Parenti has
observed, that "Classic Marxist-Leninist predictions [concerning world revolution] are
treated as statements of intent directing all present-day communist actions." 15 It means
"us" against "them".
And "them" can mean a peasant in the Philippines, a mural-painter in Nicaragua,
a legally-elected prime minister in British Guiana, or a European intellectual, a
Cambodian neutralist, an African nationalist — all, somehow, part of the same
monolithic conspiracy; each, in some way, a threat to the American Way of Life; no
land too small, too poor, or too far away to pose such a threat, the "communist threat".
The cases presented in this book illustrate that it has been largely irrelevant
whether the particular targets of intervention — be they individuals, political parties,
movements or governments — called themselves "communist" or not. It has mattered
little whether they were scholars of dialectical materialism or had never heard of Karl
Marx; whether they were atheists or priests; whether a strong and influential Communist
Party was in the picture or not; whether the government had come into being through
violent revolution or peaceful elections ... all have been targets, all "communists".
It has mattered still less that the Soviet KGB was in the picture. The assertion has
been frequently voiced that the CIA carries out its dirty tricks largely in reaction to
operations of the KGB which have been "even dirtier". This is a lie made out of whole
cloth. There may be an isolated incident of such in the course of the CIA's life, but it has
kept itself well hidden. The relationship between the two sinister agencies is marked by
fraternization and respect for fellow professionals more than by hand-to-hand combat.
Former CIA officer John Stockwell has written:
Actually, at least in more routine operations, case officers most fear the US
ambassador and his staff, then restrictive headquarters cables, then curious,
gossipy neighbors in the local community, as potential threats to operations. Next
would come the local police, then the press. Last of all is the KGB — in my twelve
years of case officering I never saw or heard of a situation in which the KGB
attacked or obstructed a CIA operation. 16
Stockwell adds that the various intelligence services do not want their world to be
"complicated" by murdering each other.
10
It isn't done. If a CIA case officer has a flat tire in the dark of night on a lonely
road, he will not hesitate to accept a ride from a KGB officer — likely the two
would detour to some bar for a drink together. In fact CIA and KGB officers
entertain each other frequently in their homes. The CIA's files are full of
mention of such relationships in almost every African station. 17
Proponents of "fighting fire with fire" come perilously close at times to arguing
that if the KGB, for example, had a hand in the overthrow of the Czechoslovak
government in 1968, it is OK for the CIA to have a hand in the overthrow of the Chilean
government in 1973. It's as if the destruction of democracy by the KGB deposits funds
in a bank account from which the CIA is then justified in making withdrawals.
What then has been the thread common to the diverse targets of American
intervention which has brought down upon them the wrath, and often the firepower, of
the world's most powerful nation? In virtually every case involving the Third World
described in this book, it has been, in one form or another, a policy of "self-
determination": the desire, born of perceived need and principle, to pursue a path of
development independent of US foreign policy objectives. Most commonly, this has
been manifested in (a) the ambition to free themselves from economic and political
subservience to the United States; (b) the refusal to minimize relations with the socialist
bloc, or suppress the left at home, or welcome an American military installation on their
soil; in short, a refusal to be a pawn in the Cold War; or (c) the attempt to alter or
replace a government which held to neither of these aspirations; i.e., a government
supported by the United States.
It cannot be emphasized too strongly that such a policy of independence has been
viewed and expressed by numerous Third World leaders and revolutionaries as one not
to be equated by definition to anti-Americanism or pro-communism, but as simply a
determination to maintain a position of neutrality and non- alignment vis-a-vis the two
superpowers. Time and time again, however, it will be seen that the United States was
not prepared to live with this proposition. Arbenz of Guatemala, Mossadegh of Iran,
Sukarno of Indonesia, Nkrumah of Ghana, Jagan of British Guiana, Sihanouk of
Cambodia ... all, insisted Uncle Sam, must declare themselves unequivocally on the side
of "The Free World" or suffer the consequences. Nkrumah put the case for non-
alignment as follows:
The experiment which we tried in Ghana was essentially one of developing the
country in co-operation with the world as a whole. Non-alignment meant exactly
what it said. We were not hostile to the countries of the socialist world in the
way in which the governments of the old colonial territories were. It should be
remembered that while Britain pursued at home coexistence with the Soviet
Union this was never allowed to extend to British colonial territories. Books on
socialism, which were published and circulated freely in Britain, were banned in
the British colonial empire, and after Ghana became independent it was assumed
abroad that it would continue to follow the same restrictive ideological
approach. When we behaved as did the British in their relations with the
socialist countries we were accused of being pro-Russian and introducing the
most dangerous ideas into Africa. 18
It is reminiscent of the 19th-century American South, where many Southerners
were deeply offended that so many of their black slaves had deserted to the Northern
side in the Civil War. They had genuinely thought that the blacks should have been
grateful for all their white masters had done for them, and that they were happy and
content with their lot. The noted Louisiana surgeon and psychologist Dr. Samuel A.
11
Cartwright argued that many of the slaves suffered from a form of mental illness, which
he called "drapetomania", diagnosed as the uncontrollable urge to escape from slavery.
In the second half of the 20th-century, this illness, in the Third World, has usually been
called "communism".
Perhaps the most deeply ingrained reflex of knee-jerk anti- communism is the
belief that the Soviet Union (or Cuba or Vietnam, etc., acting as Moscow's surrogate] is
a clandestine force lurking behind the facade of self-determination, stirring up the hydra
of revolution, or just plain trouble, here, there, and everywhere; yet another incarnation,
although on a far grander scale, of the proverbial "outside agitator", he who has made
his appearance regularly throughout history ... King George blamed the French for
inciting the American colonies to revolt ... disillusioned American farmers and veterans
protesting their onerous economic circumstances after the revolution (Shays' Rebellion)
were branded as British agents out to wreck the new republic ... labor strikes in late-
19th-century America were blamed on "anarchists" and "foreigners", during the First
World War on "German agents", after the war on "Bolsheviks".
And in the 1960s, said the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence, J. Edgar Hoover "helped spread the view among the police ranks that any
kind of mass protest is due to a conspiracy promulgated by agitators, often Communists,
'who misdirect otherwise contented people'." 19
The last is the key phrase, one which encapsulates the conspiracy mentality of
those in power — the idea that no people, except those living under the enemy, could be
so miserable and discontent as to need recourse to revolution or even mass protest; that
it is only the agitation of the outsider which misdirects them along this path.
Accordingly, if Ronald Reagan were to concede that the masses of El Salvador
have every good reason to rise up against their god-awful existence, it would bring into
question his accusation, and the rationale for US intervention, that it is principally
(only?) the Soviet Union and its Cuban and Nicaraguan allies who instigate the
Salvadoreans: that seemingly magical power of communists everywhere who, with a
twist of their red wrist, can transform peaceful, happy people into furious guerrillas. The
CIA knows how difficult a feat this is. The Agency, as we shall see, tried to spark mass
revolt in China, Cuba, the Soviet Union, Albania, and elsewhere in Eastern Europe with
a singular lack of success. The Agency's scribes have laid the blame for these failures
on the "closed" nature of the societies involved. But in non-communist countries, the
CIA has had to resort to military coups or extra-legal chicanery to get its people into
power. It has never been able to light the fire of popular revolution.
For Washington to concede merit and virtue to a particular Third World
insurgency would, moreover, raise the question: Why does not the United States, if it
must intervene, take the side of the rebels? Not only might this better serve the cause of
human rights and justice, but it would shut out the Russians from their alleged role.
What better way to frustrate the International Communist Conspiracy? But this is a
question that dares not speak its name in the Oval Office, a question that is relevant to
many of the cases in this book.
Instead, the United States remains committed to its all — too- familiar policy of
establishing and/or supporting the most vile tyrannies in the world, whose outrages
against their own people confront us daily in the pages of our newspapers: brutal
massacres; systematic, sophisticated torture; public whippings; soldiers and police firing
into crowds; government supported death squads; tens of thousands of disappeared
persons; extreme economic deprivation ... a way of life that is virtually a monopoly held
by America's allies, from Guatemala, Chile and El Salvador to Turkey, Pakistan and
12
Indonesia, all members in good standing of the Holy War Against Communism, all
members of "The Free World", that region of which we hear so much and see so little.
The restrictions on civil liberties found in the communist bloc, as severe as they
are, pale by comparison to the cottage- industry Auschwitzes of "The Free World", and,
except in that curious mental landscape inhabited by The Compleat Anti- Communist,
can have little or nothing to do with the sundry American interventions supposedly in
the cause of a higher good.
It is interesting to note that as commonplace as it is for American leaders to speak
of freedom and democracy while supporting dictatorships, so do Russian leaders speak
of wars of liberation, anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism while doing extremely little
to actually further these causes, American propaganda notwithstanding. The Soviets like
to be thought of as champions of the Third World, but they have stood by doing little
more than going "tsk, tsk" as progressive movements and governments, even
Communist Parties, in Greece, Guatemala, British Guiana, Chile, Indonesia, the
Philippines and elsewhere have gone to the wall with American complicity.
During the early 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency instigated several
military incursions into Communist China. In 1960, CIA planes, without any
provocation, bombed the sovereign nation of Guatemala. In 1973, the Agency
encouraged a bloody revolt against the government of Iraq. In the American mass media
at the time, and therefore in the American mind, these events did not happen.
"We didn't know what was happening", became a cliche used to ridicule those
Germans who claimed ignorance of the events which took place under the Nazis. Yet,
was their stock answer as far-fetched as we'd like to think? It is sobering to reflect that
in our era of instant world-wide communications, the United States has, on many
occasions, been able to mount a large- or small-scale military operation or undertake
another, equally blatant, form of intervention without the American public being aware
of it until years later, if ever. Often the only report of the event or of US involvement
was a passing reference to the fact that a communist government had made certain
charges — just the kind of "news" the American public has been well conditioned to
dismiss out of hand, and the press not to follow up; as the German people were taught
that reports from abroad of Nazi wrong-doings were no more than communist
propaganda.
With few exceptions, the interventions never made the headlines or the evening
TV news. With some, bits and pieces of the stories have popped up here and there, but
rarely brought together to form a cohesive and enlightening whole; the fragments
usually appear long after the fact, quietly buried within other stories, just as quietly
forgotten, bursting into the foreground only when extraordinary circumstances have
compelled it, such as the Iranians holding US embassy personnel and other Americans
hostage in Teheran in 1979, which produced a rash of articles on the role played by the
United States in the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953. It was as if editors
had been spurred into thinking: "Hey, just what did we do in Iran to make ail those
people hate us so?"
There have been a lot of Irans in America's recent past, but in the absence of the
New York Daily News or the Los Angeles Times conspicuously grabbing the leader by
the collar and pressing against his face the full implication of the deed ... in the absence
of NBC putting it all into teal pictures of real people on the receiving end ... in such
absence the incidents become non-events for the large majority of Americans, and they
can honestly say "We didn't know what was happening."
13
Former Chinese Premier Chou En-lai once observed: "One of the delightful things
about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory."
It's probably even worse than he realized. During the Three Mile Island nuclear
power plant accident in Pennsylvania in 1979, a Japanese journalist, Atsuo Kaneko of
the Japanese Kyoto News Service, spent several hours interviewing people temporarily
housed at a hockey rink — mostly children, pregnant women and young mothers. He
discovered that none of them had heard of Hiroshima. Mention of the name drew a
blank. 20
And in 1982, a judge in Oakland, California said he was appalled when some 50
prospective jurors for a death-penalty murder trial were questioned and "none of them
knew who Hitler was". 21
To the foreign policy oligarchy in Washington, it is more than delightful. It is sine
qua non.
So obscured is the comprehensive record of American interventions that when, in
1975, the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress was asked to
undertake a study of covert activities of the CIA to date, it was able to come up with but
a very minor portion of the overseas incidents presented in this book for the same
period.
For all of this information that has made its way into popular consciousness, or
into school texts, encyclopedias, or other standard reference works, there might as well
exist strict censorship in the United States.
The reader is invited to look through the relevant sections of the three principal
American encyclopedias, Americana, Britannica, and Colliers. The image of
encyclopedias as the final repository of objective knowledge takes a beating. What is
tantamount to a non-recognition of American interventions may very well be due to
these esteemed works employing a criterion similar to that of Washington officials as
reflected in the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times summarized this highly
interesting phenomenon thusly:
Clandestine warfare against North Vietnam, for example, is not seen ... as
violating the Geneva Accords of 1954, which ended the French Indochina War,
or as conflicting with the public policy pronouncements of the various
administrations. Clandestine warfare, because it is covert, does not exist as far as
treaties and public posture are concerned. Further, secret commitments to other
nations are not sensed as infringing on the treaty-making powers of the Senate,
because they are not publicly acknowledged. 23
The de facto censorship which leaves so many Americans functionally illiterate
about the history of US foreign affairs may be all the more effective because it is not, so
much official, heavy-handed or conspiratorial, as it is woven artlessly into the fabric of
education and media. No conspiracy is needed. The editors of Reader's Digest and U.S.
News and World Report do not need to meet covertly with the representative from NBC
in an FBI safe-house to plan next month's stories and programs; for the simple truth is
that these individuals would not have reached the positions they occupy if they
themselves had not all been guided through the same tunnel of camouflaged history and
emerged with the same selective memory and conventional wisdom.
'The upheaval in China is a revolution which, if we analyze it, we will see is
prompted by the same things that prompted the British, French and American
revolutions." 24 A cosmopolitan and generous sentiment of Dean Rusk, then Assistant
Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs, later Secretary of State. At precisely the same time as
14
Mr. Rusk's talk in 1950, others in his government were actively plotting the downfall of
the Chinese revolutionary government.
This has been a common phenomenon. For many of the cases described in the
following pages, one can find statements of high or middle-level Washington officials
which put into question the policy of intervention; which expressed misgivings based
either on principle (sometimes the better side of American liberalism) or concern that
the intervention would not serve any worthwhile end, might even result in disaster. I
have attached little weight to such dissenting statements as, indeed, in the final analysis,
did Washington decision-makers who, in controversial world situations, could be relied
upon to play the anti-communist card. In presenting the interventions in this manner, I
am declaring that American foreign policy is what American foreign policy does.
Excerpts from the Introduction, 1995 edition
In 1993, I came across a review of a book about people who deny that the Nazi
Holocaust actually occurred. I wrote to the author, a university professor, telling her that
her book made me wonder whether she knew that an American holocaust had taken
place, and that the denial of it put the denial of the Nazi one to shame. So broad and
deep is the denial of the American holocaust, 1 said, that the denyers are not even aware
that the claimers or their claim exist. Yet, a few million people have died in the
American holocaust and many more millions have been condemned to lives of misery
and torture as a result of US interventions extending from China and Greece in the
1940s to Afghanistan and Iraq in the 1990s. I enclosed a listing of these interventions,
which is of course the subject of the present book.
In my letter I also offered to exchange a copy of the earlier edition of my book for
a copy of hers, but she wrote back informing me that she was not in a position to do so.
And that was all she said. She made no comment whatsoever about the remainder of my
letter — the part dealing with denying the American holocaust — not even to
acknowledge that I had raised the matter. The irony of a scholar on the subject of
denying the Nazi Holocaust engaging in such denial about the American holocaust was
classic indeed. I was puzzled why the good professor had bothered to respond at all.
Clearly, if my thesis could receive such a non-response from such a person, I and
my thesis faced an extremely steep uphill struggle. In the 1930s, and again after the war
in the 1940s and '50s, anti-communists of various stripes in the United States tried their
best to expose the crimes of the Soviet Union, such as the purge trials and the mass
murders. But a strange thing happened. The truth did not seem to matter. American
Communists and fellow travelers continued to support the Kremlin. Even allowing for
the exaggeration and disinformation regularly disbursed by the anti-communists which
damaged their credibility, the continued ignorance and/or denial by the American
leftists is remarkable.
At the close of the Second World War, when the victorious Allies discovered the
German concentration camps, in some cases German citizens from nearby towns were
brought to the camp to come face-to-face with the institution, the piles of corpses, and
the still-living skeletal people; some of the respectable burghers were even forced to
bury the dead. What might be the effect upon the American psyche if the true-believers
and denyers were compelled to witness the consequences of the past half- century of US
foreign policy close up? What if all the nice, clean-cut, wholesome American boys who
dropped an infinite tonnage of bombs, on a dozen different countries, on people they
knew nothing about — characters in a video game — had to come down to earth and look
upon and smell the burning flesh?
15
It has become conventional wisdom that it was the relentlessly tough anti-
communist policies of the Reagan Administration, with its heated-up arms race, that led
to the collapse and reformation of the Soviet Union and its satellites. American history
books may have already begun to chisel this thesis into marble. The Tories in Great
Britain say that Margaret Thatcher and her unflinching policies contributed to the
miracle as well. The East Germans were believers too. When Ronald Reagan visited
East Berlin, the people there cheered him and thanked him "for his role in liberating the
East". Even many leftist analysts, particularly those of a conspiracy bent, are believers.
But this view is not universally held; nor should it be.
Long the leading Soviet expert on the United States, Georgi Arbatov, head of the
Moscow -based Institute for the Study of the U.S.A. and Canada, wrote his memoirs in
1992. A Los Angeles Times book review by Robert Scheer summed up a portion of it:
Arbatov understood all coo well the failings of Soviet totalitarianism in
comparison to the economy and politics of the West. It is clear from this candid
and nuanced memoir that the movement for change had been developing
steadily inside the highest corridors of power ever since the death of Stalin.
Arbatov not only provides considerable evidence for the controversial notion
that this change would have come about without foreign pressure, he insists that
the U.S. military buildup during the Reagan years actually impeded this
development. 25
George F. Kennan agrees. The former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, and
father of the theory of "containment" of the same country, asserts that "the suggestion
that any United States administration had the power to influence decisively the course
of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of
the globe is simply childish." He contends that the extreme militarization of American
policy strengthened hard-liners in the Soviet Union. "Thus the general effect of Cold
War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet
Union." 25
Though the arms-race spending undoubtedly damaged the fabric of the Soviet
civilian economy and society even more than it did in the United States, this had been
going on for 40 years by the time Mikhail Gorbachev came to power without the
slightest hint of impending doom. Gorbachev's close adviser, Aleksandr Yakovlev,
when asked whether the Reagan administration's higher military spending, combined
with its "Evil Empire" rhetoric, forced the Soviet Union into a more conciliatory
position, responded:
It played no role. None. I can tell you that with the fullest responsibility.
Gorbachev and I were ready for changes in our policy regardless of whether the
American president was Reagan, or Kennedy, or someone even more liberal. It
was cleat that our military spending was enormous and we had to reduce it. 27
Understandably, some Russians might be reluctant to admit that they were forced
to make revolutionary changes by their archenemy, to admit that they lost the Cold War.
However, on this question we don't have to rely on the opinion of any individual,
Russian or American. We merely have to look at the historical facts.
From the late 1940s to around the mid-1960s, it was an American policy objective
to instigate the downfall of the Soviet government as well as several Eastern European
regimes. Many hundreds of Russian exiles were organized, trained and equipped by the
CIA, then sneaked back into their homeland to set up espionage rings, to stir up armed
political struggle, and to carry out acts of assassination and sabotage, such as derailing
16
trains, wrecking bridges, damaging arms factories and power plants, and so on. The
Soviet government, which captured many of these men, was of course fully aware of
who was behind all this.
Compared to this policy, that of the Reagan administration could be categorized
as one of virtual capitulation. Yet what were the fruits of this ultra-tough anti-
communist policy? Repeated serious confrontations between the United States and the
Soviet Union in Berlin, Cuba and elsewhere, the Soviet interventions into Hungary and
Czechoslovakia, creation of the Warsaw Pact (in direct reaction to NATO), no glasnost,
no perestroika, only pervasive suspicion, cynicism and hostility on both sides. It turned
out that the Russians were human after all — they responded to toughness with
toughness. And the corollary: there was for many years a close correlation between the
amicability of US-Soviet relations and the number of Jews allowed to emigrate from the
Soviet Union. 28 Softness produced softness.
If there's anyone to attribute the changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
to, both the beneficial ones and those questionable, it is of course Mikhail Gorbachev
and the activists he inspired. It should be remembered that Reagan was in office for over
four years before Gorbachev came to power, and Thatcher for six years, but in that
period of time nothing of any significance in the way of Soviet reform took place
despite Reagan's and Thatcher's unremitting malice toward the communist state.
The argument is frequently advanced that it's easy in hindsight to disparage the
American cold-war mania for a national security state — with all its advanced paranoia
and absurdities, its NATO-supra-state-military juggernaut, its early-warning systems
and airraid drills, its nuclear silos and U-2s — but that after the War in Europe the
Soviets did indeed appear to be a ten-foot- tall world-wide monster threat.
This argument breaks up on the rocks of a single question, which was all one had
to ask back then: Why would the Soviets want to invade Western Europe or bomb the
United States? They clearly had nothing to gain by such actions except the almost
certain destruction of their country, which they were painstakingly rebuilding once
again after the devastation of the war.
By the 1980s, the question that still dared not be asked had given birth to a $300
billion military budget and Star Wars.
There are available, in fact, numerous internal documents from the State
Department, the Defense Department, and the CIA from the postwar period, wherein
one political analyst after another makes clear his serious skepticism of "The Soviet
Threat " — revealing the Russians' critical military weaknesses and/or questioning their
alleged aggressive intentions — while high officials, including the president, were
publicly presenting a message explicitly the opposite. 29
Historian Roger Morris, former member of the National Security Council under
Presidents Johnson and Nixon, described this phenomenon:
Architects of U.S. policy would have to make their case "clearer than the truth,"
and "bludgeon the mass mind of top government," as Secretary of State Dean
Acheson ... puts it. They do. The new Central Intelligence Agency begins a
systematic overstatement of Soviet military expenditures. Magically, the
sclerotic Soviet economy is made to hum and climb on U.S. government charts.
To Stalin's horse-drawn army — complete with shoddy equipment, war- torn
roads and spurious morale — the Pentagon adds phantom divisions, then
attributes invasion scenarios to the new forces for good measure.
U.S. officials "exaggerated Soviet capabilities and intentions to such an extent,"
says a subsequent study of the archives, "that it is surprising anyone took them
17
seriously." Fed by somber government claims and reverberating public fear, the
U.S. press and people have no trouble. 30
Nonetheless, the argument insists, there were many officials in high positions
who simply and sincerely misunderstood the Soviet signals. The Soviet Union was,
after all, a highly oppressive and secretive society, particularly before Stalin died in
1953. Apropos of this, former conservative member of the British Parliament Enoch
Powell observed in 1983:
International misunderstanding is almost wholly voluntary: it is that
contradiction in terms, intentional misunderstanding — a contradiction, because
in order to misunderstand deliberately, you must at least suspect if not actually
understand what you intend to misunderstand. ... [The US misunderstanding of
the USSR has] the function of sustaining a myth — the myth of the United States
as "the last, best hope of mankind." St. George and the Dragon is a poor show
without a real drag-on, the bigger and scalier the better, ideally with flames
coming out of its mouth. The misunderstanding of Soviet Russia has become
indispensable to the self-esteem of the American nation: he will not be regarded
with benevolence who seeks, however ineffectually, to deprive them of it. 31
It can be argued as well that the belief of the Nazis in the great danger posed by
the "International Jewish Conspiracy" must be considered before condemning the
perpetrators of the Holocaust.
Both the Americans and the Germans believed their own propaganda, or
pretended to. In reading Mein Kampf, one is struck by the fact that a significant part of
what Hitler wrote about Jews reads very much like an American anti-communist writing
about communists: He starts with the premise that the Jews (communists) are evil and
want to dominate the world; then, any behavior which appears to contradict this is
regarded as simply a ploy to fool people and further their evil ends; this behavior is
always part of a conspiracy and many people are taken in. He ascribes to the Jews great,
almost mystical, power to manipulate societies and economies. He blames Jews for the
ills arising from the industrial revolution, e.g., class divisions and hatred. He decries the
Jews' internationalism and lack of national patriotism.
There were of course those Cold Warriors whose take on the Kremlin was that its
master plan for world domination was nothing so gross as an invasion of Western
Europe or dropping bombs on the United States. The ever more subtle — one could say
fiendishly-clever — plan was for subversion ... from the inside ... country by country ...
throughout the Third World ... eventually surrounding and strangling the First World ...
verily an International Communist Conspiracy, "a conspiracy," said Senator Joseph
McCarthy, "on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history
of man.
This is the primary focus of this book: how the United States intervened all over
the world to combat this conspiracy wherever and whenever it reared its ugly head.
Did this International Communist Conspiracy actually exist?
If it actually existed, why did the Cold Warriors of the CIA and other government
agencies have to go to such extraordinary lengths of exaggeration? If they really and
truly believed in the existence of a diabolic, monolithic International Communist
Conspiracy, why did they have to invent so much about it to convince the American
people, the Congress, and the rest of the world of its evil existence? Why did they have
to stage manage, entrap, plant evidence, plant stories, create phony documents? The
following pages are packed with numerous anti-commiespeak examples of US-
government and media inventions about "the Soviet threat", "the Chinese threat", and
"the Cuban threat". And all the while, at the same time, we were being flailed with scare
18
stories: in the 1950s, there was "the Bomber Gap" between the US and the Soviet
Union, and the "civil defense gap". Then came "the Missile Gap". Followed by "the
Anti-ballistic missile (ABM) Gap". In the 1980s, it was "the Spending Gap". Finally,
"the Laser Gap". And they were all lies.
We now know that the CIA of Ronald Reagan and William Casey regularly
"politicized intelligence assessments" to support the anti-Soviet bias of their
administration, and suppressed reports, even those from its own analysts, which
contradicted this bias. We now know that the CIA and the Pentagon regularly
overestimated the economic and military strength of the Soviet Union, and exaggerated
the scale of Soviet nuclear tests and the number of "violations" of existing test-ban
treaties, which Washington then accused the Russians of. 32 All to create a larger and
meaner enemy, a bigger national security budget, and give security and meaning to the
Cold Warriors' own jobs.
Post-Cold War, New- World- Order time, it looks good for the Military-Industrial-
Intelligence Complex and their global partners in crime, the World Bank and the IMF.
They've got their NAFTA, and soon their World Trade Organization. They're dictating
economic, political and social development all over the Third World and Eastern
Europe. Moscow's reaction to events anywhere is no longer a restraining consideration.
The UN's Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations, 15 years in the making, is
dead. Everything in sight is being deregulated and privatized. Capital prowls the globe
with a ravenous freedom it hasn't enjoyed since before World War I, operating free of
friction, free of gravity. The world has been made safe for the transnational
corporation.
Will this mean any better life for the multitudes than the Cold War brought? Any
more regard for the common folk than there's been since they fell off the cosmic agenda
centuries ago? "By all means," says Capital, offering another warmed-up version of the
"trickle down" theory, the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps
dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.
The boys of Capital, they also chortle in their martinis about the death of
socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no
one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth
century — without exception — has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, or
corrupted, perverted, subverted, or destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible
for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement — from the
Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the
FMLN in Salvador — not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not
one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and
freely and fully relax control at home.
It's as if the Wright brothers' first experiments with flying machines all failed
because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-
fearing folk of the world looked upon this, took notice of the consequences, nodded
their collective heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Man shall never fly.
19
1. China 1945 to 1960s
Was Mao Tse-tung just paranoid?
For four years, numerous Americans, in high positions and obscure, sullenly
harbored the conviction that World War II was "the wrong war against the wrong
enemies". Communism, they knew, was the only genuine adversary on America's
historical agenda. Was that not why Hitler had been ignored/tolerated/appeased/aided?
So that the Nazi war machine would turn East and wipe Bolshevism off the face of the
earth once and for all? It was just unfortunate that Adolf turned out to be such a
megalomaniac and turned West as well.
But that war was over. These Americans were now to have their day in every
corner of the world. The ink on the Japanese surrender treaty was hardly dry when the
United States began to use the Japanese soldiers still in China alongside American
troops in a joint effort against the Chinese communists. (In the Philippines and in
Greece, as we shall see, the US did not even wait for the war to end before
subordinating the struggle against Japan and Germany to the anti-communist crusade.)
The communists in China had worked closely with the American military during
the war, providing important intelligence about the Japanese occupiers, rescuing and
caring for downed US airmen. 1 But no matter. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek would be
Washington's man. He headed what passed for a central government in China. The
Office of Strategic Services (OSS, forerunner of the CIA) estimated that the bulk of
Chiang's military effort had been directed against the communists rather than the
Japanese. He had also done his best to block the cooperation between the Reds and the
Americans. Now his army contained Japanese units and his regime was full of officials
who had collaborated with the Japanese and served in their puppet government. But no
matter. The Generalissimo was as anti-communist as they come. Moreover, he was a
born American client. His forces would be properly trained and equipped to do battle
with the men of Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai.
President Truman was up front about what he described as "using the Japanese to
hold off the Communists":
It was perfectly clear to us that if we told the Japanese to lay down their arms
immediately and march to the seaboard, the entire country would be taken over
by the Communists. We therefore had to take the unusual step of using the
enemy as a garrison until we could airlift Chinese National [Chiang's] troops to
South China and send Marines to guard the seaports. 3
The deployment of American Marines had swift and dramatic results. Two weeks
after the end of the war, Peking was surrounded by communist forces. Only the arrival
of the Marines in the city prevented the Reds from taking it over. 4 And while Mao's
forces were pushing into Shanghai's suburbs, US transport planes dropped Chiang's
troops in to seize the city. 5
In a scramble to get to key centers and ports before the communists, the US
transported between 400,000 and 500,000 Nationalist troops by ship and plane all over
the vastness of China and Manchuria, places they could never have reached otherwise.
As the civil war heated up, the 50,000 Marines sent by Truman were used to
guard railway lines, coal mines, ports, bridges, and other strategic sites. Inevitably, they
became involved in the fighting, sustaining dozens, if not hundreds of casualties. US
20
troops, the communists charged, attacked areas controlled by the Reds, directly opened
fire on them, arrested military officers, and disarmed soldiers. 6 The Americans found
themselves blasting a small Chinese village "unmercifully", wrote a Marine to his
congressman, not knowing "how many innocent people were slaughtered". 7
United States planes regularly made reconnaissance flights over communist
territory to scout the position of their forces. The communists claimed that American
planes frequently strafed and bombed their troops and in one instance machine-gunned a
communist-held town. 8 To what extent these attacks were carried out by US airmen is
not known.
There were, however, American survivors in some of the many crashes of United
States aircraft. Surprisingly, the Reds continued to rescue them, tend to their wounds,
and return them to US bases. It may be difficult to appreciate now, but at this time the
mystique and the myth of "America" still gripped the imagination of people all over the
world, and Chinese peasants, whether labeled "communist" or not, were no exception.
During the war the Reds had helped to rescue scores of American fliers and had
transported them through Japanese lines to safety. "The Communists", wrote the New
York Times, "did not lose one airman taken under their protection. They made a point of
never accepting rewards for saving American airmen." 9
When 1946 arrived, about 100,000 American military personnel were still in
China, still supporting Chiang. The official United States explanation for the presence
of its military was that they were there to disarm and repatriate the Japanese. Though
this task was indeed carried out eventually, it was secondary to the military's political
function, as Truman's statement cited above makes abundantly cleat.
The American soldiers in China began to protest about not being sent home, a
complaint echoed round the world by other GIs kept overseas for political (usually anti-
communist) purposes. "They ask me, too, why they're here," said a Marine lieutenant in
China at Christmas-time, 1945. "As an officer I am supposed to tell them, but you can't
tell a man that he's here to disarm Japanese when he's guarding the same railway with
[armed] Japanese." 10
Strangely enough, the United States attempted to mediate in the civil war; this,
while being an active, powerful participant on one side. In January 1946, President
Truman, apparently recognizing that it was either compromise with the communists or
see all of China fall under their sway, sent General George Marshall to try and arrange a
cease-fire and some kind of unspecified coalition government. While some temporary
success was achieved in an on — and — off truce, the idea of a coalition government
was doomed to failure, as unlikely as a marriage between the Czar and the Bolsheviks.
As the historian D.F. Fleming has pointed out, "One cannot unite a dying oligarchy with
a rising revolution." 11
Not until early 1947 did the United States begin to withdraw some of its military
forces, although aid and support to the Chiang government continued in one form or
another long afterward. At about this same time, the Flying Tigers began to operate. The
legendary American air squadron under the leadership of General Claire Chennault had
fought for the Chinese against the Japanese before and during the world war. Now
Chennault, Chiang's former air force adviser, had reactivated the squadron (under the
name CAT) and its pilots — of — fortune soon found themselves in the thick of the
fray, flying endless supply missions to Nationalist cities under siege, dodging
communist shell bursts to airlift food, ammunition, and supplies of all kinds, or to
12
rescue the wounded. Technically, CAT was a private airline hired by the Chiang
government, but before the civil war came to an end, the airline had formally
21
interlocked with the CIA to become the first unit in the Agency's sprawling air-empire-
to-be, best known for the Air America line.
By 1949, United States aid to the Nationalists since the war amounted to almost
$2 billion in cash and $1 billion worth of military hardware; 39 Nationalist army
divisions had been trained and equipped. 13 Yet the Chiang dynasty was collapsing all
around in bits and pieces. It had not been only the onslaught of Chiang's communist
foes, but the hostility of the Chinese people at large to his tyranny, his wanton cruelty,
and the extraordinary corruption and decadence of his entire bureaucratic and social
system. By contrast, the large areas under communist administration were models of
honesty, progress and fairness; entire divisions of the Generalissimo's forces defected to
the communists. American political and military leaders had no illusions about the
nature and quality of Chiang's rule. The Nationalist forces, said General David Barr,
head of the US Military Mission in China, were under "the world's worst leadership". 14
The Generalissimo, his cohorts and soldiers fled to the offshore island of Taiwan
(Formosa). They had prepared their entry two years earlier by terrorizing the islanders
into submission — a massacre which took the lives of as many as 28,000 people. 15 Prior
to the Nationalists' escape to the island, the US government entertained no doubts that
Taiwan was a part of China. Afterward, uncertainty began to creep into the minds of
Washington officials. The crisis was resolved in a remarkably simple manner: the US
agreed with Chiang that the proper way to view the situation was not that Taiwan
belonged to China, but that Taiwan was China. And so it was called.
In the wake of the communist success, China scholar Felix Greene observed,
"Americans simply could not bring themselves to believe that the Chinese, however
rotten their leadership, could have preferred a communist government." 16 It must have
been the handiwork of a conspiracy, an international conspiracy, at the control panel of
which sat, not unexpectedly, the Soviet Union. The evidence for this, however, was thin
to the point of transparency. Indeed, ever since Stalin's credo of "socialism in one
country" won out over Trotsky's internationalism in the 1920s, the Russians had sided
with Chiang more than with Mao, advising the latter more than once to dissolve his
army and join Chiang's government. 17 Particularly in the post-World War II years, when
the Soviet Union was faced with its own staggering crisis of reconstruction, did it not
relish the prospect of having to help lift the world's most populous nation into the
modern age. In 1947, General Marshall stated publicly that he knew of no evidence that
the Chinese communists were being supported by the USSR. 18
But in the United States this did not prevent the rise of an entire mythology of
how the US had "lost" China: Soviet intervention, State Department communists, White
House cowards, military and diplomatic folly, communist dupes and fellow-travelers in
the media ... treachery everywhere ...
The Truman administration, said Senator Joseph McCarthy with characteristic
charm, was composed of "egg-sucking phony liberals" who protected the "Communists
and queers" who had "sold China into atheistic slavery". 19
Yet, short of an all-out invasion of the country by large numbers of American
troops, it is difficult to see what more the US government could have done to prevent
Chiang's downfall. Even after Chiang fled to Taiwan, the United States pursued a
campaign of relentless assaults against the communist government, despite a request
from Chou En-lai for aid and friendship. The Red leader saw no practical or ideological
bar to this. 20 Instead, the United States evidently conspired to assassinate Chou on
several occasions. 21
22
Many Nationalist soldiers had taken refuge in northern Burma in the great exodus
of 1949, much to the displeasure of the Burmese Government. There, the CIA began to
regroup this stateless army into a fighting force, and during the early 1950s a number of
large- and small-scale incursions into China were carried out. In one instance, in April
1951, a few thousand troops, accompanied by CIA advisers and supplied by air drops
from American C46s and C47s, crossed the border into China's Yunnan province, but
they were driven back by the communists in less than a week. The casualties were high
and included several CIA advisers who lost their lives. Another raid that summer took
the invaders 65; miles into China where they reportedly held a 100-mile-long strip of
territory.
While the attacks continued intermittently, the CIA proceeded to build up the
force's capabilities: American engineers arrived to help construct and expand airstrips in
Burma, fresh troops were flown in from Taiwan, other troops were recruited from
amongst Burmese hill tribes, CIA air squadrons were brought in for logistical services,
and enormous quantities of American heavy arms were ferried in. Much of the supply of
men and equipment came in via nearby Thailand.
The army soon stood at more than 10,000 men. By the end of 1952, Taiwan
claimed that 41,000 communist troops had been killed and more than 3,000 wounded.
The figures were most likely exaggerated, but even if not, it was clear that the raids
would not lead to Chiang's triumphant return to the mainland — although this was not
their sole purpose. On the Chinese border two greater battles were raging: in Korea and
Vietnam. It was the hope of the United States to force the Chinese to divert troops and
military resources away from these areas. The infant People's Republic of China was
undergoing a terrible test.
In between raids on China, the "Chinats" (as distinguished from the "Chicoms")
found time to clash frequently with Burmese troops, indulge in banditry, and become
the opium barons of The Golden Triangle, that slice of land encompassing parts of
Burma, Laos and Thailand which was the world's largest source of opium and heroin.
CIA pilots flew the stuff all over, to secure the cooperation of those in Thailand who
were important to the military operation, as a favor to their Nationalist clients, perhaps
even for the money, and, ironically, to serve as cover for their more illicit activities.
The Chinats in Burma kept up their harassment of the Chicoms until 1961 and the
CIA continued to supply them militarily, but at some point the Agency began to phase
itself out of a more direct involvement. When the CIA, in response to repeated protests
by the Burmese Government to the United States and the United Nations, put pressure
on the Chinats to leave Burma, Chiang responded by threatening to expose the Agency's
covert support of his troops there. At an earlier stage, the CIA had entertained the hope
that the Chinese would be provoked into attacking Burma, thereby forcing the strictly
neutral Burmese to seek salvation in the Western camp. 22 In January 1961, the Chinese
did just that, but as part of a combined force with the Burmese to overwhelm the
Nationalists' main base and mark finis to their Burmese adventure. Burma subsequently
renounced American aid and moved closer to Peking. 23 For many of the Chinats,
unemployment was short-lived. They soon signed up with the CIA again; this time to
fight with the Agency's grand army in Laos.
Burma was not the only jumping-off site for CIA-organized raids into China.
Several islands within about five miles of the Chinese coast, particularly Quemoy and
Matsu, were used as bases for hit-and-run attacks, often in battalion strength, for
occasional bombing forays, and to blockade mainland ports. Chiang was "brutally
pressured" by the US to build up his troops on the islands beginning around 1953 as a
demonstration of Washington's new policy of "unleashing" him. 24
23
The Chinese retaliated several times with heavy artillery attacks on Quemoy, on
one occasion killing two American military officers. The prospect of an escalated war
led the US later to have second thoughts and to ask Chiang to abandon the islands, but
he then refused. The suggestion has often been put forward that Chiang's design was to
embroil the United States in just such a war as his one means of returning to the
mainland.
Many incursions into China were made by smaller, commando-type teams air-
dropped in for intelligence and sabotage purposes. In November 1952, two CIA
officers, John Downey and Richard Fecteau, who had been engaged in flying these
teams in and dropping supplies to them, were shot down and captured by the
communists. Two years passed before Peking announced the capture and sentencing of
the two men. The State Department broke its own two-year silence with indignation,
claiming that the two men had been civilian employees of the US Department of the
Army in Japan who were presumed lost on a flight from Korea to Japan. "How they
came into the hands of the Chinese Communists is unknown to the United States ... the
continued wrongful detention of these American citizens furnishes further proof of the
Chinese Communist regime's disregard for accepted practices of international
conduct. " 2S
Fecteau was released in December 1971, shortly before President Nixon's trip to
China; Downey was not freed until March 1973, soon after Nixon publicly
acknowledged him to be a CIA officer.
The Peking announcement in 1954 also revealed that eleven American airmen
had been shot down over China in January 1953 while on a mission which had as its
purpose the "air-drop of special agents into China and the Soviet Union". These men
were luckier, being freed after only 2 1/2 years. All told, said the Chinese, they had
killed 106 American and Taiwanese agents who had parachuted into China between
1951 and 1954 and had captured 124 others. Although the CIA had little, if anything, to
show for its commando actions, it reportedly maintained the program until at least
I960. 27
There were many other CIA flights over China for purely espionage purposes,
carried out by high-altitude U-2 planes, pilot-less "drones", and other aircraft. These
over-flights began around the late 1950s and were not discontinued until 1971, to
coincide with Henry Kissinger's first visit to Peking. The operation was not without
incident. Several U-2 planes were shot down and even more of the drones, 19 of the
latter by Chinese count between 1964 and 1969. China registered hundreds of "serious
warnings" about violations of its air space, and on at least one occasion American
aircraft crossed the Chinese border and shot down a Mig-17. 28
It would seem that no degree of failure or paucity of result was enough to deter
the CIA from seeking new ways to torment the Chinese in the decade following their
revolution. Tibet was another case in point. The Peking government claimed Tibet as
part of China, as had previous Chinese governments for more than two centuries,
although many Tibetans still regarded themselves as autonomous or independent. The
United States made its position clear during the war:
The Government of the United States has borne in mind the fact that the Chinese
Government has long claimed suzerainty over Tibet and that the Chinese
constitution lists Tibet among areas constituting the territory of the Republic of
China. This Government has at no time raised a question regarding either of
these claims. 29
24
After the communist revolution, Washington officials tended to be more
equivocal about the matter. But US actions against Tibet had nothing to do with the
niceties of international law.
In the mid-1950s, the CIA began to recruit Tibetan refugees and exiles in
neighboring countries such as India and Nepal. Amongst their number were members of
the Dalai Lama's guard, often referred to picturesquely as "the fearsome Khamba
horsemen", and others who had already engaged in some guerrilla activity against
Peking rule and/or the profound social changes being instituted by the revolution.
(Serfdom and slavery were, liter-ally, still prevalent in Tibet.] Those selected were
flown to the United States, to an unused military base high in the Colorado mountains,
an altitude approximating that of their mountainous homeland. There, hidden away as
much as possible from the locals, they were trained in the fine points of paramilitary
warfare.
After completing training, each group of Tibetans was flown to Taiwan or another
friendly Asian country, thence to be infiltrated back into Tibet, or elsewhere in China,
where they occupied themselves in activities such as sabotage, mining roads, cutting
communication lines, and ambushing small communist forces. Their actions were
supported by CIA aircraft and on occasion led by Agency contract mercenaries.
Extensive support facilities were constructed in northeast India.
The operation in Colorado was maintained until some time in the 1960s. How
many hundreds of Tibetans passed through the course of instruction will probably never
be known. Even after the formal training program came to an end, the CIA continued to
finance and supply their exotic clients and nurture their hopeless dream of reconquering
their homeland.
In 1961, when the New York Times got wind of the Colorado operation, it acceded
to a Pentagon request to probe no further. The matter was particularly sensitive
because the CIA's 1947 charter and Congress's interpretation of it had traditionally
limited the Agency's domestic operations to information collection.
Above and beyond the bedevilment of China on its own merits, there was the
spillover from the Korean war into Chinese territory — numerous bombings and strafings
by American planes which, the Chinese frequently reported, took civilian lives and
destroyed homes. And there was the matter of germ warfare.
The Chinese devoted a great deal of effort to publicizing their claim that the
United States, particularly during January to March 1952, had dropped quantities of
bacteria and bacteria-laden insects over Korea and northeast China. It presented
testimony of about 38 captured American airmen who had purportedly flown the planes
with the deadly cargo. Many of the men went into voluminous detail about the entire
operation: the kinds of bombs and other containers dropped, the types of insects, the
diseases they carried, etc. At the same time, photographs of the alleged germ bombs and
insects were published. Then, in August, an "International Scientific Committee" was
appointed, composed of scientists from Sweden, France, Great Britain, Italy, Brazil and
the Soviet Union. After an investigation in China of more than two months, the
committee produced a report of some 600 pages, many photos, and the conclusion that:
The peoples of Korea and China have indeed been the objectives of
bacteriological weapons. These have been employed by units of the U.S.A.
armed forces, using a great variety of different methods for the purpose, some of
which seem to be developments of those applied by the Japanese during the
second world war. 31
25
The last reference has to do with the bacteriological warfare experiments the
Japanese had carried out against China between 1940 and 1942. The Japanese scientists
responsible for this program were captured by the United States in 1945 and given
immunity from prosecution in return for providing technical information about the
experiments to American scientists from the Army biological research center at Fort
Detrick, Maryland. The Chinese were aware of this at the time of the International
Scientific Committee's investigation.
It should be noted that some of the American airmen's statements contained so
much technical biological information and were so full of communist rhetoric —
"imperialist, capitalist Wall Street war monger" and the like — that their personal
authorship of the statements must be seriously questioned. Moreover, it was later
learned that most of the airmen had confessed only after being subjected to physical
abuse.
But in view of what we have since learned about American involvement with
chemical and biological weapons, the Chinese claims cannot be dismissed out of hand.
In 1970, for example, the New York Times reported that during the Korean War, when
US forces were overwhelmed by "human waves' of Chinese, "the Army dug into
captured Nazi chemical warfare documents describing Sarin, a nerve gas so lethal that a
few pounds could kill thousands of people in minutes. ... By the mid-nineteen- fifties,
the Army was manufacturing thousands of gallons of Sarin." 34
And during the 1950s and 1960s, the Army and the CIA conducted numerous
experiments with biological agents within the United States. To cite just two examples:
In 1955, there is compelling evidence that the CIA released whooping-cough bacteria
into the open air in Florida, followed by an extremely sharp increase in the incidence of
the disease in the state that year. 35 The following year, another toxic substance was
disseminated in the streets and tunnels of New York City. 36
We will also see in the chapter on Cuba how the CIA conducted chemical and
biological warfare against Fidel Castro's rule.
In March 1966, Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke before a congressional
committee about American policy toward China. Mr. Rusk, it seems, was perplexed that
"At times the Communist Chinese leaders seem to be obsessed with the notion that they
are being threatened and encircled." He spoke of China's "imaginary, almost
pathological, notion that the United States and other countries around its borders are
seeking an opportunity to invade mainland China and destroy the Peiping [Peking]
regime". The Secretary then added:
How much Peiping's "fear" of the United States is genuine and how much it is artificially induced
for domestic political purposes only the Chinese Communist leaders themselves know. I am convinced,
however, that their desire to expel our influence and activity from the western Pacific and Southeast Asia
is not motivated by fears that we are threatening them. 37
26
2. Italy 1947-1948
Free elections, Hollywood style
"Those who do not believe in the ideology of the United States, shall not be
allowed to stay in the United States," declared the American Attorney General, Tom
Clark, in January 1948. 1
In March, the Justice Department, over which Clark presided, determined that
Italians who did not believe in the ideology of the United States would not be allowed to
emigrate to, or even enter, the United States.
This was but one tactic in a remarkable American campaign to ensure that
Italians who did not believe in the ideology of the United States would not be allowed to
form a government of a differing ideology in Italy in their election of 1948.
Two years earlier, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), one of the largest in the
world,] and the Socialist Party (PSI) had together garnered more votes and more seats in
the Constituent Assembly election than the Christian Democrats. But the two parties of
the left had run separate candidates and thus had to be content with some ministerial
posts in a coalition cabinet under a Christian Democrat premier. The results,
nonetheless, spoke plainly enough to put the fear of Marx into the Truman
administration.
For the 1948 election, scheduled for 18 April, the PCI and PSI united to form
the Popular Democratic Front (FDP) and in February won municipal elections in
Pescara with a 10 percent increase in their vote over 1946. The Christian Democrats ran
a poor second. The prospect of the left winning control of the Italian government
loomed larger than ever before. It was at this point that the US began to train its big
economic and political guns upon the Italian people. All the good ol' Yankee know-
how, all the Madison Avenue savvy in the art of swaying public opinion, all the
Hollywood razzmatazz would be brought to bear on the "target market".
Pressing domestic needs in Italy, such as agricultural and economic reform, the
absence of which produced abysmal extremes of wealth and poverty, were not to be the
issues of the 1 day. The lines of battle would be drawn around the question of
"democracy" vs. "communism" (the idea of "capitalism" remaining discreetly to one
side). The fact that the Communists had been the single most active anti-fascist group in
Italy during the war, undergoing ruthless persecution, while the Christian Democrat
government of 1948 and other electoral opponents on the right were riddled through
with collaborators, monarchists and plain unreconstructed fascists ... this too would be
ignored; indeed, turned around. It was now a matter of Communist "dictatorship" vs.
their adversaries' love of "freedom"; this was presumed a priori. As one example, a
group of American congressmen visited Italy in summer 1947 and casually and
arbitrarily concluded that "The country is under great pressure from within and without
to veer to the left and adopt a totalitarian-collective national organization." 2
To make any of this at all credible, the whole picture had to be pushed and
squeezed into the frame of The American Way of Life vs. The Soviet Way of Life, a
specious proposition which must have come as somewhat of a shock to leftists who
regarded themselves as Italian and neither Russian nor American.
In February 1948, after non-Communist ministers in Czechoslovakia had
boycotted cabinet meetings over a dispute concerning police hiring practices, the
Communist government dissolved the coalition cabinet and took sole power. The Voice
of America pointed to this event repeatedly, as a warning to the Italian people of the fate
27
awaiting them if Italy "went Communist" (and used as well by anti-communists for
decades afterward as a prime example of communist duplicity). Yet, by all appearances,
the Italian Christian Democrat government and the American government had conspired
the previous year in an even more blatant usurpation of power.
In January 1947, when Italian Premier Alcide de Gasperi visited Washington at
the United States' invitation, his overriding concern was to plead for crucial financial
assistance for his war-torn, impoverished country. American officials may have had a
different priority. Three days after returning to Italy, de Gasperi unexpectedly dissolved
his cabinet, which included several Communists and Socialists. The press reported that
many people in Italy believed that de Gasperi's action was related to his visit to the
United States and was aimed at decreasing leftist, principally Communist, influence in
the government. After two weeks of tortuous delay, the formation of a center or center-
right government sought by de Gasperi proved infeasible; the new cabinet still included
Communists and Socialists although the left had lost key positions, notably the
ministries of foreign affairs and finance.
From this point until May, when de Gasperi's deputy, Ivan Lombardo, led a
mission to Washington to renew the request for aid, promised loans were "frozen" by
the United States for reasons not very clear. On several occasions during this period the
Italian left asserted their belief that the aid was being held up pending the ouster of
leftists from the cabinet. The New York Times was moved to note that, "Some observers
here feel that a further Leftward swing in Italy would retard aid." As matters turned out,
the day Lombardo arrived in Washington, de Gasperi again dissolved his entire cabinet
and suggested that the new cabinet would manage without the benefit of leftist
members. This was indeed what occurred, and over the ensuing few months,
exceedingly generous American financial aid flowed into Italy, in addition to the
cancellation of the nation's $1 billion debt to the United States. 3
At the very same time, France, which was also heavily dependent upon
American financial aid, ousted all its Communist ministers as well. In this case there
was an immediate rationale: the refusal of the Communist ministers to support Premier
Ramadier in a vote of confidence over a wage freeze. Despite this, the ouster was
regarded as a "surprise" and considered "bold" in France, and opinion was widespread
that American loans were being used, or would be used, to force France to align with
the US. Said Ramadier: "A little of our independence is departing from us with each
loan we obtain." 4
As the last month of the 1948 election campaign began, Time magazine
pronounced the possible leftist victory to be "the brink of catastrophe". 5
"It was primarily this fear," William Colby, former Director of the CIA, has
written, "that had led to the formation of the Office of Policy Coordination, which gave
the CIA the capability to undertake covert political, propaganda, and paramilitary
operations in the first place." 6 But covert operations, as far as is known, played a
relatively minor role in the American campaign to break the back of the Italian left. It
was the very overtness of the endeavor, without any apparent embarrassment, that
stamps the whole thing with such uniqueness and arrogance — one might say swagger.
The fortunes of the FDP slid downhill with surprising acceleration in the face of an
awesome mobilization of resources such as the following: 7
• A massive letter writing campaign from Americans of Italian extraction to their relatives and friends in
Italy-at first written by individuals in their own words or guided by "sample letters" in newspapers, soon
expanded to mass-produced, pre-written, postage-paid form letters, cablegrams, "educational circulars",
and posters, needing only an address and signature. And-from a group calling itself The Committee to
Aid Democracy in Italy-half a million picture postcards illustrating the gruesome fate awaiting Italy if it
28
voted for "dictatorship" or "foreign dictatorship". In all, an estimated 10 million pieces of mail were
written and distributed by newspapers, radio stations, churches, the American Legion, wealthy
individuals, etc.; and business advertisements now included offers to send letters airmail to Italy even if
you didn't buy the product. All this with the publicly expressed approval of the Acting Secretary of State
and the Post Office which inaugurated special "Freedom Flights" to give greater publicity to the dispatch
of the mail to Italy.
The form letters contained messages such as: "A communist victory would ruin Italy. The United States
would withdraw aid and a world war would probably result." ... "We implore you not to throw our
beautiful Italy into the arms of that cruel despot communism. America hasn't anything against
communism in Russia [sic], but why impose it on other people, other lands, in that way putting out the
torch of liberty?" ... "If the forces of true democracy should lose in the Italian election, the American
Government will not send any more money to Italy and we won't send any more money to you, our
relatives."
These were by no means the least sophisticated of the messages. Other themes emphasized were Russian
domination of Italy, loss of religion and the church, loss of family life, loss of home and land.
Veteran newsman Howard K. Smith pointed out at the time chat "For an Italian peasant a telegram from
anywhere is a wondrous thing; and a cable from the terrestrial paradise of America is not lightly to be
disregarded."
The letters threatening to cut off gifts may have been equally intimidating. "Such letters," wrote a
Christian Democrat official in an Italian newspaper, "struck home in southern Italian and Sicilian villages
with the force of lightning." A 1949 poll indicated that 16 percent of Italians claimed relatives in the
United States with whom they were in touch; this, apparently, was in addition to friends there.
•The State Department backed up the warnings in the letters by announcing that "If the Communists
should win ... there would be no further question of assistance from the United States." The Italian left felt
compelled to regularly assure voters that this would not really happen; this, in turn, inspired American
officials, including Secretary of State George Marshall, to repeat the threat. (Marshall was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.)
•A daily series of direct short-wave broadcasts to Italy backed by the State Department and featuring
prominent Americans. (The State Department estimated that there were 1.2 million short-wave receivers
in Italy as of 1946.) The Attorney General went on the air and assured the Italian people that the election
was a "choice between democracy and communism, between God and godlessness, between order and
chaos." William Donovan, the wartime head of the OSS (fore-runner of the CIA) warned that "under a
communist dictatorship in Italy," many of the "nation's industrial plants would be dismantled and shipped
to Russia and millions of Italy's workers would be deported to Russia for forced labor." If this were not
enough to impress the Italian listeners, a parade of unknown but passionate refugees from Eastern Europe
went before the microphone to recount horror stories of life behind "The Iron Curtain".
• Several commercial radio stations broadcast to Italy special services held in American Catholic churches
to pray for the Pope in "this, his most critical hour". On one station, during an entire week, hundreds of
Italian-Americans from all walks of life delivered one-minute messages to Italy which were relayed
through the short-wave station. Station WOV in New York invited Italian war brides to transcribe a
personal message to their families back home. The station then mailed the recordings to Italy.
•Voice of America daily broadcasts into Italy were sharply increased, highlighting news of American
assistance or gestures of friendship to Italy. A sky-full of show-biz stars, including Frank Sinatra and
Gary Cooper, recorded a series of radio programs designed to win friends and influence the vote in Italy.
Five broadcasts of Italian-American housewives were aired, and Italian-Americans with some leftist
credentials were also enlisted for the cause. Labor leader Luigi Antonini called upon Italians to "smash
the Muscovite fifth column" which "follows the orders of the ferocious Moscow tyranny," or else Italy
would become an "enemy totalitarian country".
To counter Communist charges in Italy that negroes in the United States were denied opportunities, the
VOA broadcast the story of a negro couple who had made a fortune in the junk business and built a
hospital for their people in Oklahoma City. (It should be remembered that in 1948 American negroes had
not yet reached the status of second-class citizens.]
• Italian radio stations carried a one-hour show from Hollywood put on to raise money for the orphans of
Italian pilots who had died in the war. (It was not reported if the same was done for the orphans of
German pilots.)
• American officials in Italy widely distributed leaflets extolling US economic aid and staged exhibitions
among low-income groups. The US Information Service presented an exhibition on "The Worker in
America" and made extensive use of documentary and feature films to sell the American way of life. It
29
was estimated that in the period immediately preceding the election more than five million Italians each
week saw American documentaries. The 1939 Hollywood film "Ninotchka", which satirized life in
Russia, was singled out as a particularly effective feature film. It was shown throughout working-class
areas and the Communists made several determined efforts to prevent its presentation. After the election,
a pro-Communist worker was reported as saying that "What licked us was 'Ninotchka'. "
•The Justice Department served notice that Italians who joined the Communist Party would be denied
that dream of so many Italians, emigration to America. The State Department then ruled that any Italians
known to have voted for the Communists would not be allowed to even enter the terrestrial paradise. (A
Department telegram to a New York politico read: "Voting Communist appears to constitute affiliation
with Communist Party within meaning of Immigration Law and therefore would require exclusion from
United States."] It was urged that this information be emphasized in letters to Italy.
• President Truman accused the Soviet Union of plotting the subjugation of Western Europe and called
for universal military training in the United States and a resumption of military conscription to forestall
"threatened communist control and police-state rule". During the campaign, American and British
warships were frequently found anchored off Italian ports. Time, in an edition widely displayed and
commented upon in Italy shortly before the election, gave its approval to the sentiment that "The U.S.
should make it clear that it will use force, if necessary, to prevent Italy from going Communist." 8
• The United States and Italy signed a ten-year treaty of "friendship, commerce and navigation". This was
the first treaty of its kind entered into by the US since the war, a point emphasized for Italian
consumption.
• A "Friendship Train" toured the United States gathering gifts and then traveled round Italy distributing
them. The train was painted red, white and blue, and bore large signs expressing the friendship of
American citizens toward the people of Italy.
• The United States government stated that it favored Italian trusteeship over some of its former African
colonies, such as Ethiopia and Libya, a wholly unrealistic proposal that could never come to pass in the
post-war world. (The Soviet Union made a similar proposal.)
•The US, Great Britain and France maneuvered the Soviet Union into vetoing, for the third time, a
motion that Italy be admitted to the United Nations. (The first time, the Russians had expressed their
opposition on the grounds that a peace treaty with Italy had not been signed. After the signing in 1947,
they said they would accept the proposal if other World War II enemies, such as Bulgaria, Hungary and
Rumania were also made members.)
• The same three allied nations proposed to the Soviet Union that negotiations take place with a view to
returning Trieste to Italy. Formerly the principal Italian port on the Adriatic coast, bordering Yugoslavia,
Trieste had been made a "free city" under the terms of the peace treaty. The approval of the Soviet Union
was necessary to alter the treaty, and the Western proposal was designed to put the Russians on the spot.
The Italian people had an intense sentimental attachment to Trieste, and if the Russians rejected the
proposal it could seriously embarrass the Italian Communists. A Soviet acceptance, however, would
antagonize their Yugoslav allies. The US prodded the Russians for a response, but none was forthcoming.
From the Soviet point of view, the most obvious and safest path to follow would have been to delay their
answer until after the election. Yet they chose to announce their rejection of the proposal only five days
before the vote, thus hammering another nail into the FDP coffin.
• A "Manifesto of peace to freedom-loving Italians", calling upon them to reject Communism, was sent to
Premier de Gasperi. Its signatories included two former US Secretaries of State, a former Assistant
Secretary of State, a former Attorney General, a former Supreme Court Justice, a former Governor of
New York, the former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and many other prominent personages. This message
was, presumably, suitably publicized throughout Italy, a task easy in the extreme inasmuch as an
estimated 82 percent of Italian newspapers were in the hands of those unsympathetic to the leftist bloc.
• More than 200 American labor leaders of Italian origin held a conference, out of which came a cable
sent to 23 daily newspapers throughout Italy similarly urging thumbs down on the Reds. At the same
time, the Italian-American Labor Council contributed $50,000 to anti-Communist labor organizations in
Italy. The CIA was already secretly subsidizing such trade unions to counteract the influence of leftist
unions,9 but this was standard Agency practice independent of electoral considerations. (According to a
former CIA officer, when, in 1945, the Communists came very near to gaining control of labor unions,
first in Sicily, then in all Italy and southern France, co-operation between the OSS and the Mafia
successfully stemmed the tide.)' 10
• The CIA, by its own later admission, gave $1 million to Italian "center parties", a king's ransom in Italy
1948," although another report places the figure at $10 million. The Agency also forged documents and
letters purported to come from the PCI which were designed to put the party in a bad light and discredit
its leaders; anonymous books and magazine articles funded by the CIA told in vivid detail about supposed
30
communist activities in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; pamphlets dealt with PCI candidates' sex
and personal lives as well as smearing them with the fascist and/or anti-church brush.
• An American group featuring noted Italian-American musicians traveled to Rome to present a series of
concerts.
•President Truman chose a month before the election as the time to transfer 29 merchant ships to the
Italian government as a "gesture of friendship and confidence in a democratic Italy". (These were Italian
vessels seized during the war and others to replace those seized and lost.)
•Four days later, the House Appropriations Committee acted swiftly to approve $18.7 million in
additional "interim aid" funds for Italy.
• Two weeks later, the United States gave Italy $4.3 million as the first payment on wages due to 60,000
former Italian war prisoners in the US who had worked "voluntarily" for the Allied cause. This was a
revision of the peace treaty which stipulated that the Italian government was liable for such payments.
• Six days before election day, the State Department made it public that Italy would soon receive $31
million in gold in return for gold looted by the Nazis. (The fact that only a few years earlier Italy had been
the "enemy" fighting alongside the Nazis was now but a dim memory.)
• Two days later, the US government authorized two further large shipments of food to Italy, one for $8
million worth of grains. A number of the aid ships, upon their arrival in Italy during the election
campaign, had been unloaded amid ceremony and a speech by the American ambassador.
A poster prominent in Italy read: "The bread that we eat-40 per cent Italian flour-60 per cent American
flour sent free of charge." The poster neglected to mention whether the savings were passed on to the
consumer or served to line the pockets of the baking companies.
•Four days before election day, the American Commission for the Restoration of Italian Monuments, Inc.
announced an additional series of grants to the Italian Ministry of Fine Arts.
•April 15 was designated "Free Italy Day" by the American Sympathizers for a Free Italy with nation-
wide observances to be held.
•The American ambassador, James Clement Dunn, traveled constantly throughout Italy pointing out to
the population "on every possible occasion what American aid has meant to them and their country". At
the last unloading of food, Dunn declared that the American people were saving Italy from starvation,
chaos and possible domination from outside. His speeches usually received wide coverage in the non-left
press. By contrast, the Italian government prohibited several of its own ambassadors abroad from
returning home to campaign for the FDP.
In his historic speech of 12 March 1947, which came to be known as "The
Truman Doctrine", the president had proclaimed:
I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who
are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.
I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their
own way. 13
It scarcely needs to be emphasized how hypocritical this promise proved to be,
but the voices which spoke out in the United States against their government's crusade
in Italy were few and barely audible above the roar. The Italian-American Committee
for Free Elections in Italy held a rally to denounce the propaganda blitz, declaring that
"Thousands of Americans of Italian origin feel deeply humiliated by the continuous
flow of suggestions, advice and pressure put on the Italians, as though they were unable
to decide for themselves whom to elect." 14
The Progressive Party also went on record, stating: "As Americans we
repudiate our Government's threat to cut off food from Italy unless the election results
please us. Hungry children must not go unfed because their parents do not vote as
ordered from abroad." 15 The party's candidate for president in 1948 was Henry Wallace,
the former vice-president who was an outspoken advocate of genuine detente with the
Soviet Union. History did not provide the opportunity to observe what the reaction
would have been — amongst those who saw nothing wrong with what the United States
was doing in Italy — if a similar campaign had been launched by the Soviet Union or the
Italian left in the United States on behalf of Wallace.
31
Though some Italians must have been convinced at times that Stalin himself
was the FDP's principal candidate, the actual Soviet intervention in the election hardly
merited a single headline. The American press engaged in speculation that the Russians
were pouring substantial sums of money into the Communist Party's coffers. However,
a survey carried out by the Italian bureau of the United Press revealed that the anti-
Communist patties spent 7 1/2 times as much as the FDP on all forms of propaganda,
the Christian Democrats alone spending four times as much. 16 As for other Soviet
actions, Howard K. Smith presented this observation:
The Russians tried to respond with a few feeble gestures for a while — some
Italian war prisoners were released; some newsprint was sent to Italy and offered
to all parties for their campaign. But there was no way of resisting what
amounted to a tidal wave.
There is evidence that the Russians found the show getting too rough for them
and actually became apprehensive of what the American and British reaction to
a Communist victory at the polls might be. (Russia's concern about conflict with
the West was also expressed within a month of the Italian elections in one of the
celebrated Cominform letters to Tito, accusing the Yugoslavs of trying to
involve the Soviets with the Western powers when "it should have been known
... that the U.S.S.R. after such a heavy war could not start a new one".) 17
The evidence Smith was alluding to was the Soviet rejection of the Trieste
proposal. By its timing, reported the New York Times, "the unexpected procedure
caused some observers to conclude that the Russians had thrown the Italian Communist
1 8
Patty overboard." The party's newspaper had a difficult time dealing with the story.
Washington did as well, for it undermined the fundamental premise of the Italian
campaign: that the Italian Communist Party and the Soviet Union were
indistinguishable as to ends and means; that if you buy the one, you get the other as
well. Thus the suggestion was put forth that perhaps the Soviet rejection was only a
tactic to demonstrate that the US could not keep its promise on Trieste, out the Soviet
announcement had not been accompanied by any such propaganda message, and it
would not explain why the Russians had waited several weeks until near the crucial end
to deliver its body blow to their Italian comrades. In any event, the United States could
only come out smelling a lot sweeter than the Russians.
When the Broadway show had ended its engagement in Italy, the Christian
Democrats stood as the clear winner with 48 percent of the vote. The leftist coalition
had been humiliated with a totally unexpected polling of but 3 1 percent. It had been a
crusade of the kind' which Aneurin Bevan had ascribed to the Tories: "The whole art of
Conservative politics in the 20th century," the British Labour leader wrote, "is being
deployed to enable wealth to persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep
wealth in power."
32
3. Greece 1947 to early 1950s
From cradle of democracy to client state
Jorge Semprun is a Spaniard, a Frenchman, a novelist and film-writer, former
Communist, former inmate of Buchenwald. He was at the infamous Nazi concentration
camp in 1944 with other party members when they heard the news:
For some days now, we had talked of nothing else. ... At first some of us had
thought it was a lie. It had to be. An invention of Nazi propaganda, to raise the
morale of the people. We listened to the news bulletins on the German radio,
broadcast by all the loudspeakers, and we shook our heads. A trick to raise the
morale of the German people, it had to be. But we soon had to face up to the
evidence. Some of us listened in secret to the Allied broadcasts, which
confirmed the news. There was no doubt about it: British troops really were
crushing the Greek Resistance. In Athens, battle was raging, British troops were
retaking the city from the ELAS forces, district by district. It was an unequal
fight: ELAS had neither tanks nor planes.
But Radio Moscow had said nothing, and this silence was variously interpreted. 1
The British army had arrived in Greece during October and November 1944,
shortly after the bulk of the Germans had fled, an evacuation due in no small part to
ELAS, the People's Liberation Army. Founded during the course of 1941- 42 on the
initiative of the Greek Communist Party, ELAS and its political wing EAM cut across
the entire left side of the political spectrum, numbering many priests and even a few
bishops amongst its followers. The guerrillas had wrested large areas of the country
from the Nazi invaders who had routed the British in 1941.
ELAS/EAM partisans could be ruthless and coercive toward those Greeks who
did not cooperate with them or who were suspected of collaboration with the Germans.
But they also provided another dramatic example of the liberating effects of a world
war: the encrusted ways of the Greek old guard were cast aside; in their place arose
communities which had at least the semblance of being run by the local residents,
inchoate institutions and mechanisms which might have been the precursor of a
regenerated Greek society after the war; education, perhaps geared toward propaganda,
but for the illiterate education nonetheless; fighting battalions of women, housewives
called upon for the first time to act independently of their husbands' control ... a
phenomenon which spread irrepressibly until EAM came to number some one to two
million Greeks out of a population of seven million. 2
This was hardly the kind of social order designed to calm the ulcers of the
British old guard (Winston Churchill for one) who had long regarded Greece as their
private manor. The Great Man was determined that the Greek king should be restored to
his rightful place, with all that that implied, and the British military in Greece lost no
time in installing a government dedicated to that end. Monarchists, quislings, and
conservatives of all stripes found themselves in positions of political power,
predominant in the new Greek army and police; members of EAM/ELAS found
themselves dead or in prison. 3
In the early days of the world war, when defeating the Nazis was the Allies'
over whelming purpose, Churchill had referred to ELAS as "those gallant guerrillas",
and ELAS's supporters had welcomed the British in early November 1944 with a sign
reading, "We Greet the Brave English Army. ... EAM." 4
33
But the following month, fighting broke out between ELAS and the British
forces and their Greek comrades-in-arms, many of whom had fought against ELAS
during the war and, in the process, collaborated with the Germans; others had simply
served with the Germans. (The British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, acknowledged
in August 1946 that there were 228 ex-members of the Nazi Security Battalions — whose
main task had been to track down Greek resistance fighters and Jews — on active service
in the new Greek army.) 5 Further support for the campaign against ELAS came from the
US Air Force and Navy which transported more than two British divisions into
Greece." 6 All this while the war against Germany still raged in Europe.
In mid- January 1945 ELAS agreed to an armistice, one that had much of the
appearance and the effect of a surrender. There is disagreement amongst historians as to
whether ELAS had been militarily defeated or whether the Communists in the ELAS
and EAM hierarchy had received the word from Stalin to lay down the gun. If the latter
were the case, it would have been consistent with the noted agreement between Stalin
and Churchill in October 1944, whereby spheres of influence in Eastern Europe were
allocated between the two powers. In this cynical (as Churchill acknowledged)
Monopoly game Britain had landed on Greece. Churchill later wrote that Stalin had
"adhered strictly and faithfully to our agreement of October, and during all the long
weeks of fighting the Communists in the streets of Athens not one word of reproach
came from Pravda or Izvestia" . Nor, as Jorge Semprun noted, from Radio Moscow.
"It is essential to remember," Professor D.F. Fleming has pointed out in his
eminent history of the cold war, "that Greece was the first of the liberated states to be
openly and forcibly compelled to accept the political system of the occupying Great
Power. It was Churchill who acted first and Stalin who followed his example, in
Bulgaria and then in Rumania, though with less bloodshed." 8
A succession of Greek governments followed, serving by the grace of the
British and the United States; thoroughly corrupt governments in the modern Greek
tradition, which continued to terrorize the left, tortured them in notorious island prison
camps, and did next to nothing to relieve the daily misery of the war-torn Greek
people. 9 "There are few modern parallels for government as bad as this," CBS's chief
European correspondent Howard K. Smith observed at the time. 10
In the fall of 1946 the inevitable occurred: leftists took to the hills to launch
phase two of the civil war. The Communists had wrenched Stalin's strangulating hand
from their throats, for their very survival was at stake and everything that they believed
in.
The British were weighed down by their own post-war reconstruction needs,
and in February 1947 they informed the United States that they could no longer
shoulder the burden of maintaining a large armed force in Greece nor provide sizeable
military and economic aid to the country. Thus it was that the historic task of preserving
all that is decent and good in Western Civilization passed into the hands of the United
States.
Several days later, the State Department summoned the Greek charge 'affaires
in Washington and informed him that his government was to ask the US for aid. This
was to be effected by means of a formal letter of request; a document, it turned out, to
be written essentially by the State Department. The text of the letter, the charge
d'affaires later reported, "had been drafted with a view to the mentality of Congress ... It
would also serve to protect the U.S. Government against internal and external charges
that it was taking the initiative of intervening in a foreign state or that it had been
persuaded by the British to take over a bad legacy from them. The note would also serve
as a basis for the cultivation of public opinion which was under study." 11
34
In July, in a letter to Dwight Griswold, the head of the American Mission to
Aid Greece (AMAG), Secretary of State George Marshall said:
It is possible that during your stay in Greece you and the Ambassador will come to
the conclusion that the effectiveness of your Mission would be enhanced if a
reorganization of the Greek Government could be effected. If such a conclusion is
reached, it is hoped that you and the Ambassador will be able to bring about such a
reorganization indirectly through discreet suggestion and otherwise in such a
manner that even the Greek political leaders will have a feeling that the
reorganization has been effected largely by themselves and not by pressure from
without. 12
The Secretary spelled out a further guideline for Griswold, a man the New York
Times shortly afterwards called the "most powerful man in Greece". 13
During the course of your work you and the members of your Mission will from
time to time find that certain Greek officials are not, because of incompetence,
disagreement with your policies, or for some other reason, extending the type of
cooperation which is necessary if the objec-tives of your Mission are to be
achieved. You will find it necessary to effect the removal of these officials. 14
These contrivances, however, were not the most cynical aspects of the
American endeavor. Washington officials well knew that their new client government
was so venal and so abusive of human rights that even confirmed American anti-
communists were appalled. Stewart Alsop for one. On 23 February 1947 the noted
journalist had cabled from Athens that most of the Greek politicians had "no higher
ambition than to taste the profitable delights of a free economy at American expense". 15
The same year, an American investigating team found huge supplies of food aid rotting
in warehouses at a time when an estimated 75 percent of Greek children were suffering
from malnutrition. 16
So difficult was it to gloss over this picture, that President Truman, in his
address to Congress in March 1947 asking for aid to Greece based on the Greek
"request" (the "Truman Doctrine" speech), attempted to pre-empt criticism by admitting
that the Greek government was "not perfect" and that "it has made mistakes". Yet,
somehow, by some ideological alchemy best known to the president, the regime in
Athens was "democratic", its opponents the familiar "terrorists". 17
There was no mention of the Soviet Union in this particular speech, but that
was to be the relentless refrain of the American rationale over the next 2 1/2 years: the
Russians were instigating the Greek leftists so as to kidnap yet another "free" country
and drag it kicking and screaming behind the Iron Curtain.
The neighboring Communist states of Bulgaria, Albania, and particularly
Yugoslavia, in part motivated by old territorial claims against Greece, did aid the
insurgents by allowing them important sanctuary behind their borders and furnishing
them with military supplies (whether substantial or merely token in amount is a
debatable question). The USSR, however, in the person of Joseph Stalin, was adamantly
opposed to assisting the Greek "comrades". At a meeting with Yugoslav leaders in early
1948 (a few months before Yugoslavia's break with the Soviet Union), described by
Milovan Djilas, second-in-command to Tito, Stalin turned to the foreign minister
Edvard Kardelj and asked: "Do you believe in the success of the uprising in Greece?"
Kardelj replied, "If foreign intervention does nor grow, and if serious political and
military errors are not made."
Stalin went on, without paying attention to Kardelj's opinion: "If, if! No, they have
no prospect of success at all. What, do you think that Great Britain and the United
States — the United States, the most powerful state in the world — will permit you to
35
break their line of communication in the Mediterranean? Nonsense. And we have
no navy. The uprising in Greece must be stopped, and as quickly as possible." 18
The first major shiploads of military assistance under the new American
operation arrived in the summer of 1947. (Significant quantities had also been shipped
to the Greek government by the US while the British ran the show.] By the end of the
year, the Greek military was being entirely supported by American aid, down to and
including its clothing and food. The nation's war-making potential was transformed:
continual increases in the size of the Greek armed forces ... fighter-bombers, transport
squadrons, air fields, napalm bombs, recoilless rifles, naval patrol vessels,
communication networks ... docks, railways, roads, bridges ... hundreds of millions of
dollars of supplies and equipment, approaching a billion in total since the end of the
world war... and millions more to create a "Secret Army Reserve" fighting unit,
composed principally of the ex-members of the Nazi Security Battalions referred to
earlier.
The US Military Mission took over the development of battle plans for the
army from the ineffective Greek generals. The Mission, related British military writer
Major Edgar O'Ballance, "took a tough line and insisted that all its recommendations be
carried into effect, at once and in full". 20 Eventually, more than 250 American army
officers were in the country, many assigned to Greek army divisions to ensure
compliance with directives; others operated at the brigade level; another 200 or so US
Air Force and Navy personnel were also on active duty in Greece.
All military training methods and programs were "revised, revitalized and
tightened up" under American supervision 21 ... infantry units made mote mobile, with
increased firepower; special commando units trained in anti-guerrilla tactics; training in
mountain warfare, augmented by some 4,000 mules (sic) shipped to Greece by the
United States ... at American insistence, whole sections of the population uprooted to
eliminate the guerrillas' natural base of operation and source of recruits, just as would be
done in Vietnam 20 years later.
"Both on the ground and in the air, American support was becoming
increasingly active," observed CM. Woodhouse, the British colonel and historian who
served in Greece during the mid- 1940s, "and the theoretical line between advice,
22
intelligence and combat was a narrow one."
The Greek leftists held out for three terrible years. Despite losses of many tens
of thousands, they were always able to replenish their forces, even increase their
number. But by October 1949, foreseeing nothing but more loss of lives to a vastly
superior destruction-machine, the guerrillas announced over their radio a "cease fire". It
was the end of the civil war.
The extent of American hegemony over Greece from 1947 onwards can
scarcely be exaggerated. We have seen Marshall's directives to Griswold, and the
American management of the military campaign. There were many other manifestations
of the same phenomenon, of which the following are a sample:
In September 1947, Vice-Prime Minister Constantine Tsaldaris agreed to the
dissolution of the government and the creation of a new ruling coalition. In doing so,
said the New York Times, Tsaldaris had "surrendered to the desires of Dwight P.
Griswold ... of [US] Ambassador MacVeagh, and also of the King". 23 Before Tsaldaris
addressed the Greek legislature on the matter, MacVeagh stepped in to make a change
to the speech. 24
Over the next several years, each of the frequent changes of prime minister
came about only after considerable American input, if not outright demand. 25 One
example of the latter occurred in 1950 when then American Ambassador Henry Grady
36
sent a letter to Prime Minister Venizelos threatening to cut off US aid if he failed to
Oft
carry out a government reorganization. Venizelos was compelled to step down. The
American influence was felt in regard to other high positions in Greek society as well.
Andreas Papandreou, later to become prime minister himself, has written of this period
that "Cabinet members and army-generals, political party leaders and members of the
Establishment, all made open references to American wishes or views in order to justify
or to account for their own actions or posi-tions." 27
Before undertaking a new crackdown on dissidents in July 1947, Greek
authorities first approached Ambassador Macveagh. The ambassador informed them
that the US government would have no objection to "preventive measures if they were
considered necessary". Reassured, the Greeks went ahead and rounded up 4,000 people
in one week. 28
An example of what could land a Greek citizen in prison is the case of the
EAM member who received an 18 -month sentence for printing remarks deemed
insulting to Dwight Griswold. He had referred to the American as "the official
representative of a foreign country". 29
"In the economic sphere," Andreas Papandreou noted, the United States
"exercised almost dictatorial control during the early fifties requiring that the signature
of the chief of the U.S. Economic Mission appear alongside that of the Greek Minister
of Co-ordination on any important documents." 30
Earlier, American management of the economy may have been even tighter. A
memorandum from Athens dated 17 November 1947, from the American Mission to
Aid Greece to the State Department in Washington, read in part: "we have established
practical control ... over national budget, taxation, currency issuance, price and wage
policies, and state economic planning, as well as over imports and exports, the issuance
of foreign exchange and the direction of military reconstruction and relief
expenditures." 31
There was, moreover, the creation of a new internal security agency, named
and modeled after the CIA (KYP in Greek). Before long, KYP was carrying out all the
endearing practices of secret police everywhere, including systematic torture.
By the early 1950s, Greece had been molded into a supremely reliable ally-
client of the United States. It was staunchly anti-communist and well integrated into the
NATO system. It sent troops to Korea to support the United States' pretence that it was
not simply an American war.
It is safe to say that had the left come to power, Greece would have been much
more independent of the United States. Greece would likely have been independent as
well of the Soviet Union, to whom the Greek left owed nothing. Like Yugoslavia, which
is also free of a common border with the USSR, Greece would have been friendly
towards the Russians, but independent.
When, in 1964, there came to power in Greece a government which entertained
the novel idea that Greece was a sovereign nation, the United States and its Greek
cohorts, as we shall see, quickly and effectively stamped out the heresy.
37
4. The Philippines 1940s and 1950s
U.S. 's oldest colony
I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not
ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed (to)
Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it
came to me this way — I don't know how it was, but it came: (1) That we could not
give them [the Philippine Islands] back to Spain — that would be cowardly and
dishonorable; (2) that we could not turn them over to France or Germany — our
commercial rivals in the Orient — that would be bad business and discreditable; (3)
chat we could not leave them to themselves — they were unfit for self-
government — and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than
Spain's was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and
to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's
grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also
— William McKinley, President of the United States, 1899 1
William McKinley's idea of doing the very best by the Filipinos was to employ
the United States Army to kill them in the tens of thousands, burn down their villages,
subject them to torture, and lay the foundation for an economic exploitation which was
proudly referred to at the time as "imperialism" by leading American statesmen and
newspapers.
After the Spanish had been driven out of the Philippines in 1898 by a combined
action of the United States and the Filipinos, Spain agreed to "cede" (that is, sell) the
islands to the United States for $20 million. But the Filipinos, who had already
proclaimed their own independent republic, did not take kindly to being treated like a
plot of uninhabited real estate. Accordingly, an American force numbering at least
50,000 proceeded to instill in the population a proper appreciation of their status.
Thus did America's longest-lasting and most conspicuous colony ever come
into being.
Nearly half a century later, the US Army again landed in the Philippines to find
a nationalist movement fighting against a common enemy, this time the Japanese. While
combatting the Japanese during 1945, the American military took many measures aimed
at quashing this resistance army, the Huks (a shortening of Hukbalahap- "People's Army
Against Japan" in Tagalog). American forces disarmed many Huk units, removed the
local governments which the Huks had established, and arrested and imprisoned many
of their high-ranking members as well as leaders of the Philippine Communist Party.
Guerrilla forces, primarily organized and led by American officers and composed of US
and Filipino soldiers of the so-called US Army Forces in the Far East, undertook police-
type actions which resulted in a virtual reign of terror against the Huks and suspected
sympathizers; disparaging rumors were spread about the Huks to erode their support
amongst the peasants; and the Japanese were allowed to assault Huk forces unmolested.
This, while the Huks were engaged in a major effort against the Japanese
invaders and Filipino collaborators and frequently came to the aid of American
soldiers.
In much of this anti-Huk campaign, the United Slates made use of Filipinos who
were collaborating with the Japanese, such as landlords, large estate owners, many
police constables, and other officials. In the post-war period, the US restored to power
38
and position many of those tainted with collaboration, much to the distaste of other
Filipinos.
The Huk guerrilla forces had been organized in 1942, largely at the initiative of
the Communist Party, in response to the Japanese occupation of the islands. Amongst
American policy makers, there were those who came to the routine conclusion that the
Huks were thus no more than a tool of the International Communist Conspiracy, to be
opposed as all such groups were to be opposed. Others in Washington and Manila,
whose reflexes were less knee-jerk, but mote cynical, recognized that the Huk
movement, if its growing influence was not checked, would lead to sweeping reforms of
Philippine society.
The centerpiece of the Huk political program was land reform, a crying need in
this largely agricultural society. (On occasion, US officials would pay lip-service to the
concept, but during SO years of American occupation, nothing of the sort had been
carried out.) The other side of the Huk coin was industrialization, which the United
States had long thwarted in order to provide American industries with a veritable
playground in the Philippines. From the Huks' point of view, such changes were but
prologue to raising the islanders from their state of backwardness, from illiteracy,
grinding poverty, and the diseases of poverty like tuberculosis and beri-beri. "The
Communist Hukbalahap rebellion," reported the New York Times, "is generally
regarded as an outgrowth of the misery and discontent among the peasants of Central
Luzon [the main island]." 4
A study prepared years later for the US Army echoed this sentiment, stating that
the Huks' "main impetus was peasant grievances, not Leninist designs". 5
Nevertheless, the Huk movement was unmistakably a threat to the neo-colonial
condition of the Philippines, the American sphere of influence, and those Philippine
interests which benefited from the status quo.
By the end of 1945, four months after the close of World War II, the United
States was training and equipping a force of 50,000 Filipino soldiers for the Cold War. 6
In testimony before a congressional committee, Major General William Arnold of the
US Army candidly stated that this program was "essential for the maintenance of
internal order, not for external difficulties at all". None of the congressmen present
publicly expressed any reservation about the international propriety of such a foreign
policy.
At the same time, American soldiers were kept on in the Philippines, and in at
least one infantry division combat training was re-established. This led to vociferous
protests and demonstrations by the GIs who wanted only to go home. The inauguration
of combat training, the New York Times disclosed, was "interpreted by soldiers and
certain Filipino newspapers as the preparation for the repression of possible uprisings in
the Philippines by disgruntled farm tenant groups." The story added that the soldiers had
a lot to say "on the subject of American armed intervention in China and the
Netherlands Indies [Indonesia]," which was occurring at the same time. 8
To what extent American military personnel participated directly in the
suppression of dissident groups in the Philippines after the war is not known.
The Huks, though not trusting Philippine and US authorities enough to
voluntarily surrender their arms, did test the good faith of the government by taking part
in the April 1946 national elections as part of a "Democratic Alliance" of liberal and
socialist peasant political groups. (Philippine independence was scheduled for three
months later — the Fourth of July to be exact.) As matters turned out, the commander-in-
chief of the Huks, Luis Taruc, and several other Alliance members and reform-minded
candidates who won election to Congress (three to the Senate and seven to the House]
39
were not allowed to take their seats under the transparent fiction that coercion had been
used to influence voters. No investigation or review of the cases had even been carried
out by the appropriate body, the Electoral Tribunal. 9 (Two years later, Taruc was
temporarily allowed to take his seat when he came to Manila to discuss a ceasefire with
the government.)
The purpose of denying these candidates their seats was equally transparent: the
government was thus able to push through Congress the controversial Philippine-US
Trade Act — passed by two votes more than required in the House, and by nothing to
spare in the Senate — which yielded to the United States bountiful privileges and
concessions in the Philippine economy, including "equal rights ... in the development of
the nation's natural resources and the operation of its public utilities". 10 This "parity"
provision was eventually extended to every sector of the Philippine economy. 11
The debasement of the electoral process was followed by a wave of heavy
brutality against the peasants carried out by the military, the police, and landlord goon
squads. According to Luis Taruc, in the months following the election, peasant villages
were destroyed, more than 500 peasants and their leaders killed, and about three times
that number jailed, tortured, maimed or missing. The Huks and others felt they had little
12
alternative but to take up arms once again.
Independence was not likely to change much of significance. American historian
George E.Taylor, of impeccable establishment credentials, in a book which bears the
indication of CIA sponsorship, was yet moved to state that independence "was marked
by lavish expressions of mutual good will, by partly fulfilled promises, and by a
restoration of the old relationship in almost everything except in name. ... Many
demands were made of the Filipinos for the commercial advantage of the United States,
but none for the social and political advantage of the Philippines." 13
The American military was meanwhile assuring a home for itself in the
Philippines. A 1947 agreement provided sites for 23 US military bases in the country.
The agreement was to last for 99 years. It stipulated that American servicemen who
committed crimes outside the bases while on duty could be tried only by American
military tribunals inside the bases.
By the terms of a companion military assistance pact, the Philippine government
was prohibited from purchasing so much as a bullet from any arms source other than the
US, except with American approval. Such a state of affairs, necessarily involving
training, maintenance and spare parts, made the Philippine military extremely dependent
upon their American counterparts. Further, no foreigners other than Americans were
permitted to perform any function for or with the Philippine armed forces without the
approval of the United States. 14
By early 1950, the United States had provided the Philippines with over $200
million of military equipment and supplies, a remarkable sum for that time, and was in
addition to the construction of various military facilities. 15 The Joint US Military
Advisory Group (JUS-MAG) reorganized the Philippine intelligence capability and
defense department, put its chosen man, Ramon Magsaysay, at its head, and formed the
Philippine army into battalion combat teams trained for counter-insurgency warfare. 16
The Philippines was to be a laboratory experiment for this unconventional type of
combat. The methods and the terminology, such as "search-and-destroy" and
"pacification", were later to become infamous in Vietnam.
By September, when Lt. Col. Edward G. Lansdale arrived in the Philippines, the
civil war had all the markings of a long, drawn-out affair, with victory not in sight for
either side. Ostensibly, Lansdale was just another American military adviser attached to
JUSMAG, but in actuality he was the head of CIA clandestine and paramilitary
40
operations in the country. His apparent success in the Philippines was to make him a
recognized authority in counter-insurgency.
In his later reminiscences about this period in his life, Lansdale relates his
surprise at hearing from informed Filipino civilian friends about how repressive the
Quirino government was, that its atrocities matched those of (or attributed to) the Huks,
that the government was "rotten with corruption" (down to the policeman in the street,
Lansdale observed on his own), that Quirino himself had been elected the previous year
through "extensive fraud", and that "the Huks were right", they were the "wave of the
future", and violence was the only way for the people to get a government of their own.
(The police, wrote a correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post, were "bands of
uniformed thieves and rapists, more feared than bandits ... the army was little better.") 17
Lansdale was undeterred. He had come to do a job. Accordingly, he told himself
that if the Huks took over there would only be another form of injustice by another
privileged few, backed by even crueller force. By the next chapter, he had convinced
himself that he was working on the side of those committed to "defend human liberty in
the Philippines". 18
As a former advertising man, Lansdale was no stranger to the use of market
research, motivation techniques, media, and deception. In CIA parlance, such arts fall
under the heading of "psychological warfare". To this end, Lansdale fashioned a unit
called the Civil Affairs Office. Its activities were based on the premise — one both new
and suspect to most American military officers — that a popular guerrilla army cannot be
defeated by force alone.
Lansdale's team conducted a careful study of the superstitions of the Filipino
peasants living in Huk areas: their lore, taboos, and myths were examined for clues to
the appropriate appeals that could wean them from supporting the insurgents. In one
operation, Lansdale's men flew over these areas in a small plane hidden by a cloud
cover and broadcast in Tagalog mysterious curses on any villagers who dared to give the
Huks food or shelter. The tactic reportedly succeeded into starving some Huk units into
surrender.
Another Lansdale-initiated "psywar" operation played on the superstitious dread
in the Philippine countryside of the asuang, a mythical vampire. A psywar squad
entered a town and planted rumors that an asuang lived in the neighboring hill where
the Huks were based, a location from which government forces were anxious to have
them out. Two nights later, after giving the rumors time to circulate among Huk
sympathizers in the town and make their way up the hill, the psywar squad laid an
ambush for the rebels along a trail used by them. When a Huk patrol passed, the
ambushers silently snatched the last man, punctured his neck vampire-fashion with two
holes, held his body by the heels until the blood drained out, and put the corpse back on
the trail. When the Huks, as superstitious as any other Filipinos, discovered the
20
bloodless comrade, they fled from the region.
Lansdale regularly held "coffee klatsches" with Filipino officials and military
personnel in which new ideas were freely tossed back and forth, a la a Madison Avenue
brain session. Out of this came the Economic Development Corps to lure Huks with a
program of resettlement on their own patch of farm land, with tools, seeds, cash loans,
etc. It was an undertaking wholly inadequate to the land problem, and the number that
responded was very modest, but like other psywar techniques, a principal goal was to
steal from the enemy his most persuasive arguments. 21 Among other tactics introduced
or refined by Lansdale were: production of films and radio broadcasts to explain and
justify government actions; infiltration of government agents into the ranks of the Huks
to provide information and sow dissension; attempts to modify the behavior of
41
government soldiers so as to curtail their abuse of people in rural areas (for the Huks
had long followed an explicit code of proper conduct towards the peasants, with
punishment meted out to violators), but on other occasions, government soldiers were
allowed to run amok in villages — disguised as Huks. 22
This last, revealed L. Fletcher Prouty, was a technique "developed to a high art
in the Philippines" in which soldiers were "set upon the unwary village in the grand
manner of a Cecil B. De Mille production". 23 Prouty, a retired US Air Force colonel,
was for nine years the focal point officer for contacts between the Pentagon and the
CIA. He has described another type of scenario by which the Huks were tarred with the
terrorist brush, serving to obscure the political nature of their movement and mar their
credibility:
In the Philippines, lumbering interests and major sugar interests have forced tens
of thousands of simple, backward villagers to leave areas where they have lived
for centuries. When these poor people flee to other areas, it should be quite
obvious that they in turn then infringe upon the territorial rights of other villagers
or landowners. This creates violent rioting or at least sporadic outbreaks of
banditry, that last lowly recourse of dying and terrorized people. Then when the
distant government learns of the banditry and rioting, it must offer some safe
explanation. The last thing that regional government would want to do would be
to say that the huge lumbering or paper interests had driven the people out of their
ancestral homeland. In the Philippines it is customary for the local/regional
government to get a 10 percent rake-off on all such enterprise and for national
politicians to get another 10 percent. So the safe explanation becomes
"Communist-inspired subversive insurgency." The word for this in the Philippines
The most insidious part of the CIA operation in the Philippines was the
fundamental manipulation of the nation's political life, featuring stage-managed
elections and disinformation campaigns. The high-point of this effort was the election to
the presidency, in 1953, of Ramon Magsaysay, the cooperative former defense
department head.
25
Lansdale, it was said, "invented" Magsaysay. His CIA front organizations —
such as the National Movement for Free Elections — ran the Filipino's campaign with all
the license, impunity, and money that one would expect from the Democratic or
Republican National Committees operating in the US, or perhaps more to the point,
Mayor Daley operating in Chicago. Yet the New York Times, in an editorial, was
moved to refer to the Philippines as "democracy's showcase in Asia." 26
The CIA, on one occasion, drugged the drinks of Magsaysay's opponent,
incumbent president Elpido Quirino, before he gave a speech so that he would appear
incoherent. On another occasion, when Magsaysay insisted on delivering a speech
which had been written by a Filipino instead of one written by Lansdale's team,
Lansdale reacted in a rage, finally hitting the presidential candidate so hard that he
knocked him out.
Magsaysay won the election, but not before the CIA had smuggled in guns for
use in a coup in case their man lost. 28
Once Magsaysay was in office, the CIA wrote his speeches, carefully guided his
foreign policy, and used its press "assets" (paid editors and journalists) to provide him
with a constant claque of support for his domestic programs and his involvement in the
US-directed anti-communist crusade in southeast Asia, as well as to attack anti-US
newspaper columnists. So beholden was Magsaysay to the United States, disclosed
presidential assistant Sherman Adams, that he "sent word to Eisenhower that he would
do anything the United States wanted him to do — even though his own foreign minister
took the opposite view". 29
42
One inventive practice of the CIA on behalf of Magsaysay was later picked up
by Agency stations in a number of other Third World countries. This particular piece of
chicanery consisted of selecting articles written by CIA writer-agents for the provincial
press and republishing them in a monthly Digest of the Provincial Press. The Digest was
then sent to congressmen and other opinion makers in Manila to enlighten them as to
"what the provinces were thinking".
Senator Claro M. Recto, Magsaysay's chief political opponent and a stern critic
of American policy in the Philippines, came in for special treatment. The CIA planted
stories that he was a Communist Chinese agent and it prepared packages of condoms
labeled "Courtesy of Claro M. Recto — the People's Friend". The condoms ail had holes
in them at the most inappropriate place. 31
The Agency also planned to assassinate Recto, going so far as to prepare a
substance for poisoning him. The idea was abandoned "for pragmatic considerations
rather than moral scruples." 32
After Magsaysay died in a plane crash in 1957, various other Filipino politicians
and parties were sought out by the CIA as clients, or offered themselves as such. One of
the latter was Diosdado Macapagal, who was to become president in 1961. Macapagal
provided the Agency with political information for several years and eventually asked
for, and received, what he felt he deserved: heavy financial support for his campaign.
{Reader's Digest called his election: "certainly a demonstration of democracy in
action".) 33
Ironically, Macapagal had been the bitterest objector to American intervention in
the Magsaysay election in 1953, quoting time and again from the Philippine law that
"No foreigner shall aid any candidate directly or indirectly or take part in or influence in
any manner any election." 34
Perhaps even more ironic, in 1957 the Philippine government adopted a law,
clearly written by Americans, which outlawed both the Communist Party and the Huks,
giving as one of the reasons for doing so that these organizations aimed at placing the
government "under the control and domination of an alien power".
By 1953 the Huks were scattered and demoralized, no longer a serious threat,
although their death would be distributed over the next few years. It is difficult to
ascertain to what extent their decline was due to the traditional military force employed
against them, or to Lansdale's more unorthodox methods, or to the eventual debilitation
of many of the Huks from malnutrition and disease, brought on by the impoverishment
of the peasantry. Long before the end, many Huks were also lacking weapons and
ammunition and proper military equipment, bringing into question the oft-repeated
charge of Soviet and Chinese aid to them made by Filipino and American authorities. 36
Edward Lachica, a Filipino historian, has written that "The Kremlin did pay lip service
to the Communist movement in the Philippines, praising the Huks for being part of the
37
'global struggle against the U.S.', but no material support was offered."
"Since the destruction of Huk military power," noted George Taylor, "the social
and political program that made the accomplishment possible has to a large extent fallen
by the wayside." 8
Fortress America, however, was securely in place in southeast Asia. From the
Philippines would be launched American air and sea actions against Korea and China,
Vietnam and Indonesia. The Philippine government would send combat forces to fight
alongside the United States in Vietnam and Korea. On the islands' bases, the technology
and art of counter-insurgency warfare would be imparted to the troops of America's
other allies in the Pacific.
43
5. Korea 1945-1953
Was it all that it appeared to be ?
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble.
But how much nobler it would be if men died for
ideas that were true.
— H.L. Mencken, 1919
How is it that the Korean War escaped the protests which surrounded the war in
Vietnam? Everything we've come to love and cherish about Vietnam had its forerunner
in Korea: the support of a corrupt tyranny, the atrocities, the napalm, the mass slaughter
of civilians, the cities and villages laid to waste, the calculated management of the news,
the sabotaging of peace talks. But the American people were convinced that the war in
Korea was an unambiguous case of one country invading another without provocation.
A case of the bad guys attacking the good guys who were being saved by the even better
guys; none of the historical, political and moral uncertainty that was the dilemma of
Vietnam. The Korean War was seen to have begun in a specific manner: North Korea
attacked South Korea in the early morning of 25 June 1950; while Vietnam ... no one
seemed to know how it all began, or when, or why.
And there was little in the way of accusations about American "imperialism" in
Korea. The United States, after all, was fighting as part of a United Nations Army. What
was there to protest about? And of course there was McCarthyism, so prevalent in the
early 1950s, which further served to inhibit protest.
There were, in fact, rather different interpretations to be made of what the war
was all about, how it was being conducted, even how it began, but these quickly
succumbed to the heat of war fever.
Shortly after the close of the Second World War, the Soviet Union and the
United States occupied Korea in order to expel the defeated Japanese. A demarcation
line between the Russian and American forces was set up along the 38th Parallel. The
creation of this line in no way had the explicit or implicit intention of establishing two
separate countries, but the cold war was soon to intrude.
Both powers insisted that unification of North and South was the principal and
desired goal. However, they also desired to see this carried out in their own ideological
image, and settled thereby into a routine of proposal and counter-proposal, accusation
and counter-accusation, generously intermixed with deviousness, and produced nothing
in the way of an agreement during the ensuing years. Although both Moscow and
Washington and their hand-picked Korean leaders were not always displeased about the
division of the country (on the grounds that half a country was better than none),
officials and citizens of both sides continued to genuinely call for unification on a
regular basis.
That Korea was still one country, with unification still the goal, at the time the
war began, was underscored by the chief US delegate to the UN, Warren Austin, in a
statement he made shortly afterwards:
The artificial barrier which has divided North and South Korea has no basis for
existence either in law or in reason. Neither the United Nations, its Commission
on Korea, nor the Republic of Korea [South Korea] recognize such a line. Now
44
the North Koreans, by armed attack upon the Republic of Korea, have denied the
reality of any such line. 1
The two sides had been clashing across the Parallel for several years. What
happened on that fateful day in June could thus be regarded as no more than the
escalation of an ongoing civil war. The North Korean Government has claimed that in
1949 alone, the South Korean army or police perpetrated 2,617 armed incursions into
the North to carry out murder, kidnapping, pillage and arson for the purpose of causing
social disorder and unrest, as well as to increase the combat capabilities of the invaders.
At times, stated the Pyongyang government, thousands of soldiers were involved in a
single battle with many casualties resulting. 2
A State Department official, Ambassador-at-large Philip C. Jessup, speaking in
April 1950, put it this way:
There is constant fighting between the South Korean Army and bands that
infiltrate the country from the North. There are very real battles, involving
perhaps one or two thousand men. When you go to this boundary, as I did ... you
see troop movements, fortifications, and prisoners of war. 3
Seen in this context, the question of who fired the first shot on 25 June 1950
takes on a much reduced air of significance. As it is, the North Korean version of events
is that their invasion was provoked by two days of bombardment by the South Koreans,
on the 23rd and 24th, followed by a surprise South Korean attack across the border on
the 25th against the western town of Haeju and other places. Announcement of the
Southern attack was broadcast over the North's radio later in the morning of the 25th.
Contrary to general belief at the time, no United Nations group — neither the UN
Military Observer Group in the field nor the UN Commission on Korea in Seoul —
witnessed, or claimed to have witnessed, the outbreak of hostilities. The Observer
Group's field trip along the Parallel ended on 23 June. Its statements about what took
place afterward are either speculation or based on information received from the South
Korean government or the US military.
Moreover, early in the morning of the 26th, the South Korean Office of Public
Information announced that Southern forces had indeed captured the North Korean
town of Haeju. The announcement stated that the attack had occurred that same
morning, but an American military status report as of nightfall on the 25th notes that all
Southern territory west of the Imjin River had been lost to a depth of at least three miles
inside the border except in the area of the Haeju "counter attack".
In either case, such a military victory on the part of the Southern forces is
extremely difficult to reconcile with the official Western account, maintained to this
day, that has the North Korean army sweeping south in a devastating surprise attack,
taking control of everything that lay before it, and forcing South Korean troops to
evacuate further south.
Subsequently, the South Korean government denied that its capture of Haeju had
actually taken place, blaming the original announcement, apparently, on an
exaggerating mili-taty officer. One historian has ascribed the allegedly incorrect
announcement to "an error due to poor communications, plus an attempt to stiffen South
Korean resistance by claiming a victory". Whatever actually lay behind the
announcement, it is evident that very little reliance, if any, can be placed upon
statements made by the South Korean government concerning the start of the war. 4
There were, in fact, reports in the Western press of the attack on Haeju which
made no mention of the South Korean government's announcement, and which appear
to be independent confirmations of the event. The London Daily Herald, in its issue of
45
26 June, stated that "American military observers said the Southern forces had made a
successful relieving counter-attack near the west coast, penetrated five miles into
Northern territory and seized the town of Haeju." This was echoed in The Guardian of
London the same day: "American officials confirmed that the Southern troops had
captured Haeju."
Similarly, the New York Herald Tribune reported, also on the 26th, that "South
Korean troops drove across the 38th Parallel, which forms the frontier, to capture the
manufacturing town of Haeju, just north of the line. The Republican troops captured
quantities of equipment." None of the accounts specified just when the attack took
place.
On the 25th, American writer John Gunther was in Japan preparing his
biography of General Douglas MacArthur. As he recounts in the book, he was playing
tourist in the town of Nikko with "two important members" of the American occupation,
when "one of these was called unexpectedly to the telephone. He came back and
whispered, A big story has just broken. The South Koreans have attacked North
Korea!'" That evening, Gunther and his party returned to Tokyo where "Several officers
met us at the station to tell us correctly and with much amplification what had happened
... there was no doubt whatever that North Korea was the aggressor."
And the telephone call? Gunther explains: "The message may have been garbled
in transmission. Nobody knew anything much at headquarters the first few hours, and
probably people were taken in by the blatant, corrosive lies of the North Korean radio." 5
There is something a little incongruous about the picture of American military
and diplomatic personnel, practicing anti-communists each one, being taken in on so
important a matter by communist lies — blatant ones no less.
The head of South Korea, Syngman Rhee, had often expressed his desire and
readiness to compel the unification of Korea by force. On 26 June the New York Times
reminded its readers that "on a number of occasions, Dr. Rhee has indicated that his
army would have taken the offensive if Washington had given the consent." The
newspaper noted also that before the war began: "The warlike talk strangely [had]
almost all come from South Korean leaders."
Rhee may have had good reason for provoking a full-scale war apart from the
issue of unification. On 30 May, elections for the National Assembly were held in the
South in which Rhee's party suffered a heavy setback and lost control of the assembly.
Like countless statesmen before and after him, Rhee may have decided to play the war
card to rally support for his shaky rule. A labor adviser attached to the American aid
mission in South Korea, Stanley Earl, resigned in July, expressing the opinion that the
South Korean government was "an oppressive regime" which "did very little to help the
people" and that "an internal South Korean rebellion against the Rhee Government
would have occurred if the forces of North Korea had not invaded". 6
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, in his reminiscences, makes it plain that the
North Koreans had contemplated an invasion of the South for some time and he reports
their actual invasion without any mention of provocation on that day. This would seem
to put that particular question to rest. However, Khrushchev's chapter on Korea is a
wholly superficial account. It is not a serious work of history, nor was it intended to be.
As he himself states:
"My memories of the Korean War are unavoidably sketchy." (He did not
become Soviet leader until after the war was over.) His chapter contains no discussion
of any of the previous fighting across the border, nothing of Rhee's belligerent
statements, nothing at all even of the Soviet Union's crucial absence from the UN
which, as we shall see, allowed the so-called United Nations Army to be formed and
46
intervene in the conflict. Moreover, his reminiscences, as published, are an edited and
condensed version of the tapes he made. A study based on a comparison between the
Russian-language transcription of the tapes and the published English-language book
reveals that some of Khrushchev's memories about Korea were indeed sketchy, but that
the book fails to bring this out. For example, North Korean leader Kim Il-sung met with
Stalin to discuss Kim's desire "to prod South Korea with the point of a bayonet". The
book then states unambiguously: "Kim went home and then returned to Moscow when
he had worked everything out." In the transcript, however, Khrushchev says: "In my
opinion, either the date of his return was set, or he was to inform us as soon as he
finished preparing all of his ideas. Then, I don't remember in which month or year, Kim
Il-sung came and related his plan to Stalin" (emphasis added). 7
On 26 June, the United States presented a resolution before the UN Security
Council condemning North Korea for its "unprovoked aggression". The resolution was
approved, although there were arguments that "this was a fight between Koreans" and
should be treated as a civil war, and a suggestion from the Egyptian delegate that the
word "unprovoked" should be dropped in view of the longstanding hostilities between
the two Koreas. 8
Yugoslavia insisted as well that "there seemed to be lack of precise information
that could enable the Council to pin responsibility", and proposed that North Korea be
invited to present its side of the story. 9 This was not done. (Three months later, the
Soviet foreign minister put forward a motion that the UN hear representatives from both
sides. This, too, was voted down, by a margin of 46 to 6, because of North Korea's
"aggression", and it was decided to extend an invitation to South Korea alone.) 10
On the 27th, the Security Council recommended that members of the United
Nations furnish assistance to South Korea "as may be necessary to repel the armed
attack". President Truman had already ordered the US Navy and Air Force into combat
by this time, thus presenting the Council with a fait accompli, 11 a tactic the US was to
repeat several times before the war came to an end. The Council made its historic
decision with the barest of information available to it, and all of it derived from and
selected by only one side of the conflict. This was, as journalist I.F. Stone put it,
"neither honorable nor wise".
It should be kept in mind that in 1950 the United Nations was in no way a
neutral or balanced organization. The great majority of members were nations very
dependent upon the United States for economic recovery or development. There was no
Third World bloc which years later pursued a UN policy much more independent of the
United States. And only four countries of the Soviet bloc were members at the time,
none on the Security Council. 12
Neither could UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie, of Norway, be regarded as
neutral in the midst of cold war controversy. In his memoirs, he makes it remarkably
clear that he was no objective outsider. His chapters on the Korean War are pure knee-
reflex anti-communism and reveal his maneuvering on the issue. 13 In 1949, it was later
disclosed, Lie had entered into a secret agreement with the US State Department to
dismiss from UN employment individuals whom Washington regarded as having
questionable political leanings. 14
The adoption of these resolutions by the Security Council was possible only
because the Soviet Union was absent from the proceedings due to its boycott of the
United Nations over the refusal to seat Communist China in place of Taiwan. If the
Russians had been present, they undoubtedly would have vetoed the resolutions. Their
absence has always posed an awkward problem for those who insist that the Russians
were behind the North Korean invasion. One of the most common explanations offered
47
is that the Russians, as a CIA memorandum stated, wanted "to challenge the US
specifically and test the firmness of US resistance to Communist expansion." 15
Inasmuch as, during the existence of the Soviet Union, the same analysis was put forth
by American political pundits for virtually every encounter between the United States
and leftists anywhere in the world, before and after Korea, it would appear that the test
was going on for an inordinately long period and one can only wonder why the Soviets
never came to a conclusion.
"The finishing touch," wrote T.F. Stone, "was to make the United Nations'
forces subject to MacArthur without making Mac Arthur subject to the United Nations.
This came on July 7 in a resolution introduced jointly by Britain and France. This is
commonly supposed to have established a United Nations Command. Actually it did
nothing of the sort." 16 The resolution recommended "that all members providing
military forces and other assistance ... make such forces and other assistance available to
a unified command under the United States" (emphasis added}. It further requested "the
United States to designate the commander of such forces." 17 This would be the
redoubtable MacArthur.
It was to be an American show. Military personnel of some 16 other countries
took part in one way or another but, with the exception of the South Koreans, there
could be little doubt as to their true status or function. Eisenhower later wrote in his
memoirs that when he was considering US military intervention in Vietnam in 1954,
also as part of a "coalition", he recognized that the burden of the operation would fall on
the United States, but "the token forces supplied by these other nations, as in Korea,
would lend real moral standing to a venture that otherwise could be made to appear as a
brutal example of imperialism" (emphasis added). 18
The war, and a brutal one it was indeed, was fought ostensibly in defense of the
Syngman Rhee regime. Outside of books published by various South Korean
governments, it is rather difficult to find a kind word for the man the United States
brought back to Korea in 1945 after decades of exile in America during the Japanese
occupation of his country. Flown into Korea in one of MacArthur's airplanes, Rhee was
soon maneuvered into a position of prominence and authority by the US Army Military
Government in Korea (USAMGIK). In the process, American officials had to suppress a
provisional government, the Korean People's Republic, that was the outgrowth of a
number of regional governing committees set up by prominent Koreans and which had
already begun to carry out administrative tasks, such as food distribution and keeping
order. The KPR's offer of its services to the arriving Americans was dismissed out of
hand.
Despite its communist-sounding name, the KPR included a number of
conservatives; indeed, Rhee himself had been given the leading position of chairman.
Rhee and the other conservatives, most of whom were still abroad when chosen,
perhaps did not welcome the honor because the KPR, on balance, was probably too
leftist for their tastes, as it was for the higher echelons of the USAMGIK. But after 35
years under the Japanese, any group or government set up to undo the effects of
colonialism had to have a revolutionary tinge to it. It was the conservatives in Korea
who had collaborated with the Japanese; leftists and other nationalists who had
struggled against them; the make-up of the KPR necessarily reflected this, and it was
reportedly more popular than any other political grouping. 19
Whatever the political leanings or intentions of the KPR, by denying it any
"authority, status or form", the USAMGIK was regulating Korean political life as if
the country were a defeated enemy and not a friendly state liberated from a common foe
and with a right to independence and self-determination.
48
The significance of shunting aside the KPR went beyond this. John Gunther,
hardly a radical, summed up the situation this way: "So the first — and best — chance for
building a united Korea was tossed away." 21 And Alfred Crofts, a member of the
American military government at the time, has written that "A potential unifying agency
became thus one of the fifty-four splinter groups in South Korean political life." 22
Syngman Rhee would be Washington's man: eminently pro-American, strongly
anti-Communist, sufficiently controllable. His regime was one in which landlords,
collaborators, the wealthy, and other conservative elements readily found a home.
Crofts has pointed out that "Before the American landings, a political Right, associated
in popular thought with colonial rule, could not exist; but shortly afterward we were to
foster at least three conservative factions." 23
Committed to establishing free enterprise, the USAMGIK sold off vast amounts
of confiscated Japanese property, homes, businesses, industrial raw materials and other
valuables. Those who could most afford to purchase these assets were collaborators who
had grown rich under the Japanese, and other profiteers. "With half the wealth of the
24
nation 'up for grabs', demoralization was rapid."
While the Russians did a thorough house-cleaning of Koreans in the North who
had collaborated with the Japanese, the American military government in the South
allowed many collaborators, and at first even the Japanese themselves, to retain
positions of administration and authority, much to the consternation of those Koreans
who had fought against the Japanese occupation of their country. To some extent, these
people may have been retained in office because they were the most experienced at
keeping the country running. Another reason has been suggested: to prevent the Korean
People's Republic from assuming a measure of power. 25
And while the North soon implemented widespread and effective land reform
and at least formal equality for women, the Rhee regime remained hostile to these
ideals. Two years later, it enacted a land reform measure, but this applied only to former
Japanese property. A 1949 law to covet other holdings was not enforced at all, and the
abuse of land tenants continued in both old and new forms. 26
Public resentment against the US/Rhee administration was aroused because of
these policies as well as because of the suppression of the KPR and some very
questionable elections. So reluctant was Rhee to allow an honest election, that by early
1950 he had become enough of an embarrassment to the United States for Washington
officials to threaten to cut off aid if he failed to do so and also improve the state of civil
liberties. Apparently because of this pressure, the elections held on May 30 were fair
enough to allow "moderate" elements to participate, and, as mentioned earlier, the Rhee
government was decisively repudiated. 27
The resentment was manifested in the form of frequent rebellions, including
some guerrilla warfare in the hills, from 1946 to the beginning of the war, and even
during the war. The rebellions were dismissed by the government as "communist-
inspired" and repressed accordingly, but, as John Gunther observed, "It can be safely
said that in the eyes of Hodge [the commander of US forces in Korea] and Rhee,
particularly at the beginning, almost any Korean not an extreme rightist was a
28
communist and potential traitor."
General Hodge evidently permitted US troops to take part in the repression.
Mark Gayn, a correspondent in Korea for the Chicago Sun, wrote that American
soldiers "fired on crowds, conducted mass arrests, combed the hills for suspects, and
organized posses of Korean rightists, constabulary and police for mass raids. Gayn
related that one of Hodge's political advisers assured him (Gayn) that Rhee was not a
fascist: "He is two centuries before fascism — a pure Bourbon." 30
49
Describing the government's anti-guerrilla campaign in 1948, pro-Western
political scientist John Kie-Chiang Oh of Marquette University has written: "In these
campaigns, the civil liberties of countless persons were often ignored. Frequently,
hapless villagers, suspected of aiding the guerillas, were summarily executed." 31
A year later, when a committee of the National Assembly launched an
investigation of collaborators, Rhee had his police raid the Assembly: 22 people were
arrested, of whom 16 were later found to have suffered either broken ribs, skull injuries
or broken eardrums. 32
At the time of the outbreak of war in June 1950, there were an estimated 14,000
political prisoners in South Korean jails.
Even during the height of the war, in February 1951, reported Professor Oh,
there was the "Koch'ang Incident", again involving suspicion of aiding guerrillas, "in
which about six hundred men and women, young and old, were herded into a narrow
valley and mowed down with machine guns by a South Korean army unit." 34
Throughout the war, a continuous barrage of accusations was leveled by each
side at the other, charging the enemy with engaging in all manner of barbarity and
atrocity, against troops, prisoners of war, and civilians alike, in every part of the country
(each side occupied the other's territory at times), trying to outdo each other in a verbal
war of superlatives almost as heated as the combat. In the United States this produced a
body of popular myths, not unlike those emerging from other wars which are widely
supported at home. (By contrast, during the Vietnam War the inclination of myths to
flourish was regularly countered by numerous educated protestors who carefully
researched the origins of the war, monitored its conduct, and publicized studies sharply
at variance with the official version(s), eventually influencing the mass media to do the
same.)
There was, for example, the consensus that the brutality of the war in Korea
must be laid overwhelmingly on the doorstep of the North Koreans. The Koch'ang
Incident mentioned above may be relevant to providing some counterbalance to this
belief. Referring to the incident, the British Korea scholar Jon Halliday observed:
This account not only serves to indicate the level of political violence employed
by the UN side, but also confers inherent plausibility on DPRK [North Korea] and
Southern opposition accusations of atrocities and mass executions by the UN
forces and Rhee officials during the occupation of the DPRK in late 1950. After
all, if civilians could be mowed down in the South on suspicion of aiding (not
even being) guerrillas — what about the North, where millions could reasonably be
assumed to be Communists, or political militants? 35 (Emphasis in original.)
Oh's account is but one of a number of reports of slaughter carried out by the
South Koreans against their own people during the war. The New York Times reported a
"wave of [South Korean] Government executions in Seoul" in December 1950.36 Rene
Cutforth, a correspondent for the BBC in Korea, later wrote of "the shooting without
trial of civilians, designated by the police as 'communist'. These executions were done,
usually at dawn, on any patch of waste ground where you could dig a trench and line up
a row of prisoners in front of it." 37 And Gregory Henderson, a US diplomat who served
seven years in Korea in the 1940s and '50s, has stated that "probably over 100,000 were
killed without any trial whatsoever" by Rhee's forces in the South during the war. 38
Following some of the massacres of civilians in the South, the Rhee government turned
around and attributed them to Northern troops.
One way in which the United States contributed directly to the war's brutality
was by introducing a weapon which, although used in the last stage of World War II,
50
and in Greece, was new to almost all observers and participants in Korea. It was called
napalm. Here is one description of its effect from the New York Times.
A napalm raid hit the village three or four days ago when the Chinese were
holding up the advance, and nowhere in [he village have they buried the dead
because there is nobody left to do so. ... The inhabitants throughout the village
and in the fields were caught and killed and kept the exact postures they had held
when the napalm struck — a man about to get on his bicycle, fifty boys and girls
playing in an orphanage, a housewife strangely unmarked, holding in her hand a
page torn from a Sears-Roebuck catalogue crayoned at Mail Order No. 3,811,294
for a $2.98 "bewitching bed jacket — coral". There must be almost two hundred
dead in the tiny hamlet. 39
The United States may also have waged germ warfare against North Korea and
China, as was discussed earlier in the chapter on China.
At the same time, the CIA reportedly was targeting a single individual for
termination — North Korean leader Kim II Sung. Washington sent a Cherokee Indian,
code- named Buffalo, to Hans V. Tofte, a CIA officer stationed in Japan, after Buffalo
had agreed to serve as Kim II Sung's assassin. Buffalo was to receive a considerable
amount of money if his mission succeeded. It obviously did not, and nothing further has
been revealed about the incident. 40
Another widely-held belief in the United States during the war was that
American prisoners in North Korean camps were dying off like flies because of
Communist neglect and cruelty. The flames of this very emotional issue were fanned by
the tendency of US officials to exaggerate the numbers involved. During November
1951, for example — long before the end of the war — American military announcements
put the count of POW deaths at between 5,000 and 8,000. 41 However, an extensive
study completed by the US Army two years after the war revealed that the POW death
toll for the entire war was 2,730 (out of 7,190 held in camps; an unknown number of
other prisoners never made it to the camps, being shot in the field because of the
inconvenience of dealing with them in the midst of combat, a practice engaged in by
both sides).
The study concluded that "there was evidence that the high death rate was not
due primarily to Communist maltreatment... it could be accounted for largely by the
ignorance or the callousness of the prisoners themselves." 42 "Callousness" refers here to
the soldiers' lack of morale and collective spirit. Although not mentioned in the study,
the North Koreans, on several occasions, claimed that many American POWs also died
in the camps as a result of the heavy US bombing.
The study of course could never begin to catch up with all the scare headlines to
which the Western world had been treated for three years. Obscured as well was the fact
that several times as many Communist prisoners had died in US/South Korean camps —
halfway through the war the official figure stood at 6,600 43 — though these camps did
hold many more prisoners than those in the North.
The American public was also convinced, and probably still is, that the North
Koreans and Chinese had "brainwashed" US soldiers. This story arose to explain the
fact that as many as 30 percent of American POWs had collaborated with the enemy in
one way or another, and "one man in every seven, or more than thirteen per cent, was
guilty of serious collaboration — writing disloyal tracts ... or agreeing to spy or organize
for the Communists after the war." 44 Another reason the brainwashing theme was
promoted by Washington was to increase the likelihood that statements made by
returning prisoners which questioned the official version of the war would be
discounted.
51
In the words of Yale psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton, brainwashing was popularly
held to be an "all-powerful, irresistible, unfathomable, and magical method of achieving
total control over the human mind." 45 Although the CIA experimented, beginning in the
1950s, to develop just such a magic, neither they nor the North Koreans or Chinese ever
possessed it. The Agency began its "behavior-control" or "mind-control" experiments
on human subjects (probably suspected double agents), using drugs and hypnosis, in
Japan in July 1950, shortly after the beginning of the Korean War. In October, they
apparently used North Korean prisoners of war as subjects. 46 In 1975, a US Navy
psychologist, Lt. Com. Thomas Narut, revealed that his naval work included
establishing how to induce servicemen who may not be naturally inclined to kill, to do
so under certain conditions. He referred to these men using the words "hitmen" and
"assassin". Narut added that convicted murderers as well had been released from
military prisons to become assassins. 47
Brainwashing, said the Army study, "has become a catch phrase, used for so
many things that it no longer has any precise meaning" and "a precise meaning is
necessary in this case 48
The prisoners, as far as Army psychiatrists have been able to discover, were not
subjected to anything that could properly be called brainwashing. Indeed, the
Communist treatment of prisoners, while it came nowhere near fulfilling the
requirements of the Genera Convention, rarely involved outright cruelty, being
instead a highly novel blend of leniency and pressure ... The Communists rarely
used physical torture ... and the Army has not found a single verifiable case in
which they used it for the specific purpose of forcing a man to collaborate or to
accept their convictions. 49
According to the study, however, some American airmen, of the 90 or so who
were captured, were subjected to physical abuse in an attempt to extract confessions
about germ warfare. This could reflect either a greater Communist resentment about the
use of such a weapon, or a need to produce some kind of corroboration of a false or
questionable claim.
American servicemen were also subjected to political indoctrination by their
jailers. Here is how the US Army saw it:
In the indoctrination lectures, the Communists frequently displayed global charts
dotted with our military bases, the names of which were of course known to many
of the captives. "See those bases?" the instructor would say, tapping them on the
chart with his pointer. "They are American — full of war materiel. You know they
are American. And you can see they are ringing Russia and China. Russia and
China do not have one base outside their own territory. From this it's clear which
side is the warmonger. Would America have these bases and spend millions to
maintain them were it not preparing to war on Russia and China?" This argument
seemed plausible to many of the prisoners. In general they had no idea that these
bases showed not the United States' wish for war, but its wish for peace, that they
had been established as part of a series of treaties aimed not at conquest, but at
curbing Red aggression. 50
The Chinese Communists, of course, did not invent this practice. During the
American Civil War, prisoners of both the South and the North received indoctrination
about the respective merits of the two sides. And in the Second World War,
"democratization courses" were held in US and British POW camps for Germans, and
reformed Germans were granted privileges. Moreover, the US Army was proud to state
that Communist prisoners in American camps during the Korean War were taught "what
democracy stands for". 51
52
The predicted Chinese aggression manifested itself about four months after the
war in Korea began. The Chinese entered the war after American planes had violated
their air space on a number of occasions, had bombed and strafed Chinese territory
several times (always "in error"], when hydro-electric plants on the Korean side of the
border, vital to Chinese industry, stood in great danger, and US or South Korean forces
had reached the Chinese border, the Yalu River, or come within a few miles of it in
several places.
The question must be asked: How long would the United States refrain from
entering a war being waged in Mexico by a Communist power from across the sea,
which strafed and bombed Texas border towns, was mobilized along the Rio Grande,
and was led by a general who threatened war against the United States itself?
American airpower in Korea was fearsome to behold. As would be the case in
Vietnam, its use was celebrated in the wholesale dropping of napalm, the destruction of
villages "suspected of aiding the enemy", bombing cities so as to leave no useful
facilities standing, demolishing dams and dikes to cripple the irrigation system, wiping
out rice crops ... and in those moving expressions like "scorched-earth policy",
"saturation bombing", and "operation killer". 52
"You can kiss that group of villages good-bye," exclaimed Captain Everett L.
Hundley of Kansas City, Kansas after a bombing raid.
"I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible
mess," testified Major General Emmett O'Donnell before the Senate when the war was
one year old. "Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name." 54
And here, the words of the venerable British military guide, Brassey's Annual, in
its 1951 yearbook:
It is no exaggeration to state that South Korea no longer exists as a country. Its
towns have been destroyed, much of its means of livelihood eradicated, and its
people reduced to a sullen mass dependent upon charity and exposed to
subversive influences. When the war ends no gratitude can be expected from the
South Koreans, but it is to be hoped that the lesson will have been learned that it
is worse than useless to destroy to liberate. Certainly, western Europe would
never accept such a "liberation". 55
The worst of the bombing was yet to come. That began in the summer of 1952
and was Washington's way of putting itself in a better bargaining position in the truce
discussions with the Communists, which had been going on for a full year while the
battles raged. The extended and bitter negotiations gave rise to another pervasive
Western belief — that it was predominantly Communist intransigence, duplicity, and
lack of peaceful intentions which frustrated the talks and prolonged the war.
This is a lengthy and entangled chapter of the Korean War story, but one does
not have to probe too deeply to discover the unremarkable fact that the barriers were
erected by the anti-Communist side as well. Syngman Rhee, for example, was so
opposed to any outcome short of total victory that both the Truman and Eisenhower
administrations drew up plans for overthrowing him; 56 which is not to suggest that the
American negotiators were negotiating in the best of faith. The last thing they wanted to
be accused of was having allowed the commies to make suckers of them. Thus it was
that in November of 1951 we could read in the New York Times:
The unadorned way that an apparently increasing number of them [American
soldiers in Korea] see the situation right now is that the Communists have made
important concessions, while the United Nations Command, as they view it,
continues to make more and more demands. ... The United Nations truce team has
53
created the impression that it switches its stand whenever the Communists
indicate that they might go along with it. 57
At one point during this same period, when the Communists proposed that a
ceasefire and a withdrawal of troops from the combat line should take place while
negotiations were going on, the United Nations Command reacted almost as if this were
a belligerent and devious act. "Today's stand by the Communists," said the UNC
announcement, "was virtually a renunciation of their previously stated position that
CO
hostilities should continue during armistice talks."
Once upon a time, the United States fought a great civil war in which the North
attempted to reunite the divided country through military force. Did Korea or China or
any other foreign power send in an army to slaughter Americans, charging Lincoln with
aggression?
Why did the United States choose to wage full-scale war in Korea? Only a year
earlier, in 1949, in the Arab-Israeli fighting in Palestine and in the India- Pakistani war
over Kashmir, the United Nations, with American support, had intervened to mediate an
armistice, not to send in an army to take sides and expand the fighting. And both these
conflicts were less in the nature of a civil war than was the case in Korea. If the US/UN
response had been the same in these earlier cases, Palestine and Kashmir might have
wound up as the scorched-earth desert that was Korea's fate. What saved them, what
kept the US armed forces out, was no more than the absence of a communist side to the
conflict.
6. Albania 1949-1953
The proper English spy
"To simultaneously plan and sabotage this ill-fated venture must have been a
severe test of his energy and ingenuity," wrote one of Kim Philby's biographers. 1 The
venture was the clandestine attempt, begun in 1949, by the United States and Great
Britain to overthrow the pro-Soviet regime of Enver Hoxha through guerrilla-fomented
uprisings.
It ended in disaster, in part because the Russians had apparently been alerted by
Philby, the proper Englishman who had gone to all the right schools and penetrated the
highest ranks of British and American intelligence, though he had been a Soviet spy
since the age of 2 1 .
Philby had moved to Washington the year before to act as the British Secret
Intelligence Service (SIS } liaison to the CIA. In that capacity he served as a co-director
of the CIA-SIS task force engaged in planning the Albanian operation. The choice had
fallen upon Albania because it was regarded as the most vulnerable of the socialist
states, the smallest and the weakest, not sharing a border with the Soviet Union, isolated
between a US-controlled Greece and a Yugoslavia that was a renegade from the Soviet
bloc. Moreover, a recent agreement between the Soviet Union and Albania involved aid
for Albania in return for a Soviet right to build a submarine base with direct access to
the Mediterranean. By the rules and logic of the cold-war board game, this was a move
the United States was obliged to thwart.
54
The task force began by recruiting scattered Albanian emigres who were living
in Italy, Greece and elsewhere. They were exposed to basic military training, with a
touch of guerrilla warfare thrown in, at sites established on the British island of Malta in
the Mediterranean, in the American occupation zone of West Germany, and, to a lesser
extent, in England itself. 3 "Whenever we want to subvert any place," confided Frank
Wisner, the CIA's head of covert operations, to Philby, "we find that the British own an
island within easy reach." 4
Intermittently, for some three-and-a-half years, the emigres were sent back into
their homeland: slipping up into the mountains of Greece and over the border,
parachuting in from planes which had taken off from bases in Western Europe, entering
by sea from Italy. American planes and balloons dropped propaganda leaflets and goods
as well, such items in scarce supply in Albania as flour, halvah, needles, and razor
blades, along with a note announcing that they were a gift from the "Albanian National
Liberation Front" 5 — another instance of the subtle "marketing" touch that the CIA, born
and raised in America, was to bring to so many of its operations.
In outline, the plan, or the hope, was for the guerrillas to make for their old
home regions and try to stir up anti-Soviet and anti-Communist sentiments, eventually
leading to uprisings. They were to distribute propaganda, obtain political, economic and
military information, engage in sabotage, recruit individuals into cells, and supply them
with equipment. Later infusions of men and material would expand these cells into
"centers of resistance". 6
Cold- war conventional wisdom dictated chat the masses of Eastern Europe were
waiting to be sparked into open rebellion for their freedom. Even if this were the case,
the choice of ignition was highly dubious, for the guerrillas included amongst their
numbers many who supported a reinstitution of the Albanian monarchy in the person of
the reactionary King Zog, then in exile, and others who had collaborated with the Italian
fascists or Nazis during their wartime occupations of Albania.
To be sure, there were those of republican and democratic leanings in the
various emigre committees as well, but State Department papers, later declassified,
reveal that prominent Albanian collaborators played leading roles in the formation of
these committees. These were individuals the State Department characterized as having
"somewhat checkered" political backgrounds who "might sooner or later occasion
embarrassment to this government". They were admitted to the United States over the
Department's objections because of "intelligence considerations". One of the checkered
gentlemen was Xhafer Deva, minister of interior during the Italian occupation, who had
been responsible for deportations of "Jews, Communists, partisans and suspicious
persons" (as a captured Nazi report put it) to extermination camps in Poland.
In the name of the CIA-funded National Committee for a Free Albania, a
powerful underground radio station began broadcasting inside the country, calling for
the nation's liberation from the Soviet Union. In early 195 1, several reports came out of
Albania of open organized resistance and uprisings. 8 To what extent these happenings
were a consequence of the Western infiltration and agitation is impossible to determine.
Overall, the campaign had little to show for its efforts. It was hounded throughout by
logistical foul-ups, and the grim reality that the masses of Albanians greeted the emigres
as something less than liberators, either from fear of the harsh Hoxha regime, or because
they supported the social changes taking place more than they trusted what the emigres
had to offer.
Worst of all, the Albanian authorities usually seemed to know in which area the
guerrillas would be arriving, and when. Kim Philby was not the only potential source of
disclosure. The Albanian groups were almost certainly infiltrated, and careless talk
55
indulged in by the motley emigres could have contributed to the fiasco. Philby, referring
to the CIA-SIS task force members' habit of poking fun at Albanians, wrote: "Even in
our more serious moments, we Anglo-Saxons never forgot that our agents were just
down from the trees." 9
So lax was security that New York Times correspondent Cyrus I.. Sulzberger
filed several dispatches from the Mediterranean area touching upon the intervention
which required virtually no reading between the lines. 10 (The articles carried no
attention- grabbing headlines, there was no public comment about them from
Washington, no reporters asked government officials any embarrassing questions ...
ergo: a "non-event" for Americans.)
Despite one failure after another, and without good reason to expect anything
different in the future, the operation continued until the spring of 1953, resulting in the
death or imprisonment of hundreds of men. It was not simply the obsession with
chopping off one of Stalin's fingers. Professional prestige and careers had been invested,
a visible success was needed to "recoup past losses" and "justify earlier decisions". 11
And the men who were being lost were, after all, only Albanians, who spoke not a word
of the Queen's English, and did not yet walk upright properly.
There was, however, the danger of the action escalating into conflict with the
Soviet Union. The Soviets did in fact send some new fighter planes to Albania,
presumably in the hope that they could shoot down the foreign aircraft making drops. 12
The operation could not fail to remind Stalin, Hoxha, and the entire socialist bloc of
another Western intervention 30 years earlier in the Soviet Union. It could only serve to
make them yet more "paranoid" about Western intentions and convince them to turn the
screw of internal security yet tighter. Indeed, every now and again over the ensuing
years, Hoxha mentioned the American and British "invasion" and used it to justify his
policy of isolation. 13
In the early 1960s, Hoxha himself did what the CIA and SIS had failed to do: He
pulled Albania out of the Soviet orbit. The Albanian leader purged pro-Soviet officials
in his government and aligned his country with China. There was no military retaliation
on the part of the USSR. In the mid-1970s, Hoxha forsook China as well.
7. Eastern Europe 1948-1956
Operation Splinter Factor
Jozef Swiatlo surfaced at a press conference in Washington on 28 September
1954. Swiatlo was a Pole; he had been a very important one, high up in the Ministry of
Public Security, the secret police. The story went that he had defected in West Berlin
the previous December while on a shopping trip, and now the State Department was
presenting him to the world to clear up the mystery of the Fields, the American citizens
who had disappeared in 1949. Swiatlo revealed that Noel Field and his wife Herta had
been arrested in Hungary, and that brother Hermann Field had suffered the same fate in
Poland at the hands of Swiatlo himself, all in connection with the trial of a leading
Hungarian Communist. The State Department had already dispatched strong letters to
the governments of Hungary and Poland. 1
There is a more expanded and more sinister version of the Jozef Swiatlo story.
This story has Swiatlo seeking to defect to the British in Warsaw back in 1948 at a time
when he was already in his high security position. The British, for various reasons,
56
turned his case over to the United States and, at the request of Allen Dulles, Swiatlo was
told to remain at his post until further notice.
At this time Dulles was not yet Director of the CIA, but was a close consultant
to the Agency, had his own men in key positions, and was waiting only until November
for Thomas Dewey to win the presidential election and appoint him to the top position.
(Harry Truman's surprising re-election postponed this for four years, but Dulles did
become Deputy Director in 1951.)
Noel Field, formerly a State Department Foreign Service Officer, was a long-
time Communist fellow-traveler, if not a party member in the United States or Europe.
During the Second World War, his path converged with Dulles's in intrigue-filled
Switzerland. Dulles was an OSS man, Field the representative of the Unitarian Church
in Boston helping refugees from Nazi occupation. Field made it a point particularly to
help Communist refugees, of which there were many inasmuch as Communists were
second only to Jews on the German persecution list. The OSS aided the operation
financially; the Communists in turn were an excellent source of information about
happenings in Europe of interest to Washington and its allies.
Toward the end of the war, Field induced Dulles to provide American support
for a project which placed agents in various European countries to prepare the way for
the advancing Allied troops. The men chosen by Field, unsurprisingly, were all
Communists and their placement in certain Eastern European countries helped them to
get their hands on the reins of power long before non-Communist forces were able to
regroup and organize themselves.
It could be concluded from this that Allen Dulles had been duped. Moreover, the
OSS, under Dulles's direction and again with Field involved, had financed the
publication of a clandestine newspaper inside Germany; anti-fascist and left-wing, the
paper was called Neues Deutschland, and immediately upon liberation became the
official newspaper of the East German Communist Party.
After the war these incidents served as jokes which intelligence services of both
East and West could and did appreciate. Before long, the joke fell heavily upon Noel
Field.
In 1949 when Field visited Poland he was regarded with grave suspicion by
Polish authorities. He was seen to have worked during the war in a position which could
easily have been a front for Western espionage, a position which brought him into
regular contact with senior Communist Party members; and he had, after all, worked
closely with Allen Dulles, famous already as a spymaster, and the brother of John Foster
Dulles, prominent in Washington official circles and already making his calls for the
"liberation" of the Soviet bloc nations.
At the time of Field's arrival in Poland, Jozef Swiatlo was looking to implicate
Jakub Berman, a high party and state official whom Swiatlo was suspicious of and
detested. It was his failure to convince the Polish president to act against Berman that
reportedly drove Swiatlo to try to defect the year before. When Noel Field wrote to
Berman asking his help in obtaining a job in Eastern Europe, Swiatlo learned of the
letter and saw his chance to nail Berman.
But first Noel Field had to be established as an American spy. Given the
circumstantial evidence pointing in that direction, that would not be too difficult for a
man of Swiatlo's high position and low character. Of course, if Field really was working
with US intelligence, Swiatlo couldn't very well be exposing him since the Polish
security officer was now himself an American agent. Accordingly, he sent his first
message to the CIA, describing his plan about Berman and Field and the harm it could
do to the Communist Party in Poland. He concluded with: "Any objections?"
57
Allen Dulles had none. His reaction to Swiatlo's message was one of pleasure
and amusement. The time had come to settle accounts with Noel Field. More
importantly, Dulles saw that Swiatlo, using Noel Field, "the American spy", as a
bludgeon could knock off countless leading Communist officials in the Soviet bloc. It
could put the whole of the bloc into a state of acute paranoia and set off a wave of
repression and Stalinist tyranny that could eventually lead to uprisings. Dulles called his
plan: Operation Splinter Factor.
Thus it was that Jozef Swiatlo was directed to find spies everywhere in Eastern
Europe. He would uncover American plots and British plots, "Trotskyist" conspiracies
and "Titoist" conspiracies. He would report to Soviet secret-police chief Lavrenti Beria
himself that at the center of the vast network was a man named Noel Haviland Field.
Field was arrested and wound up in a prison in Hungary, as did his wife Herta
when she came looking for him. And when his brother Hermann Field sought to track
down the two of them, he met the same fate in Poland.
Swiatlo was in a unique position to carry out Operation Splinter Factor. Not only
did he have the authority and command, he had the files on countless Communist Party
members in the bloc countries. Any connection they had had with Noel Field, anything
that Field had done, could be interpreted to show the hand of American intelligence or
an act of real or potential subversion of the socialist states. The Soviets, and Stalin
himself, were extremely interested in the "Fieldists". Noel Field had known almost
everyone who was anyone in the Soviet bloc.
just in case the level of paranoia in the infant, insecure governments of Eastern
Europe was not high enough, a CIA double agent would "corroborate" a vital piece of
information, or introduce the right rumor at the right time; or the Agency's Radio Free
Europe would broadcast certain tantalizing, seemingly-coded messages; or the CIA
would direct the writing of letters from "East European expatriates" in the United States
to leading Communists in their homelands, containing just the bit of information, or the
phrase, carefully designed to lift the eyebrows of a security officer.
Many of the victims of Swiatlo's purges were people who had spent the war
years in the West rather than in the Soviet Union and thus had crossed Field's path.
These were people who tended to be more nationalist Communists, who wanted to put
greater distance between their countries and the Soviet Union, as Tito had done in
Yugoslavia, and who favored a more liberal regime at home. Dulles brushed aside the
argument that these were people to be supported, not eliminated. He felt that they were
potentially the more dangerous to the West because if their form of Communism were
allowed to gain a foothold in Eastern Europe then Communism might become
respectable and accepted; particularly with Italy and France threatening to vote
Communists into power, Communism had to be shown at its worst.
There were hundreds of trials all over Eastern Europe — "show trials" and lesser
spectacles — in which the name of Noel Field played an important part. What Operation
Splinter Factor began soon took on a life of its own: following the arrest of a highly-
placed person, others fell under suspicion because they knew him or had been appointed
by him; or any other connection to an arrested person might serve to implicate some
unlucky soul.
Jozef Swiatlo had his counterpart in Czechoslovakia, a man firmly entrenched in
the upper rungs of the Czech security apparatus. The man, whose name is not known,
had been recruited by General Reinhard Gehlen, the former Nazi intelligence chief who
went to work for the CIA after the war.
When, in October 1956, the uprising in Hungary occurred, these men, according
to the CIA, were not used because they were not yet ready. 14 But the Agency did send
58
its agents in Budapest into action to join the rebels and help organize them. 15 In the
meantime, RFE was exhorting the Hungarian people to continue their resistance,
offering tactical advice, and implying that American military assistance was on the way.
It never came.
There is no evidence that Operation Splinter Factor contributed to the Hungarian
uprising or to the earlier ones in Poland and East Germany. Nonetheless, the CIA could
point to all the cold-war, anti-Communist propaganda points it had won because of the
witch hunts in the East, the human cost notwithstanding.
Czechoslovakia was the worst case. By 1951 an unbelievable 169,000 card-
carrying members of the Czech Communist Party had been arrested — ten percent of the
entire membership. There were tens of thousands more in Poland, Hungary, East
Germany, and Bulgaria. Hundreds were put to death, others died in prison or went
insane.
After Swiatlo defected in December 1953, East European intelligence services
came to realize that he had been working for the other side all along. Four weeks after
Swiatlo held his Washington press conference, the Polish government announced that it
was releasing Hermann Field because investigation had revealed that the charges which
had been brought against him by "an American agent and provocateur", Jozef Swiatlo,
were "baseless". 3 Field was later paid $50,000 for his imprisonment as well as having
his convalescence at a sanitorium paid for. 4
Three weeks after Hermann Field's release, Noel and Herta Field were freed in
Hungary. The government in Budapest stated that it could not justify the charges against
them. 5 They were also compensated and chose to remain in Hungary.
Once Noel Field had been officially declared innocent, the cases of countless
others in East Europe had to be reviewed. First in trickles, then in rushes, the prisoners
were released. By 1956 the vast majority stood outside prison walls.
Throughout the decade following the war, the CIA was fanning the flames of
discontent in Eastern Europe in many ways other than Operation Splinter Factor. Radio
Free Europe (RFE, cf. Soviet Union chapter), broadcasting from West Germany, never
missed a (dirty) trick. In January 1952, for example, after RFE learned that
Czechoslovakia was planning to devalue its currency, it warned the population, thus
stimulating a nation-wide buying panic. 6 RFE's commentaries about various European
Communists were described by Blanche Wiesen Cook in her study of the period, The
Declassified Eisenhower. She wrote that the broadcasts:
involved a wide range of personal criticism, tawdry and slanderous attacks
ranging from rumors of brutality and torture, to corruption, and to madness,
perversion, and vice. Everything was used that could be imagined in order to
make communists, whether in England or in Poland, look silly, undignified, and
insignificant. 7
One of the voices heard frequently over RFE on the subject of Communist
obnoxious-ness was none other than Jozef Swiatlo, who had earned the nickname of
"Butcher" for his proclivity to torture. Needless to say, the born-again humanitarian
made no mention of Splinter Factor or his double role, although some of his broadcasts
reportedly shook up the Polish security system for the better. 8
Any way the US could stir up trouble and nuisance ... supporting opposition
groups in Rumania 9 ... setting up an underground radio station in Bulgaria 10 ... dropping
propaganda from balloons over Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland (on one day in
August 1951 alone, 1 1 ,000 balloons carrying 13 million leaflets) 11 ... dropping people as
59
well: four American airmen, presumably intelligence operatives, landing in Hungary
In 1955, Eastern Europeans could be found at Fort Bragg, North Carolina
training with the Green Berets, learning guerrilla warfare tactics, hopefully to be used in
their native lands. 13
By the following year, hundreds of Hungarians, Rumanians, Poles and others
were being trained by CIA paramilitary specialists at a secret installation in West
Germany.
8. Germany 1950s
Everything from juvenile delinquency to terrorism
Within a period of 30 years and two world wars with Germany, the Soviet Union
suffered more than 40 million dead and wounded, enormous devastation to its land, and
its cities razed to the ground. At the close of the Second World War, the Russians were
not kindly disposed toward the German people. With their own country to rebuild, they
placed the reconstruction of Germany far down on their list of priorities.
The United States emerged from the war with relatively minor casualties and its
territory completely unscathed. It was ready, willing and able to devote itself to its main
priority in Europe: the building of an anti-Communist bulwark in the West, particularly
in the strategic location of Germany.
In 1945, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson has written, official American
policy was explicitly "to bring home to the Germans that they could not escape the
suffering they had brought upon themselves ... [and] to control [the] German economy
to ... prevent any higher standard of living than in neighboring nations." 1
"From the outset," Acheson added, US officials in Germany believed this plan
"to be unworkable". 2
Acheson did not explain what lay behind this prognosis, but its correctness soon
became apparent for three distinct reasons: (1) influential American business and
financial leaders, some of them occupying important government positions, had too
great a stake in a highly-industrialized Germany (usually dating back to before the war)
to allow the country to sink to the depths that some American policy-makers advocated
as punishment; (2) a revitalized West Germany was seen as an indispensable means of
combatting Soviet influence in the Eastern sector of the country, if not in all of Eastern
Europe. West Germany was to become "the showcase of Western democracy" —
dramatic, living proof of the superiority of capitalism over socialism; (3) in American
conservative circles, and some liberal ones as well, wherein a Soviet invasion of
Western Europe remained perpetually imminent, the idea of tying West Germany's
industrial hands was one which came perilously close to being "soft on communism", if
not worse. 3
Dwight Eisenhower echoed this last sentiment when he later wrote:
Had certain officials in the Roosevelt administration had their way, Germany
would have been far worse off, for there were those who advocated the flooding
of the Ruhr mines, the wrecking of German factories, and the reducing of
Germany from an industrial to an agricultural nation. Among others, Harry Dexter
White, later named by Attorney General Brownell as one who had been heavily
60
involved in a Soviet espionage ring operating within our government... proposed
exactly that. 4
Thus it was that the de-industrialization of West Germany met the same fate as
the demilitarization of the country would in the coming years, as the United States
poured in massive economic assistance: $4 billion of Marshall Plan aid and an army of
industrial and technical experts.
At the same time, the Soviet Union was pouring massive economic assistance
out of East Germany. The Soviets dismantled and moved back home entire factories
with large amounts of equipment and machinery, and thousands of miles of railroad
track. When added to war reparations, the toll reached into the billions of dollars.
By the early 1950s, though social services, employment, and cultural life in East
Germany were on a par or superior to that in West Germany, the Western sector had the
edge in those areas of prosperity with the most sex appeal: salaries were higher, the
eating was better, consumer goods more available, and the neon lights emblazoned the
nights along the Kurfurstendamm.
American cold warriors, however, as if discontent with the game score or with
leaving so much to chance, instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion
against East Germany designed to throw the economic and administrative machinery
out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services in West Germany
(with occasional help from the likes of British, intelligence and the West German
police) recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals
of West and East. Finding recruits for such a crusade was not difficult, for in post-war
Germany, anti-communism lived on as the only respectable vestige of Naziism.
The most active of these groups, which went by the name of Fighting Group
Against Inhumanity, admitted that it had received financial support from the Ford
Foundation and the West Berlin government. 5 Subsequently, an East Berlin news
magazine published a copy of a letter from the Ford Foundation confirming a grant of
$150,000 to the National Committee for a Free Europe "so that it, in turn, could support
the humanitarian activities of 'The Fighting Group Against Inhumanity'." 6 The National!
Committee for a Free Europe, in turn, was a CIA front organization which also ran
Radio Free Europe. 7
The Association of Political Refugees from the East, and the Investigating
Committee of Freedom-minded Jurists of the Soviet Zone, were two of the other groups
involved in the campaign against East Germany. The actions carried out by these
operatives ran the spectrum from juvenile delinquency to terrorism; anything "to make
the commies look bad". It added up to the following remarkable record: 8
• through explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods they damaged power stations,
shipyards, a dam, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, shops, a radio station, outdoor stands,
public transportation;
• derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and
destroyed air pressure hoses of others;
• blew up road and railway bridges; placed explosives on a railway bridge of the Berlin-Moscow
line but these were discovered in time — hundreds would have been killed;
• used special acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory,
bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories;
stole blueprints and samples of new technical developments;
• killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy by poisoning the wax coating of the wire used to bale
the cows' corn fodder;
• added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools;
• raided and wrecked left-wing offices in East and West Berlin, stole membership lists; assaulted
and kidnapped leftists and, on occasion, murdered them;
• set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings;
61
• floated balloons which burst in the air, scattering thousands of propaganda pamphlets down
upon East Germans;
• were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it
was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans;
• attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations,
false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations; carried out attacks on participants
with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; set fire to a wooden bridge on a main
motorway leading to the festival;
• forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards — for example, for 60,000 pounds of
meat — to cause confusion, shortages and resentment;
• sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster
disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions;
• "gave considerable aid and comfort" to East Germans who staged an uprising on 17 June 1953;
during and after the uprising, the US radio station in West Berlin, RIAS (Radio In the American Sector),
issued inflammatory broadcasts into East Germany appealing to the populace to resist the government;
RIAS also broadcast warnings to witnesses in at least one East German criminal case being monitored by
the Investigating Committee of Freedom-minded Jurists of the Soviet Zone that they would be added to
the committee's files of "accused persons" if they lied.
Although many hundreds of the American agents were caught and tried by East
Germany, the ease with which they could pass back and forth between the two sectors
and infiltrate different enterprises without any language barrier provided opportunities
for the CIA unmatched anywhere else in Eastern Europe.
Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly
lodged complaints with the Soviets' erstwhile allies in the West and with the United
Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the
offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided
names and addresses. Inevitably the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the
country from the West.
The West also bedeviled the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East
German professionals and skilled workers. Eventually, this led to a severe labor and
production crisis in the East, and in August 1961, to the building of the infamous Berlin
Wall.
While staging their commando attacks upon East Germany, American
authorities and their German agents were apparently convinced that the Soviet Union
had belligerent designs upon West Germany; perhaps a textbook case of projection. On
8 October 1952, the Minister- President of the West German state of Hesse, Georg
August Zinn, disclosed that the United States had created a secret civilian army in his
state for the purpose of resisting a Russian invasion.
This force of between 1,000 and 2,000 men belonged to the so-called "Technical
Service" of the German Youth Federation, the latter characterized by the New York
Times as "a Right-wing youth group frequently charged with extremist activities" (a
reference to the terrorist tactics described above). The stalwarts of the Technical Service
were hardly youths, however, for almost all appeared to be between 35 and 50 and most,
said Zinn, were "former officers of the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht and the S.S. [Hitler's
Black-shirts]".
For more than a year they had received American training in infantry weapons
and explosives and "political instruction" in small groups at a secluded site in the
countryside and at a US military installation.
The intelligence wing of the Technical Service, the state president revealed, had
drawn up lists and card indexes of persons who were to be "put out of the way" when
the Soviet tanks began to roll. These records, which contained detailed descriptions and
62
intimate biographical information, were of some 200 leading Social Democrats
(including Zinn himself!, 15 Communists, and various others, all of whom were deemed
"politically untrustworthy" and opponents of West German militarization. Apparently,
support for peaceful coexistence and detente with the Soviet bloc was sufficient to
qualify one for inclusion on the hit-list, for one man was killed at the training site,
charged with being an "East-West bridge builder". It was this murder that led to the
exposure of the entire operation.
The United States admitted its role in the creation and training of the guerrilla
army, but denied any involvement in the "illegal, internal, and political activities" of the
organization. But Zinn reported that the Americans had learned of the plotting in May
and had not actually dissolved the group until September, the same month that German
Security Police arrested a number of the group's leaders. At some point, the American
who directed the training courses. Sterling Garwood, had been "supplied with carbon
copies of the card-index entries". It appears that at no time did US authorities
communicate anything of this matter to the West German Government.
As the affair turned out, those who had been attested were quickly released and
the United States thwarted any further investigation in this the American Zone of
occupied Germany. Commented Herr Zinn: "The only legal explanation for these
releases can be that the people in Karlsruhe [the Federal Court] declared that they acted
upon American direction." 9
To add to the furor, the national leader of the Social Democrats accused the
United States of financing an opposition group to infiltrate and undermine his party.
Erich Ollenhauer, whose name had also appeared on the Technical Service's list,
implied that American "clandestine" agencies were behind the plot despite the
disapproval of high-ranking US officials. 10
The revelations about the secret army and its hit-list resulted in a storm of
ridicule and denunciation falling upon the United States from many quarters in West
Germany. In particular, the delicious irony of the Americans working hand-in-glove
with "ex"-Nazis did nor escape the much-castigated German people.
This operation in Germany, it was revealed many years later, was part of a much
wider network — called "Operation Gladio" — created by the CIA and other European
intelligence services, with similar secret armies all over Western Europe. (See Western
Europe chapter.)
9. Iran 1953
Making it safe for the King of Kings
"So this is how we get rid of that madman Mossadegh," announced John Foster
Dulles to a group of top Washington policy makers one day in June 1953. 1 The
Secretary of State held in his hand a plan of operation to overthrow the prime minister
of Iran prepared by Kermit (Kim) Roosevelt of the CIA. There was scarcely any
discussion amongst the high-powered men in the room, no probing questions, no legal
or ethical issues raised.
"This was a grave decision to have made," Roosevelt later wrote. "It involved
tremendous risk. Surely it deserved thorough examination, the closest consideration,
somewhere at the very highest level. It had not received such thought at this meeting. In
63
fact, I was morally certain that almost half of those present, if they had felt free or had
the courage to speak, would have opposed the undertaking."
Roosevelt, the grandson of Theodore and distant cousin of Franklin, was
expressing surprise more than disappointment at glimpsing American foreign-policy-
making undressed. The original initiative to oust Mossadegh had come from the British,
for the elderly Iranian leader had spearheaded the parliamentary movement to
nationalize the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), the sole oil
company operating in Iran, In March 1951, the bill for nationalization was passed, and
at the end of April Mossadegh was elected prime minister by a large majority of
Parliament, On 1 May, nationalization went into effect. The Iranian people, Mossadegh
declared, "were opening a hidden Treasure upon which lies a dragon". 3
As the prime minister had anticipated, the British did not take the national
Nation grace-fully, though it was supported unanimously by the Iranian parliament and
by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people for reasons of both economic
justice and national pride. The Mossadegh government tried to do all the right things to
placate the British: It offered to set aside 25 percent of the net profits of the oil
operation as compensation; it guaranteed the safety and the jobs of the British
employees; it was willing to sell its oil without disturbance to the tidy control system so
dear to the hearts of the international oil giants. But the British would have none of it.
What they wanted was their oil company back. And they wanted Mossadegh's head. A
servant does not affront his lord with impunity.
A military show of force by the British navy was followed by a ruthless
international economic blockade and boycott, and a freezing of Iranian assets which
brought Iran's oil exports and foreign trade to a virtual standstill, plunged the already
impoverished country into near destitution, and made payment of any compensation
impossible. Nonetheless, and long after they had moved to oust Mossadegh, the British
demanded compensation not only for the physical assets of the AIOC, but for the value
of their enterprise in developing the oil fields; a request impossible to meet, and, in the
eyes of Iranian nationalists, something which decades of huge British profits had paid
for many times over.
The British attempt at economic strangulation of Iran could not have gotten off
the ground without the active co-operation and support of the Truman and Eisenhower
administrations and American oil companies. At the same time, the Truman
administration argued with the British that Mossadegh's collapse could open the door to
the proverbial communist takeover. 4 When the British were later expelled from Iran,
however, they had no alternative but to turn to the United States for assistance in
toppling Mossadegh. In November 1952, the Churchill government approached
Roosevelt, the de facto head of the CIA's Middle East division, who told the British that
he felt that there was "no chance to win approval from the outgoing administration of
Truman and Acheson. The new Republicans, however, might be quite different." 5
John Foster Dulles was certainly different. The apocalyptic anti-communist saw
in Mossadegh the epitome of all that he detested in the Third World: unequivocal
neutralism in the cold war, tolerance of Communists, and disrespect for free enterprise,
as demonstrated by the oil nationalization. (Ironically, in recent years Great Britain had
nationalized several of its own basic industries, and the government was the majority
owner of the AIOC.) To the likes of John Foster Dulles, the eccentric Dr. Mohammed
Mossadegh was indeed a madman. And when the Secretary of State considered further
that Iran was a nation exceedingly rich in the liquid gold, and that it shared a border
with the Soviet Union more than 1,000 miles long, he was not unduly plagued by
indecision as to whether the Iranian prime minister should finally retire from public life.
64
As matters turned out, the overthrow of Mossadegh in August 1953 was much
more an American operation than a British one. Twenty-six years later, Kermit
Roosevelt took the unusual step of writing a book about how he and the CIA carried out
the operation. He called his book Countercoup to press home the idea that the CIA coup
was staged only to prevent a takeover of power by the Iranian Communist Party (The
Tudeh) closely backed by the Soviet Union. Roosevelt was thus arguing that Mossadegh
had to be removed to prevent a Communist takeover, whereas the Truman
administration had felt that Mossadegh had to be kept in power to prevent one.
It would be incorrect to state that Roosevelt offers little evidence to support his
thesis of the Communist danger. It would be more precise to say that he offers no
evidence at all. Instead, the reader is subjected to mere assertions of the thesis which are
stated over and over, apparently in the belief that enough repetition will convince even
the most skeptical. Thus are we treated to variations on the theme such as the following:
"The Soviet threat [was] indeed genuine, dangerous and imminent" ...
Mossadegh "had formed an alliance" with the Soviet Union to oust the Shah ... "the
obvious threat of Russian takeover" ... "the alliance between [Mossadegh] and the
Russian-dominated Tudeh was taking on a threatening shape" ... Mossadegh's
"increasing dependence on the Soviet Union" ... "the hand of the Tudeh, and behind
them the Russians, is showing more openly every day" ... "Russian backing of the
Tudeh and Tudeh backing of [Mossadegh] became ever more obvious" ... the Soviet
Union was "ever more active in Iran. Their control over Tudeh leadership was growing
stronger all the time. It was exercised often and, to our eyes, with deliberate ostentation"
But none of this subversive and threatening activity was, apparently, ever open,
obvious, or ostentatious enough to provide Roosevelt with a single example he could
impart to a curious reader.
In actuality, although the Tudeh Party more or less faithfully followed the
fluctuating Moscow line on Iran, the relation of the party to Mossadegh was much mote
complex than Roosevelt and other cold-war chroniclers have made it out to be. The
Tudeh felt very ambiguous about the wealthy, eccentric, land-owning prime minister
who, nonetheless, was standing up to imperialism. Dean Acheson, Truman's Secretary
of State, described Mossadegh as "essentially a rich, reactionary, feudal-minded
Persian", 7 hardly your typical Communist Party fellow-traveler.
On occasion the Tudeh had supported Mossadegh's policies; more often it had
attacked them bitterly, and in one instance, on 15 July 1951, a Tudeh- sponsored
demonstration was brutally suppressed by Mossadegh, resulting in some 100 deaths and
500 injured. The Iranian leader, moreover, had campaigned successfully against
lingering Soviet occupation of northern Iran after World War II, and in October 1947
had led Parliament in its rejection of a government proposal that a joint Irano-Soviet oil
company be set up to exploit the oil of northern Iran.
What, indeed, did Mossadegh have to gain by relinquishing any of his power to
the Tudeh and/or the Soviet Union? The idea that the Russians even desired the Tudeh
to take power is no more than speculation. There was just as much evidence, or as little,
to conclude that the Russians, once again, were more concerned about their relationship
with Western governments than with the fate of a local Communist Party in a country
outside the socialist bloc of Eastern Europe.
A secret State Department intelligence report, dated 9 January 1953, in the
closing days of the Truman administration, stated that Mossadegh had not sought any
alliance with the Tudeh, and that "The major opposition to the National Front
65
[Mossadegh's governing coalition] arises from the vested interests, on the one hand, and
the Tudeh Party on the other." 9
The Tudeh Party had been declared illegal in 1949 and Mossadegh had not lifted
that ban although he allowed the party to operate openly, at least to some extent because
of his democratic convictions, and had appointed some Tudeh sympathizers to
government posts.
Many of the Tudeh's objectives paralleled those espoused by the National Front,
the State Department report observed, but "An open Tudeh move for power ... would
probably unite independents and non-Communists of all political leanings and would
result ... in energetic efforts to destroy Tudeh by force." 10
The National Front itself was a coalition of highly diverse political and religious
elements including right-wing anti-communists, held together by respect for
Mossadegh's personal character and honesty, and by nationalistic sentiments,
particularly in regard to the nationalization of oil.
In 1979, when he was asked about this State Department report, Kermit
Roosevelt replied: "I don't know what to make of that ... Loy Henderson [US
ambassador to Iran in 1953] thought that there was a serious danger that Mossadegh was
going to, in effect, place Iran under Soviet domination." 11 Though he was the principal
moving force behind the coup, Roosevelt was now passing the buck, and to a man who,
as we shall see in the Middle East chapter, was given to alarmist statements about
"communist takeovers".
One can but wonder what Roosevelt, or anyone else, made of a statement by
John Foster Dulles before a Senate committee in July 1953, when the operation to oust
Mossadegh was already in process. The Secretary of State, the press reported, testified
"that there was 'no substantial evidence' to indicate that Iran was cooperating with
Russia. On the whole, he added, Moslem opposition to communism is predominant,
although at times the Iranian Government appears to rely for support on the Tudeh
12
party, which is communistic."
The young Shah of Iran had been relegated to little more than a passive role by
Mossadegh and the Iranian political process. His power had been whittled away to the
point where he was "incapable of independent action", noted the State Department
intelligence report. Mossadegh was pressing for control of the armed forces and more
say over expenditures of the royal court, and the inexperienced and indecisive Shah —
the "King of Kings" — was reluctant to openly oppose the prime minister because of the
latter's popularity-
The actual sequence of events instigated by Roosevelt which culminated in the
Shah's ascendancy appears rather simple in hindsight, even naive, and owed not a little
to luck. The first step was to reassure the Shah that Eisenhower and Churchill were
behind him in his struggle for power with Mossadegh and were willing to provide
whatever military and political support he needed. Roosevelt did not actually know
what Eisenhower felt, or even knew, about the operation and went so far as to fabricate
a message from the president to the Shah expressing his encouragement. 13
At the same time, the Shah was persuaded to issue royal decrees dismissing
Mossadegh as prime minister and replacing him with one Fazlollah Zahedi, a general
who had been imprisoned during the war by the British for collaboration with the
Nazis. 14 Late in the night of 14/15 August, the Shah's emissary delivered the royal
decree to Mossadegh's home, which was guarded by troops. Not surprisingly, he was
received very coolly and did not get in to see the prime minister. Instead, he was obliged
to leave the decree with a servant who signed a receipt for the piece of paper dismissing
his master from power. Equally unsurprising, Mossadegh did not abdicate. The prime
66
minister, who maintained that only Parliament could dismiss him, delivered a radio
broadcast the following morning in which he stated that the Shah, encouraged by
"foreign elements", had attempted a coup d'etat. Mossadegh then declared that he was,
therefore, compelled to cake full power unto himself. He denounced Zahedi as a traitor
and sought to have him arrested, but the general had been hidden by Roosevelt's team.
The Shah, fearing all was lost, fled with his queen to Rome via Baghdad without
so much as packing a suitcase. Undeterred, Roosevelt went ahead and directed the
mimeographing of copies of the royal decrees for distribution to the public, and sent two
of his Iranian agents to important military commanders to seek their support. It appears
that this crucial matter was left to the last minute, almost as an afterthought. Indeed, one
of the two Iranians had been recruited for the cause only the same day, and it was only
he who succeeded in winning a commitment of military support from an Iranian colonel
who had tanks and armored cars under his command. 15
Beginning on 16 August, a mass demonstration arranged by the National Front,
supporting Mossadegh and attacking the Shah and the United States, took place in the
capital city, Teheran. Roosevelt characterizes the demonstrators simply as "the Tudeh,
with strong Russian encouragement", once again failing to offer any evidence to support
his assertion. The New York Times referred to them as "Tudeh partisans and Nationalist
extremists", the latter term being one which could have applied to individuals
comprising a wide range of political leanings. 16
Among the demonstrators there were as well a number of individuals working
for the CIA. According to Richard Cottam, an American academic and author
reportedly in the employ of the Agency in Teheran at this time, these agents were sent
"into the streets to act as if they were Tudeh. They were more than just provocateurs,
they were shock troops, who acted as if they were Tudeh people throwing rocks at
mosques and priests", the purpose of which was to stamp the Tudeh and, by implication,
Mossadegh as being anti -religion. 17
During the demonstrations, the Tudeh raised their familiar demand for the
creation of a democratic republic. They appealed to Mossadegh to form a united front
and to provide them with arms to defend against the coup, but the prime minister
i o
refused. Instead, on 18 August he ordered the police and army to put an end to the
Tudeh demonstrations which they did with considerable force. According to the
accounts of Roosevelt and Ambassador Henderson, Mossadegh took this step as a result
of a meeting with Henderson in which the ambassador complained of the extreme
harassment being suffered by US citizens at the hands of the Iranians. It is left unclear
by both of the Americans how much of this harassment was real and how much
manufactured by them for the occasion. In any event, Henderson told Mossadegh that
unless it ceased, he would be obliged to order all Americans to leave Iran at once.
Mossadegh, says Henderson, begged him not to do this for an American evacuation
would make it appear that his government was unable to control the country, although at
the same time the prime minister was accusing the CIA of being behind the issuance of
the royal decrees. 19 (The Tudeh newspaper at this time was demanding the expulsion of
"interventionist" American diplomats.) 20
Whatever Mossadegh's motivation, his action was again in sharp contradiction to
the idea that he was in alliance with the Tudeh or that the party was in a position to grab
the reins of power. Indeed, the Tudeh did not take to the streets again.
The following day, 19 August, Roosevelt's Iranian agents staged a parade
through Teheran. With a fund of some one million dollars having been established in a
safe in the American embassy, the "extremely competent professional 'organizers'," as
Roosevelt called them, had no difficulty in buying themselves a mob, probably using
67
but a small fraction of the fund. (The various accounts of the CIA role in Iran have the
Agency spending from $10,000 to $19 million to overthrow Mossadegh. The larger
amounts are based on reports that the CIA engaged in heavy bribery of members of
Parliament and other influential Iranians to enlist their support against the prime
minister.)
Soon a line of people could be seen coming out of the ancient bazaar, led by
circus and athletic performers to attract the public. The marchers were waving banners,
shouting "Long live the Shah!" Along the edges of the procession, men were passing
out Iranian currency adorned with a portrait of the Shah. The demonstrators gathered
followers as they went, people joining and picking up the chants, undoubtedly for a
myriad of political and personal reasons. The balance of psychology had swung against
Mossadegh.
Along the way, some matchers broke ranks to attack the offices of pro-
Mossadegh newspapers and political parries, Tudeh and government offices. Presently,
a voice broke in over the radio in Teheran announcing that "The Shah's instruction that
Mossadegh be dismissed has been carried out. The new Prime Minister, Fazlollah
Zahedi, is now in office. And His Imperial Majesty is on his way home!"
This was a lie, or a "pre-truth" as Roosevelt suggested. Only then did he go to
fetch Zahedi from his hiding place. On the way, he happened to run into the commander
of the air force who was among the marching throng. Roosevelt told the officer to get
hold of a tank in which to carry Zahedi to Mossadegh's house in proper fashion. 21
Kermit Roosevelt would have the reader believe that at this point it was all over
but the shouting and the champagne he was soon to uncork: Mossadegh had fled,
Zahedi had assumed power, the Shah had been notified to return — a dramatic, joyful,
and peaceful triumph of popular will. Inexplicably, he neglects to mention at all that in
the streets of Teheran and in front of Mossadegh's house that day, a nine-hour battle
raged, with soldiers loyal to Mossadegh on one side and those supporting Zahedi and
the Shah on the other. Some 300 people were reported killed and hundreds more
wounded before Mossadegh's defenders finally succumbed. 22
Roosevelt also fails to mention any contribution of the British to the whole
operation, which considerably irritated the men in MI6, the CIA's counterpart, who
claim that they, as well as AIOC staff, local businessmen and other Iranians, had indeed
played a role in the events. But they have been tight-lipped about what that role was
precisely.
The US Military Mission in Iran also claimed a role in the action, as Major
General George C. Stewart later testified before Congress:
Now, when this crisis came on and the thing was about to collapse, we violated
our normal criteria and among the other things we did, we provided the army
immediately on an emergency basis, blankets, boots, uniforms, electric
generators, and medical supplies that permitted and created the atmosphere in
which they could support the Shah ... The guns that they had in their hands, the
trucks that they rode in, the armored cars that they drove through the streets, and
the radio communications that permitted their control, were all furnished through
the military defense assistance program. 24
The latter part of the General's statement would, presumably, apply to the other
side as well.
"It is conceivable that the Tudeh could have turned the fortunes of the day
against the royalists," wrote Kennett Love, a New York Times reporter who was in
Teheran during the crucial days of August. "But for some reason they remained
completely aloof from the conflict. ... My own conjecture is that the Tudeh were
68
resrrained by the Soviet Embassy because the Kremlin, in the first post-Stalin year, was
not willing to take on such consequences as might have resulted from the establishment
of a communist-controlled regime in Teheran."
Love's views, contained in a paper he wrote in 1960, may well have been
inspired by information received from the CIA. By his own admission, he was in close
25
contact with the Agency in Teheran and even aided them in their operation.
Earlier in the year, the New York Times had noted that "prevailing opinion
among detached observers in Teheran" was that "Mossadegh is the most popular
politician in the country". During a period of more than 40 years in public life,
Mossadegh had "acquired a reputation as an honest patriot". 26
In July, the State Department Director of Iranian Affairs had testified that
"Mossadegh has such tremendous control over the masses of people that it would be
very difficult to throw him out." 27
A few days later, "at least 100,000" people filled the streets of Teheran to
express strong anti-US and anti-Shah sentiments. Though sponsored by the Tudeh, the
turnout far exceeded any estimate of party adherents. 28
But popularity and masses, of the unarmed kind, counted for little, for in the
final analysis what Teheran witnessed was a military showdown carried out on both
sides by soldiers obediently following the orders of a handful of officers, some of whom
were staking their careers and ambitions on choosing the winning side: some had a more
ideological commitment. The New York Times characterized the sudden reversal of
Mossadegh's fortunes as "nothing mote than a mutiny ... against pro-Mossadegh
officers" by "the lower ranks" who revered the Shah, had brutally quelled the
demonstrations the day before, but refused to do the same on 19 August, and instead
turned against their officers. 29
What connection Roosevelt and his agents had with any of the pro-Shah officers
beforehand is not clear. In an interview given at about the same time that he finished his
book, Roosevelt stated that a number of pro-Shah officers were given refuge in the CIA
compound adjoining the US Embassy at the time the Shah fled to Rome. 30 But
inasmuch as Roosevelt mentions not a word of this rather important and interesting
development in his book, it must be regarded as yet another of his assertions to be
approached with caution.
In any event, it may be that the 19 August demonstration organized by
Roosevelt's team was just the encoutagement and spark these officers were waiting for.
Yet, if so, it further illustrates how much Roosevelt had left to chance.
In light of all the questionable, contradictory, and devious statements which
emanated at times from John Foster Dulles, Kermit Roosevelt, Loy Henderson and other
American officials, what conclusions can be drawn about American motivation in the
toppling of Mossadegh? The consequences of the coup may offer the best guide.
For the next 25 years, the Shah of Iran stood fast as the United States' closest
ally in the Third World, to a degree that would have shocked the independent and
neutral Mossadegh. The Shah literally placed his country at the disposal of US military
and intelligence organizations to be used as a cold-war weapon, a window and a door to
the Soviet Union — electronic listening and radar posts were set up near the Soviet
border; American aircraft used Iran as a base to launch surveillance flights over the
Soviet Union; espionage agents were infiltrated across the border; various American
military installations dotted the Iranian landscape. Iran was viewed as a vital link in the
chain being forged by the United States to "contain" the Soviet Union. In a telegram to
the British Acting Foreign Secretary in September, Dulles said: "I think if we can in
69
coordination move quickly and effectively in Iran we would close the most dangerous
gap in the line from Europe to South Asia." 31 In February 1955, Iran became a member
of the Baghdad Pact, set up by the United States, in Dulles's words, "to create a solid
band of resistance against the Soviet Union". 32
One year after the coup, the Iranian government completed a contract with an
international consortium of oil companies. Amongst Iran's new foreign partners, the
British lost the exclusive rights they had enjoyed previously, being reduced now to 40
percent. Another 40 percent now went to American oil firms, the remainder to other
countries. The British, however, received an extremely generous compensation for their
former property. 33
In 1958, Kermit Roosevelt left the CIA and presently went to work for Gulf Oil
Co., one of the American oil firms in the consortium. In this position, Roosevelt was
director of Gulfs relations with the US government and foreign governments, and had
occasion to deal with the Shah. In 1960, Gulf appointed him a vice president.
Subsequently, Roosevelt formed a consulting firm, Downs and Roosevelt, which,
between 1967 and 1970, reportedly received $116,000 a year above expenses for its
efforts on behalf of the Iranian government. Another client, the Northrop Corporation, a
Los Angeles-based aerospace company, paid Roosevelt $75,000 a year to aid in its sales
to Iran, Saudi Arabia and other countries. 34 (See the Middle East chapter for Roosevelt's
CIA connection with King Saud of Saudi Arabia.)
Another American member of the new consortium was Standard Oil Co. of New
Jersey (now Exxon), a client of Sullivan and Cromwell, the New York law firm of
which John Foster Dulles had long been the senior member. Brother Allen, Director of
the CIA, had also been a member of the firm. 35 Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson
reported some years later that the Rockefeller family, who controlled Standard Oil and
Chase Manhattan Bank, had "helped arrange the CIA coup that brought down
Mossadegh". Anderson listed a number of ways in which the Shah demonstrated his
gratitude to the Rockefellers, including heavy deposits of his personal fortune in Chase
Manhattan, and housing developments in Iran built by a Rockefeller family company. 36
The standard "textbook" account of what took place in Iran in 1953 is that —
whatever else one might say for or against the operation — the United States saved Iran
from a Soviet/Communist takeover. Yet, during the two years of American and British
subversion of a bordering country, the Soviet Union did nothing that would support
such a premise. When the British Navy staged the largest concentration of its forces
since World War II in Iranian waters, the Soviets took no belligerent steps; nor when
Great Britain instituted draconian international sanctions which left Iran in a deep
economic crisis and extremely vulnerable, did the oil fields "fall hostage" to the
Bolshevik Menace; this, despite "the whole of the Tudeh Party at its disposal" as agents,
as Roosevelt put it. 37 Not even in the face of the coup, with its imprint of foreign hands,
did Moscow make a threatening move; neither did Mossadegh at any point ask for
Russian help.
One year later, however, the New York Times could editorialize that "Moscow ...
counted its chickens before they were hatched and thought that Iran would be the next
'People's Democracy." At the same time, the newspaper warned, with surprising
arrogance, that "underdeveloped countries with rich resources now have an object
lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid by one of their number which goes berserk
with fanatical nationalism." 38
A decade later, Allen Dulles solemnly stared that communism had "achieved
39
control of the governmental apparatus" in Iran. And a decade after that, Fortune
magazine, to cite one of many examples, kept the story alive by writing that Mossadegh
70
"plotted with the Communist party of Iran, the Tudeh, to overthrow Shah Mohammed
Reza Pahlevi and hook up with the Soviet Union." 40
And what of the Iranian people? What did being "saved from communism" do
for them? For the preponderance of the population, life under the Shah was a grim
tableau of grinding poverty, police terror, and torture. Thousands were executed in the
name of fighting communism. Dissent was crushed from the outset of the new regime
with American assistance. Kennett Love wrote that he believed that CIA officer George
Carroll, whom he knew personally, worked with General Farhat Dadsetan, the new
military governor of Teheran, "on preparations for the very efficient smothering of a
potentially dangerous dissident movement emanating from the bazaar area and the
Tudeh in the first two weeks of November, 1953". 41
The notorious Iranian secret police, SAVAK, created under the guidance of the
CIA and Israel, 42 spread its tentacles all over the world to punish Iranian dissidents.
According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, SAVAK was instructed in torture
techniques by the Agency. 43 Amnesty International summed up the situation in 1976 by
noting that Iran had the "highest rate of death penalties in the world, no valid system of
civilian courts and a history of torture which is beyond belief. No country in the world
has a worse record in human rights than Iran." 44
When to this is added a level of corruption that "startled even the most hardened
observers of Middle Eastern thievery", 45 it is understandable that the Shah needed his
huge military and police force, maintained by unusually large US aid and training
programs, 46 to keep the lid down for as long as he did. Said Senator Hubert Humphrey,
apparently with some surprise:
Do you know what the head of the Iranian Army told one of our people? He said
the Army was in good shape, thanks to U.S. aid — it was now capable of coping
with the civilian population. That Army isn't going to fight the Russians. It's
planning to fight the Iranian people. 47
Where force might fail, the CIA turned to its most trusted weapon — money. To
insure support for the Shah, or at least the absence of dissent, the Agency began making
payments to Iranian religious leaders, always a capricious bunch. The payments to the
ayatollahs and mullahs began in 1953 and continued regularly until 1977 when
President Carter abruptly halted them. One "informed intelligence source" estimated
that the amount paid reached as much as $400 million a year; others thought that figure
too high, which it certainly seems to be. The cut-off of funds to the holy men, it is
believed, was one of the elements which precipitated the beginning of the end for the
King of Kings. 48
10. Guatemala 1953-1954
While the world watched
To whom do you turn for help when the police are assaulting you? The old
question.
To whom does a poor banana republic turn when a CIA army is advancing upon
its territory and CIA planes are overhead bombing the country?
71
The leaders of Guatemala tried everyone — the United Nations, the Organization
of American States, other countries individually, the world press, even the United States
itself, in the desperate hope that it was all a big misunderstanding, that in the end,
reason would prevail.
Nothing helped. Dwight Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles had
decided that the legally-elected government of Jacobo Arbenz was "communist",
therefore must go; and go it did, in June 1954.
In the midst of the American preparation to overthrow the government, the
Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Guillermo Toriello, lamented that the United States was
categorizing "as 'communism' every manifestation of nationalism or economic
independence, any desire for social progress, any intellectual curiosity, and any interest
in progressive liberal reforms." 1
Toriello was close to the truth, but Washington officials retained enough contact
with reality and world opinion to be aware of the inappropriateness of coming out
against nationalism, independence or reform. Thus it was that Secretary of State Dulles
asserted that Guatemalans were living under a "Communist type of terrorism" 2 ...
President Eisenhower warned about "the Communist dictatorship" establishing "an
outpost on this continent to the detriment of all the American nations" ... the US
Ambassador to Guatemala, John Peurifoy, declared that "We cannot permit a Soviet
Republic to be established between Texas and the Panama Canal" 4 ... others warned that
Guatemala could become a base from which the Soviet Union might actually seize the
Canal ... Senator Margaret Chase Smith hinted, unmistakably, that the "unjustified
increases in the price of coffee" imported from Guatemala were due to communist
control of the country, and called for an investigation 5 ... and so it went.
The Soviet Union could be excused if it was somewhat bewildered by all the
rhetoric, for the Russians had scant interest in Guatemala, did not provide the country
with any kind of military assistance, did not even maintain diplomatic relations with it,
thus did not have the normally indispensable embassy from which to conduct such
nefarious schemes. (During this period, the height of McCarthyist "logic", there were
undoubtedly those Americans who reasoned: "All the better to deceive us!"]
With the exception of one occasion, the countries of Eastern Europe had as little
to do with Guatemala as did the Soviet Union. A month before the coup, that is, long
after Washington had begun preparation for it, Czechoslovakia made a single arms sale
to Guatemala for cash, something the Czechs would no doubt have done for any other
country willing to pay the price. The weapons, it turned out, were, in the words of the
New York Times, "worthless military junk". Time magazine pooh-poohed the
newspaper's report and cited US military men giving a better appraisal of the weapons.
It may be that neither Time nor the military men could conceive that one member of the
International Communist Conspiracy could do such a thing to another member. 6
The American propaganda mill made much of this arms transaction. Less
publicized was the fact that Guatemala had to seek arms from Czechoslovakia because
the United States had refused to sell it any since 1948 due to its reformist governments,
and had pressured other countries to do the same despite Arbenz's repeated pleas to lift
the embargo.
Like the Soviets, Arbenz had reason to wonder about the American charges. The
Guatemalan president, who took office in March 1951 after being elected by a wide
mat-gin, had no special contact or spiritual/ideological ties with the Soviet Union or the
rest of the Communist bloc. Although American policymakers and the American press,
explicitly and implicitly, often labeled Arbenz a communist, there were those in
Washington who knew better, at least during their more dispassionate moments. Under
72
Arbenz's administration, Guatemala had voted at the United Nations so closely with the
United States on issues of "Soviet imperialism" that a State Department group occupied
with planning Arbenz's overthrow concluded that propaganda concerning Guatemala's
UN record "would not be particularly helpful in our case". 8 And a State Department
analysis paper reported that the Guatemalan president had support "not only from
Communist-led labor and the radical fringe of professional and intellectual groups, but
also among many anti-Communist nationalists in urban areas". 9
Nonetheless, Washington repeatedly and adamantly expressed its displeasure
about the presence of communists working in the Guatemalan government and their
active participation in the nation's political life. Arbenz maintained that this was no
more than proper in a democracy, while Washington continued to insist that Arbenz was
too tolerant of such people — not because of anything they had done which was
intrinsically threatening or offensive to the US or Western civilization, but simply
because they were of the species communist, well known for its infinite capacity for
treachery. Ambassador Peurifoy — a diplomat whose suit might have been pinstriped,
but whose soul was a loud check — warned Arbenz that US -Guatemalan relations would
remain strained so long as a single communist remained on the public payroll. 10
The centerpiece of Arbenz's program was land reform. The need for it was
clearly expressed in the ail-too-familiar underdeveloped-country statistics: In a nation
overwhelmingly rural, 2.2 percent of the landowners owned 70 percent of the arable
land; the annual per capita income of agricultural workers was $87. Before the
revolution of 1944, which overthrew the Ubico dictatorship, "farm laborers had been
roped together by the Army for delivery to the low-land farms where they were kept in
debt slavery by the landowners." 11
The expropriation of large tracts of uncultivated acreage which was distributed
to approximately 100,000 landless peasants, the improvement in union rights for the
workers, and other social reforms, were the reasons Arbenz had won the support of
Communists and other leftists, which was no more than to be expected. When Arbenz
was criticized for accepting Communist support, he challenged his critics to prove their
good faith by backing his reforms themselves. They failed to do so, thus revealing
where the basis of their criticism lay. 12
The party formed by the Communists, the Guatemalan Labor Party, held four
seats in Congress, the smallest component of Arbenz's ruling coalition which
commanded a total of 51 seats in the 1953-54 legislature. 13 Communists held several
important sub-cabinet posts but none was ever appointed to the cabinet. In addition,
there were Communists employed in the bureaucracy, particularly in the administration
of land reform. 14
Lacking anything of substance they could accuse the Guatemalan left of,
Washington officials were reduced to condemnation by semantics. Thus, communists,
unlike normal human beings, did not take jobs in the government — they "infiltrated" the
government. Communists did not support a particular program — they "exploited" it.
Communists did not back Arbenz — they "used" him. Moreover, communists
"controlled" the labor movement and land reform — but what type of person is it who
devotes himself in an under-developed country to furthering the welfare of workers and
peasants? None other than the type that Washington calls "communist".
The basic idea behind the employment of such language — which was standard
Western fare throughout the cold war — was to deny the idea that communists could be
people sincerely concerned about social change. American officials denied it to each
other as well as to the world. Here, for example, is an excerpt from a CIA report about
73
Guatemala, prepared in 1952 for the edification of the White House and the intelligence
community:
Communist political success derives in general from the ability of individual
Communists and fellow travelers to identify themselves with the nationalist and
social aspirations of the Revolution of 1944. In this manner, they have been
successful in infiltrating the Administration and pro-Administration political
parties and have gained control! of organized labor ... [Arbenz] is essentially an
opportunist whose politics are largely a matter of historical accident... The
extension of [communist] influence has been facilitated by the applicability of
Marxist 'cliches' to the anti-colonial and social aims of the Guatemalan
Revolution. 15
The first plan to topple Arbenz was a CIA operation approved by President
Truman in 1952, but at the eleventh hour, Secretary of State Dean Acheson persuaded
Truman to abort it. 16 However, soon after Eisenhower became president in January
1953, the plan was resurrected.
Both administrations were pressured by executives of United Fruit Company,
much of whose vast and uncultivated land in Guatemala had been expropriated by the
Arbenz government as part of the land reform program. The company wanted nearly
$16 million for the land, the government was offering $525,000, United Fruit's own
declared valuation for tax purposes. 17
United Fruit functioned in Guatemala as a state within a state. It owned the
country's telephone and telegraph facilities, administered its only important Atlantic
harbor, and monopolized its banana exports. A subsidiary of the company owned nearly
every mile of railroad track in the country. The fruit company's influence amongst
Washington's power elite was equally impressive. On a business and/or personal level,
it had close ties to the Dulles brothers, various State Department officials, congressmen,
the American Ambassador to the United Nations, and others. Anne Whitman, the wife
of the company's public relations director, was President Eisenhower's personal
secretary. Under- secretary of State (and formerly Director of the CIA) Walter Bedell
Smith was seeking an executive position with United Fruit at the same time he was
helping to plan the coup. He was later named to the company's board of directors. 18
Under Arbenz, Guatemala constructed an Atlantic port and a highway to
compete with United Fruit's holdings, and built a hydro-electric plant to offer cheaper
energy than the US-controlled electricity monopoly. Arbenz's strategy was to limit the
power of foreign companies through direct competition rather than through
nationalization, a policy not feasible of course when it came to a fixed quantity like
land. In his inaugural address, Arbenz stated that:
Foreign capital will always be welcome as long as it adjusts to local conditions,
remains always subordinate to Guatemalan laws, cooperates with the economic
development of the country, and strictly abstains from intervening in the nation's
social and political life. 19
This hardly described United Fruit's role in Guatemala. Amongst much else, the
company had persistently endeavored to frustrate Arbenz's reform programs, discredit
him and his government, and induce his downfall.
Arbenz was, accordingly, wary of multinationals and could not be said to
welcome them into his country with open arms. This attitude, his expropriation of
United Fruit's land, and his "tolerance of communists" were more than enough to make
him a marked man in Washington. The United States saw these policies as being inter-
related: that is, it was communist influence — not any economic or social exigency of
74
Guatemalan life — which was responsible for the government's treatment of American
firms.
In March 1953, the CIA approached disgruntled right-wing officers in the
Guatemalan army and arranged to send them arms. United Fruit donated $64,000 in
cash. The following month, uprisings broke out in several towns but were quickly put
down by loyal troops. The rebels were put on trial and revealed the fruit company's role
in the plot, but not the CIA's. 20
The Eisenhower administration resolved to do the job right the next time around.
With cynical glee, almost an entire year was spent in painstaking, step-by-step
preparation for the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Of the major CIA
undertakings, few have been as well documented as has the coup in Guatemala. With
the release of many formerly classified government papers, the following story has
emerged.
Headquarters for the operation were established in Opa Locka, Florida, on the
outskirts of Miami. The Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza lent/leased his country
out as a site for an airstrip and for hundreds of men — Guatemalan exiles and US and
Central American mercenaries — to receive training in the use of weapons and radio
broadcasting, as well as in the fine arts of sabotage and demolition. Thirty airplanes
were assigned for use in the "Liberation", stationed in Nicaragua, Honduras and the
Canal Zone, to be flown by American pilots. The Canal Zone was set aside as a
weapons depot from which arms were gradually distributed to the rebels who were to
assemble in Honduras under the command of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas before
crossing into Guatemala. Soviet-marked weapons were also gathered for the purpose of
planting them inside Guatemala before the invasion to reinforce US charges of Russian
intervention. And, as important as arms, it turned out, hidden radio transmitters were
placed in and around the perimeter of Guatemala, including one in the US Embassy.
An attempt was made to blow up the trains carrying the Czech weapons from
port- side to Guatemala City; however, a torrential downpour rendered the detonators
useless, whereupon the CIA paramilitary squad opened fire on one train, killing a
Guatemalan soldier and wounding three others; but the convoy of trains made it safely
to its destination.
After the Czech ship had arrived in Guatemala, Eisenhower ordered the stopping
of "suspicious foreign-flag vessels on the high seas off Guatemala to examine cargo". 22
The State Department's legal adviser wrote a brief which concluded in no uncertain
terms that "Such action would constitute a violation of international law." No matter. At
least two foreign vessels were stopped and searched, one French and one Dutch. It was
because of such actions by the British that the United States had fought the War of
1812.
The Guatemalan military came in for special attention. The US ostentatiously
signed mutual security treaties with Honduras and Nicaragua, both countries hostile to
Arbenz, and dispatched large shipments of arms to them in the hope that this would
signal a clear enough threat to the Guatemalan military to persuade it to withdraw its
support of Arbenz. Additionally, the US Navy dispatched two submarines from Key
West, saying only that they were going "south". Several days later, the Air Force, amid
considerable fanfare, sent three B-36 bombers on a "courtesy call" to Nicaragua.
The CIA also made a close study of the records of members of the Guatemalan
officer corps and offered bribes to some of them. One of the Agency's clandestine radio
stations broadcast appeals aimed at military men, as well as others, to join the liberation
movement. The station reported that Arbenz was secretly planning to disband or disarm
75
the armed forces and replace it with a people's militia. CIA planes dropped leaflets over
Guatemala carrying the same message.
Eventually, at Ambassador Peurifoy's urging, a group of high-ranking officers
called on Arbenz to ask that he dismiss all communists who held posts in his
administration. The president assured them that the communists did not represent a
danger, that they did not run the government, and that it would be undemocratic to
dismiss them. At a second meeting, the officers also demanded that Arbenz reject the
creation of the "people's militia".
At one point, the CIA offerred Arbenz himself a large sum of money, which was
rejected. The money, which was deposited in a Swiss bank, presumably was offered to
induce Arbenz to abdicate or to serve as a means of later claiming he was corrupt.
On the economic front, contingency plans were made for such things as cutting
off Guatemalan credit abroad, disrupting its oil supplies, and causing a run on its foreign
23
reserves. But it was on the propaganda front that American ingenuity shone at its
brightest. Inasmuch as the Guatemalan government was being overthrown because it
was communist, the fact of its communism would have to be impressed upon the rest of
Latin America. Accordingly, the US Information Agency (USIA) began to place
unattributed articles in foreign newspapers labeling particular Guatemalan officials as
communist and referring to various actions by the Guatemalan government as
"communist-inspired". In the few weeks prior to Arbenz's fall alone, more than 200
articles about Guatemala were written and placed in scores of Latin American
newspapers.
Employing a method which was to become a standard CIA/USIA feature all
over Latin America and elsewhere, as we shall see, articles placed in one country were
picked up by newspapers in other countries, either as a result of CIA payment or
unwittingly because the story was of interest. Besides the obvious advantage of
multiplying the potential audience, the tactic gave the appearance that independent
world opinion was taking a certain stand and further obscured the American connection.
The USIA also distributed more than 100,000 copies of a pamphlet entitled
"Chronology of Communism in Guatemala" throughout the hemisphere, as well as
27,000 copies of anti-communist cartoons and posters. The American propaganda
agency, moreover, produced three films on Guatemala, with predictable content, and
newsreels favorable to the United States for showing free in cinemas.
Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York, a prelate possessed of anti-
communism, a man who feared social change more than he feared God, was visited by
the CIA. Would his Reverence arrange CIA contact with Archbishop Mariano Rossell
Arellano of Guatemala? The Cardinal would be delighted. Thus it came to pass that on 9
April 1954, a pastoral letter was read in Guatemalan Catholic churches calling to the
attention of the congregations the presence in the country of a devil called communism
and demanding that the people "rise as a single man against this enemy of God and
country", or at least not rally in Arbenz's defense. To appreciate the value of this, one
must remember that Guatemala's peasant class was not only highly religious, but that
very few of them were able to read, and so could receive the Lord's Word only in this
manner. For those who could read, many thousands of pamphlets carrying the
Archbishop's message were air-dropped around the country.
In May, the CIA covertly sponsored a "Congress Against Soviet Intervention in
Latin America" in Mexico City. The same month, Somoza called in the diplomatic
corps in Nicaragua and told them, his voice shaking with anger, that his police had
discovered a secret Soviet shipment of arms (which had been planted by the CIA) near
the Pacific Coast, and suggested that the communists wanted to convert Nicaragua into
76
"a new Korean situation". A few weeks later, an unmarked plane parachuted arms with
Soviet markings onto Guatemala's coast.
On such fare did the people of Latin America dine for decades. By such tactics
were they educated about "communism".
In late January 1954 the operation appeared to have suffered a serious setback
when photostat copies of Liberation documents found their way into Arbenz's hands. A
few days later, Guatemala's newspapers published copies of correspondence signed by
Castillo Annas, Somoza and others under banner headlines. The documents revealed the
existence of some of the staging, training and invasion plans, involving, amongst others,
the "Government of the North". 24
The State Department labeled the accusations of a US role "ridiculous and
untrue" and said it would not comment further because it did not wish to give them a
dignity they did not deserve. Said a Department spokesperson: "It is the policy of the
United States not to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. This policy has
repeatedly been reaffirmed under the present administration."
Time magazine gave no credence whatsoever to the possibility of American
involvement in such a plot, concluding that the whole expose had been "masterminded
in Moscow". 25
The New York Times was not so openly cynical, but its story gave no indication
that there might be any truth to the matter. "Latin American observers in New York,"
reported the newspaper, "said the 'plot' charges savored of communist influence." This
article was followed immediately on the page by one headed "Red Labor Chiefs Meet.
Guatemalan Confederation Opens Its Congress". 26
And the CIA continued with its preparations as if nothing had happened.
The offensive began in earnest on 18 June with planes dropping leaflets over
Guatemala demanding that Arbenz resign immediately or else various sites would be
bombed. CIA radio stations broadcast similar messages. That afternoon, the planes
returned to machine-gun houses near military barracks, drop fragmentation bombs and
strafe the National Palace.
Over the following week, the air attacks continued daily — strafing or bombing
ports, fuel tanks, ammunition dumps, military barracks, the International airport, a
school, and several cities; nine persons, including a three-year-old girl, were reported
wounded; an unknown number of houses were set afire by incendiary explosives.
During one night-time raid, a tape recording of a bomb attack was played over
loudspeakers set up on the roof of the US Embassy to heighten the anxiety of the
capital's residents. When Arbenz went on the air to try and calm the public's fear, the
CIA radio team jammed the broadcast.
Meanwhile, the Agency's army had crossed into Guatemala from Honduras and
captured a few towns, but its progress in the face of resistance by the Guatemalan army
was unspectacular. On the broadcasts of the CIA's "Voice of Liberation" the picture was
different: The rebels were everywhere and advancing; they were of large numbers and
picking up volunteers as they marched; war and upheaval in all corners; fearsome
battles and major defeats for the Guatemalan army. Some of these broadcasts were
transmitted over regular public and even military channels, serving to convince some of
Arbenz's officers that the reports were genuine. In the same way, the CIA was able to
answer real military messages with fake responses. All manner of disinformation was
spread and rumors fomented; dummy parachute drops were made in scattered areas to
heighten the belief that a major invasion was taking place. 27
77
United Fruit Company's publicity office circulated photographs to journalists of
mutilated bodies about to be buried in a mass grave as an example of the atrocities
committed by the Arbenz regime. The photos received extensive coverage. Thomas
McCann of the company's publicity office later revealed that he had no idea what the
photos represented; "They could just as easily have been the victims of either side — or
of an earthquake. The point is, they were widely accepted for what they were purported
to be — victims of communism.
In a similar vein, Washington officials reported on political arrests and
censorship in Guatemala without reference to the fact that the government was under
siege (let alone who was behind the siege), that suspected plotters and saboteurs were
the bulk of those being arrested, or that, overall, the Arbenz administration had a fine
record on civil liberties. The performance of the American press in this regard was little
better.
The primary purpose of the bombing and the many forms of disinformation was
to make it appear that military defenses were crumbling, that resistance was futile, thus
provoking confusion and division in the Guatemalan armed forces and causing some
elements to turn against Arbenz. The psychological warfare conducted over the radio
was directed by E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate fame, and David Atlee Phillips, a
newcomer to the CIA. When Phillips was first approached about the assignment, he
asked his superior, Tracy Barnes, in all innocence, "But Arbenz became President in a
free election. What right do we have to help someone topple his government and throw
him out of office?"
"For a moment," wrote Phillips later, "I detected in his face a flicker of concern,
a doubt, the reactions of a sensitive man." But Barnes quickly recovered and repeated
the party line about the Soviets establishing "an easily expandable beachhead" in
Central America.
Phillips never looked back. When he retired from the CIA in the mid-1970s, he
founded the Association of Retired Intelligence Officers, an organization formed to
counteract the flood of unfavorable publicity sweeping over the Agency at the time.
American journalists reporting on the events in Guatemala continued to exhibit
neither an investigative inclination nor a healthy conspiracy mentality. But what was
obscure to the US press was patently obvious to large numbers of Latin Americans.
Heated protests against the United States broke out during this week in June in at least
eleven countries and was echoed by the governments of Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay,
and Chile which condemned American "intervention" and "aggression".
Life magazine noted these protests by observing that "world communism was
efficiently using the Guatemalan show to strike a blow at the U.S." It scoffed at the idea
that Washington was behind the revolt. 29 Newsweek reported that Washington "officials
interpreted" the outcry "as an indication of the depth of Red penetration into the
Americas". 30 A State Department memo at the time, however, privately acknowledged
that much of the protest emanated from non-communist and even pro- American
moderates.
On 21 and 22 June, Guatemalan Foreign Minister Toriello made impassioned
appeals to the United Nations for help in resolving the crisis. American UN Ambassador
Henry Cabot Lodge tried to block the Security Council from discussing a resolution to
send an investigating team to Guatemala, characterizing Toriello's appeals as
communist maneuvers. But under heavy pressure from UN Secretary-General Dag
78
Hammarskjold, the Council was convened. Before the vote, while Lodge worked on the
smaller nations represented on the Council, Eisenhower and Dulles came down hard on
France and Great Britain, both of whom favored the resolution. Said the President of the
United States to his Secretary of State: "The British expect us to give them a free ride
and side with them on Cyprus. And yet they won't even support us on Guatemala! Let's
give them a lesson." 32
As matters turned out, the resolution was defeated by five votes to four, with
Britain and France abstaining, although their abstentions were not crucial inasmuch as
seven votes were required for passage. Hammarskjold was so upset with the American
machinations, which he believed undercut the strength of the United Nations, that he
confided that he might be forced "to reconsider my present position in the United
Nations" 33
During this same period, the CIA put into practice a plan to create an "incident".
Agency planes were dispatched to drop several harmless bombs on Honduran territory.
The Honduran government then complained to the UN and the Organization of
American States, claiming that the country had been attacked by Guatemalan planes. 34
Arbenz finally received an ultimatum from certain army officers: Resign or they
would come to an agreement with the invaders. The CIA and Ambassador Peurifoy had
been offering payments to officers to defect, and one army commander reportedly
accepted $60,000 to surrender his troops. With his back to the wall, Arbenz made an
attempt to arm civilian supporters to fight for the government, but array officers blocked
the disbursement of weapons. The Guatemalan president knew that the end was near.
The Voice of Liberation meanwhile was proclaiming that two large and heavily
armed columns of invaders were moving towards Guatemala City. As the hours passed,
the further advance of the mythical forces was announced, while Castillo Armas and his
small band had actually not progressed very far from the Honduran border. The
American disinformation and rumor offensive continued in other ways as well, and
Arbenz, with no one he could trust to give him accurate information, could no longer be
certain that there wasn't at least some truth to the radio bulletins.
Nothing would be allowed to threaten the victory so near at hand: A British
freighter docked in Guatemala and suspected of having arrived with fuel for Arbenz's
military vehicles, was bombed and sunk by a CIA plane after the crew had been warned
to flee. It turned out that the ship had come to Guatemala to pick up a cargo of coffee
and cotton.
A desperate Toriello pleaded repeatedly with Ambassador Peurifoy to call off
the bombings, offering even to reopen negotiations about United Fruit's compensation.
In a long cable to John Foster Dulles, the foreign minister described the aerial attacks on
the civilian population, expressed his country's defenselessness against the bombings,
and appealed to the United States to use its good offices to put an end to them. In what
must have been a deeply humiliating task, Toriello stated all of this without a hint that
the United States was, or could be, a party to any of it. The pleas were not simply too
late. They had always been too late.
The Castillo Armas forces could not have defeated the much larger Guatemalan
array, but the air attacks, combined with the belief in the invincibility of the enemy,
persuaded Guatemalan military officers to force Arbenz to resign. No Communists,
domestic or foreign, came to his aid. He asked the head of the officers, Army Chief of
Staff Col. Carlos Diaz, only that he give his word not to negotiate with Castillo Armas,
and Diaz, who despised the rebel commander as much as Arbenz did, readily agreed.
What Diaz did not realize was that the United States would not be satisfied merely to
79
oust Arbenz. Castillo Armas had been groomed as the new head of government, and that
was not negotiable.
A CIA official, Enno Hobbing, who had just arrived in Guatemala to help draft a
new constitution (sic) for the incoming regime, told Diaz that he had "made a big
mistake" in taking over the government. "Colonel," said Hobbing, "you're just not
convenient for the requirements of American foreign policy."
Presently, Peurifoy confronted Diaz with the demand that he deal directly with
Castillo Armas. At the same time, the Ambassador showed the Guatemalan colonel a
long list of names of some leaders, requiring that Diaz shoot them all within 24 hours.
"But why?" Diaz asked.
"Because they're communists," replied Peurifoy.
Although Diaz was not a communist sympathizer, he refused both requests, and
indicated that the struggle against the invaders would continue. 36 Peurifoy left, livid
with anger. He then sent a simple cable to CIA headquarters in Florida: "We have been
doubled-crossed. BOMB!" Within hours, a CIA plane took off from Honduras, bombed
a military base and destroyed the government radio station. Col. Castillo Armas, whose
anti-communism the United States could trust, was soon the new leader of Guatemala.
The propaganda show was not yet over. At the behest of the CIA, Guatemalan
military officers of the new regime took foreign correspondents on a tour of Arbenz's
former residence where they could see for themselves rooms filled with school
textbooks published in ... yes, the Soviet Union. The New York Times correspondent,
Paul Kennedy, considered to be strongly anti-Arbenz, concluded that the "books had
in
been planted" and did not bother to report the story. Time made no mention of the
books either, but somehow came upon the story that mobs had plundered Arbenz's
home and found "stacks of communist propaganda and four bags of earth, one each
from Russia, China, Siberia and Mongolia. " 38 Time'?, article made it clear enough that it
now knew of the American role in Arbenz's downfall (although certainly not the full
story), but the magazine had nothing to say about the propriety of overthrowing a
democratically elected government by force.
Castillo Armas celebrated the liberation of Guatemala in various ways. In July
alone, thousands were arrested on suspicion of communist activity. Many were tortured
or killed. In August a law was passed and a committee set up which could declare
anyone a communist, with no right of appeal. Those so declared could be arbitrarily
arrested for up to six months, could not own a radio or hold public office. Within four
months the committee had registered 72,000 names. A committee official said it was
aiming for 200,000.39 Further implementation of the agrarian reform law was stopped
and all expropriations of land already carried out were declared invalid. 40 United Fruit
Company not only received all its land back, but the government banned the banana
workers' unions as well. Moreover, seven employees of the company who had been
active labor organizers were found mysteriously murdered in Guatemala City. 41
The new regime also disenfranchised three-quarters of Guatemala's voters by
barring illiterates from the electoral rolls and outlawed all political parties, labor
confederations and peasant organizations. To "his was added the closing down of
opposition newspapers (which Arbenz had not done) and the burning of "subversive"
books, including Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Dostoyevsky novels, and the works of
80
Guatemala's Nobel Prize-winning author Miguel Angel Asturias, a biting critic of
United Fruit. 42
Meanwhile, John Foster Dulles, who was accused by Toriello of seeking to
establish a "banana curtain" in Central America, 43 was concerned that some
"communists" might escape retribution. In cables he exchanged with Ambassador
Peurifoy, Dulles insisted that the government arrest those Guatemalans who had taken
refuge in foreign embassies and that "criminal charges" be brought against them to
prevent them leaving the country, charges such as "having been covert Moscow agents".
The Secretary of State argued that communists should be automatically denied the right
of asylum because they were connected with an international conspiracy. The only way
they should be allowed to leave, he asserted, was if they agreed to be sent to the Soviet
Union. But Castillo Armas refused to accede to Dulles's wishes on this particular issue,
influenced perhaps by the fact that he, as well as some of his colleagues, had been
granted political asylum in an embassy at one time or another. 44
One of those who sought asylum in the Argentine Embassy was a 25-year-old
Argentine doctor named Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Guevara, who had been living
in Guatemala since sometime in 1953, had tried to spark armed resistance to the
invading forces, but without any success. Guevara's experience in Guatemala had a
profound effect upon his political consciousness. His first wife, Hilda Gadea, whom he
met there, later wrote:
Up to that point, he used to say, he was merely a sniper, criticizing from a
theoretical point of view the political panorama of our America. From here on he
was convinced that the struggle against the oligarchic system and the main
enemy, Yankee imperialism, must be an armed one, supported by the people. 45
In the wake of the coup, the United States confiscated a huge amount of
documents from the Guatemalan government, undoubtedly in the hope of finally
uncovering the hand of The International Communist Conspiracy behind Arbenz. If this
is what was indeed discovered, it has not been made public.
On 30 June, while the dust was still settling, Dulles summed up the situation in
Guatemala in a speech which was a monument to coldwarspeak:
[The events in Guatemala] expose the evil purpose of the Kremlin to destroy the
inter- American system ... having gained control of what they call the mass
organizations, [the communists] moved on to take over the official press and
radio of the Guatemalan Government. They dominated the social security
organization and ran the agrarian reform program ... dictated to the Congress
and to the President ... Arbenz ... was openly manipulated by the leaders of
communism ... The Guatemalan regime enjoyed the full support of Soviet
Russia ... [the] situation is being cured by the Guatemalans themselves. 46
When it came to rewriting history, however, Dulles's speech had nothing on
these lines from a CIA memo written in August 1954 and only for internal consumption
no less: "When the communists were forced by outside pressure to attempt to take over
Guatemala completely, they forced Arbenz to resign (deleted). They then proceeded to
establish a Communist Junta under Col. Carlos Diaz." 47
And in October, John Peurifoy sat-before a congressional committee and told
them:.
My role in Guatemala prior to the revolution was strictly that of a diplomatic
observer ... The revolution that overthrew the Arbenz government was engineered
81
and instigated by those people in Guatemala who rebelled against the policies and
ruthless oppression of the Communist-con-trolled government. 48
Later, Dwight Eisenhower was to write about Guatemala in his memoirs. The
former president chose not to offer the slightest hint that the United States had anything
to do with the planning or instigation of the coup, and indicated that his administration
had only the most tangential of connections to its execution. 49 (When Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs were published in the West, the publisher saw fit to
employ a noted Kremlinologist to annotate the work, pointing out errors of omission
and commission.)
Thus it was that the educated, urbane men of the State Department, the CIA and
the United Fruit Company, the pipe-smoking, comfortable men of Princeton, Harvard
and Wall Street, assured each other that the illiterate peasants of Guatemala did not
deserve the land which had been given to them, that the workers did not need their
unions, that hunger and torture were a small price to pay for being rid of the scourge of
communism.
The terror carried out by Castillo Armas was only the beginning. It was, as we
shall see, to get much worse in time. It continued without pause for more than 40 years.
In 1955, the New York Times reported from the United Nations that "The United
States has begun a drive to scuttle a section of the proposed Covenant of Human Rights
that poses a threat to its business interests abroad." The offending section dealt with the
right of peoples to self-determination and to permanent sovereignty over their natural
wealth and resources. Said the newspaper: "It declares in effect that any country has the
right to nationalize its resources ..." 50
11. Costa Rica mid- 1950s
Trying to topple an ally, part I
If ever the CIA maintained a love-hate relationship, it was with Jose Figueres,
three times the head of state of Costa Rica.
On the one hand, Figueres, by his own admission in 1975, worked for the CIA
"in 20,000 ways ... all over Latin America" for 30 years. 1 "I collaborated with the CIA
when we were trying to topple Trujillo," he divulged, speaking of the Dominican
Republic dictator. 2
On the other hand, Figueres revealed that the Agency had twice tried to kill
him. 3 He did not elaborate, although he stated at the same time that he had tried for two
years to get the Bay of Pigs invasion called off. This may have precipitated one or both
of the assassination attempts.
The CIA also tried to overthrow the Figueres. government. In 1964, the first
significant expose of the Agency, The Invisible Government, disclosed that:
in the mid-1950s CIA agents intruded deeply into the political affairs of Costa
Rica, the most stable and democratic republic in Latin America. Knowledgeable
Costa Ricans were aware of the CIA's role. The CIA's purpose was to promote the
ouster of Jose (Pepe) Figueres, the moderate socialist who became President in a
fair and open election in 1953. 4
82
Figueres remained in office until 1958, in this his first term as president; he had
headed a liberal junta in the late 1940s.
The Agency's "major grievance was that Figueres had scrupulously recognized
the right of asylum in Costa Rica — for non-Communists and Communists alike. The
large influx of questionable characters complicated the agency's job of surveillance and
forced it to increase its staff." 5
The CIA's problems with Figueres actually went somewhat deeper. Costa Rica
was a haven for hundreds of exiles fleeing from various Latin American right-wing
dictatorships, such as in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and
Figueres was providing groups of them with material and moral support in their plans to
overthrow these regimes. 6 To Figueres, this was entirely in keeping with his anti-
totalitarian beliefs, directed against the left as well as the right. The problem was that
the dictators targeted for overthrow were all members in good standing of the United
States' anti-Communist, "Free- World" club. (The American attitude toward Trujillo was
later modified-) Moreover, Figueres had on occasion expressed criticism of the
American policy of supporting such dictatorships while neglecting the economic and
social problems of the hemisphere.
These considerations could easily outweigh the fact that Figueres had
established his anti-Communist credentials, albeit not of the "ultra" variety, and was no
more a "socialist" than US Senator Hubert Humphrey. Although Figueres spoke out
strongly at times against foreign investment, as president he was eminently
accommodating to Central America's betes noires, the multinational fruit companies. 7
In addition to providing support to Figueres's political opponents, 8 the CIA,
reported The Invisible Government, tried:
to stir up embarrassing trouble within the Communist Party in Costa Rica, and to
attempt to link Figueres with the Communists. An effort to produce evidence that
Figueres had been in contact with leading Communists during a trip to Mexico
was unsuccessful. But CIA agents had better luck with the first part of their
strategy — stirring up trouble for the Communists. They succeeded in planting a
letter in a Communist newspaper. The letter, purportedly from a leading Costa
Rican Communist, put him on record in opposition to the Party line on the [1956]
Hungarian revolution. Unaware that the letter was a CIA plant, the leading
officials in the American Embassy held an urgent meeting to ponder its meaning.
The political officer then dispatched a long classified report to Washington,
alerting top policy makers to the possibility of a startling turn in Latin American
Communist politics. 9
In 1955 the Agency carried out an action against Figueres that was more
immediately threatening. A deep personal and political animosity between Figueres and
Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza had escalated into violence: an attempt against
Somoza's life, launched from Costa Rica with Figueres's support, was countered by an
invasion from Nicaragua by land and air. Figueres's biographer, Charles Ameringer, has
related that:
Figueres accused the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency of aiding the Somoza
movement against him. He claimed that the CIA felt indebted to Somoza for the
help he had given in overthrowing the Arbenz regime. He asserted that the same
pilots and planes (the F-47) that had participated in the attack upon Guatemala,
"afterwards came from Nicaragua and machine-gunned eleven defenseless towns
in our territory." According to Figueres, at the same time that the U.S. Department
of State arranged the sale of fighter planes for Costa Rica's defense, CIA planes
and pilots were flying sorties for the rebels. 10
83
It is interesting to note that during this period, when virtually nothing had yet
been revealed about such blatant CIA covert activities, the fact that the Agency had
been caught red-handed tapping Figueres's telephone was worthy of condemnatory
editorial comment by the Washington Post and a like statement by Senator Mike
Mansfield on the floor of the Senate. 11
Jose Figueres did not regain the presidency of Costa Rica until 1970, at which
time a renewed CIA effort to overthrow him was undertaken, for not very different
reasons.
"Neutrality," proclaimed John Foster Dulles in 1956, "has increasingly become
an obsolete conception, and, except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an
immoral and shortsighted conception." 1
The short-sightedness of the neutralist government lay perhaps in its inability to
perceive that its neutralism would lead to John Foster Dulles attempting to overthrow it.
Syria was not behaving like Washington thought a Third World government
should. For one thing, it was the only state in the area to refuse all US economic or
military assistance. Damascus did not much care for the strings which came attached —
the acceptance of military aid usually meant the presence of American military advisers
and technicians; furthermore, the US Mutual Security Act of 1955 specified that the
recipient country agree to make a contribution to "the defensive strength of the free
world", and declared it US policy "to encourage the efforts of other free nations ... to
foster private initiative and competition [i.e., capitalism]." 2
Another difficulty posed by Syria was that, although its governments of recent
years had been more or less conservative and had refrained from unpleasant leftist
habits like nationalizing American-owned companies, US officials — suffering from
what might be called anti-communist paranoia or being victims of their own
propaganda — consistently saw the most ominous handwritings on the walls. To
appreciate this, one has to read some of the formerly-secret-now-declassified documents
of the National Security Council (NSC), based in part on reports received from the
American embassy in Damascus during 1955 and 1956 ...
"IT the popular leftward trend in Syria continues over any considerable period,
there is a real danger that Syria will fall completely under left-wing control either by
coup or usurpation of authority" ... "the fundamental anti-US and anti-West orientation
of the Syrians is stimulated by inevitable political histrionics about the Palestine
problem" ... "Four successive short-lived governments in Syria have permitted
continuous and increasing Communist activities" ... "the Communists support the leftist
cliques [in] the army" ... "apathy towards Communism on the part of politicians and
army officers" is a threat to security ... "the Arab Socialist Resurrectionist Party
(ASRP)" and "the Communist Party of Syria are capable of bringing about further
deterioration of Syrian internal security" ... danger of ASRP "coup d'etat" and
"increased Communist penetration of government and army" ... "Of all the Arab states
Purchasing a new government
84
Syria is at the present time the most wholeheartedly devoted to a neutralist policy with
strong anti-Western overtones" ... "If the present trend continues there is a strong
possibility that a Communist-dominated Syria will result, threatening the peace and
stability of the area and endangering the achievement of out objectives in the Near East"
...we "should give priority consideration to developing courses of action in the Neat
East designed to affect the situation in Syria and to recommending specific steps to
combat communist subversion" ...
It would appear that the idea of military men who were leftist and/or apathetic to
communists must truly have been an incongruous phenomenon to the American official
mind. But nowhere in any of the documents is there mention of the
leftists/Communists/ASRP having in fact done anything illegal or wicked, although the
language employed is similar to what we saw in the Guatemala chapter: These people
don't join anything, they "infiltrate", they "penetrate"; they "control", they're
"opportunistic". In actuality, the behavior described is like that of other political
animals: trying to influence key sectors of the society and win allies. But to the men
holding positions of responsibility in the National Security Council and the State
Department, the evil intent and danger of such people was so self-evident as not to
require articulation.
There is one exception, perhaps expressed to explain away an uncomfortable
observation:
In fact, the Communist Party does not appear to have as its immediate objective
seizure of power. Rather it seeks to destroy national unity, Co strengthen support
for Soviet policies and opposition to Western policies and to exacerbate tensions
in the Arab world. It has made significant progress coward these objectives. 4
There is no indication of what the author had in mind by "national unity".
A leftist-oriented or communist-dominated Syrian government, reasoned the US
ambassador to Syria, James Moose, Jr., would clearly threaten American interests in
neighboring Turkey, which, in turn, could outflank all the states of the NATO alliance,
and so forth and so on. 5 It was clear that since the Syrian government could not be relied
upon to do anything about this major impending disaster, something would have to be
done about the Syrian government.
To this we add the usual Middle-Eastern intrigue: in this case, Iraq plotting with
the British to topple the governments in both Syria and Nasser's Egypt; the British
pressuring the Americans to join the conspiracy; 6 and the CIA compromising — leave
Nasser alone, at least for the time being, and we'll do something about Syria. 7
An implausible scenario, scandalous, but in the time-honored tradition of the
Middle East. The British were old hands at it. Dulles and the Americans, still exulting in
their king-making in Iran, were looking to further remake the oil region in their own
image.
Wilbur Crane Eveland was a staff member of the National Security Council, the
high-level inter-agency group in Washington which, in theory, monitors and controls
CIA clandestine activities. Because of Eveland's background and experience in the
Middle East, the CIA had asked that he be lent to the Agency for a series of assignments
there.
Archibald Roosevelt was, like his cousin Kermit Roosevelt, a highly-placed
official of the CIA; both were grandsons of Teddy. Kermit had masterminded the
overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953. Archie had fond hopes of doing the same
in Syria.
Michail Bey Ilyan had once served as Syria's foreign minister. In 1956 he was
the leader of the conservative Populist Party.
85
At a meeting of these three men in Damascus, Syria on 1 July 1956, as described
by Eveland in his memoirs, Roosevelt asked Ilyan "what would be needed to give the
Syrian conservatives enough control to purge the communists and their leftist
sympathizers. Ilyan responded by ticking off names and places: the radio stations in
Damascus and Aleppo; a few key senior officers; and enough money to buy newspapers
now in Egyptian and Saudi hands."
"Roosevelt probed further. Could these things, he asked Ilyan, be done with U.S.
money and assets alone, with no other Western or Near Eastern country involved?"
"Without question, Ilyan replied, nodding gravely."
On 26 July, Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser announced that his
government was taking over the operation of the Suez Canal. The reaction of the British
and French was swift and inflamed. The United States was less openly hostile, though it
was critical and Egyptian government funds in the US were frozen. This unexpected
incident put a crimp in the CIA's plans, for — as Ilyan explained to Eveland in despair —
Nasser was now the hero of the Arab world, and collaboration with any Western power
to overthrow an Arab government was politically indefensible.
Eventually the coup was scheduled for 25 October. The logistics, as outlined by
Ilyan, called for senior colonels in the Syrian army to:
take control of Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Hamah. The frontier posts with
Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon would also be captured in order to seal Syria's borders
until the radio stations announced that a new government had taken over under
Colonel Kabbani, who would place armored units at key positions throughout
Damascus. Once control had been established, Ilyan would inform the civilians
he'd selected that they were to form a new government, but in order to avoid leaks
none of them would be told until just a week before the coup.
For this operation, money would have to change hands. Ilyan asked for and
received half a million Syrian pounds (approximately $167,000). The Syrian further
stipulated that to guarantee their participation the Syrian plotters would require
assurance from the highest level of the American government that the US would both
back the coup and immediately grant recognition to the new government. This, Ilyan
explained, could be communicated as follows: in April, President Eisenhower had said
that the United States would oppose aggression in the Middle East, hut not without
congressional approval. Could the president repeat this statement, in light of the Suez
crisis, he asked, on a specified date when Ilyan's colleagues would be told to expect it?
Eisenhower's words would provide the guarantees they were seeking.
An affirmative reply to Ilyan's plan arrived in Damascus from Washington the
next day. A proper occasion for the requested statement would have to be found and
Secretary Dulles would be the one to use it. The scheme was for Dulles to make public
reference to Eisenhower's statement between 16 and 18 October, thus giving Ilyan the
week he needed to assemble his civilian team.
Before long, John Foster Dulles held a press conference. In light of recent Israeli
attacks on Jordan, one of the reporters present asked whether the United States might
come to Jordan's aid per "our declaration of April 9".
Yes, replied the Secretary of State, repeating the reference to the April
statement. The date was 16 October.
But following close on the heels of this was a message from Ilyan in Damascus
to Eveland in Beirut postponing the date of the coup for five days to 30 October because
Colonel Kabbani had told Ilyan that his people weren't quite ready.
The postponement was crucial. Early in the morning of the 30th, a very
distraught Michail Ilyan appeared at Eveland's door. "Last night," he cried, "the Israelis
86
invaded Egypt and are right now heading for the Suez Canal! How could you have
asked us to overthrow our government at the exact moment when Israel started a war
with an Arab state?" 8
The leftist-trend-in-Syria bell continued to ring in Washington. In January 1957,
wrote President Eisenhower later, CIA Director Alien Dulles "submitted reports
indicating that the new Syrian Cabinet was oriented to the left". 9 Two months later,
Dulles prepared a "Situation Report on Syria" in which he wrote of an "increasing trend
toward a decidedly leftist, pro-Soviet government". Dulles was concerned with
"organized leftist officers belonging to the Arab Socialist Resurrection Party". 10 That
same month, a State Department internal document stated:
The British are believed to favor active stimulation of a change in the present
regime in Syria, in an effort to assure a pro-Western orientation on the part of
future Syrian governments. ... The United States shares the concern of the British
Government over the situation in Syria. 11
Then, in June, an internal Department of Defense memorandum spoke of a
possible "leftist coup". This was to be carried out, according to the memo, against "the
leftist Syrian Government". 12
Thus it was that in Beirut and Damascus, CIA officers were trying their hands
again at stage-managing a Syrian coup. On this occasion, Kermit Roosevelt, rather than
cousin Archibald, was pulling the strings. He arranged for one Howard ("Rocky"! Stone
to be transferred to Damascus from the Sudan to be sure that the "engineering" was
done by a "pro". Stone was, at thirty-two, already a legend in the CIA's clandestine
service as the man who had helped Kim Roosevelt overthrow the Iranian government
four years earlier, though what Stone's precise contribution was has remained obscure.
The proposed beneficiary of this particular plot was to be Adib Shishakly,
former right-wing dictator of Syria, living covertly in Lebanon. Shishakly's former chief
of security, Colonel Ibrahim Husseini, now Syrian military attache in Rome, was
secretly slipped into Lebanon under cover of a CIA-fabricated passport. Husseini was
then to be smuggled across the Syrian border in the trunk of a US diplomatic car in
order to meet with key Syrian CIA agents and provide assurances that Shishakly would
come back to rule once Syria's government had been overthrown.
But the coup was exposed before it ever got off the ground. Syrian army officers
who had been assigned major roles in the operation walked into the office of Syria's
head of intelligence, Colonel Sarraj, turned in their bribe money and named the CIA
officers who had paid them. Lieut. Col. Robert Molloy, the American army attache,
Francis Jeton, a career CIA officer, officially Vice Consul at the US Embassy, and the
legendary Howard Stone, with the title of Second Secretary for Political Affairs, were
all declared personae -non gratae and expelled from the country in August.
Col. Molloy was determined to leave Syria in style. As his car approached the
Lebanese border, he ran his Syrian motorcycle escort off the road and shouted to the
fallen rider that "Colonel Sarraj and his commie friends" should be told that Molloy
would "beat the shit out of them with one hand tied behind his back if they ever crossed
his path again."
The Syrian government announcement which accompanied the expulsion order
stated that Stone had first made contact with the outlawed Social Nationalist Party and
then with the army officers. When the officers reported the plot, they were told to
continue their contacts with the Americans and later met Shishakly and Husseini at the
homes of US Embassy staff members. Husseini reportedly told the officers that the
87
United States was prepared to give a new Syrian government between 300 and 400
million dollars in aid if the government would make peace with Israel.
An amusing aside to the affair occurred when the Syrian Defense Minister and
the Syrian Ambassador to Italy disputed the claim that Husseini had anything to do with
the plot. The Ambassador pointed out that Husseini had not been in Syria since 20 July
and his passport showed no indication that he had been out of Italy since that time.
The State Department categorized the Syrian charge as "complete fabrications"
and retaliated by expelling the Syrian ambassador and a Second Secretary and recalling
the American ambassador from Syria. It marked the first time since 1915 that the United
1 3
States had expelled a chief of mission of a foreign country.
In the wake of the controversy, the New York Times reported that:
In the same issue, a Times editorial speculated upon other plausible- sounding
explanations. 15 Neither in its news report nor in its editorial did the New York Times
seem to consider even the possibility that the Syrian accusation might be true.
President Eisenhower, recalling the incident in his memoirs, offered no denial to
the accusation. His sole comment on the expulsions was: "The entire action was
shrouded in mystery but the suspicion was strong that the Communists had taken
control of the government. Moreover, we had fresh reports that arms were being sent
into Syria from the Soviet bloc." 16
Syria's neutralism/" leftism" continued to obsess the United States. Five years
later, when John F. Kennedy was in the White House, he met with British Prime
Minister Macmillan and the two leaders agreed, according to a CIA report, on
"Penetration and cultivation of disruptive elements in the Syrian armed forces,
particularly in the Syrian army, so that Syria can be guided by the West." 17
Decades later, Washington was still worried, though Syria had still not "gone
communist".
The Eisenhower Doctrine claims another backyard for America
On 9 March 1957, the United States Congress approved a presidential resolution
which came to be known as the Eisenhower Doctrine. This was a piece of paper, like the
Truman Doctrine and the Monroe Doctrine before it, whereby the US government
conferred upon the US government the remarkable and enviable right to intervene
militarily in other countries. With the stroke of a pen, the Middle East was added to
Europe and the Western hemisphere as America's field of play.
The resolution stated that "the United States regards as vital to the national
interest and world peace the preservation of the independence and integrity of the
nations of the Middle East." Yet, during this very period, as we have seen, the CIA
initiated its operation to overthrow the government of Syria.
There ace numerous theories about why the Syrians struck at the United States.
One is that they acted at the instigation of the Soviet Union. Another is that the
Government manufactured an anti-U.S. spy story to distrait public attention from
the significance of Syria's negotiations with Moscow. 14
1 3 . The Middle
88
The business part of the resolution was contained in the succinct declaration that
the United States "is prepared to use armed forces to assist" any Middle East country
"requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by
international communism". Nothing was set forth about non-communist or anti-
communist aggression which might endanger world peace.
Wilbur Crane Eveland, the Middle East specialist working for the CIA at the
time, had been present at a meeting in the State Department two months earlier called to
discuss the resolution. Eveland read the draft, which stated that "many, if not all" of the
Middle East states "are aware of the danger that stems from international communism".
Later he wrote:
I was shocked. Who, I wondered, had reached this determination of what the
Arabs considered a danger? Israel's army had just invaded Egypt and still
occupied all of the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. And, had it not been for
Russia's threat to intervene on behalf of the Egyptians, the British, French, and
Israeli forces might now be sitting in Cairo, celebrating Nasser's ignominious fall
from power. 1
The simplistic and polarized view of the world implicit in the Eisenhower
Doctrine ignored not only anti-Israeli sentiments but currents of nationalism, pan-
Arabism, neutralism and socialism prevalent in many influential quarters of the Middle
East. The framers of the resolution saw only a cold-war battlefield and, in doing so,
succeeded in creating one.
In April, King Hussein of Jordan dismissed his prime minister, Suleiman
Nabulsi, amidst rumors, apparently well-founded, of a coup against the King
encouraged by Egypt and Syria and Palestinians living in Jordan. It was the turning
point in an ongoing conflict between the pro-West policy of Hussein and the neutralist
leanings of the Nabulsi regime. Nabulsi had announced that in line with his policy of
neutralism, Jordan would develop closet relations with the Soviet Union and accept
Soviet aid if offered. At the same time, he rejected American aid because, he said, the
United States had informed him that economic aid would be withheld unless Jordan
"severs its ties with Egypt" and "consents to settlement of Palestinian refugees in
Jordan", a charge denied by the State Department. Nabulsi added the commentary that
"communism is not dangerous to the Arabs".
Hussein, conversely, accused "international communism and its followers" of
direct responsibility for "efforts to destroy my country". When pressed for the specifics
of his accusation, he declined to provide any.
When rioting broke out in several Jordanian cities, and civil war could not be
ruled out, Hussein showed himself equal to the threat to his continued rule. He declared
martial law, purged the government and military of pro-Nasser and leftist tendencies,
and abolished all political opposition. Jordan soon returned to a state of relative calm.
The United States, however, seized upon Hussein's use of the expression
"international communism" to justify rushing units of the Sixth Fleet to the eastern
Mediterranean — a super aircraft carrier, two cruisers, and 15 destroyers, followed
shortly by a variety of other naval vessels and a battalion of marines which put ashore in
Lebanon — to "prepare for possible future intervention in Jordan". 2
Despite the fact that nothing resembling "armed aggression from any country
controlled by international communism" had taken place, the State Department openly
invited the King to invoke the Eisenhower Doctrine. But Hussein, who had not even
requested the show of force, refused, knowing that such a move would only add fuel to
the fires already raging in Jordanian political life. He survived without it.
89
Sometime during this year the CIA began making secret annual payments to
King Hussein, initially in the millions of dollars per year. The practice was to last for 20
years, with the Agency providing Hussein female companions as well. As justification
for the payment, the CIA later claimed that Hussein allowed American intelligence
agencies to operate freely in Jordan. Hussein himself provided intelligence to the CIA
and distributed part of his payments to other government officials who also furnished
information or cooperated with the Agency. 4
A few months later, it was Syria which occupied the front stage in Washington's
melodrama of "International Communism". The Syrians had established relations with
the Soviet Union via trade, economic aid, and military purchases and training. The
United States chose to see something ominous in this although it was a state of affairs
engendered in no small measure by John Foster Dulles, as we saw in the previous
chapter. American antipathy toward Syria was heightened in August following the
Syrian government's exposure of the CIA-directed plot to overthrow it.
Washington officials and the American media settled easily into the practice of
referring to Syria as a "Soviet satellite" or "quasi-satellite". This was not altogether
objective or spontaneous reporting. Kennett Love, a New York Times correspondent in
close contact to the CIA (see Iran chapter), later disclosed some of the background:
The US Embassy in Syria connived at false reports issued in Washington and
London through diplomatic and press channels to the effect that Russian arms
were pouring into the Syrian port of Latakia, that "not more than 123 Migs" had
arrived in Syria, and that Lieutenant Colonel Abdel Hameed Serraj, head of
Syrian intelligence, had taken over control in a Communist-inspired coup. I
travelled all over Syria without hindrance in November and December [1956] and
found there were indeed "not more than 123 Migs". There were none. And no
Russian arms had arrived for months. And there had been no coup, although some
correspondents in Beirut, just a two-hour drive from Damascus, were dispatching
without attribution false reports fed to them by embassy visitors from Damascus
and a roving CIA man who worked in the guise of a US Treasury agent. Serraj,
who was anti-Communist, had just broken the clumsy British-US-Iraqi-supported
plot [to overthrow the Syrian government]. Syria was quiet but worried lest the
propaganda presage a new coup d'etat or a Western-backed invasion. 5
As if to further convince any remaining skeptics, Eisenhower dispatched a
personal emissary, Loy Henderson, on a tour of the Middle East. Henderson, not
surprisingly, returned with the conclusion that "there was a fear in all Middle East
countries that the Soviets might be able to topple the regimes in each of their countries
through exploiting the crisis in Syria". 6 He gave no indication as to whether the Syrians
themselves thought they were going through a crisis.
As an indication of how artificial were the crises announced by the White
House, how arbitrary were the doomsday pronouncements about the Soviet Union, let
us consider the following from a Department of Defense internal memorandum of June
1957, about two months before Henderson went to the Middle East:
The USSR has shown no intention of direct intervention in any of the previous
Mid-Eastern crises, and we believe it is unlikely that they would intervene,
directly, to assure the success of a leftist coup in Syria. 7
In early September, the day after Henderson returned, the United States
announced that the Sixth Fleet was once again being sent to the Mediterranean and that
arms and other military equipment were being rushed to Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and
90
Turkey. A few days later, Saudi Arabia was added to the list. The Soviet Union replied
with arms shipments to Syria, Egypt and Yemen.
The Syrian government accused the US of sending warships dose to her coast in
an "open challenge" and said that unidentified planes had been flying constantly over
the Latakia area day and night for four days, Latakia being the seaport where Soviet
ships arrived.
Syria further claimed that the US had "incited" Turkey to concentrate an
estimated 50,000 soldiers on Syria's border. The Syrians ridiculed the explanation that
the Turkish troops were only on maneuvers. Eisenhower later wrote that the troops were
at the border with "a readiness to act" and that the United States had already assured the
leaders of Turkey, Iraq and Jordan that if they "felt it necessary to take actions against
aggression by the Syrian government, the United States would undertake to expedite
shipments of arms already committed to the Middle Eastern countries and, further,
would replace losses as quickly as possible." The president had no quarrel with the idea
that such action might be taken to repel, in his words, the "anticipated aggression" of
Syria, for it would thus be "basically defensive in nature" (emphasis added). 8
The American role here may have been more active than Eisenhower suggests.
One of his advisers, Emmet John Hughes, has written of how Under-Secretary of State
Christian Herter, later to replace an ailing John Foster Dulles as Secretary, "reviewed in
rueful detail... some recent clumsy clandestine American attempts to spur Turkish forces
to do some vague kind of battle with Syria". 9
Dulles gave the impression in public remarks that the United States was anxious
to somehow invoke the Eisenhower Doctrine, presumably as a "justification" for taking
further action against Syria. But he could not offer any explanation of how this was
possible. Certainly Syria was not going to make the necessary request.
The only solution lay in Syria attacking another Arab country which would then
request American assistance. This appears to be one rationale behind the flurry of
military and diplomatic activity directed at Syria by the US. A study carried out for the
Pentagon some years later concluded that in "the 1957 Syrian crisis ... Washington
seem[ed] to seek the initial use of force by target" 10 (emphasis added; '"target" refers to
Syria).
Throughout this period, Washington officials alternated between striving to
enlist testimonials from other Arab nations that Syria was indeed a variety of Soviet
satellite and a threat to the region, and assuring the world that the United States had
received a profusion of just such testimony. But Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia all
denied that they felt threatened by Syria. Egypt, Syria's closest ally, of course
concurred. At the height of the "crisis", King Hussein of Jordan left for a vacation in
Europe. The Iraqi premier declared that his country and Syria had arrived at a "complete
understanding". And King Saud of Saudi Arabia, in a message to Eisenhower, said that
US concern over Syria was "exaggerated" and asked the president for "renewed
assurances that the United States would refrain from any interference in the internal
affairs of Arab states". Saud added that "efforts to overturn the Syrian regime would
merely make the Syrians more amenable to Soviet influence", a view shared by several
observers on all sides.
At the same time, the New York Times reported:
From the beginning of the crisis over Syria's drift to the left, there has been less
excitement among her Arab neighbors than in the United States. Foreign
diplomats in the area, including many Americans, felt that the stir caused in
Washington was out of proportion to the cause.
91
Eventually, Dulles may have been influenced by this lack of support for the
American thesis, for when asked specifically to "characterize what the relation is
between Soviet aims in the area and the part that Syria adds to them", he could only
reply that "The situation internally in Syria is not entirely clear and fluctuates
somewhat." Syria, he implied, was not yet in the grip of international Communism.
The next day, Syria, which had no desire to isolate itself from the West,
similarly moderated its tone by declaring that the American warships had been 15 miles
offshore and had continued "quietly on their way". 11
It appears that during this same restless year of 1957, the United States was also
engaged in a plot to overthrow Nasser and his troublesome nationalism, although the
details are rather sketchy. In January, when King Saud and Iraqi Crown Prince Abdul
Illah were in New York at the United Nations, they were approached by CIA Director
Allen Dulles and one of his top aides, Kermit Roosevelt, with offers of CIA covert
planning and funding to topple the Egyptian leader whose radical rhetoric, inchoate
though it was, was seen by the royal visitors as a threat to the very idea of monarchy.
Nasser and other army officers had overthrown King Farouk of Egypt in 1952.
Ironically, Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA have traditionally been given credit for
somehow engineering this coup. However, it is by no means certain that they actually
carried this out. 12
"Abdul Illah," wrote Eveland, "insisted on British participation in anything
covert, but the Saudis had severed relations with Britain and refused. As a result, the
CIA dealt separately with each: agreeing to fund King Saud's part in a new area scheme
to oppose Nasser and eliminate his influence in Syria; and to the same objective,
coordinating in Beirut a covert working group composed of representatives of the
British, Iraqi, Jordanian, and Lebanese intelligence services." 13
The conspiracy is next picked up in mid- spring at the home of Ghosn Zogby in
Beirut. Zogby, of Lebanese ancestry, was the chief of the CIA Beirut station. He and
Kermit Roosevelt, who was staying with him, hosted several conferences of the
clandestine planners. "So obvious," Eveland continued, "were their 'covert' gyrations,
with British, Iraqi, Jordanian and Lebanese liaison personnel coming and going nightly,
that the Egyptian ambassador in Lebanon was reportedly taking bets on when and where
the next U.S. coup would take place." At one of these meetings, the man from the
British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) informed the gathering that teams had been
fielded to assassinate Nasser.
Shortly afterwards, Eveland learned from a CIA official that John Foster Dulles,
as well as his brother Allen, had directed Roosevelt to work with the British to bring
down Nasser. Roosevelt now spoke in terms of a "palace revolution" in Egypt. 14
From this point on we're fishing in murky waters, for the events which followed
produced more questions than answers. With the six countries named above, plus
Turkey and Israel apparently getting in on the act, and less than complete trust and love
existing amongst the various governments, a host of plots, sub-plots and side plots
inevitably sprang to life; at times it bordered on low comedy, though some would call it
no mote than normal Middle East "diplomacy".
Between July 1957 and October 1958, the Egyptian and Syrian governments and
media announced the uncovering of what appear to be at least eight separate
conspiracies to overthrow one or the other government, to assassinate Nasser, and/or
prevent the expected merger of the two countries. Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the United
States were most often named as conspirators, but from the entanglement of intrigue
which surfaced it is virtually impossible to unravel the particular threads of the US
role.
92
Typical of the farcical goings-on, it seems that at least one of the plots to
assassinate Nasser arose from the Dulles brothers taking Eisenhower's remark that he
hoped "the Nasser problem could be eliminated" to be an order for assassination, when
the president, so the story goes, was merely referring to improved US-Egyptian
relations. Upon realizing the error, Secretary Dulles ordered the operation to cease. 16
(Three years later, Allen Dulles was again to "misinterpret" a remark by Eisenhower as
an order to assassinate Patrice Lumumba of the Congo.)
Official American pronouncements during this entire period would have had the
world believe that the Soviet Union was the eminence grise behind the strife in Jordan,
the "crisis" in Syria, and unrest generally in the Middle East; that the Soviet aim was to
dominate the area, while the sole purpose of US policy was to repel this Soviet thrust
and maintain the "independence" of the Arab nations. Yet, on three separate occasions
during 1957 — in February, April and September — the Soviet Union called for a four-
power (US, USSR, Great Britain and France) declaration renouncing the use of force
and interference in the internal affairs of the Middle Eastern countries. The February
appeal had additionally called for a four-power embargo on arms shipments to the
region, withdrawal of all foreign troops, liquidation of all foreign bases, and a
conference to reach a general Middle East settlement.
The Soviet strategy was clearly to neutralize the Middle East, to remove the
threat it had long felt from the potentially hostile control of the oil region by,
traditionally, France and Great Britain, and now the United States, which sought to fill
the "power vacuum" left by the decline of the two European nations as Middle East
powers.
History does not relate what a Middle East free from big-power manipulation
would have been like, for neither France, Great Britain, nor the United States was
amenable to even calling the Soviet "bluff, if that was what it was. The New York
Times summarized the attitude of the three Western nations to the first two overtures as
one that "deprecated the Soviet proposals as efforts to gain recognition of a Soviet right
to a direct voice in the affairs of the Middle East. They have told the Russians to take up
their complaints through the United Nations."
Following the September proposal, John Foster Dulles, replying to a question at
a press conference, said that "the United States is skeptical of these arrangements with
the Soviet Union for 'hands-off. What they are apt to mean is our hands off and their
hands under the table." This appears to be the only public comment the US government
17
saw fit to make on the matter.
It may be instructive to speculate upon the reaction of the Western nations if the
Soviet Union had announced a "Khrushchev Doctrine", ceding to itself the same scope
of action in the Middle East as that stipulated in the Eisenhower Doctrine.
In January 1958, Syria and Egypt announced their plans to unite, forming the
new nation of the United Arab Republic (UAR). The initiative for the merger had come
from Syria who was motivated in no small part by her fear of further American power
plays against her. Ironically, under the merger arrangement, the Communist Party,
already outlawed in Egypt, was dissolved in Syria, an objective which a year and a half
of CIA covert activity had failed to achieve.
Two weeks after the birth of the UAR, and in direct response to it, Iraq and
Jordan formed the Arab Union, with the United States acting as midwife. This union
was short lived, for in July a bloody coup in Iraq overthrew the monarchy, the new
regime establishing a republic and promptly renouncing the pact. The trumpets of
Armageddon could once more be heard distinctly in the Oval Office. "This somber turn
93
of events," wrote Eisenhower in his memoirs, "could, without vigorous response on our
part, result in a complete elimination of Western influence in the Middle East."
Although the president would not be so crass as to mention a concern about oil, his
anxiety attack was likely brought on by the fact that one of the greatest oil reserves in
the world was now under rule of a government which might well prove to be not as
pliable an ally as the previous regime, and too independent of Washington.
The time for a mere show of force was over. The very next day, the marines,
along with the American navy and air force, were sent in — not to Iraq, but to Lebanon.
Of all the Arab states, Lebanon was easily the United States' closest ally. She
alone had supported the Eisenhower Doctrine with any enthusiasm or unequivocally
echoed Washington's panic about Syria. To be more precise, it was the president of
Lebanon, Camille Chamoun, and the foreign minister, Charles Malik, a Harvard Ph.D.
in philosophy, who had put all their cold-war eggs into the American basket. Chamoun
had ample reason to be beholden to the United States. The CIA apparently played a role
in his 1952 election, 19 and in 1957 the Agency furnished generous sums of money to
Chamoun to use in support of candidates in the Chamber of Deputies (Parliament) June
elections who would back him and, presumably, US policies. Funds were also provided
to specifically oppose, as punishment, those candidates who had resigned in protest over
Chamoun's adherence to the Eisenhower Doctrine.
As is customary in such operations, the CIA sent an "election specialist" along
with the money to Beirut to assist in the planning. American officials in Washington
and Lebanon proceeded on the assumption, they told each other, that Egypt, Syria and
Saudi Arabia would also intervene financially in the elections. The American
ambassador to Lebanon, Donald Heath, argued as well, apparently without ironic
intention, that "With both the president and the new chamber of deputies supporting
American principles, we'd also have a demonstration that representative democracy
could work" in the Middle East.
To what extent the American funding helped, or even how the money was spent,
is not known, but the result was a landslide for pro-government deputies; so much so,
that it caused considerable protest within Lebanon, including the charge that Chamoun
had stacked the parliament in order to amend the constitution to permit him to seek an
otherwise prohibited second six- year term of office the following year. 20
By late April 1958, tensions in Lebanon had reached bursting point. The
inordinate pro-American orientation of Chamoun's government and his refusal to dispel
rumors that he would seek a second term incensed both Lebanese nationalists and
advocates of the Arab nationalism, which Nasser was promoting throughout the Middle
East. Demands were made that the government return to the strict neutrality provided
for in the National Pact of 1943 at the time of Lebanon's declaration of independence
from France.
A rash of militant demonstrations, bombings and clashes with police took place,
and when, in early May, the editor of an anti-government newspaper was murdered,
armed rebellion broke out in several parts of the country, and US Information Agency
libraries in Tripoli and Beirut were sacked. Lebanon contained all the makings of a civil
war.
"Behind everything," wrote Eisenhower, "was out deep-seated conviction that
the Communists were principally responsible for the trouble and that President
Chamoun was motivated only by a strong feeling of patriotism."
The president did not clarify who or what he meant by "Communists". However,
in the next paragraph he refers, without explanation, to the Soviet Union as "stirring up
94
trouble" in the Middle East. And on the following page, the old soldier writes that "there
was no doubt in our minds" about Chamoun's charge that "Egypt and Syria had been
instigating the revolt and arming the rebels". 21
In the midst of the fighting, John Foster Dulles announced that he perceived
"international communism" as the source of the conflict and for the third time in a year
the Sixth Fleet was dispatched to the eastern Mediterranean; police supplies to help
quell rioters, as well as tanks and other heavy equipment, were airlifted to Lebanon.
At a subsequent news conference, Dulles declared that even if international
communism were not involved, the Eisenhower Doctrine was still applicable because
one of its provisions stated that "the independence of these countries is vital to peace
and the national interest of the United States." "That is certainly a mandate," he said, "to
do something if we think that out peace and vital interests are endangered from any
quarter." 22 Thus did one of the authors of the doctrine bestow upon himself a mandate.
Egypt and Syria, from all accounts, supported the rebels' cause with arms, men
and money, in addition to inflammatory radio broadcasts from Cairo, although the
extent of the material support is difficult to establish. A UN Observation Group went to
Lebanon in June at the request of Foreign Minister Malik and reported that they found
no evidence of UAR intervention of any significance. A second UN report in July
confirmed this finding. It is open to question, however, what degree of reliance can be
placed upon these reports, dealing as they do with so thorny an evaluation and issued by
a body in the business of promoting compromise.
In any event, the issue was whether the conflict in Lebanon represented a
legitimate, home-grown civil war, or whether it was the doing of the proverbial "outside
agitators". On this point, historian Richard Barner has observed:
No doubt the Observation Group did minimize the extent of UAR participation.
But essentially they were correct. Nasser was trying to exploit the political
turmoil in Lebanon, but he did not create it. Lebanon, which had always abounded
in clandestine arsenals and arms markets, did not need foreign weapons for its
domestic violence. Egyptian intervention was neither the stimulus nor the
mainstay of the civil strife. Once again a government that had lost the power to
rule effectively was blaming its failure on foreign agents. 23
President Eisenhower — continuing his flip-flop thinking on the issue — wrote
that it now seemed that Nasser "would be just as happy to see a temporary end to the
struggle ... and contacted our government and offered to attempt to use his influence to
end the trouble." 24
Camille Chamoun had sacrificed Lebanon's independence and neutrality on the
altar of personal ambition and the extensive American aid that derived from subscribing
to the Eisenhower Doctrine. Lebanese Muslims, who comprised most of Chamoun's
opposition, were also galled that the Christian president had once again placed the
country outside the mainstream of the Arab world, as he had done in 1956 when he
refused to break relations with France and Great Britain following their invasion of
Egypt.
Chamoun himself had admitted the significance of his pro-American alignment
in a revealing comment to Wilbur Crane Eveland. Eveland writes that in late April,
I'd suggested that he might ease tensions by making a statement renouncing a
move for reelection. Chamoun had snorted and suggested that I look at the
calendar: March 23 was a month behind us, and no amendment to permit another
term could legally be passed after that date. Obviously, as he pointed out, the
issue of the presidency was not the real issue; renunciation of the Eisenhower
Doctrine was what his opponents wanted. 25
95
Instead of renouncing the doctrine, Chamoun invoked it. Although scattered
fighting, at times heavy, was continuing in Lebanon, it was the coup in Iraq on 14 July
that tipped the scales in favor of Chamoun making the formal request for military
assistance and the United States immediately granting it. A CIA report of a plot against
King Hussein of Jordan at about the same time heightened even further Washington's
seemingly unceasing sense of urgency about the Middle East.
Chamoun had, by this time, already announced his intention to step down from
office when his term expired in September. He was now concerned about American
forces helping him to stay alive until that date, as well as their taking action against the
rebels. For the previous two months, fear of assassination had kept him constantly
inside the presidential palace, never so much as approaching a window. The murder of
the Iraqi king and prime minister during the coup was not designed to make him feel
more secure.
The Eisenhower Doctrine was put into motion not only in the face of widespread
opposition to it within Lebanon, but in disregard of the fact that, even by the doctrine's
own dubious provisions, the situation in Lebanon did not qualify: It could hardly be
claimed that Lebanon had suffered "armed aggression from any country controlled by
international communism". If further evidence of this were needed, it was provided by
veteran diplomat Robert Murphy who was sent to Lebanon by Eisenhower a few days
after the US troops had landed. Murphy concluded, he later wrote, that "communism
was playing no direct or substantial part in the insurrection". 26
Yet, Eisenhower could write that the American Government "was moving in
accord with the provisions of the Middle East Resolution [Eisenhower Doctrine], but if
the conflict expanded into something that the Resolution did not cover, I would, given
27
time, go to the Congress for additional authorization". Apparently the president did
not place too much weight on John Foster Dulles having already determined that the
Resolution's mandate was open-ended.
Thus it was that American military forces were dispatched to Lebanon. Some 70
naval vessels and hundreds of aircraft took part in the operation, many remaining as part
of the visible American presence. By 25 July, the US forces on shore totaled at least
10,600. By August 13, their number came to 14,000, more than the entire Lebanese
Army and gendarmerie combined. 28
"In my [radio-TV] address," wrote Eisenhower, "I had been careful to use the
term 'stationed in' Lebanon rather than 'invading'." This was likely a distinction lost
upon many Lebanese, both high and low, supporters of the rebels and supporters of the
government, including government tank forces who were prepared to block the entrance
into Beirut of US troops; only the last- minute intercession on the spot by the American
ambassador may have averted an armed clash.
At a meeting between Robert Murphy and Lebanese Commander-in-Chief
General Faud Chehab — related by Eveland who was briefed by Murphy afterwards —
the American diplomat was warned that the Lebanese people were "restless, resentful,
and determined that Chamoun should resign and U.S. troops leave at once. Otherwise
the general could not be responsible for the consequences. For fifteen years his officers
had acted behind his back; now, he feared, they might revolt and attack the American
forces."
Murphy had listened patiently, Eveland relates, and then ...
escorted the general to a window overlooking the sea. Pointing to the supercarrier
Saratoga, swinging at anchor on the horizon, the President's envoy had quietly
explained that just one of its aircraft, armed with nuclear weapons, could
96
obliterate Beirut and its environs from the face of the earth. To this, Murphy
quickly added that he'd been sent to be sure that it wouldn't be necessary for
American troops to fire a shot. Shehab [Chehab], he was certain, would ensure
that there were no provocations on the Lebanese side. That, Murphy told me,
ended the conversation. It now seemed that the general had "regained control" of
his troops. 31
None of the parties seem to have considered what would have been the fate of
the thousands of American military personnel in a Beirut obliterated from the face of the
earth.
Civil warfare in Lebanon increased in intensity in the two weeks following the
American intervention. During this period, CIA transmitters in the Middle East were
occupied in sending out propaganda broadcasts of disguised origin, a tactic frequently
employed by the Agency. In the case of one broadcast which has been reported, the
apparent aim was to deflect anti-US feelings onto the Soviet Union and other targets.
But the residents of the Middle East were not the only ones who may have been taken in
by the spurious broadcast, for it was picked up by the American press and passed on to
an unwitting American public; the following appeared in US newspapers:
BEIRUT, July 23 (UPI) — A second mysterious Arab radio station went on the air
yesterday calling itself the "Voice of Justice" and claiming to be broadcasting
from Syria. Its program heard here consisted of bitter criticism against Soviet
Russia and Soviet Premier Khrushchev. Earlier the "Voice of Iraq" went on the air
with attacks against the Iraqi revolutionary government. The "Voice of Justice"
called Khrushchev the "hangman of Hungary"and warned the people of the
Middle East they would suffer the same fate as the Hungarians if the Russians got
a foothold in the Middle East. 32
On 3 1 July, the Chamber of Deputies easily chose General Chehab to succeed
Chamoun as president in September, an event that soon put a damper on the fighting in
Lebanon and marked the beginning of the end of the conflict which, in the final
analysis, appears to have been more a violent protest than a civil war. Tension was
further eased by the US announcement shortly afterwards of its intention to withdraw a
Marine battalion as a prelude to a general withdrawal.
The last American troops left Lebanon in late October without having fired a
shot in anger. What had their presence accomplished?
The authors of the Pentagon study referred to earlier concluded that "A balanced
assessment of U.S. behavior in the Lebanon crisis is made difficult by the suspicion that
the outcome might have been much the same if the United States had done nothing.
Even Eisenhower expressed some doubt on this score." 33
American intervention against the new Iraqi government was more covert. A
secret plan for a joint US-Turkish invasion of the country, code-named Operation
CANNON-BONE, was drafted by the US joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the coup in
1958. Reportedly, only Soviet threats to intercede on Iraq's side forced Washington to
hold back. But in 1960, the United States began to fund the Kurdish guerrillas in Iraq
who were fighting for a measure of autonomy. 34
At the same time, the Iraqis, under Brig. General Abdul Karim Kassem, started
to work towards the creation of an international organization to counter the power of the
Western oil monopolies. This was to become OPEC, and was not received with joy in
certain Western quarters. In February 1960, the Near East Division of the CIA's
clandestine services requested that the Agency find a way to "incapacitate" Kassem for
"promoting Soviet bloc political interests in Iraq". "We do not consciously seek
97
subject's permanent removal from the scene," said the Near East Division. "We also do
not object should this complication develop."
As matters turned out, the CIA mailed a monogrammed handkerchief containing
an "incapacitating agent" to Kassem from an Asian country. If the Iraqi leader did in
fact receive it, it certainly didn't kill him. That was left to his own countrymen who
executed him three years later. 35
The significance of the Lebanese intervention, as well as the shows of force
employed in regard to Jordan and Syria, extended beyond the immediate outcomes. In
the period before and after the intervention, Eisenhower, Dulles and other Washington
officials offered numerous different justifications for the American military action in
Lebanon: protecting American lives; protecting American property; the Eisenhower
Doctrine, with various interpretations; Lebanese sovereignty, integrity, independence,
etc.; US national interest; world peace; collective self-defense; justice; international
law; law and order; fighting "Nasserism" ... the need to "do something" ...
In summing up the affair in his memoirs, president Eisenhower seemed to settle
upon one rationale in particular, and this is probably the closest to the truth of the
matter. This was to put the world — and specifically the Soviet Union and Nasser — on
notice that the United States had virtually unlimited power, that this power could be
transported to any corner of the world with great speed, that it could and would be used
to deal decisively with any situation with which the United States was dissatisfied, for
whatever reason. 37
At the same time, it was a message to the British and the French that there was
only one Western superpower in the post-war world, and that their days as great powers
in the Lands of Oil were over.
14. Indonesia 1957-1958
War and pornography
"I think it's time we held Sukarno's feet to the fire," said Frank Wisner, the CIA's
Deputy Director of Plans (covert operations), one day in autumn 1956. 1 Wisner was
speaking of the man who had led Indonesia since its struggle for independence from the
Dutch following the war. A few months earlier, in May, Sukarno had made an
impassioned speech before the US Congress asking for more understanding of the
problems and needs of developing nations like his own. 2
The ensuing American campaign to unseat the flamboyant leader of the fifth
most populous nation in the world was to run the gamut from large-scale military
maneuvers to seedy sexual intrigue.
The previous year, Sukarno had organized the Bandung Conference as an
answer to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the US-created political-
military alliance of area states to "contain communism". In the Indonesian city of
Bandung, the doctrine of neutralism had been proclaimed as the faith of the
underdeveloped world. To the men of the CIA station in Indonesia the conference was
heresy, so much so that their thoughts turned toward assassination as a means of
sabotaging it.
In 1975, the Senate committee which was investigating the CIA heard testimony
that Agency officers stationed in an East Asian country had suggested that an East
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Asian leader be assassinated "to disrupt an impending Communist [sic] Conference in
1955". (In all likelihood, the leader referred to was either Sukarno or Chou En-lai of
China.) But, said the committee, cooler heads prevailed at CIA headquarters in
Washington and the suggestion was firmly rejected.
Nevertheless, a plane carrying eight members of the Chinese delegation, a
Vietnamese, and two European journalists to the Bandung Conference crashed under
mysterious circumstances. The Chinese government claimed that it was an act of
sabotage carried out by the US and Taiwan, a misfired effort to murder Chou En-lai.
The chartered Air India plane had taken off from Hong Kong on 11 April 1955 and
crashed in the South China Sea. Chou En-lai was scheduled to be on another chartered
Air India flight a day or two later. The Chinese government, citing what it said were
press reports from the Times of India, stated that the crash was caused by two time
bombs apparently placed aboard the plane in Hong Kong. A clockwork mechanism was
later recovered from the wrecked airliner and the Hong Kong police called it a case of
"carefully planned mass murder". Months later, British police in Hong Kong announced
that they were seeking a Chinese Nationalist for conspiracy to cause the crash, but that
he had fled to Taiwan. 4
In 1967 a curious little book appeared in India, entitled / Was a CIA Agent in
India, by John Discoe Smith, an American. Published by the Communist Party of India,
it was based on articles written by Smith for Literaturnaya Gazeta in Moscow after he
had defected to the Soviet Union around 1960. Smith, born in Quincy, Mass, in 1926,
wrote that he had been a communications technician and code clerk at the US Embassy
in New Delhi in 1955, performing tasks for the CIA as well. One of these tasks was to
deliver a package to a Chinese Nationalist which Smith later learned, he claimed,
contained the two time bombs used to blow up the Air India plane. The veracity of
Smith's account cannot be determined, although his employment at the US Embassy in
New Delhi from 1954 to 1959 is confirmed by the State Department Biographic
Register. 5
Elsewhere the Senate committee reported that it had "received some evidence of
CIA involvement in plans to assassinate President Sukarno of Indonesia", and that the
planning had proceeded to the point of identifying an agent whom it was believed might
be recruited for the job. 6 (The committee noted that at one time, those at the CIA who
were concerned with possible assassinations and appropriate methods were known
internally as the "Health Alteration Committee".)
To add to the concern of American leaders, Sukarno had made trips to the Soviet
Union and China (though to the White House as well), he had purchased arms from
Eastern European countries (but only after being turned down by the United States), 7 he
had nationalized many private holdings of the Dutch, and, perhaps most disturbing of
all, the Indonesian Communist Party (PK1) had made impressive gains electorally and
in union-organizing, thus earning an important role in the coalition government.
It was a familiar Third World scenario, and the reaction of Washington policy-
makers was equally familiar. Once again, they were unable, or unwilling, to distinguish
nationalism from pro-communism, neutralism from wickedness. By any definition of
the word, Sukarno was no communist. He was an Indonesian nationalist and a
"Sukarnoist" who had crushed the PKI forces in 1948 after the independence struggle
had been won. 8 He ran what was largely his own show by granting concessions to both
the PKI and the Army, balancing one against the other. As to excluding the PKI, with its
more than one million members, from the government, Sukarno declared: "I can't and
won't ride a three-legged horse." 9
99
To the United States, however, Sukarno's balancing act was too precarious to be
left to the vagaries of the Indonesian political process. It mattered not to Washington
that the Communist Party was walking the legal, peaceful road, or that there was no
particular "crisis" or "chaos" in Indonesia, so favored as an excuse for intervention.
Intervention there would be.
It would not be the first. In 1955, during the national election campaign in
Indonesia, the CIA had given a million dollars to the Masjumi party, a centrist coalition
of Muslim organizations, in a losing bid to thwart Sukarno's Nationalist Party as well as
the PKI. According to former CIA officer Joseph Burkholder Smith, the project
"provided for complete write-off of the funds, that is, no demand for a detailed
accounting of how the funds were spent was required. I could find no clue as to what the
Masjumi did with the million dollars." 10
In 1957, the CIA decided that the situation called for more direct action. It was
not difficult to find Indonesian colleagues-in-arms for there already existed a clique of
army officers and others who, for personal ambitions and because they disliked the
influential position of the PKI, wanted Sukarno out, or at least out of their particular
islands. (Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago, consisting of some 3,000 islands.)
The military operation the CIA was opting for was of a scale that necessitated
significant assistance from the Pentagon, which could be secured for a political action
mission only if approved by the National Security Council's "Special Group" (the small
group of top NSC officials who acted in the president's name, to protect him and the
country by evaluating proposed covert actions and making certain that the CIA did not
go off the deep end; known at other times as the 5412 Committee, the 303 Committee,
the 40 Committee, or the Operations Advisory Group).
The manner in which the Agency went about obtaining this approval is a
textbook example of how the CIA sometimes determines American foreign policy.
Joseph Burkholder Smith, who was in charge of the Agency's Indonesian desk in
Washington from mid-1956 to early 1958, has described the process in his memoirs:
Instead of first proposing the plan to Washington for approval, where "premature
mention ... might get it shot down"...
we began to feed the State and Defense departments intelligence that no one could
deny was a useful contribution to understanding Indonesia. When they had read
enough alarming reports, we planned to spring the suggestion we should support
the colonels' plans to reduce Sukarno's power. This was a method of operation
which became the basis of many of the political action adventures of the 1960s
and 1970s. In other words, the statement is false that CIA undertook to intervene
in the affairs of countries like Chile only after being ordered to do so by ... the
Special Group. ... In many instances, we made the action programs up ourselves
after we had collected enough intelligence to make them appear required by the
circumstances. Our activity in Indonesia in 1957-1958 was one such instance. 11
(Emphasis in original.)
When the Communist Parry did well again in local elections held in July, the
CIA viewed it as "a great help to us in convincing Washington authorities how serious
the Indonesian situation was. The only person who did not seem terribly alarmed at the
PKI victories was Ambassador Allison. This was all we needed to convince John Foster
Dulles finally that he had the wrong man in Indonesia. The wheels began to turn to
remove this last stumbling block in the way of our operation." 12 John Allison, wrote
Smith, was not a great admirer of the CIA to begin with. And in early 1958, after less
than a year in the post, he was replaced as ambassador by Howard Jones, whose
selection "pleased" the CIA Indonesia staff. 13
100
On 30 November 1957, several hand grenades were tossed at Sukarno as he was
leaving a school. He escaped injury, but 10 people were killed and 48 children injured.
The CIA in Indonesia had no idea who was responsible, but it quickly put out the story
that the PKI was behind it "at the suggestion of their Soviet contacts in order to make it
appear that Sukarno's opponents were wild and desperate men". As it turned out, the
culprits were a Muslim group not associated with the PKI or with the Agency's military
plotters.
The issue of Sukarno's supposed hand-in-glove relationship with Communists
was pushed at every opportunity. The CIA decided to make capital of reports that a
good-looking blonde stewardess had been aboard Sukarno's aircraft everywhere he went
during his trip in the Soviet Union and that the same woman had come to Indonesia
with Soviet President Kliment Voroshilov and had been seen several times in the
company of Sukarno. The idea was that Sukarno's well-known womanizing had trapped
him in the spell of a Soviet female agent. He had succumbed to Soviet control, CIA
reports implied, as a result of her influence or blackmail, or both.
"This formed the foundation of our flights of fancy," wrote Smith. "We had as a
matter of fact, considerable success with this theme. It appeared in the press around the
world, and when Round Table, the serious British quarterly of international affairs,
came to analyze the Indonesian revolt in its March 1958 issue, it listed Sukarno's being
blackmailed by a Soviet female spy as one of the reasons that caused the uprising."
Seemingly, the success of this operation inspired CIA officers in Washington to
carry the theme one step further. A substantial effort was made to come up with a
pornographic film or at least some still photographs that could pass for Sukarno and his
Russian girl friend engaged in "his favorite activity". When scrutiny of available porno
films (supplied by the Chief of Police of Los Angeles) failed to turn up a couple who
could pass for Sukarno (dark and bald) and a beautiful blonde Russian woman, the CIA
undertook to produce its own films, "the very films with which the Soviets were
blackmailing Sukarno". The Agency developed a full-face mask of the Indonesian leader
which was to be sent to Los Angeles where the police were to pay some porno-film actor
to wear it during his big scene. This project resulted in at least some photographs,
although they apparently were never used. 15
Another outcome of the blackmail effort was a film produced for the CIA by
Robert Maheu, former FBI agent and intimate of Howard Hughes. Maheu's film starred
an actor who resembled Sukarno. The ultimate fate of the film, which was entitled
"Happy Days", has not been reported. 16
In other parts of the world, at other times, the CIA has done better in this line of
work, having produced sex films of target subjects caught in flagrante delicto who had
been lured to Agency safe-houses by female agents.
In 1960, Col. Truman Smith, US Army Ret., writing in Reader's Digest about the
KGB, declared: "It is difficult for most of us to appreciate its menace, as its methods
are so debased as to be all but beyond the comprehension of any normal person with a
sense of right and wrong." One of the KGB methods the good colonel found so debased
was the making of sex films to be used as blackmail. "People depraved enough to
employ such methods," he wrote, "find nothing distasteful in more violent methods." 17
Sex could be used at home as well to further the goals of American foreign
policy. Under the cover of the US foreign aid program, at that time called the
Economic Cooperation Administration, Indonesian policemen were trained and then
recruited to provide information on Soviet, Chinese and PKI activities in their country.
Some of the men singled out as good prospects for this work were sent to Washington
for special training and to be softened up for recruitment. Like Sukarno, reportedly, these
101
police officers invariably had an obsessive desire to sleep with a white woman.
Accordingly, during their stay they were taken to Baltimore's shabby sex district to
indulge themselves. 8
November 1957, 19 and the CIA's paramilitary machine was put into gear. In this
undertaking, as in others, the Agency enjoyed the advantage of the United States' far-
flung military empire. Headquarters for the operation were established in neighboring
Singapore, courtesy of the British; training bases set up in the Philippines; airstrips laid
out in various parts of the Pacific to prepare for bomber and transport missions;
Indonesians, along with Filipinos, Taiwanese, Americans, and other "soldiers of fortune"
were assembled in Okinawa and the Philippines along with vast quantities of arms and
equipment.
For this, the CIA's most ambitious military operation to date, tens of thousands
of rebels were armed, equipped and trained by the US Army. US Navy submarines,
patrolling off the coast of Sumatra, the main island, put over-the-beach parties ashore
along with supplies and communications equipment. The US Air Force set up a
considerable Air Transport force which air-dropped many thousands of weapons deep
into Indonesian territory. And a fleet of 15 B-26 bombers was made available for the
conflict after being "sanitized" to ensure that they were "non- attributable" and that all
airborne equipment was "deniable".
In the early months of 1958, rebellion began to break out in one part of the
Indonesian island chain, then another. CIA pilots took to the air to carry out bombing
and strafing missions in support of the rebels. In Washington, Col. Alex Kawilarung, the
Indonesian military attache, was persuaded by the Agency to "defect". He soon showed
up in Indonesia to take charge of the rebel forces. Yet, as the fighting dragged on into
spring, the insurgents proved unable to win decisive victories or take the offensive,
although the CIA bombing raids were taking their toll. Sukarno later claimed that on a
Sunday morning in April, a plane bombed a ship in the harbor of the island of Ambon —
all those aboard losing their lives — as well as hitting a church, which demolished the
building and killed everyone inside. He stated that 700 casualties had resulted from this
single run.
On 15 May, a CIA plane bombed the Ambon marketplace, killing a large number
of civilians on their way to church on Ascension Thursday. The Indonesian government
had to act to suppress public demonstrations.
Three days later, during another bombing run over Ambon, a CIA pilot, Alien
Lawrence Pope, was shot down and captured. Thirty years old, from Perrine, Florida,
Pope had flown 55 night missions over Communist lines in Korea for the Air Force.
Later he spent two months flying through Communist flak for the CIA to drop supplies
to the French at Dien Bien Phu. Now his luck had run out. He was to spend four years
as a prisoner in Indonesia before Sukarno acceded to a request from Robert Kennedy for
his release.
Pope was captured carrying a set of incriminating documents, including those
which established him as a pilot for the US Air Force and the CIA airline CAT. Like all
men flying clandesrine missions, Pope had gone through an elaborate procedure before
taking off to "sanitize" him, as well as his aircraft. But he had apparently smuggled the
papers aboard the plane, for he knew that to be captured as an "anonymous, stateless
civilian" meant having virtually no legal rights and running the risk of being shot as a
spy in accordance with custom. A captured US military man, however, becomes a
commodity of value for his captors while he remains alive.
102
The Indonesian government derived immediate material concessions from the
United States as a result of the incident. Whether the Indonesians thereby agreed to keep
silent about Pope is not known, but on 27 May the pilot and his documents were
presented to the world at a news conference, thus contradicting several recent
20
statements by high American officials. Notable amongst these was President
Eisenhower's declaration on 30 April concerning Indonesia; "Our policy is one of
careful neutrality and proper deportment all the way through so as not to be taking sides
where it is none of our business." 21
And on 9 May, an editorial in the New York Times had stated;
It is unfortunate that high officials of the Indonesian Government have given
further circulation to the false report that the United States Government was
sanctioning aid to Indonesia's rebels. The position of the United States
Government has been made plain, again and again. Our Secretary of State was
emphatic in his declaration that this country would not deviate from a correct
neutrality ... the United States is not ready ... to step in to help overthrow a
constituted government. Those are the hard facts. Jakarta does not help its case,
here, by ignoring them.
With the exposure of Pope and the lack of rebel success in the field, the CIA
decided that the light was no longer worth the candle, and began to curtail its support.
By the end of June, Indonesian army troops loyal to Sukarno had effectively crushed the
dissident military revolt.
The Indonesian leader continued his adroit balancing act between the
Communists and the army until 1965, when the latter, likely with the help of the CIA,
finally overthrew his regime.
15. Western Europe 1950s and 1960s
Fronts withinfronts within fronts
At the British Labour Party conference in 1960, Michael Foot, the party's future
leader and a member of its left wing, was accused of being a "fellow traveler" by then-
leader Hugh Gaitskell. Foot responded with a reference to Gaitskell and others of the
parry's right wing: "But who," he asked, "are they traveling with?" 1
They, it turned out, had been traveling with the CIA for some years. Fellow
passengers were Frenchmen, Germans, Dutch, Italians, and a host of other West
Europeans; all taking part in a CIA operation to win the hearts and minds of liberals,
social democrats, and assorted socialists, to keep them from the clutches of the Russian
bear.
It was an undertaking of major proportions. For some 20 years, the Agency
used dozens of American foundations, charitable trusts and the like, including a few of its
own creation, as conduits for payments to all manner of organizations in the United
States and abroad, many of which, in turn, funded other groups. So numerous were the
institutions involved, so many were the interconnections and overlaps, that it is unlikely
that anyone at the CIA had a grasp of the full picture, let alone exercised broad control
over it or proper accounting. (See Appendix I for a partial organizational chart.)
103
The ultimate beneficiaries of this flow of cash were political parties, magazines,
news agencies, journalists' unions, other unions and labor organizations, student and
youth groups, lawyers' associations, and other enterprises already committed to "The Free
World" which could be counted upon to spread the gospel further if provided with
sufficient funding.
The principal front organization set up by the CIA in this period was the grandly
named Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). In June 1950, prominent literati and
scientists of the United States and Europe assembled in the Titiana Palace Theatre, in the
American Zone of Berlin, before a large audience to launch the organization whose
purpose was to "defend freedom and democracy against the new tyranny sweeping the
world". The CCF was soon reaching out in all directions with seminars, conferences, and
a wide program of political and cultural activities in Western Europe as well as India,
Australia, Japan, Africa and elsewhere. It had, moreover, more than 30 periodicals under
its financial wing, including, in Europe:
Socialist Commentary, Censorship, Science and Freedom, Minerva, Soviet
Survey (or Survey), China Quarterly, and Encounter in Great Britain;
Preuves, Censure Contre les Artes el la Pensee, Mundo Nuevo, and Cuadernos in
France (the last two in Spanish, aimed at Latin America);
Perspektiv in Denmark, Argumenten in Sweden, Irodalmi Ujsag in Hungary,
Der Monat in Germany, Forum in Austria, Tempo Presente in Italy, and Vision
in Switzerland.
There were as well CCF links to The New Leader, Africa Report, East Europe
and Atlas in New York. 2
Generally, the CCF periodicals were well-written political and cultural magazines
which, in the words of former CIA executive Ray Cline, "would not have been able to
survive financially without CIA funds". 3
Amongst the other media-related organizations subsidized by the CIA in Europe
at this time were the West German news agency DENA (later known as DPA), 4 the
international association of writers PEN, located in Paris, certain French newspapers, 5
the International Federation of Journalists, and Forum World Features, a news feature
service in London whose stories were bought by some 140 newspapers around the
world, including about 30 in the United States, amongst which were the "Washington
Post and four other major dailies. The Church committee of the US Senate reported that
"major U.S. dailies" which took the service were informed that Forum World Features
was "CIA-controlled". The Guardian and The Sunday Times of Great Britain also used
the service, which earlier had been called Forum Service. By 1967, according to one of
Forum's leading writers, the news service had become perhaps "the principal CIA media
effort in the world", no small accomplishment when one considers that the CIA, in its
heyday, was devoting a reported 29 percent of its budget to media and propaganda. 6
Another important recipient of CIA beneficence was Axel Springer, the West
German press baron who was secretly funneled about $7 million in the early 1950s to
help him build up his vast media empire. Springer, until he died in 1985, was the head of
the largest publishing conglomerate in Western Europe, standing as a tower of pro-
Western and anti-communist sentiment. The publisher of the influential West German
weekly Der Spiegel, Rudolph Augstein, has observed: "No single man in Germany,
before or after Hitler, with the possible exception of Bismarck or the two emperors, has
had so much power as Springer." His relationship with the CIA reportedly continued until
at least the early 1970s. 7
104
The originator of the American program, the head of the CIA's International
Organizations Division, Tom Braden, later wrote that the Agency placed one operative in
the CCF and that another became an editor of the CCF's most important magazine,
Encounter} Presumably there was at least one CIA agent or officer in each of the funded
groups. Braden stated that "The agents could ... propose anti-Communist programs to the
official leaders of the organizations." He added, however, that it was a policy to "protect
the integrity of the organization by not requiring it to support every aspect of official
American policy." 9
The Cultural Freedom journals appealed to the non-Marxist left (Forum, by
contrast, was cobservative), generally eschewing the class struggle and excessive
nationalization of industry. They subscribed to Daniel Bell's "the end of ideology" thesis,
the raison d'etre of which was that since no one could call for dying for capitalism with a
straight face, the idea of dying for socialism or any other ideology had to be discredited.
At the same time, the journals advocated a reformed capitalism, a capitalism with a
human face.
To the cold warriors in Washington who were paying the bills, however, the idea
of reforming capitalism was of minimal interest. What was of consequence was the
commitment of the magazines to a strong, well-armed, and united Western Europe, allied
to the United States, which would stand as a bulwark against the Soviet bloc; support
for the Common Market and NATO; critical analysis of what was seen as the intellectual
compo-nent of international communist subversion; skepticism of the disarmament,
pacifism, and neutralism espoused by the likes of the prominent Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament (CND) in Great Britain. Criticism of US foreign policy took place within
the framework of cold-war assumptions; for example, that a particular American
intervention as not the most effective way of combatting communism, not that there was
anything wrong with intervention per se or that the United States was supporting the
wrong side.
"Private" publications such as these could champion views which official US
government organs like the Voice of America could not, and still be credible. The same
was true of the many other private organizations on the CIA payroll at this time.
In 1960, CND and other elements of the Labour Party's left wing succeeded in winning over the party's
conference to a policy of complete, unilateral nuclear disarmament and neutrality in the cold war. In
addition, two resolutions supporting NATO were voted down. Although the Labour Party was not in
power at the time, the actions carried considerable propaganda and psychological value. Washington
viewed the turn of events with not a little anxiety, for such sentiments could easily spread to the major
parties of other NATO countries.
The right wing of the Labour Party, which had close, not to say intimate, connections to the Congress for
Cultural Freedom, Encounter, New Leader, and other CIA "assets" and fronts, undertook a campaign to
reverse the disarmament resolution. The committee set up for the purpose issued an appeal for funds, and
soon could report that many small donations had been received, together with a large sum from a source
that wished to remain anonymous. Over the next year, there was sufficient funding for a permanent office,
a full-time, paid chairman and paid staff, field workers, traveling expenses, tons of literature sent to a
large mailing list within the movement, a regular bulletin sent free, etc.
Their opponents could not come close to matching this propaganda blitz. At the 1961 conference, the
unilateralist and neutralist decisions were decisively overturned and the Labour Party returned to the
NATO fold. 10
Supporters of the CIA have invariably defended the Agency's sundry activities in Western Europe on the
grounds that the Russians were the first to be so engaged there and had to be countered. Whatever truth
there may be in this assertion, the fact remains, as Tom Braden has noted, that the American effort spread
to some fields "where they [the Russians] had not even begun to operate". 11 Braden doesn't specify which
fields, but it seems that political parries was one: The CIA had working/financial relationships with
leading members of the West German Social Democratic Party, two parties in Austria, the Christian
105
Democrats of Italy, and the Liberal Party, in addition to the Labour Party, in Britain, and probably at
least one party in every other Western European country, all of which purported to be independent of
either superpower, something the various Communist parties, whether supported by the Soviet Union or
not, could never get away with.
The media provides another case in point. Neither Braden, nor anyone else apparently, has cited examples
of publications or news agencies in Western Europe — pro-Communist or anti-NATO, etc. — which,
ostensibly independent in the cold war, were covertly funded by the Soviet Union.
More importantly, it should be borne in mind that all the different types of enterprises and institutions
supported by the CIA in Western Europe were supported by the Agency all over the Third World for
decades on a routine basis without a Russian counterpart in sight. The growing strength of the left in post-
war Europe was motivation enough for the CIA to develop its covert programs, and this was a
circumstance deriving from World War II and the economic facts of life, not from Soviet propaganda and
manipulation.
Operation Gladio
The rationale behind it was your standard cold-war paranoia: There's a good
chance the Russians will launch an unprovoked invasion of Western Europe. And if
they defeated the Western armies and forced them to flee, certain people had to remain
behind to harass the Russians with guerrilla warfare and sabotage, and act as liaisons
with those abroad. The "stay-behinds" would be provided with funds, weapons,
communication equipment and training exercises. The planning for this covert
paramilitary network, code-named "Operation Gladio" (Italian for "sword"!, began in
1949, involving initially the British, the Americans and the Belgians. It eventually
established units in every non-communist country in Europe — including Greece and
Turkey and neutral Sweden and Switzerland — with the apparent exceptions of Ireland
and Finland. The question of whether the units were more under the control of national
governments or NATO remains purposely unclear, although from an operational point of
view, it appears that the CIA and various other intelligence services were calling the
shots.
As matters turned out, in the complete absence of any Russian invasions, the
operation was used almost exclusively to inflict political damage upon domestic leftist
movements.
The Gladio story broke in Italy in the fall of 1990, stemming from a judicial
investigation into a 1972 car-bombing which discovered that the explosives had come
from one of the 139 secret weapons depots kept for Gladio's forces in Italy. Subsequently,
the head of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the matter revealed that "When Gladio
was started, the Americans would often insist... that the organization also had to be used
to counter any insurgencies." Retired Greek Gen. Nikos Kouris told a similar story,
declaring that a Greek force was formed with CIA help in 1955 to intervene in case of
Communist threat, whether external or internal. "There were ex-military men, specially
trained soldiers and also civilians. What held them together was one ideological common
denominator: extreme rightism."
As in Germany (see Germany chapter), the Italian operation was closely tied to
terrorists. A former Gladio agent, Roberto Cavallero, went public to charge that there
was a direct link between Gladio and Italy's wave of terrorist bombings in the 1970s and
early 1980s which left at least 300 dead. He said that Gladio had trained him and many
others "to prepare groups which, in the event of an advance by left wing forces in our
country, would fill the streets, creating a situation of such tension as to require military
intervention." Cavallero was of course referring to electoral advances of the Italian
Communist Party, not an invasion by the Soviet Union.
The single worst terrorist action was the bombing at the Bologna railway station
in August 1980 which claimed 86 lives. The Observer of London later reported:
106
The Italian railway bombings were blamed on the extreme Left as part of a strategy
to convince voters that the country was in a state of tension and that they had no
alternative to voting the safe Christian Democrat ticket. All clues point to the fact that they
were masterminded from within Gladio.
One of the men sought for questioning in Italy about the Bologna bombing,
Roberto Fiore, has lived in London ever since and the British government has refused to
extradite him. He is apparently under the protective wing of MI6 (Britain's CIA) for
whom he has provided valuable intelligence.
The kidnapping and murder in 1978 of Aldo Moro, the leader of the Christian
Democrats, which was attributed to the Red Brigades, appears now to have also been the
work of Gladio agents provocateurs who infiltrated the organization. Just prior to his
abduction, Moro had announced his intention to enter into a governmental coalition
with the Communist Party.
In Belgium, in 1983, to convince the public that a security crisis existed, Gladio
operatives as well as police officers staged a series of seemingly random shootings in
supermarkets which, whether intended or not, led to several deaths. A year later, a party
of US Marines parachuted into Belgium with the intention of attacking a police station.
One Belgian citizen was killed and one of the Marines lost an eye in the operation, that
was intended to jolt the local Belgian police into a higher state of alert, and to give the
impression to the comfortable population at large that the country was on the brink of
Red revo-lution. Guns used in the operation were later planted in a Brussels house used
by a Communist splinter group.
As late as 1990, large stockpiles of weapons and explosives for Operation
Gladio could still be found in some member countries, and Italian Prime Minister Giulio
Andreptti disclosed that more than 600 people still remained on the Gladio payroll in
Italy."
For a period of 11 years, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great
Britain and the United States, went to great lengths to prevent a democratically elected
leader from occupying his office.
The man was Dr. Cheddi Jagan. The grandson of indentured immigrants from
India, Jagan had become a dentist in the United States, then returned to his native
Guiana. In 1953, at the age of 35, he and the People's Progressive Parry (PPP) were
elected by a large majority to head the government of the British colony. Jagan's victory
was due in part to the fact that Indians comprised about 46 percent of the population;
those of African origin made up about 36 percent.
The PPP's program in office was hardly revolutionary. It encouraged foreign
investment in the mining sectors while attempting to institute liberal reforms such as
strengthening the rights of unionists and tenant farmers, creating a public school system
that would lessen church control of education, and removing a ban on the import of
"undesirable" publications, films and records. But the British Conservative government
was not disposed to live with such policies advocated by a man who talked suspiciously
like a socialist. The government and the British media, as well as the American media,
subjected the Jagan administration to a campaign of red-scare accusations and plain lies
16. British Guiana
The CIA 's international labor mafia
107
in the fashion of Senator McCarthy whose -ism was then ail the rage in the United
States.
Four and a half months after Jagan took office, the government of Winston
Churchill flung him out. The British sent naval and army forces, suspended the
constitution and removed the entire Guianese government. At the same time, the
barristers drew up some papers which the Queen signed, so it was alt nice and legal. 1
"Her Majesty's Government," said the British Colonial Secretary during a debate
in Parliament, "are not prepared to tolerate the setting up of Communist states in the
British Commonwealth." 2
The American attitude toward this slap in the face of democracy can be surmised
by the refusal of the US government to allow Jagan to pass in transit through the United
States when he tried to book a flight to London to attend the parliamentary debate.
According to Jagan, Pan Am would not even sell him a ticket. (Pan Am has a long
history of collaboration with the CIA, a practice initiated by the airline's president, Juan
Trippe, the son-in-law of Roosevelt's Secretary of State, Edward R. Stettinius.)
By this time the CIA had already gotten its foot in the door of the British Guiana
labor movement, by means of the marriage of the Agency to the American Federation of
Labor in the United States. One of the early offsprings of this union was the Inter-
American Regional Labor Organization (ORIT from the Spanish). In the early 1950s,
ORIT was instrumental the conversion of the leading confederation of unions in
Guiana, the Trades Union Council, from a militant labor organization to a vehicle of
anti-communism. Wrote Serafino Romualdi, at one time the head of AIFLD (see below)
and a long-time CIA collaborator: "Since my first visit to British Guiana in 1951, I did
everything in my power to strengthen the democratic [i.e., anti-communist] trade union
forces opposed to him [Jagan]." 4
This was to have serious repercussions for Jagan in later years.
In 1957, running on a program similar to that of four years earlier, Jagan won the
election again. Following this, the British deemed it wiser to employ more subtle
methods for his removal and the CIA was brought into the picture, one of the rare
instances in which the Agency has been officially allowed to operate in a British
bailiwick. The CIA has done so, unofficially, on numerous occasions, to the displeasure
of British authorities.
The CIA set to work to fortify those unions which already tended somewhat
toward support of Jagan's leading political opponent, Forbes Bumham of the People's
National Congress. One of the most important of these was the civil servants' union,
dominated by blacks.
Consequently, the CIA turned to Public Services International (PSI) in London,
an international trade union secretariat for government employees, one of the
international networks which exist to export the union know-how of advanced industrial
countries to less-developed countries.
According to a study undertaken by The Sunday Times of London, by 1958 the
PSI's "finances were low, and its stocks were low with its own parent body, the
International Confederation of Free Trade Unions [set up by the CIA in 1949 to rival the
Soviet-influenced World Federation of Trade Unions]. It needed a success of some kind.
The financial crisis was resolved, quite suddenly, by the PSI's main American affiliate
union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)."
AFSCME's boss, Dr Arnold Zander, told the PSI executive that he had "been shopping"
and had found a donor.
"The spoils were modest at first-only a couple of thousand pounds in 1958. It
was, the kind donor had said, for Latin America. The money went towards a PSI
108
'recruiting drive' in the northern countries of Latin America by one William Doherty, Jr.,
a man with some previous acquaintance of the CIA." (Doherty was later to become the
Executive Director of the American Institute for Free Labor Development, the CIA's
principal labor organization in Latin America.)
"The donor was presumably pleased, because next year, 1959, Zander was able
to tell the PSI that his union was opening a full-time Latin American section in the PSI's
behalf. The PSI was charmed."
The PSI's representative, said Zander, would be William Howard McCabe (a
CIA. labor apprentice). The Times continued:
McCabe, a stocky, bullet-headed American, appeared to have no previous union
history, but the PSI liked him. When he came to its meetings, he distributed cigarette lighters
and photographs of himself doling out food parcels to the peasants. The lighters and the
parcels were both inscribed "with the compliments of the PSI". 5
In 1967, in the wake of numerous revelations about CIA covert financing, the
new head of AFSCME admitted that the union had been heavily funded by the Agency
until 1964 through a foundation conduit (see Appendix I). It was revealed that
AFSCME's International Affairs Department, which had been responsible for the British
Guiana operation, had actually been run by two CIA "aides". 6
CIA work within Third World unions Typically involves a considerable
educational effort, the basic premise of which is that all solutions will come to working
people under a system of free enterprise, class co-operation and collective bargaining,
and by opposing communism in collaboration with management and government, unless,
of course, the government, as in this case, is itself "communist". The most promising
students, those perhaps marked as future leaders, are singled out to be sent to CIA
schools in the United States for further education.
The CIA, said The Sunday Times, also "appears to have had a good deal of
success in encouraging politicians to break away from Jagan's party and government.
Their technique of financing sympathetic figures was to take out heavy insurance
policies for them." 7
During the 1961 election campaign, the CIA's ongoing program was augmented
by ad hoc operations from other American quarters. The US Information Service took the
most unusual step of showing its films, depicting the evils of Castroism and
communism, on street corners of British Guiana. And the Christian Anti-Communist
Crusade brought its traveling road show down and spent a reported $76,000 on electoral
propaganda which lived up to the organization's name. 8 One historian has described this
as "a questionable activity for a private organization, which the State Department did
nothing to discourage". 9 On the other hand, the activities of US government agencies in
British Guiana were no less questionable.
Despite the orchestrated campaign directed against him, Jagan was re-elected by a
comfortable majority of legislative seats, though with only a plurality of the popular
vote.
In October, at his request, Jagan was received at the White House in Washington.
He had come to talk about assistance for his development program. President Kennedy
and his advisers, however, were interested in determining where Jagan stood on the
political spectrum before granting any aid. Oddly, the meeting, as described by Kennedy
aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. who was present, seemed to be conducted as if the Kennedy
men were totally unaware of American destabilization activities in British Guiana.
To Jagan's expressed esteem for the politics of British Labour leader Aneurin
Bevan, those in the room "all responded agreeably".
109
To Jagan's professed socialism, Kennedy asserted that "We are not engaged in a
crusade to force private enterprise on parts of the world where it is not relevant".
But when Jagan, perhaps naively, mentioned his admiration for the scholarly,
leftist journal, Monthly Review, it appears that he crossed an ideological line, which
silently and effectively sealed his country's fate. "Jagan," wrote Schlesinger later, "was
unquestionably some sort of "Marxism." 0
No economic aid was given to British Guiana while Jagan remained in power,
and the Kennedy administration pressured the British to delay granting the country its
independence, which had been scheduled to occur within the next year or two. 11 Not
until 1966, when Jagan no longer held office, did British Guiana become the
independent nation of Guyana.
In February 1962, the CIA helped to organize and finance anti-Jagan protests
which used the newly announced budget as a pretext. The resulting strikes, riots and
arson were wholly out of proportion to the alleged instigation. A Commonwealth
Commission of Enquiry later concluded (perhaps to the discomfort of the British Colonial
Office which had appointed it) that:
There is very little doubt that, despite the loud protestations of the trades union leaders to
the contrary, political affinities and aspirations played a large part in shaping their policy
and formulating their programme of offering resistance to the budget and making a
determined effort to change the government in office. 12
The CIA arranged, as it has on similar occasions, for North American and Latin
American labor organizations, with which it had close ties, to support the strikers with
messages of solidarity and food, thus enhancing the appearance of a genuine labor
struggle. The agency also contrived for previously unheard-of radio stations to go on the
13
air and for newspapers to print false stories about approaching Cuban warships.
The centerpiece of the CIA's program in British Guiana was the general strike
(so called, although its support was considerably less than total) which began in April
1963. It lasted for 80 days, the longest general strike in history, it is said. 14
This strike, as in 1962, was called by the Trades Union Council (TUC) which, as
we have seen, was a member in good standing of the CIA's International labor mafia.
The head of the TUC was one Richard Ishmael who had been trained in the US at the
CIA's American Institute for Free Labor Development along with other Guianese labor
officials.
The strike period was marked by repeated acts of violence and provocation,
including attacks on Jagan's wife and some of his ministers. Ishmael himself was later
cited in a secret British police report as having been part of a terrorist group which had
carried out bombings and arson attacks against government buildings during the strike. 15
No action was taken against Ishmael and others in this group by British
authorities who missed no opportunity to exacerbate the explosive situation, hoping that
it would culminate in Jagal's downfall.
Meanwhile, CIA agents were giving "advice to local union leaders on how to
organize and sustain" the strike, the New York Times subsequently reported. "They also
provided funds and food supplies to keep the strikers going and medical supplies for pro-
Burnham workers injured in the turmoil. At one point, one of the agents even served as a
member of a bargaining committee from a Guiana dike workers 1 union that was
negotiating with Dr. Jagan." This agent was later denounced by Jagan and forbidden to
enter the country. 16 This is probably a reference to Gene Meakins, one of the CIA's main
labor operatives, who had been serving as public relations advisor and education officer
110
to the TUC. Meakins edited a weekly paper and broadcast a daily radio program by
means of which he was able to generate a great deal of anti-Jagan propaganda.
The Sunday Times study concluded that:
Jagan seems to have thought that the unions could hold out a month. But McCabe was
providing the bulk of the strike pay, plus money for distress funds, for the strikers' daily
15 minutes on the radio and their propaganda, and considerable travelling expenses. All
over the world, it seemed brother unions were clubbing together.
The mediator sent from London, Robert Willis, the general secretary or the London
Typographical Society and a man not noted for his mercy in bargaining with newspaper
managements was shocked. "It was rapidly clear to me that the strike was wholly
political", he said. "Jagan was giving in to everything the strikers wanted, but as soon as
he did they erected more demands". 18
Financial support for the strike alone, channeled through the PSI and other
labour organizations by the CIA, reached the sum of at least one million dollars.
American oil companies provided a further example of the multitude of resources
the US can bring to bear upon a given target. The companies co-operated with the
strikers by refusing to provide petroleum, forcing Jagan to appeal to Cuba for oil.
During Jagan's remaining year in office, in the face of a general US economic embargo,
he turned increasingly to the Soviet bloc. This practice of course provided ammunition
to those critics of Jagan in British Guiana, the United States and Great Britain who
insisted that he was a communist and thus fraught with all the dangers that communists
are fraught with.
The strike was maintained primarily by black supporters of Forbes Burnham and
by employers who locked out many of Jagan's Indian supporters. This inevitably
exacerbated the already existing racial tensions, although The Sunday Times asserted
that the "racial split was fairly amicable until the 1963 strike divided the country".
Eventually, the tension broke out into bloodshed leaving hundreds dead and wounded
and "a legacy of racial bitterness". 19
Jagan was certainly aware, to some extent at least, of what was transpiring
around him during the general strike. After it was over he charged that:
The United States, in spite of protestations to the contrary by some of its leaders,
is not prepared to permit a Socialist government or a government committed to
drastic and basic reforms to exist in this hemisphere, even when this government
has been freely elected ... It is all too clear that the United States will only support
a democratic government if it favors a classic private enterprise system. 20
In an attempt to surmount the hurdle of US obsession with the Soviet Union and
"another Cuba in the Western hemisphere", Jagan proposed that British Guiana be
"neutralized" by an agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, as the
two powers had done in the case of Austria. Officials in Washington had no comment
on the suggestion. 21
Cheddi Jagan's government managed to survive all the provocations and
humiliations. With elections on the agenda for 1964, the British and their American
cousins turned once again to the gentlemanly way of the pen.
The British Colonial Secretary, Duncan Sandys, who had been a leading party to
the British-CIA agreement concerning Jagan, cited the strike and general unrest as proof
that Jagan could not run the country or offer the stability that the British government
required for British Guiana to be granted its independence. (Sandys was the founder, in
1948, of The European Movement, a CIA-funded cold-war organization.) 22
Ill
This was, of course, a contrived position. Syndicated American columnist Drew
Pearson, writing about the meeting between President Kennedy and British Prime
Minister Macmillan in the summer of 1963, stated that "the main thing they agreed on
was that the British would refuse to grant independence to Guiana because of a general
strike against pro-Communist Prime Minister, Cheddi Jagan. That strike was secretly
inspired by a combination of U.S. Central Intelligence money and British intelligence. It
gave London the excuse it wanted." 23
The excuse was used further to justify an amendment to the British Guiana
constitution providing for a system of proportional representation in the election, a
system that appeared certain to convert Jagan's majority of legislative seats into a
plurality. Subsequently, the British-appointed Governor of British Guiana announced
that he would not be bound to call on the leader of the largest party to form a
government if it did not have a majority of seats, a procedure in striking contrast to that
followed in Great Britain.
When, in October 1964, the Labour Party succeeded the Conservative Party to
power in Great Britain, Jagan had hopes that the conspiracy directed against him would
be squashed, for several high-ranking Labour leaders had stated publicly, and to Jagan
personally, their opposition to the underhanded and anti-democratic policy of their
Conservative Party foes. Within days of taking office, however, the Labour Party
dashed these hopes. 24
"Bowing to United States wishes," the New York Times disclosed, the Labour
Party "ruled out early independence for British Guiana" and was going ahead with the
proportional representation elections. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, it was reported, had
left the new British Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon- Walker, "in no doubt that the
United States would resist a rise of British Guiana as an independent Castro-type
state". 25 On a previous occasion, Rusk had urged Gordon- Walker's Conservative
predecessor, Lord Home, to suspend the British Guiana constitution again and "revert to
direct colonial government". 26
The intensive American lobbying effort against British Guiana (the actual
campaign of subversion aside), led Conservative MP and former Colonial Secretary,
Iain Macleod, to observe in the House of Commons: "There is an irony which we all
recognize in the fact of America urging us all over the world towards colonial freedom
except when it approaches her own doorstep." 27
The day before the election of 7 December, a letter appeared in a British Guiana
newspaper — a bogus pro-Communist letter, a tactic the CIA has used successfully the
world over. The letter was purportedly written by Jagan's wife Janet to Communist
Party members, in which she stated: "We can take comfort in the thought that the PNC
[Burnham's party] will not be able to stay in power long ... our communist comrades
abroad will continue to help us win eventual total victory."
Ms. Jagan quickly retorted that she would not be so stupid as to write a letter
like that, but, as in all such cases, the disclaimer trailed weakly and too late behind the
accusation.
As expected, Jagan won only a plurality of the legislative seats, 24 of 53. The
governor then called upon Forbes Burnham, who had come in second, to form a new
government. Burnham had also been named as a terrorist in the British police report
referred to earlier, as had several of his new government ministers.
Jagan refused to resign. British Army troops were put on full alert in the capital
city of Georgetown. A week later, Her Majesty's Government waved its hand over a
piece of paper, thereby enacting another amendment to the British Guiana constitution
112
and dosing a loophole which was allowing Jagan to stall for time. He finally
surrendered to the inevitable. 29
In 1990, at a conference in New York City, Arthur Schlesinger publicly
apologized to Cheddi Jagan, who was also present. Schlesinger said that it was his
recommendation to the British that led to the proportional representation tactic. "I felt
badly about my role thirty years ago," the former Kennedy aide admitted. "I think a
great injustice was done to Cheddi Jagan." 30
Four years later, with Jagan again president — having won, in 1992, the country's
first free election since he had been ousted — the Clinton administration prepared to
nominate a new ambassador to Guyana: William Doherty, Jr. Jagan was flabbergasted
and made his feelings known, such that Doherty was dropped from consideration. 31
When it was time, in 1994, for the US government to declassify its British
Guiana documents under the 30-year rule, the State Department and CIA refused to do
so, reported the New York Times, because "it is not worth the embarassment". The
newspaper added:
Still-classified documents depict in unusual detail a direct order from the
President to unseat Dr. Jagan, say Government officials familiar with the secret
papers. Though many Presidents have ordered the CIA to undermine foreign
leaders, they say the Jagan papers are a smoking gun: a clear written record,
without veiled words or plausible denials, of a President's command to depose a
Prime Minister. 32
"They made a mistake putting Burnham in," said Janet Jagan looking back at it all. "The
regrettable part is that the country went backwards." And so it had. One of the better-off countries in the
region 30 years ago, Guyana in 1994 was among the poorest. Its principal export was people. 33
17. Soviet Union late 1940s to 1960s
From spy planes to book publishing
Information ... hundreds of young Americans and emigre Russians gave their
lives so that the United States could amass as much information as possible about the
Soviet Union ... almost any information at all about the land Churchill had described as
"a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma".
There is no evidence, however, that any of the information collected ever saved
any lives, or served any other useful purpose for the world. Today, tons of files stuffed
with reports, volumes of computer printouts, tapes, photographs, etc., lie in filing
cabinets, gathering dust in warehouses in the United States and West Germany.
Probably a good part of the material has already been shredded. Much of it has never
been looked at, and never will be.
Beginning in the late 1940s, the US military, the CIA and the National Security
Agency regularly sent aircraft along the borders of the Soviet Union to collect visual,
photographic and electronic data of a military or industrial nature, particularly to do
with Soviet missile and nuclear capability. The increasingly sophisticated planes and
equipment, as well as satellites, submarines, and electronic listening posts in Turkey and
Iran, produced vast amounts of computer input. At times, the planes would
unintentionally drift over Soviet territory. At other times, they would do so intentionally
in order to photograph a particular target, or to activate radar installations so as to
capture their signals, or to evaluate the reaction of Soviet ground defenses against an
113
attack. It was a dangerous game of aerial "chicken" and on many occasions the planes
were met by anti-aircraft fire or Soviet fighter planes.
In both 1950 and 1951, an espionage airplane with a crew of ten was shot down,
with no survivors. In 1969, a crew of 31 was lost, this time to North Korean fighters
over the Sea of Japan. During the intervening years, there were dozens of air incidents
involving American aircraft and Communist firepower, arising from hundreds, if not
thousands, of espionage flights. Some of the spy planes made it safely back to base
(which might be Turkey, Iran, Greece, Pakistan, Japan or Norway) after being attacked,
and even hit; others were downed with loss of life or with crew members captured by
the Soviets. 1
There has been considerable confusion concerning the number and the fate of
US airmen captured by the Soviets after their planes made forced landings or were shot
down during the 1950s and '60s. Russian president Boris Yeltsin stated in 1992 that nine
US planes had been shot down in the early 1950s and twelve American survivors had
been held prisoner, their ultimate fate not yet discovered. Five months later, Dmitri
Volkogonov, former Soviet general and co-chairman of a Russian-US commission
investigating the whole question of missing Americans, told a US Senate committee that
730 airmen had been captured on cold war spy flights, their fate likewise unclear.
The most notable of these incidents was of course the downing of the U-2
piloted by Francis Gary Powers on 1 May 1960. The ultra high-flying U-2 had been
developed because
of the vulnerability to being shot down of planes flying at normal altitudes. The
disappearance of Powers and his U-2 somewhere in the Soviet Union ensnared the
United States government publicly in an entanglement of a false cover story, denials,
and amendments to denials. Finally, when the Russians presented Powers and his plane
to the world, President Eisenhower had no alternative but to admit the truth. He
pointedly added, however, that flights such as the U-2's were "distasteful but vital",
given the Russian "fetish of secrecy and concealment". 3 One of Eisenhower's advisers,
Emmet John Hughes, was later to observe that it thus took the administration only six
days "to transform an unthinkable falsehood into a sovereign right." 4
On several occasions, the United States protested to the Soviet Union about
Soviet attacks on American planes which were not actually over Soviet territory, but
over the Sea of Japan, for example. Though engaged in espionage, such flights, strictly
speaking, appear to be acceptable under international law.
The most serious repercussion of the whole U-2 affair was that it doomed to
failure the Eisenhower-Khrushchev summit meeting which took place two weeks later
in Paris, and upon which so much hope for peace and detente had been placed by people
all over the world.
Was the U-2 affair the unfortunate accident of timing that history has made it out
to be? Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, US Air Force, Ret. has suggested otherwise. From 1955
to 1963, Prouty served as the liaison between the CIA and the Pentagon on matters
concerning military support of "special operations". In his book, The Secret Team,
Prouty suggests that the CIA and certain of the Agency's colleagues in the Pentagon
sabotaged this particular U-2 flight, the last one scheduled before the summit. They did
this, presumably, because they did not relish a lessening of cold-war tensions, their
raison d'etre.
The method employed, Prouty surmises, was remarkably simple. The U-2's
engine needed infusions of liquid hydrogen to maintain the plane's incredible altitude,
which placed it outside the range of Soviet firepower and interceptor aircraft. If the
hydrogen container were only partly filled upon takeoff from Turkey, it would be
114
simply a matter of time — calculable to coincide with the plane being over Soviet
territory — before the U-2 was forced to descend to a lower altitude. At this point,
whether the plane was shot down or Powers bailed out, allowing it to crash, is not
certain. The Soviet Union claimed that it had shot down the U-2 at its normal high
altitude with a rocket, but this was probably a falsehood born of four years of frustrating
failure to shoot a single U-2 from the sky. In any event, the Russians were able to
present to the world a partially intact spy plane along with a fully intact spy pilot,
complete with all manner of incriminating papers on him, and an unused suicide needle.
The presence of identification papers was no oversight, says Prouty: deliberately,
"neither pilot not plane were sanitized on this flight as was required on other flights". 5
Powers, in his book, doesn't discuss the liquid hydrogen at ad. He believed his
plane was disabled and forced to descend by the shock waves of a Soviet near-miss. But
he recounts technical problems with the plane even before the presumed near- miss. 6
In light of the furor raised by the shooting down of a South Korean commercial
airliner by the Soviet Union in 1983, which the Russians claimed was spying, it is
interesting to note that Prouty also makes mention of the United States at one time using
"a seemingly clean national commercial airline" of an unspecified foreign country "to
do some camera spying or other clandestine project".
To the Russians, the spy planes were more than simply a violation of their air
space, and they rejected the notion put forth by the US that the flights were just another
form of espionage — "intelligence collection activities are practiced by all countries",
said Washington. 8 (At the time there had been no indication of Soviet flights over the
United States.) 9 The Russians viewed the flights as particularly provocative because
airplanes are a means of conducting warfare, they can be considered as the beginning of
hostilities, and may even be carrying bombs. The Russians could not forget that the
Nazis had preceded their invasion of the Soviet Union with frequent reconnaissance
overflights. Neither could they forget that in April 1958, US planes carrying nuclear
bombs had flown over the Arctic in the direction of the USSR due to a false warning
signal on American radar. The planes were called back when only two hours flying time
separated them from the Soviet Union. 10
No American plane dropped bombs on the Soviet Union but many of them
dropped men assigned to carry out hostile missions. The men who fell from the sky
were Russians who had emigrated to the West where they were recruited by the CIA
and other Western intelligence organizations.
The leading emigre organization was known as National Alliance of Russian
Solidarists, or the National Union of Labor (NTS). It was composed largely of two
distinct groups: the sons of the Russians who had gone to the West following the
revolution, and those Russians who, through circumstance or choice, had wound up in
Western Europe at the close of the Second World War. Members of both groups had
collaborated with the Nazis during the war. Although NTS was generally classified in
the right wing of the various emigre organizations, their collaboration had been
motivated more by anti-Stalinism than by pro-Nazi sentiments.
NTS was based primarily in West Germany where, throughout the 1950s, the
CIA was the organization's chief benefactor, often its sole support. At a CIA school set
up in Germany, under the imposing name of the Institute for the Study of the USSR, as
well as at schools in Great Britain and the United States, the Agency provided NTS
members with extensive training before airdropping them into Soviet territory. The men
landed on their native soil elaborately equipped, with everything from weapons to
collapsible bicycles, frogmen suits, and rubber mats for crossing electrically-charged
barbed- wire fences.
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The Russians were returned to their homeland for a variety of reasons: to gather
intelligence about military and technological installations; commit assassinations; obtain
current samples of identification documents; assist Western agents to escape; engage in
sabotage, for which they were well trained (methods of derailing trains and wrecking
bridges, actions against arms factories and power plants, etc.); or instigate armed
political struggle against Communist rule by linking up with resistance movements — a
wholly unrealistic goal given the feeble state of such movements, but one which some
NTS fanatics swore by.
It will never be known just how many men the CIA infiltrated into the Soviet
Union, not only by air but by border crossings and by boat as well; many hundreds at
least. As to their fate ... the Soviet Union published a book in 1961 called Caught In the
Act (=CIA), in which were listed the names and other details of about two dozen
infiltrators the Russians claimed to have captured, often almost immediately upon
arrival. Some were executed, others received prison sentences, one allegedly was an
individual who had taken part in a mass execution of Jews in German-occupied Soviet
territory. The book asserts that there were many more caught who were not listed. This
may have been a self-serving statement, but it was a relatively simple matter for the
Russians to infiltrate the emigres' ranks in Western Europe and learn the entire
operation.
The CIA, to be sure, was not naive about this practice. The Agency went so far
as to torture suspected defectors in Munich — using such esoteric methods as applying
turpentine to a man's testicles or sealing someone in a room and playing Indonesian
music at deafening levels until he cracked. 11
The Russians further claimed that some of those smuggled in were furnished
with special radio beacons to guide planes where to land other agents, and which could
also be used to direct US bombers in the event of war.
Some of the emigres made it back to Western Europe with their bits and pieces
of information, or after attempting to catty out some other assignment. Others, provided
with a complete set of necessary documents, were instructed to integrate themselves
back into Soviet society and become "agents in place". Still others, caught up in the
emotions of being "home", turned themselves in — once again, "the human factor",
12
which no amount of training or indoctrination can necessarily circumvent.
No American operation against the Soviet Union would be complete without its
propaganda side: bringing the gospel to the heathen, in a myriad of ways that displayed
the creativity of the CIA and its team of emigres.
Novel mechanisms were developed to enable airplanes and balloons to drop
anti-Communist literature over the Soviet Union. When the wind was right, countless
leaflets and pamphlets were scattered across the land; or quantities of literature were
floated downstream in waterproof packages.
Soviet citizens coming to the West were met at every turn by NTS people
handing out their newspapers and magazines in Russian and Ukrainian. To facilitate
contact, NTS at times engaged in black market operations and opened small shops
which catered to Russians at cheap prices. From North Africa to Scandinavia, the CIA
network confronted Soviet seamen, tourists, officials, athletes, even Soviet soldiers in
East Germany, to present them with the Truth as seen by the "Free World", as well as to
pry information from them, to induce them to defect, or to recruit them as spies. Hotel
rooms were searched, phones tapped, bribes offered, or blackmail threatened in attempts
to reach these ends. Actions were also undertaken to entrap or provoke Soviet
diplomatic personnel so as to cause their expulsion and/or embarrass the Soviet Union. 15
116
The propaganda offensive led the US government into the book publishing
business. Under a variety of arrangements with American and foreign publishers,
distributors, literary agents and authors, the CIA and the United States Information
Agency (USIA) produced, subsidized or sponsored "well over a thousand books" by
1967 which were deemed to serve a propaganda need. 14 Many of the books were sold in
the United Stares as well as abroad. None bore any indication of US government
involvement. Of some, said the USIA, "We control the things from the very idea down
to the final edited manuscript." 15
Some books were published, and at times written, only after the USIA or the
CIA agreed to purchase a large number of copies. There is no way of determining what
effect this financial incentive had upon a publisher or author concerning a book's tone
and direction. In some cases, Washington released classified information to an author to
assist him or her in writing the book. In 1967, following revelations about CIA domestic
activities, this practice purportedly came to an end in the US although it continued
abroad. A Senate committee in 1976 stated that during the preceding few years, the CIA
had been connected with the publication of some 250 books, mostly in foreign
languages. 16 Some of these were most likely later reprinted in the United States.
The actual identity of most of the books, however, is still classified. Among
those which have been revealed are: The Dynamics of Soviet Society by Walt Rostow,
The New Class by Milovan Djilas, Concise History of the Communist Party by Robert
A. Burton, The Foreign Aid Programs of the Soviet Bloc and Communist China by Kurt
Mullet, In Pursuit of World Order by Richard N. Gardner, Peking and People 's Wars by
MajorGeneral Sam Griffith, The Yenan Way by Eudocio Ravines, Life and Death in
Soviet Russia by Valentin Gonzalez, The Anthill by Suzanne Labin, The Politics of
Struggle: The Communist Front and Political Warfare by James D. Atkinson, From
Colonialism to Communism by Hoang Van Chi, Why Vietnam? by Frank Trager, and
Terror in Vietnam by Jay Mallin. In addition, the CIA financed and distributed
throughout the world the animated cartoon film of George Orwell's Animal Farm. 17 -
The most pervasive propaganda penetration of the socialist bloc was by means
of the airwaves: Numerous transmitters, tremendous wattage, and often round-the-clock
programming brought Radio Liberty and Radio Free Russia to the Soviet Union, Radio
Free Europe and Radio in the American Sector to Eastern Europe, and the Voice of
America to all parts of the world. With the exception of the last, the stations were
ostensibly private organizations financed by "gifts" from American corporations, nickel-
and-dime donations from the American public, and other private sources. In actuality,
the CIA covertly funded almost all of the costs until 1971; exposure of the Agency's
role in 1967 (although it had been widely assumed long before then) led to Congress
eventually instituting open governmental financing of the stations.
The stations served the purpose of filling in some of the gaps and correcting the
falsehoods of the Communist media, but could not escape presenting a picture of the
world, both East and West, shot through with their own omissions and distortions. Their
mission in life was to emphasize whatever could make the Communist regimes look
bad. "To many in the CIA," wrote Victor Marchetti, former senior official of the
Agency, "the primary value of the radios was to sow discontent in Eastern Europe and,
in the process, to weaken the communist governments". 18
Many of the Russians who worked for the various stations, which broadcast at
length about freedom, democracy and other humanitarian concerns, were later identified
by the US Justice Department as members of Hitler's notorious Einsatzgruppen, which
rounded up and killed numerous jews in the Soviet Union. One of these worthies was
Stanislaw Stankievich, under whose command a mass murder of Jews in Byelorussia
117
was carried out in which babies were buried alive with the dead, presumably to save
ammunition. Stankievich wound up working for Radio Liberty. German war criminals
as well were employed by the CIA in a variety of anti-Soviet operations. 19
By every account, the sundry programs to collect strategic information about the
Soviet Union, particularly via infiltration into the country and encountering Soviet
nationals in the West, were a singular flop. The information reported was usually trivial,
spotty, garbled, or out-of-date. Worse, it was often embellished, if not out-and-out
fabricated. Many post-war emigres in Western Europe made their living in the
information business. It was their most saleable commodity. From a real or fictitious
meeting with a Soviet citizen they would prepare a report which was often just ordinary
facts with a bit of political color added on. At times, as many as four versions of the
report would be produced, differing in style and quantity of "facts"; written by four
different people, the reports would then be sold separately to US, British, French and
West German intelligence agencies. The CIA's version contained everything in the other
three versions, which were eventually transmitted to the Agency by the other countries
without their source being revealed. Analysis of all the reports tended to bring the CIA
to the conclusion that the NTS was giving them the fullest picture of all, and chat the
information all tallied. NTS looked good, and the files grew thick.
The CIA's Russian files in Washington, meanwhile, approached mountainous
proportions with the data acquired from opening mail between the Soviet Union and the
United States, a practice begun in the early 1950s and continued at least into the
2 1
1970s/ 1 (Said a Post Office counsel in 1979: "If there was no national security mail
cover program, the FBI might be inhibited in finding out if a nation was planning war
against us.") 22
Former CIA officer Harry Rositzke, who was closely involved with anti-Soviet
operations after the war, later wrote that the primary task of the emigres infiltrated into
the Soviet Union during the early years — and the same could probably be said of the
spy-planes — was to provide "early warning" of a Soviet military offensive against the
West, an invasion which, in the minds of cold-warriors in the American government,
appeared perpetually "imminent". This apprehension was reminiscent of the alarms
sounded following the Russian Revolution (see Introduction to the Original Edition) and
similarly flourished despite the fact of a Russia recently devastated by a major war and
hardly in a position to undertake a military operation of any such magnitude.
Nevertheless, wrote Rositzke, "It was officially estimated that Soviet forces were
capable of reaching the English Channel in a matter of weeks. ... It was an axiom in
Washington that Stalin was plotting war. When would it come?" He pointed out,
however, that "The mere existence of radio-equipped agents on Soviet terrain with no
early warnings to report had some cautionary value in tempering the war scare among
the military estimators at the height of the Cold War."
A secret report of the National Security Resources Board of January 1951
warned: "As things are now going, by 1953 if not 1952, the Soviet aggressors will
assume complete control of the world situation." 24
Rositzke, although a committed anti-Communist, recognized the unreality of
such thinking. But, as he explained, his was a minority opinion in official Washington:
The facts available even at the time suggested the far greater likelihood that
Moscow's postwar strategy, including the conversion of Eastern Europe into a
western buffer, was basically defensive. I argued this thesis with some of the CIA
analysts working on Soviet estimates and with some Pentagon audiences, but it
was not a popular view at the time. It is nonetheless a simple fact that no scenario
was written then, nor has it been written since, to explain why the Russians would
118
want to conquer Western Europe by force or to bomb the United States. Neither
action would have contributed in any tangible way to the Soviet national interest
and would have hazarded the destruction of the Soviet state. This basic question
was never raised, for the Cold War prism created in the minds of the diplomatic
and military strategists a clear-cut world of black and white; there were no
grays. 25
Several years were to pass, Rositzke pointed out, before it became clear to
Washington that there were no warnings, early or otherwise, to report. This, however,
had no noticeable effect upon the United States' military build-up or cold-war
propaganda.
18. Italy 1950s to 1970s
Supporting the Cardinal's orphans and techno-fascism
After the multifarious extravaganza staged by the United States in 1948 to
exorcise the spectre of Communism that was haunting Italy, the CIA settled in place for
the long haul with a less flamboyant but more insidious operation.
A White House memorandum, prepared after the 1953 election, reported that
"Neither the Moscow war stick nor the American economic carrot was being visibly
brandished overthe voters in this election." 1 Covert funding was the name of the game.
Victor Marchetti, former executive assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA, has
revealed that in the 1950s the Agency "spent some $20 to $30 million a year, or maybe
more, to finance its programs in Italy." Expenditures in the 1960s, he added, came to
about $10 million annually. 2
The CIA itself has admitted that between 1948 and 1968, it paid a total of
$65,150,000 to the Christian Democrats and other parties, to labor groups, and to a wide
variety of other organizations in Italy. 3 It also spent an undisclosed amount in support of
magazines and book publishers and other means of news and opinion manipulation,
such as planting news items in non-American media around the world which cast
unfavorable light upon communism, then arranging for these stories to be reprinted in
friendly Italian publications. 4
It is not known when, if ever, the CIA ended its practice of funding anti-
Communist groups in Italy. Internal Agency documents of 1972 reveal contributions of
some $10 million to political patties, affiliated organizations, and 2t individual
candidates in the parliamentary elections of that year. 5 At least $6 million was passed to
political leaders for the June 1976 elections. 6 And in the 1980s, CIA Director William
Casey arranged for Saudi Arabia to pay $2 million to prevent the Communists from
achieving electoral gains in Italy. 7
Moreover, the largest oil company in the United States, Exxon Corp., admitted
that between 1963 and 1972 it had made political contributions to the Christian
Democrats and several other Italian political parties totaling $46 million to $49 million.
Mobil Oil Corp. also contributed to the Italian electoral process to the tune of an
average $500,000 a year from 1970 through 1973. There is no report that these
corporate payments derived from persuasion by the CIA or the State Department, but it
119
seems rather unlikely that the firms would engage so extravagantly in this unusual
sideline with complete spontaneity. 8
Much of the money given by the CIA to Italian political parties since World War
II, said a former high-level US official, ended up "in villas, in vacation homes and in
Swiss bank accounts for the politicians themselves." 9
A more direct American intervention into the 1976 elections was in the form of
propaganda. Inasmuch as political advertising is not allowed on Italian television, the
US Ambassador to Switzerland, Nathaniel Davis, arranged for the purchase of large
blocks of time on Monte Carlo TV to present a daily "news" commentary by the
editorial staff of the Milan newspaper /i Giornale Nuovo, which was closely associated
with the CIA. It was this newspaper that, in May 1981, set in motion chat particular
piece of international disinformation known as "The KGB Plot to Kill the Pope".
Another Italian newspaper, the Daily American of Rome, for decades the
country's leading English-language paper, was for a long period in the 1950s to the 70s
partly owned and/or managed by the CIA. "We 'had' at least one newspaper in every
foreign capital at auy given time," the CIA admitted in 1977, referring to papers owned
outright or heavily subsidized, or infiltrated sufficiently to have stories printed which
were useful to the Agency or suppress those it found detrimental. 10
Ambassador Davis also arranged for news items which had been placed in
various newspapers by the Agency to be read on Monte Carlo TV and Swiss TV, both
of which were received in Italy. The programs were produced in Milan by Franklin J.
Tonnini of the US Diplomatic Corps, and Michael Ledeen, a reporter with // Giornale
Nuovo. 11 (Ledeen, an American, was later a consultant to the Reagan administration and
a senior fellow at the conservative think-tank of Georgetown University in Washington,
the Center for Strategic and International Studies.)
The relentless fight against the Italian Communist Party took some novel twists.
One, in the 1950s, was the brainchild of American Ambassador Clare Booth Luce. The
celebrated Ms. Luce (playwright and wife of Time magazine publisher Henry Luce)
decided to make it known that no US Department of Defense procurement contracts
would be awarded to Italian firms whose employees had voted to be represented by the
Communist-controlled labor union. In the case of Fiat, this had dramatic results: The
12
Communist union's share of the vote promptly fell from 60 to 38 percent.
Then there was the case of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini, another
beneficiary of CIA largesse. The payments made to him reveal something of the
Agency's mechanistic thinking about why people become radicals. It seems that the
good Cardinal was promoting orphanages in Italy during the 1950s and 1960s and, says
Victor Marchetti, "The thinking was that if such institutions were adequately supported,
many young people would be able to live well there and so would not one day fall into
1 3
Communist hands." The Cardinal, as a Monsignor, had been involved with the
Vatican's operation to smuggle Nazis to freedom after World War II. He had a long
history of association with Western governments and their intelligence agencies. In
1963, he became Pope Paul VI. 14
In a 1974 interview, Marchetti also spoke of the training provided by the Agency
to the Italian security services:
They are trained, for example, to confront disorders and student demonstrations,
to prepare dossiers, to make the best possible use of bank data and tax returns of
individual citizens, etc. In other words, to watch over the population of their
country with the means offered by technology. This is what I call techno-
fascism. 15
120
William Colby, later Director of the CIA, arrived in Italy in 1953 as station chief
and devoted the next five years of his life to financing and advising center/right
organizations for the express purpose of inducing the Italian people to turn away from
the leftist bloc, particularly the Communist Party, and keep it from taking power in the
1958 elections. In his account of that period he justifies this program on the grounds of
supporting "democracy" or "center democracy" and preventing Italy from becoming a
Soviet satellite. Colby perceived all virtue and truth to be bunched closely around the
center of the political spectrum, and the Italian Communist Party to be an extremist
organization committed to abolishing democracy and creating a society modeled after
the (worst?) excesses of Stalinist Russia. He offers no evidence to support his
conclusion about the Communists, presumably because he regards it as self-evident, as
much to the reader as to himself. Neither, for that matter, does he explain what was this
thing called "democracy" which he so cherishes and which the Communists were so
eager to do away with. 16
Colby comes across as a technocrat who carried out the orders of his "side" and
mouthed the party line without serious examination. When Oriana Fallaci, the Italian
jout-nalist, interviewed him in 1976, she remarked at the close of a frustrating
conversation, "Had you been born on the other side of the barricade, you would have
been a perfect Stalinist." To which, Colby replied- "I reject that statement. But ... well ...
it might be. No, no. It might not." 1 '
American policy makers dealing with Italy in the decades subsequent to Colby's
time there did not suffer any less than he from hardening of the categories. Colby, after
all, took pains to point out his liberal leanings. These were men unable to view the
Italian Communist Party in its indigenous political context, but only as a "national
security" threat to the United States and NATO. Yet, all those years, the party was
proceeding along a path revisionist enough to make Lenin turn in his grave if he were in
one. The path was marked by billboards proclaiming the "democratic advance to
socialism" and the "national road to socialism", the abandonment of "the dictatorship of
the proletariat" and the denunciation of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The
party pushed its "national" role as responsible opposition, participated in "the drive for
productivity", affirmed its support for a multiparty system and for" Italy remaining in
the Common Market and in NATO, and was second to none in its condemnation of any
form of terrorism. On many occasions, it was the principal political force in city
governments including Rome, Florence and Venice, without any noticeable return to
barbarism, and was a de facto participant in the running of the Italian state. (The
Socialist Party, a prime target of the United States in the 1948 elections, was a formal
member of the government for much of the 1960s to the 1990s.)
In the files of the State Department and the CIA lie any number of internal
reports prepared by anonymous analysts testifying to the reality of the Communist
Party's "historic compromise" and the evolution of its estrangement from the Soviet
Union known as "Eurocommunism."
In the face of this, however — in the face of everything — American policy
remained rooted in place, fixed in a time that was no longer, and probably never was; a
policy that had nothing to do with democracy (by whatever definition) and everything to
do with the conviction that a Communist government in Italy would not have been the
supremely pliant cold-war partner that successive Christian Democrat regimes were for
decades. It would not have been enough for such a government to be independent of
Moscow. The problem with a Communist government was that it would probably have
tried to adopt the same position towards Washington.
121
19. Vietnam 1950-1973
The hearts and minds circus
Contrary to repeated statements by Washington officials during the 1960s that
the United States did not intervene in Vietnam until, and only because, "North Vietnam
invaded South Vietnam", the US was deeply and continually involved in that woeful
(and from the year 1950 onwards.
The initial, fateful step was the decision to make large-scale shipments of
military equipment (tanks, transport planes, etc.) to the French in Vietnam in the spring
and summer of 1950. In April, Secretary of State Dean Acheson had told French
officials that the United States government was set against France negotiating with their
Northern-based Vietnamese foes, the Vietminh 1 (also spelled Viet Minh or Viet-Minh:
the name was short for League for the Independence of Vietnam, a broadly-based
nationalist movement led by Communists). Washington was not particularly
sympathetic to France's endeavor to regain control of its colony of 100 years and had
vacillated on the issue, but the rise to power of the Communists in China the previous
autumn had tipped the scale in favor of supporting the French. To the Truman
administration, the prospect of another Communist government in Asia was intolerable.
There was a secondary consideration as well at the time: the need to persuade a
reluctant France to support American plans to include Germany in West European
defense organizations.
During World War II, the Japanese had displaced the French. Upon the defeat of
Japan, the Vietminh took power in the North, while the British occupied the South, but
soon turned it back to the French. Said French General Jean Leclerc in September 1945:
"I didn't come back to Indochina to give Indochina back to the Indochinese."
Subsequently, the French emphasized that they were fighting for the "free world"
against communism, a claim made in no small part to persuade the United States to
increase its aid to them.
American bombers, military advisers and technicians by the hundreds were to
follow the first aid shipments, and over the next few years direct American military aid
to the French war effort ran to about a billion dollars a year. By 1954, the authorized aid
had reached the sum of $1.4 billion and constituted 78 percent of the French budget for
the war. 3
The extensive written history of the American role in Indochina produced by the
Defense Department, later to be known as "The Pentagon Papers", concluded that the
decision to provide aid to France "directly involved" the United States in Vietnam and
"set" the course for future American policy. 4
There had been another path open. In 1945 and 1946, Vietminh leader Ho Chi
Minh had written at least eight letters to President Truman and the State Department
asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French. He
wrote that world peace was being endangered by French efforts to reconquer Indochina
and he requested that the "four powers" (US, USSR, China, and Great Britain) intervene
in order to mediate a fair settlement and bring the Indochinese issue before the United
Nations. 5 (This was a remarkable repeat of history. In 1919, following the First World
War, Ho Chi Minh had appealed to US Secretary of State Robert Lansing for America's
help in achieving basic civil liberties and an improvement in the living conditions for
the colonial subjects of French Indochina. This plea, too, was ignored.) 6
122
Despite the fact that Ho Chi Minh and his followers had worked closely with the
American OSS (the forerunner of the CIA) during the recently ended world war, while
the French authorities in Indochina had collaborated with the Japanese, the United
States failed to answer any of the letters, did not reveal that it had received them, and
eventually sided with the French. In 1950, part of the publicly stated rationale for the
American position was that Ho Chi Minh was not really a "genuine nationalist" but
rather a tool of "international communism", a conclusion that could be reached only by
deliberately ignoring the totality of his life's work. He and the Vietminh had, in fact,
been long-time admirers of the United States. Ho trusted the US more than he did the
Soviet Union and reportedly had a picture of George Washington and a copy of the
American Declaration of Independence on his desk. According to a former OSS officer,
Ho sought his advice on framing the Vietminh's own declaration of independence. The
actual declaration of 1945 begins with the familiar "All men are created equal. They are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness."
But it was the French who were to receive America's blessing. Ho Chi Minh
was, after all, some kind of communist.
The United States viewed the French struggle in Vietnam and their own
concurrent intervention in Korea as two links in the chain aimed at "containing" China.
Washington was adamantly opposed to the French negotiating an end to the war which
would leave the Vietminh in power, in the northern part of the country, and, at the same
time, free the Chinese to concentrate exclusively on their Korean border. In 1952, the
US exerted strong pressure upon France not to pursue peace feelers extended by the
Vietminh, and a French delegation, scheduled to meet with Vietminh negotiators in
Burma, was hastily recalled to Paris.
Bernard Fall, the renowned French scholar on Indochina, believed that the
canceled negotiations "could perhaps have brought about a cease-fire on a far more
acceptable basis" for the French "than the one obtained two years later in the shadow of
crushing military defeat". 8
Subsequently, to keep the French from negotiating with the Vietminh, the
United States used the threat of a cessation of their substantial economic and military
aid. 9 (This prompted a French newspaper to comment that "the Indochina War has
become France's number one dollar-earning export".) 10
In November 1953, the omnipresent CIA airline, CAT, helped the French air
force airlift 16,000 men into a fortified base the French had established in a valley in the
North called Dien Bien Phu. When the garrison was later surrounded and cut off by the
Vietminh, CAT pilots, flying US Air Force C-119s, often through anti-aircraft fire,
delivered supplies to the beleaguered French forces, in this their Waterloo. 11
By 1954, the New York Times could report that "The French Air Force is now
1 2
almost entirely equipped with American planes." The United States had also
constructed a number of airfields, ports and highways in Indochina to facilitate the war
effort, some of which American forces were to make use of in their later wars in that
area.
In April 1954, when a French military defeat was apparent and negotiations at
Geneva were scheduled, the National Security Council urged President Eisenhower "to
inform Paris that French acquiescence in a Communist take-over of Indochina would
bear on its status as one of the Big Three" and that "U.S. aid to France would
automatically cease". 13
A Council paper recommended that "It be U.S. policy to accept nothing short of
a military victory in Indo-China" and that the "U.S. actively oppose any negotiated
123
settlements in Indo-China at Geneva". The Council stated further that, if necessary, the
US should consider continuing the war without French participation. 14
The Eisenhower administration had for some time very seriously considered
committing American combat troops to Vietnam. Apparently this move was not made
only because of uncertainty about congressional approval and the refusal of other
countries to send even a token force, as they had done in Korea, to remove the
appearance of a purely American operation. 15 "We are confronted by an unfortunate
fact," lamented Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at a 1954 Cabinet meeting. "Most
of the countries of the world do not share our view that Communist control of any
government anywhere is in itself a danger and a threat." 16
In May, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur Radford, sent
a memorandum to Defense Secretary Charles Wilson on "Studies With Respect to
Possible U.S. Actions Regarding Indochina" which stated that "The employment of
atomic weapons is contemplated in the event that such course appears militarily
advantageous." 17 (General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's director of intelligence,
put it a bit more poetically when he advocated the use of atomic bombs "to create a belt
of scorched earth across the avenues of communism to block the Asiatic hordes".) 18
By this time, two American aircraft carriers equipped with atomic weapons had
been ordered into the Gulf of Tonkin, in the North of Vietnam, 19 and Dulles is, in fact,
reported to have offered his French counterpart, Georges Bidault, atomic bombs to save
Dien Bien Phu. Bidault was obliged to point out to Dulles that the use of atomic bombs
in a war of such close armed conflict would destroy the French troops as well as the
Vietminh. 20
Dulles regularly denounced China, in the ultra-sanctimonious manner he was
known for, for assisting the Vietminh, as if the Chinese had no cause or right to be
alarmed about an anti-communist military crusade taking place scant miles from their
border. As the Geneva conference approached, a CIA propaganda team in Singapore
began to disseminate fabricated news items to advance the idea that "the Chinese were
giving full armed support to the Viet-Minh" and to "identify" the Viet-Minh "with the
world Communist movement". The CIA believed that such stories would strengthen the
2 1
non-Communist side at the Geneva talks.
Joseph Burkholder Smith was a CIA officer in Singapore. His "press asset" was
one Li Huan Li, an experienced local journalist. It is instructive to note the method
employed in the creation and dissemination of one such news report about the Chinese.
After Smith and Li had made up their story, Li attended the regular press conference
held by the British High Commissioner in Singapore, Malcolm MacDonald. At the
conference, Li mentioned the report and asked the Commissioner if he had any
comment. As expected, MacDonald had nothing to say about it one way or the other.
The result was the following news item:
MORE CHINESE SUPPLIES AND TROOPS SPOTTED EN ROUTE TO
HAIPHONG. At the press conference of the British High Commissioner for Southeast
Asia today, reports of the sightings of Chinese naval vessels and supply ships in the
Tonkin Gulf en route from Hainan to Haiphong were again mentioned.
According to these reports, the most recent of many similar sightings occurred one
week ago when a convoy of ten ships was spotted. Among them were two armed
Chinese naval vessels indicating that the convoy consisted of troops as well as arms and
supplies.
High Commissioner Malcolm MacDonald would not elaborate further about these
22
reports.
124
The story was put onto a wire service in the morning, and by the evening had
gone around the world, coming back to Singapore on the European relay to Asia.
The Geneva conference, on 20 July 1954, put a formal end to the war in
Vietnam. The United States was alone in refusing to sign the Final Declaration, purely
because it was peeved at the negotiated settlement, which precluded any further military
effort to defeat the Vietminh. There had been ample indication of American displeasure
with the whole process well before the end of the conference. Two weeks earlier, for
example, President Eisenhower had declared at a news conference: "I will not be a party
to any treaty that makes anybody a slave; now that is all there is to it." But the US did
issue a "unilateral declaration" in which it agreed to "refrain from the threat or the use of
force to disturb" the accords. 24
The letter and the spirit of the ceasefire agreement and the Final Declaration
looked forward to a Vietnam free from any military presence other than Vietnamese or
French, and free from any aggressive operations. However, while the conference was
still in session in June, the United States began assembling a paramilitary team inside
Vietnam. By August, only days after the close of the conference, the team was in place.
Under the direction of CIA leading-light Edward Lansdale, fresh from his success in the
Philippines, a campaign of military and psychological warfare was carried out against
the Vietminh. (Lansdale's activities in Vietnam were later enshrined in two semi-
fictional works, The Ugly American and The Quiet American.) Over the next six
months, Lansdale's clandestine team executed such operations as the following:
• Encouraged the migration of Vietnamese from the North to the South through "an extremely
intensive, well-coordinated, and, in terms of its objective, very successful ... psychological war-
fare operation. Propaganda slogans and leaflets appealed to the devout Catholics with such
themes as 'Christ has gone to the South' and the 'Virgin Mary has departed from the North'." 25
• Distributed other bogus leaflets, supposedly put out by the Vietminh, to instill trepidation in
the minds of people in the North about how life would be under Communist rule. The following
day, refugee registration to move South tripled. (The exodus of Vietnamese to the South during
the "regrouping" period that followed the Geneva Accords was often cited by American officials
in the 1960s, as well as earlier, as proof of the fact that the people did not want to live under
communism — "They voted with their feet" was the catchphrase) Still other "Vietminh" leaflets
were aimed at discouraging people in the South from returning to the North.
• Infiltrated paramilitary forces into the North under the guise of individuals choosing to live
there.
• Contaminated the oil supply of the bus company in Hanoi so as to lead to a gradual wreckage
of the bus engines.
• Took "the first actions for delayed sabotage of the railroad (which required teamwork with a
CIA special technical team in Japan who performed their part brilliantly)."
• Instigated a rumor campaign to stir up hatted of the Chinese, with the usual stories of rapes.
• Created and distributed an almanac of astrological predictions carefully designed to play on
Vietnamese fears and superstitions and undermine life in the North while making the future of
the South appear more attractive.
• Published and circulated anti-Communist articles and "news" reports in newspapers and
leaflets.
• Attempted, unsuccessfully, to destroy the largest printing establishment in the North because
it intended to remain in Hanoi and do business with the Vietminh.
• Laid some of the foundation for the future American war in Vietnam by: sending selected
Vietnamese to US Pacific bases for guerrilla training; training the armed forces of the South who
had fought with the French; creating various military support facilities in the Philippines; smug-
gling into Vietnam large quantities of arms and military equipment to be stored in hidden loca-
tions; developing plans for the "pacification of Vietminh and dissident areas". 26
At the same time, the United States began an economic boycott against the
North Vietnamese and threatened to blacklist French firms which were doing business
77
with them.
125
Another development during this period that had very profound consequences
for the coming tragedy was the cancelation of the elections that would have united
North and South Vietnam as one nation.
The Geneva Accords specified that elections under international supervision
were to be held in July 1956, with "consultations" to prepare for them to be held "from
20 July 1955 onwards". The United States, in its unilateral declaration, had reiterated
this pledge: "In the case of nations now divided against their will, we shall continue to
seek to achieve unity through free elections supervised by the United Nations to insure
that they are conducted fairly."
The elections were never held. On 16 July 1955, four days before the
consultations were scheduled to begin, President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam
issued a statement that made it cleat that he had no intention of engaging in the
28
consultations, much less the elections. Three days later, North Vietnam sent Diem a
formal note calling for the talks, but Diem remained firm in his position. Efforts by
France and Great Britain to persuade Diem to begin the talks were to no avail.
The reason for Diem's intransigence is well known. He, like President
Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, knew that Ho Chi Minh would be a certain winner
of any national elections. A CIA National Intelligence Estimate in the autumn
concluded that the Diem regime (which Lansdale himself called "fascistic") "almost
certainly would not be able to defeat the communists in country-wide elections." 50
Later, Eisenhower was to write in his memoirs: "I have never talked or corresponded
with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections
been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 percent of the population would
have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State
Bao Dai." 31 (The latter was Diem's predecessor.)
The study of the Pentagon papers cited "State Department cables and National
Security Council memorandums indicating that the Eisenhower Administration wished
to postpone the elections as long as possible and communicated its feelings to Mr.
Diem." f2
This was support that Diem could not have done without, for, as the Pentagon
historians point out: "Without the threat of U.S. intervention, South Vietnam could not
have refused to even discuss the elections called for in 1956 under the Geneva
settlement without being immediately overrun by the Vietminh armies."
The public statements of Diem and Dulles spoke only of their concern that the
elections would not be "free", which served to obscure the fact that Ho Chi Minh did
not need to resort to fraud in order to win, as well as ignoring the announcements of
both the United Nations and the International Control Commission (set up in Vietnam
by the Geneva Accords) that they were ready to supervise the elections.
In any event, Diem's commitment to free elections may be surmised from a
referendum he held in October 1955 in South Vietnam to invest his regime with a
semblance of legality, in which he received 98.2 percent of the vote. Life magazine later
reported that Diem's American advisers had told him that a 60 percent margin would be
quite sufficient and would look better, "but Diem insisted on 98 percent". 34
With the elections canceled, the nation still divided, and Diem with his
"mandate" free to continue his heavy, tyrannical rule, the turn to violence in South
Vietnam became inevitable.
As if in knowledge of and preparation for this, the United States sent 350
additional military men to Saigon in May 1956, an "example of the U.S. ignoring" the
Geneva Accords, stated the Pentagon study. 35 Shortly afterwards, Dulles confided to a
126
colleague: "We have a clean base there now, without a taint of colonialism.
Dienbienphu was a blessing in disguise."
The Later Phase
"If you grab 'em by the balls, the hearts and minds will follow" ... "Give us your
hearts and minds or we'll burn down your goddamn village" ... the end result of
America's anti-communist policy in Vietnam; also its beginning and its middle.
There was little serious effort to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese
people, even less chance of success, for the price of success was social change, of the
kind that Diem was unwilling to accept in Vietnam, the kind the United States was not
willing to accept anywhere in the Third World. If Washington had been willing to
accept such change — which they have always routinely and disparagingly dismissed as
"socialist" — there would have been no need to cancel the elections or to support Diem,
no need for intervention in the first place. There was, consequently, no way the United
States could avoid being seen by the people of Vietnam as other than the newest
imperialist occupiers, following in the footsteps of first the Chinese, then the French,
then the Japanese, then the French again.
We will not go into a detailed recounting of all the horrors, all the deceptions,
the destruction of a society, the panorama of absurdities and ironies; only a selection, a
montage, lest we forget.
To the men who walked the corridors of power in Washington, to the military
men in the field, Indochina — nay, southeast Asia — was a single, large battlefield.
Troops of South Vietnam were used in Laos and Cambodia. Troops of Thailand were
used in Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam. Thailand and the Philippines were used as
bases from which to bomb the three countries of Indochina.
Military officers in South Vietnam, Thailand, and Taiwan were trained at
American schools in the Philippines.
CIA- supported forces carried out incursions and invasions into China from Laos,
Burma and Taiwan.
When there was a (much-publicized] pause in the bombing of North Vietnam,
more American planes were thus available to increase the bombing of Laos. And so it
went.
From 1955 to 1959, Michigan State University, under a US government
contract, con ducted a covert police training program for the South Vietnamese. With
the full knowledge of certain MSU officials, five CIA operatives were concealed in the
staff of the program and carried on the university's payroll as its employees. By the
terms of a 1957 law, drawn up by the MSU group, every Vietnamese 15 years and older
was required to register with the government and carry ID cards. Anyone caught
without the proper identification was considered as a National Liberation Front
(Vietcong) suspect and subject to imprisonment or worse. At the time of registration, a
full set of fingerprints was obtained and information about the person's political beliefs
was recorded. 37
When popular resistance to Ngo Dinh Diem reached the level where he was
more of a liability than an asset he was sacrificed. On 1 November 1963. some of
Diem's generals overthrew him and then murdered both him and his brother after they
had surrendered. The coup, wrote Time magazine, "was planned with the knowledge of
127
Dean Rusk and Averill Harriman at the State Department, Robert S. McNamara and
Roswell Gilpatrick at the Defense Department and the late Edward R. Murrow at the
U.S Information Agency." 38
Evidently Washington had not planned on assassinations accompanying the
coup, but as General Maxwell Taylor, President Kennedy's principal military adviser,
has observed: "The execution of a coup is not like organizing a tea party; it's a very
dangerous business. So I didn't think we had any right to be surprised ... when Diem and
his brother were murdered." 39
Donald Duncan was a member of the Green Berets in Vietnam. He has written
about his training, part of which was called "countermeasures to hostile interrogation",
ostensibly how Americans captured by Communists could deal with being tortured.
Translations of an alleged Soviet interrogation manual were handed out to the class. The
manual described in detail such methods as the "Airplane Ride" (hanging by the
thumbs], the Cold-Hot Water Treatment, and the lowering of a man's testicles into a
jeweler's vise, while the instructor, a Sergeant Lacey, explained some variations of these
methods. Then a student had a question:
"Sergeant Lacey, the name of this class is 'Countermeasures to Hostile
Interrogation,' but you have spent most of the period telling us there are no
countermeasures. If this is true, then the only reason for teaching them [the torture
methods], it seems to me, is so that we'll know how to use them. Are you
suggesting we use these methods?"
The class laughs, and Lacey looks down at the floor creating a dramatic pause.
When he raises his head, his face is solemn but his deep set eyes are dancing. "We
can't tell you that, Sergeant Harrison. The Mothers of America wouldn't approve."
The class bursts into laughter at the sarcastic cynicism. "Furthermore," a
conspiratorial wink, "we will deny that any such thing is taught or intended." 40
At the US Navy's schools in San Diego and Maine during the 1960s and 1970s,
the course had a different name. There, the students were supposedly learning about
methods of "survival, evasion, resistance and escape" which they could use as prisoners
of war. There was in the course something of survival in a desert, where students were
forced to eat lizards, but the naval officers and cadets were also subjected to beatings,
jarring judo flips, "tiger cages" — hooded and placed in a 16-cubic-foot box for 22 hours
with a coffee can for their excrement — and a torture device called the "water board": the
subject strapped to an inclined board, head downward, a towel placed over his face, and
cold water poured over the towel; he would choke, gag, retch and gurgle as he
experienced the sensation of drowning, just as was done to Vietcong prisoners in
Vietnam, along with the tiger cages.
A former student, Navy pilot Lt. Wendell Richard Young, claimed that his back
was broken during the course and that students were tortured into spitting, urinating and
defecating on the American flag, masturbating before guards, and, on one occasion,
engaging in sex with an instructor. 41
Fabrications were required to support the varied State Department claims about
the nature of the war and the reasons for the American military actions. A former CIA
officer, Philip Liechty, stated in 1982 that in the early 1960s he saw written plans to
take large amounts of Communist-bloc arms, load them on a Vietnamese boat, fake a
battle In which the boat would be sunk in shallow water, then call in Western reporters
to see the captured weapons as proof of outside aid to the Vietcong. This is precisely
what occurred in 1965. The State Department's white paper, "Aggression From the
128
North", which came out at the end of February 1965, relates that a "suspicious vessel"
was "sunk in shallow water" off the coast of South Vietnam on 16 February 1965 after
an attack by South Vietnamese forces. The boat was reported to contain at least 100 tons
of military supplies "almost all of communist origin, largely from Communist China
and Czechoslovakia as well as North Vietnam", The white paper noted that
"Representatives of the free press visited the sunken North Vietnamese ship and viewed
its cargo."
Liechty said that he had also seen documents involving an elaborate operation to
print large numbers of postage stamps showing a Vietnamese shooting down a US
Army helicopter. The former CIA officer stated that this was a highly professional job
and that the very professionalism required to produce the multicolor stamps was meant
to indicate that they were produced by the North Vietnamese because the Vietcong
would not have had the capabilities. Liechty claimed that letters in Vietnamese were
then written and mailed all over the world with the stamp on them "and the CIA made
sure journalists would get hold of them". Life magazine, in its issue of 26 February
1965, did in fact feature a full color blow-up of the stamp on its cover, referring to it as
a "North Vietnam stamp". This was just two days before the State Department's white
paper appeared.
In reporting Liechty's statements, the Washington Post noted:
Publication of the white paper turned out to be a key event in documenting the
support of North Vietnam and other communist countries in the fighting in the
South and in preparing American public opinion for what was to follow very
soon: the large-scale commitment of U.S. forces to the fighting. 42
Perhaps the most significant fabrication was that of the alleged attack in August
1964 on two US destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of North Vietnam. President
Johnson used the incident to induce a resolution from Congress to take "all necessary
steps, including the use of armed forces" to prevent further North Vietnamese
aggression. It was a blanket endorsement for escalation heaped upon escalation. Serious
enough doubts were raised at the time about the reality of the attack, but over the years
other information has come to light which has left the official story in tatters. 43
And probably the silliest fabrication: the 1966 US Army training film, "County
Fair", in which the sinister Vietcong are shown in a jungle clearing heating gasoline and
soap bars, concocting a vicious communist invention called napalm. 44
The Johnson administration's method of minimizing public concern about
escalation of the war, as seen by a psychiatrist:
First step: Highly alarming rumors about escalation are "leaked".
Second step: The President officially and dramatically sets the anxieties to rest by
announcing a much more moderate rate of escalation, and accompanies this
announcement with assurances of the Government's peaceful intentions.
Third step: After the general sigh of relief, the originally rumored escalation is
gradually put into effect.
The succession of "leaks", denials of leaks, and denials of denials thoroughly
confuses the individual. He is left bewildered, helpless, apathetic.
The end result is that the people find themselves deeply committed to large-scale
war, without being able to tell how it came about, when and how it all began. 45
Senator Stephen Young of Ohio was reported to have said that while he was in
Vietnam he was told by the CIA that the Agency disguised people as Vietcong to
commit atrocities, including murder and rape, so as to discredit the Communists. After
129
the report caused a flurry in Washington, Young said that he had been misquoted, that
the CIA was not the source of the story. Congressman Cornelius Gallagher, who had
accompanied Young on the trip, suggested that it "may well be that he [Young] spoke to
a Vietcong disguised as a CIA man". 46
From a speech by Carl Oglesby, President of Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS), during the March on Washington, 27 November 1965:
The original commitment in Vietnam was made by President Truman, a
mainstream liberal. It was seconded by President Eisenhower, a moderate liberal.
It was intensified by the late President Kennedy, a flaming liberal. Think of the
men who now engineer that war — those who study the maps, give the commands,
push the buttons, and tally the dead: Bundy, McNamara, Rusk, Lodge, Goldberg,
the President [Johnson] himself. They are not moral monsters. They are all
honorable men. They are all liberals. 47
The International Communist Conspiracy in action:
During the heat of the fighting in 1966-67, the Soviet Union sold to the United
States over $2 million worth of magnesium — a metal vital in military aircraft
production — when there was a shortage of it in the United States. This occurred at a
time when Washington maintained an embargo on supplying Communist nations with
certain alloys of the same metal. 48 At about the same time, China sold several thousand
tons of steel to the United States in South Vietnam for use in the construction of new
Air and Army bases when no one else could meet the American military's urgent need:
this, while Washington maintained a boycott on all Chinese products; even wigs
imported into the US from Hong Kong had to be accompanied by a certificate of origin
stating that they contained no Chinese hair. The sale of steel may have been only the tip
of the iceberg of Chinese sales to the United States during the war 49
In a visit to China in January 1972, White House envoy Alexander Haig met
with Premier Chou En-lai. Years later, Haig wrote: "Though he never stated the case in
so many words, I reported to President Nixon that the import of what Zhou [Chou] said
to me was: don't lose in Vietnam; don't withdraw from Southeast Asia." 50
In 1975, a Senate investigating committee began looking into allegations that the
CIA had counterfeited American money during the Vietnam war to finance secret
operations. 51
"Two Vietcong prisoners were interrogated on an airplane flying toward Saigon.
The first refused to answer questions and was thrown out of the airplane at 3,000 feet.
The second immediately answered all the questions. But he, too, was thrown out."
Variations of the water torture were also used to loosen tongues or simply to torment.
"Other techniques, usually designed to force onlooking prisoners to talk, involve cutting
52
off the fingers, ears, fingernails or sexual organs of another prisoner."
It is not clear whether these particular Vietnamese were actual prisoners of war,
i.e., captured in combat, or whether they were amongst the many thousands of civilians
arrested as part of the infamous Phoenix Program. Phoenix was the inevitable
consequence of fighting a native population: You never knew who was friend, who was
enemy. Anyone was a potential informer, bomb-thrower, or assassin. Safety demanded
130
that, unless proved otherwise, everyone was to be regarded as the enemy, part of what
the CIA called the Vietcong infrastructure (VCI).
In 1971, CIA officer William Colby, the director of Phoenix, was asked by a
congressman: "Are you certain that we know a member of the VCI from a loyal member
of the South Vietnam citizenry?"
"No, Mr. Congressman," replied Colby, "I am not." 53
Phoenix was a coordinated effort of the United States and South Vietnam to
wipe out this infrastructure. Under the program, Vietnamese citizens were rounded up
and jailed, often in tiger cages, often tortured, often killed, either in the process of being
arrested or subsequently. By Colby's records, during the period between early 1968 and
May 1971, 20,587 alleged Vietcong cadres met their death as a result of the Phoenix
Program. 54 A similar program, under different names, had existed since 1965 and been
run by the United States alone. 55
Colby claims that more than 85 percent of the 20,587 figure were actually killed
in military combat and only identified afterward as members of the VCI. 56 It strains
credulity, however, to think that the tens of thousands of Vietcong killed in combat
during this period were picked over, body by body, on the battlefield, for identification
and that their connection to the VCI was established.
The South Vietnam government credited Phoenix with 40,994 VCI deaths. The
true figure will probably never be known.
A former US military-intelligence officer in Vietnam, K. Barton Osborn,
testified before a House Committee that suspects caught by Phoenix were interrogated
in helicopters and sometimes pushed out. He also spoke of the use of electric shock
torture and the insertion into the ear of a six-inch dowel which was tapped through the
brain until the victim died. 58 Osborn's colleague, Michael J. Uhl, testified that most
suspects were captured during sweeping tactical raids and that all persons detained were
classified as Vietcong. None of those held for questioning, said Osborn, had ever lived
through the process. 59
Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, was the man
most responsible for "giving, controlling and managing the war news from Vietnam".
One day in July 1965, Sylvester told American journalists that they had a patriotic duty
to disseminate only information that made the United States look good. When one of the
newsmen exclaimed: "Surely, Arthur, you don't expect the American press to be
handmaidens of government," Sylvester replied, "That's exactly what I expect," adding:
"Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you're
stupid. Did you hear that? — stupid." And when a correspondent for a New York paper
began a question, he was interrupted by Sylvester who said: "Aw, come on. What does
someone in New York care about the war in Vietnam?" 60
Meanwhile, hundreds of US servicemen in Asia and Europe were being
swindled by phoney American auto dealers who turned up to take down-payments on
cars which they never delivered. Commented an Illinois congressman: "We cannot
expect our servicemen to fight to protect the free enterprise system if the very system
which they fight to protect takes advantage of them." 61
On 27 January 1973, in Paris, the United States signed the "Agreement on
Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam". Among the principles to which the
United States agreed was the one stated in Article 2 1 : "In pursuance of its traditional
policy, the United States will contribute to healing the wounds of war and to postwar
131
reconstruction of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam [North Vietnam] and throughout
Indochina."
Five days later, 1 February, President Nixon sent a message to the Prime
Minister of North Vietnam reiterating and expanding upon this pledge. The first two
principles put forth in the President's message were:
(1) The Government of the United States of America will contribute to postwar
reconstruction in North Vietnam without any political conditions. (2) Preliminary
United Stares studies indicate that the appropriate programs for the United States
contribution to postwar reconstruction will fall in [he range of $3.2.5 billion of
grant aid over 5 years. Other forms of aid will be agreed upon between the two
parties- This estimate is subject to revision and to detailed discussion between the
Government of the United States and the Government of the Democratic Republic
of Vietnam. 62
For the next two decades, the only aid given to any Vietnamese people by the
United States was to those who left Vietnam and those who were infiltrated back in to
stir up trouble. At the same time, the US imposed a complete embargo on trade and
assistance to the country, which lasted until 1994.
Are the victims of the Vietnam War also to be found in generations yet unborn?
Tens of millions of gallons of herbicides were unleashed over the country; included in
this were quantities of dioxin, which has been called the most toxic man-made
substance known; three ounces of dioxin, it is claimed, in the New York City water
supply could wipe out the entire populace. Studies in Vietnam since the war have
pointed to abnormally high rates of cancers, particularly of the liver, chromosomal
damage, birth defects, long-lasting neurological disorders, etc. in the heavily- sprayed
areas. Other victims were Americans. Thousands of Vietnam veterans fought for years
to receive disability compensation, claiming irreparable damage from simply handling
the toxic herbicides.
After the Second World War, the International Military Tribunal convened at
Nuremberg, Germany. Created by the victorious Allies, the Tribunal sentenced to prison
or execution numerous Nazis who pleaded that they had been "only following orders".
In an opinion handed down by the Tribunal, it declared that "the very essence of the
[Tribunal's] Charter is that individuals have international duties which transcend the
national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual state."
During the Vietnam war, a number of young Americans refused military service
on the grounds that the United States was committing war crimes in Vietnam and that if
they took part in the war they too, under the principles laid down at Nuremberg, would
be guilty of war crimes.
One of the most prominent of these cases was that of David Mitchell of
Connecticut. At Mitchell's trial in September 1965, Judge William Timbers dismissed
his defense as "tommyrot" and "degenerate subversion", and found the Nuremberg
principles to be "irrelevant" to the case. Mitchell was sentenced to prison. Conservative
columnist William F. Buckley, Jr., not celebrated as a champion of draft resistance,
noted shortly afterward:
I am glad 1 didn't have Judge Timbers' job. Oh, I could have scolded Mr. Mitchell
along with the best of them. But I'd have to cough and wheeze and clear my throat
during that passage in my catechism at which I explained to Mr. Mitchell wherein
the Nuremberg Doctrine was obviously not at his disposal. 63
132
In 1971, Telford Taylor, the chief United States prosecutor at Nuremberg,
suggested rather strongly that General William Westmoreland and high officials of the
Johnson administration such as Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk could be found guilty
of war crimes under criteria established at Nuremberg. 64 Yet every American court and
judge, when confronted by the Nuremberg defense, dismissed it without according it
any serious consideration whatsoever.
The West has never been allowed to forget the Nazi holocaust. For 55 years
there has been a continuous outpouring of histories, memoirs, novels, feature films,
documentaries, television series ... played and replayed in every Western language;
there have been museums, memorial sculptures, photo exhibitions, remembrance
ceremonies ... Never Again! But who hears the voice of the Vietnamese peasant? Who
has access to the writings of the Vietnamese intellectual? What was the fate of the
Vietnamese Anne Frank? Where, asks the young American, is Vietnam?
Prince Sihanouk walks the high-wire of neutralism
John Foster Dulles had called on me in his capacity as Secretary of State, and he
had exhausted every argument to persuade me to place Cambodia under the
protection of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization. I refused ... I considered
SEATO an aggressive military alliance directed against neighbors whose ideology
I did not share but with whom Cambodia had no quarrel. I had made all this quite
clear to John Foster, an acidy, arrogant man, but his brother [CIA Director Allen
Dulles] soon turned up with a briefcase full of documents "proving" that
Cambodia was about to fall victim to "communist aggression" and that the only
way to save the country, the monarchy and myself was to accept the protection of
SEATO. The "proofs" did not coincide with my own information, and I replied to
Allen Dulles as I had replied to John Foster: Cambodia wanted no part of
SEATO. We would look after ourselves as neutrals and Buddhists. There was
nothing for the secret service chief to do but pack up his dubious documents and
leave.
The visits of the Brothers Dulles in 1955 appear to have been the opening salvos
in a campaign of extraordinary measures aimed at pressuring the charismatic
Cambodian leader into aligning his nation with the West and joining The Holy War
Against Communism. The coercion continued intermittently until 1970 when Sihanouk
was finally overthrown in an American-backed coup and the United States invaded
Cambodia.
In March 1956, after Sihanouk had visited Peking and criticized SEATO, the
two countries which sandwich Cambodia — Thailand and South Vietnam, both heavily
dependent upon and allied with the United States — suddenly closed their borders. It was
a serious move, for the bulk of Cambodia's traffic with the outside world at that time
passed either along the Mekong River through South Vietnam or by railway through
Thailand.
The danger to the tiny kingdom was heightened by repeated military
provocations. Thai troops invaded Cambodian territory and CIA-financed irregulars
20. Cambodia
Prince Norodom Sihanouk, in his memoirs
133
began to make commando raids from South Vietnam. Deep intrusions were made into
Cambodian air space by planes based in the two countries.
To Sihanouk, these actions "looked more and more like preliminary softening-up
probes" for his overthrow. He chose to thrust matters out into the open. At a press
conference he scolded the US, defended Cambodia's policy of neutrality, and announced
that the whole question would be on the agenda of his party's upcoming national
congress- There was the implication that Cambodia would turn to the socialist bloc for
aid.
The United States appeared to retreat in the face of this unorthodox public
diplomacy. The State Department sent a couple of rather conciliatory messages which
nullified a threatened cut-off of certain economic aid and included this remarkable piece
of altruism: "The only aim of American policy to Cambodia is to help her strengthen
and defend her independence." Two days before the national congress convened,
Thailand and South Vietnam opened their frontiers. The local disputes which the two
countries had cited as the reasons for the blockade had not been resolved at all.
The measures taken against Cambodia were counter-productive. Not only did
Sihanouk continue to attack SEATO, but he established relations with the Soviet Union
and Poland and accepted aid from China. He praised the latter lavishly for treating
Cambodia as an equal and for providing aid without all the strings which, he felt, came
attached to American aid. 3
Such behavior should not obscure the fact that Sihanouk was as genuine a
neutralist as one could be in such a highly polarized region of the world in the midst of
the cold war. He did not shy away from denouncing China, North Vietnam or
communism on a number of occasions when he felt that Cambodia's security or
neutrality was being threatened. "I foresee perfectly well," he said at one time, "the
collapse of an independent and neutral Cambodia after the complete triumph of
Communism in Laos and South Vietnam.'" 1
In May 1957, a National Security Council (NSCI paper acknowledged that "the
United States has been unable to influence Cambodia in the direction of a stable [i.e.,
pro-Western] government and non-involvement in the communist bloc." 5
The following year, five battalions of Saigon troops, supported by aircraft,
crossed the Cambodian border again, penetrated to a depth of almost 10 miles and
began putting up new boundary markers. Sihanouk's impulse was to try and repel the
invaders but, to his amazement, he was informed by the American Ambassador to
Cambodia, Carl Strom, that US military aid was provided, exclusively for the purpose
of opposing "communist aggression" and in no case could be used against an American
ally. The ambassador cautioned that if a single bullet were fired at the South
Vietnamese or a single US -supplied, truck used to transport Cambodian troops to a
military confrontation with them, this would constitute grounds for canceling aid. 6
Ambassador Strom was called back to Washington, told that Sihanouk would
now have to go and that US aid would be cut off to precipitate his fall. Strom, however,
did not think that this was the wisest move to make at that point and was able to
convince the State Department to hold off for the time being."
William Shawcross, in his elaborately-researched book, Sideshow: Kissinger,
Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, notes that "NSC papers of the period cited in
the Pentagon papers confirm that Washington saw Thai and Vietnamese pressure across
the borders as one of the principal weapons to be used in an effort to move Sihanouk
toward a more pro-American position."
In addition to Thai and South Vietnamese troops, the CIA had at its disposal two
other forces, the Khmer Serei and the Khmer Krom, composed largely of ethnic
134
Cambodians opposed to Sihanouk's rule, who operated out of the two neighboring
countries. The Khmer Serei ("Free Cambodians") were described by Shawcross as the
"Cambodian organization with which American officials had had the closest contact". 9
Sihanouk once equated them to the "free" Cubans the United States maintained in
Florida. 0
These forces — recruited, financed, armed and trained by the CIA and the US
Special Forces (Green Berets) 11 — began to infiltrate into Cambodia in the latter part of
1958 as part of a complex conspiracy which included, amongst others, a disloyal
Cambodian general named Dap Chhuon who was plotting an armed uprising inside the
country. At its most optimistic, the conspiracy aimed at overthrowing Sihanouk.
Sihanouk discovered the plan, partly through reports from Chinese and French
intelligence. The French were not happy about the American intrusion into what had
been their domain for close to a century.
By February 1959 the conspirators had been apprehended or had fled, including
Victor Masao Matsui, a member of the CIA station in Cambodia's capital city Phnom
Penh, who hurriedly left the country after Sihanouk accused him of being a party to the
plot. Matsui, an American of Japanese descent, had been operating under State
Department cover as an attache at the embassy.
The intrigue, according to Sihanouk, began in September 1958 at a SEATO
meeting in Thailand and was carried a step further later that month in New York when
he visited the United Nations. While Sihanouk was away in Washington for a few days,
a member of his delegation, Slat Peou, held several conferences with Americans in his
New York hotel room which he did not mention to any of his fellow delegates. Slat
Peou, it happened, was a close friend of Victor Matsui and was the brother of General
Dap Chhuon. In the aftermath of the aborted conspiracy, Slat Peou was executed for
12
treason. Sihanouk was struck by the bitter irony of the CIA plotting against him in
New York while he was in Washington being honored by President Eisenhower with a
21 -gun salute. 13
In a similar vein, several years later President Kennedy assured Sihanouk "on his
honour" that the United States had played no role in the affairs of the Khmer Serei. "I
considered President Kennedy to be an honourable man," wrote Sihanouk, "but, in that
case, who really represented the American government?" 14
CIA officer (later Director) William Colby, stationed in Vietnam at the time of
the Dap Chhuon plot, has written that the Agency was well aware of the plot and had
recruited someone on Dap Chhuon's staff and furnished him with a radio with which to
keep the CIA informed. The Agency wanted to be kept informed, Colby asserts, in order
to "dissuade the Thai and Vietnamese" from overthrowing Sihanouk. Colby adds:
Unfortunately, in putting down the coup, Sihanouk had captured our agent and his
radio. And, not unnaturally, he drew the conclusion that CIA was one of the
participants, and that the gold and arms furnished from Bangkok and Saigon to be
used against him were only part of the over-ail plot of which the radio was a key
element. 15
The Cambodian leader has attested to several other plots he lays at the doorstep
of the CIA. Amongst these was a 1959 effort to murder him which was foiled when the
police picked a nervous young man, Rat Vat by name, out of a crowd surrounding
Sihanouk. He was found to be carrying a hand grenade and a pistol. Investigation
showed, writes Sihanouk, that the would-be assassin was instigated by the CIA and the
Khmer Serei. Sihanouk also cites three incidents occurring in 1963: an attempt to blow
up a car carrying him and the visiting president of China, Liu Shao Chi; an attempt to
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smuggle arms into Cambodia in a number of crates addressed to the US Embassy; and a
partially successful venture aimed at sabotaging the Cambodian economy and
subverting key government personnel through the setting up of a bank in Phnom Penh. 16
On 20 November of the same year, two days before the assassination of John F.
Kennedy, the Cambodian National Congress, at Sihanouk's initiative, vote to "end all
aid granted by the United States in the military, economic, technical and cultural fields".
It was perhaps without precedent that a country receiving American aid voluntarily
repudiated it. But Sihanouk held strong feelings on the subject. Over the years he had
frequently recited from his register of complaints about American aid to Cambodia: how
it subverted and corrupted Cambodian officials and businessmen who wound up
"constituting a clientele necessarily obedient to the demands of the lavish bestower of
foreign funds"; and how the aid couldn't be used for state institutions, only private
enterprise, nor, as mentioned earlier, used against attacks by US allies. 17
After some American bombings of Cambodian villages near the South Vietnam
border in pursuit of North Vietnamese and Vietcong, the Cambodian government, in
October 1964, announced that "in case of any new violation of Cambodian territory by
US ground, air, or naval forces, Cambodia will immediately sever diplomatic relations
with the United States". The government did just that the following May when
1 o
American planes bombarded several villages, killing or wounding dozens of peasants.
The pattern over the next few years, as the war in Indochina intensified, was one
of repeated forays into Cambodian territory by American, Saigon and Khmer Serei
forces in search of Communist supply lines and sanctuaries along the Ho Chi Minh
Trail; bombing and strafing, napalming, and placing land mines, with varying numbers
of Cambodian civilian casualties; angry accusations by the Cambodian government,
followed on occasion by an American apology, promise of an investigation, and the
taking of "measures to prevent any recurrence of such incidents". 19
Sihanouk did not at all relish the intrusions into Cambodia by the Vietnamese
Communists, nor was he wholly or consistently antagonistic to American pursuit of
them, particularly when there was no loss of Cambodian lives. On at least one occasion
he disclosed the location of Communist bases which were promptly bombed by the US .
However, Sihanouk then went on the radio and proceeded to denounce the bombings.
Opportunist that he often revealed himself to be, Sihanouk was nonetheless truly caught
between the devil and the deep blue sea, and by the late 1960s his predicament had
compelled him to resume American aid and re-establish diplomatic relations with the
United States.
Despite all the impulsiveness of his personality and policies, Sihanouk's
neutralist high-wire balancing act did successfully shield his country from the worst of
the devastation that was sweeping through the land and people of Vietnam and Laos.
Cambodia had its own Communist insurgents, the Khmer Rouge, who surely would
have unleashed a full-scale civil war if faced with a Cambodian government nestled
comfortably in the American camp. This is precisely what later came to pass following
the overthrow of Sihanouk and his replacement by Lon Nol who was closely tied to the
United States.
In March 1969, the situation began to change dramatically. Under the new
American president, Richard Nixon, and National Security Affairs adviser Henry
Kissinger, the isolated and limited attacks across the Cambodian border became
sustained, large-scale B-52 bombings — "carpet bombings", in the euphemistic language
so dear to the hearts of military men.
Over the next 14 months, no less than 3,630 B-52 bombing raids were flown
over Cambodia. 21 To escape the onslaught, the Vietnamese Communists moved their
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bases further inside the country. The B-52s of course followed, with a concomitant
increase in civilian casualties.
The Nixon administration artfully played down the nature and extent of these
bombings, going so far as to falsify military records, and was largely successful in
keeping it all a secret from the American public, the press and Congress. 22 Not until
1973, in the midst of the Watergate revelations, did a fuller story begin to emerge.
It was frequently argued that the United States had every right to attack
Cambodia because of its use as a sanctuary by America's foes in Vietnam. Apropos of
this claim, William Shawcross has pointed out that:
During the Algerian war of independence the United States rejected France's
claimed right to attack a Tunisian town inhabited by Algerian guerrillas, and in
1964 Adlai Stevenson, at the U.N., condemned Britain for assaulting a Yemeni
town used as a base by insurgents attacking Aden. Even Israel had frequently
been criticized by the United States for attacks on enemy bases outside its
territory. 23
On 18 Match 1970, Sihanouk, while on a trip abroad, was deposed as Head of
State by two of his leading ministers, Lon Nol and Sirik Matak. To what extent, if any,
the United States played a direct role in the coup has not been established, but there are
circumstances and testimony pointing to American complicity, among which are the
following:
• According to Frank Snepp, the CIA's principal political analyst in Vietnam at
this time, in early 1970 the Agency was cultivating both Lon Nol and Son Ngoc
Thanh, leader of the Khmer Serei, as possible replacements for Sihanouk. The
CIA believed, he says, that if Lon Nol came to power, "He would welcome the
United States with open arms and we would accomplish everything." 24 (This,
presumably, meant carte blanche to wipe out Vietnamese Communist forces and
sanctuaries in Cambodia, as opposed to Sihanouk's extremely equivocal position
on the matter.) Both men, as matters turned out, served as prime minister in the
new government, for which diplomatic recognition was immediately forthcoming
from Washington.
• The United States could seemingly also rely on Sink Matak, a committed anti-
Communist who had been profiled by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence
Agency as "a friend of the West and ... co-operative with U.S. officials during the
1950s." 25
• Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in his biographic work on Kissinger,
states chat Sihanouk's "immediate overthrow had been for years a high priority of
the Green Berets reconnaissance units operating inside Cambodia since the late
1960s, There is also incontrovertible evidence that Lon Nol was approached by
agents of American military intelligence in 1969 and asked to overthrow the
Sihanouk government. Sihanouk made similar charges in his 1973 memoir, My
War With The CIA, but they were not taken seriously then." 26
• An opponent of Sihanouk, Prom Thos, who became a minister in the new
government, has said that whether Lon Nol had specific promises of American
help before the coup is unimportant: "We all just knew that the United States
would help us; there had been many stories of CIA approaches and offers before
then." 27
• The CIA's intimate links to the conspiratorial circle are exemplified by an
Agency report prepared six days before the coup, entitled "Indications of Possible
Coup in Phnom Penh". It disclosed that anti-Communist demonstrations against
the Vietcong and North Vietnamese embassies in the capital the previous day had
been planned by Sirik Matak and Lon Nol as part of a showdown policy against
Sihanouk and his followers, and that the two men had put the army on alert "to
prepare ... for a coup against Sihanouk if Sihanouk refused to support" them. 28
137
• General William Rosson, deputy to General Creighton Abrams, the Commander
of US Forces in Vietnam at the time, has declared that American commanders
were informed several days beforehand that a coup was being planned and that
United States support was solicited. 29
• Roger Morris, who was serving under Henry Kissinger on the National Security
Council staff when the coup took place, reported that "It was clear in the White
House that the CIA station in Phnom Penh knew the plotters well, probably knew
their plans, and did nothing to alert Sihanouk. They informed Washington well in
• William Shawctoss asserts that had Sihanouk "returned quickly and calmly to
Phnom Penh [following the anti-communist demonstrations] he would most likely
have been able to avert disaster." That he did not do so may not have been by
chance. Frank Snepp has revealed that the CIA persuaded Sihanouk's mother, the
Queen, to send a message to her son abroad reassuring him that the situation was
not serious enough to warrant his return. 31
With Sihanouk and his irritating neutralism no longer an obstacle, American
military wheels began to spin. Within hours of the coup, US and South Vietnam forces
stationed in border districts were directed to establish communication with Cambodian
commanders on the other side and take steps toward military co-operation. The next
day, the Cambodian army called in an American spotter plane and South Vietnamese
artillery during a sweep of a Vietcong sanctuary by a battalion of Cambodian troops
inside Cambodia. The New York Times declared that "The battle appeared to be the
most determined Cambodian effort yet to drive the Vietcong out of border areas." 32 The
Great Cambodian War had begun. It was to persist for five terrible years.
The enemy confronting the United States and its Saigon and Phnom Penh allies
was now not simply the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. The Cambodian
Communists — the Khmer Rouge — under the leadership of Pol Pot, had entered the
conflict, as had sundry Cambodian supporters of Prince Sihanouk.
On 30 April 1970, the first full-scale American invasion of the new war was
launched. It produced a vast outcry of protest in the United States, rocking university
campuses from coast to coast. Perhaps the most extraordinary reaction was the angry
resignations of four men from Henry Kissinger's National Security Council staff,
including Roger Morris. (Kissinger labeled the resignations as "the cowardice of the
Eastern establishment".)
By the end of May, scores of villages had been reduced to rubble and ashes by
US air power; the long train of Cambodian refugees had begun their march.
Three years and more than a hundred thousand tons of bombs later, 27 January
1973 to be precise, an agreement was signed in Paris putting an end to a decade of
American warfare in Vietnam. The bombing of Cambodia, however, continued.
Prior to the Paris agreement, the official position of the Nixon administration,
repeatedly asserted, was that the sole purpose of bombing Cambodia was to protect
American lives in Vietnam. Yet now, the US not only did not cease the bombing, it
increased it, in a last desperate attempt to keep the Khmer Rouge from coming to
power. During March, April and May, the tonnage of bombs unloosed over Cambodia
was more than double that of the entire previous year. The society's traditional economy
had vanished. The old Cambodia was being destroyed forever.
Under increasing pressure from Congress, the Nixon administration finally
ended the bombing in August. More than two million Cambodians had been made
homeless.
It does appear rather ludicrous, in the light of this application of brute force, that
the CIA was at the same time carrying out the most subtle of psychological tactics. To
138
spread dissatisfaction about the exiled Sihanouk amongst the Cambodian peasantry who
revered him, a CIA sound engineer, using sophisticated electronics, fashioned an
excellent counterfeit of the Prince's distinctive voice and manner of speaking —
breathless, high-pitched, and full of giggles. This voice was beamed from a clandestine
radio station in Laos with messages artfully designed to offend any good Cambodian. In
one of the broadcasts, "Sihanouk" exhorted young women to aid the cause by sleeping
with the valiant Vietcong. 34
In a farewell press conference in September 1973, the American Ambassador to
Cambodia, Emory Swank, called what had taken place there "Indochina's most useless
war".
Later, California Congressman Pete McClosky, following a visit to Cambodia,
had harsher words. He was moved to declare that what the United States had "done to
the country is greater evil than we have done to any country in the world, and wholly
without reason, except for our own benefit to fight against the Vietnamese." 36
On 17 April 197S, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh in victory. Two
weeks later, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. Incredibly, the
Khmer Rouge were to inflict even greater misery upon this unhappy land. And to add to
the irony — or to multiply it — the United States supported the Khmer Rouge after their
subsequent defeat by the Vietnamese, both by defending their right to the United
Nations Cambodian seat, and in their military struggle against the Cambodian
government and its Vietnamese allies. In November 1980, Ray Cline, former Deputy
Director of the CIA, visited a Khmer Rouge enclave in Cambodia in his capacity as
senior foreign policy adviser to President-elect Ronald Reagan. A Khmer Rouge press
release spoke of the visit in warm terms. This was in keeping with the Reagan
administration's subsequent opposition to the Vietnamese-supported Phnom Penh
government. A lingering bitter hatred of Vietnam by unreconstructed American cold
warriors appears to be the only explanation for this policy.
21. Laos 1957-1973
L'Armee Clandestine
For the past two years the US has carried out one of the most sustained
bombing campaigns in history against essentially civilian targets in northeastern
Laos.... Operating from Thai bases and from aircraft carriers, American jets have
destroyed the great majority of villages and towns in the northeast. Severe
casualties have been inflicted upon the inhabitants ... Refugees from the Plain of
Jars report they were bombed almost daily by American jets last year. They say
they spent most of the past two years living in caves or holes.
Far Eastern Economic Review, Hong Kong, 1970 1
[The Laos operation] is something of which we can be proud as Americans. It has
involved virtually no American casualties. What we are getting for our money
there ... is, I think, to use the old phrase, very cost effective.
U. Alexis Johnson, US Under Secretary of State, 197 1 2
139
The United Stales undertook the bombing campaign because its ground war
against the Pathet Lao had failed.
The ground war had been carried out because the Pathet Lao were led by people
whom the State Department categorized as "communist", no more, no less.
The Pathet Lao (re)turned to warfare because of their experiences in "working
within the system".
In 1957 the Pathet Lao ("Lao nation") held two ministerial posts in the coalition
"government of national union". This was during John Foster Dulles's era, and if there
was anything the fanatic Secretary of State hated more than neutralism it was a coalition
with communists. This government featured both. There could be little other reason for
the development of the major American intervention into this impoverished and
primitive land of peasants. The American ambassador to Laos at the time, J. Graham
Parsons, was to admit later: "I struggled for sixteen months to prevent a coalition." 3
In addition to its demand for inclusion in the coalition government, the Pathet
Lao had called for diplomatic relations with the countries of the Soviet bloc and the
acceptance of aid from them, as was already the case with Western nations. "Agreement
to these conditions," said Washington, "would have given the Communists their most
significant gains in Southeast Asia since the partition of Indochina." 4 Others would say
that the Pathet Lao's conditions were simply what neutralism is all about.
In May 1958, the Pathet Lao and other leftists, running a campaign based on
government corruption and indifference, won 13 of 21 contested seats for the National
Assembly and wound up controlling more than one-third of the new legislature. 5 Two
months later, however, Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma, a man universally
categorized as a neutralist, "resigned" to form a new government which would exclude
the Pathet Lao ministers. 6 (He subsequently claimed that he was forced to resign due to
continued American opposition to Laotian neutrality; as it happened, one Phoui
Sananikone, backed by the US, became premier in the reorganized government.) Then,
in January 1959, the non-left majority in the National Assembly voted, in effect, to
dissolve the Assembly in order "to counteract communist influence and subversion".
The left was now altogether excluded from the government, and the elections scheduled
for December were canceled. 8
If this wasn't enough to disenchant the Pathet Lao or anyone else with the
Laotian political process, there was, in the late 1950s and eariy 1960s, the spectacle of a
continuous parade of coups and counter-coups, of men overthrown winding up in the
new government, and regimes headed by men who had sided with the French in their
war against Indochinese independence, while the Pathet Lao had fought against the
colonialists. 9 There were as well government-rigged elections, with the CIA stuffing
ballot boxes; 10 different regimes-cum-warlords governing simultaneously from different
"capitals", their armies fighting each other, switching allies and enemies when it suited
them; hundreds of millions of US dollars pouring into a tiny kingdom which was 99
percent agricultural, with an economy based more on barter than money, the result
being "unimaginable bribery, graft, currency manipulation and waste". 11
The CIA and the State Department alone could take credit for engineering
coups, through force, bribery or other pressures, at least once in each of the years 1958,
12
1959 and 1960, if not in others. "By merely withholding the monthly payment to the
troops," wrote Roger Hilsman (whose career encompassed both agencies, perhaps
covertly simultaneously), "the United States could create the conditions for toppling any
Lao government whose policies it opposed. As it turned out, in fact, the United States
used this weapon twice — to bring down the government of one Lao leader and to break
the will of another." 13
140
The American wheeling and dealing centered around giving power to the CIA's
hand-picked rightist strongman Phoumi Nosavan, ousting Souvanna Phouma and other
neutralists, and jailing Pathet Lao leaders, including the movement's head,
Souphanouvong (the half-brother of Souvanna Phouma, both being princes of the royal
family). Souphanouvong insisted that neither he nor the Pathet Lao were communist,
but were rather "ultra-nationalist". 14 Crucial to understanding his statements, of course,
is the question of exactly what he meant by the term "communist". This is not clear, but
neither is it clear what the Stare Department meant when it referred to him as such. The
Pathet Lao were the only sizable group in the country serious about social change, a
characteristic which of course tends to induce Washington officials to apply the
communist label.
In August 1960, Kong Le, a military officer with his own troop following,
staged a coup and set up a neutralist government under Souvanna Phouma, rejecting
Pathet Lao help. 15 But when this government became a casualty of a CIA coup in
December, Kong Le allied himself with the Pathet Lao; later he turned to the United
States for aid and fought against the Pathet Lao. Such was the way of the Laotian circus.
No study of Laos of this period appears to have had notable success in
untangling the muddle of who exactly replaced whom, and when, and how, and why.
After returning from Laos, writer Norman Cousins stated in 1961 that "if you want to
get a sense of the universe unraveling, come to Laos. Complexity such as this has to be
respected."
One thing that came through unambiguously, however, was the determination of
the United States to save Laos from communism and neutralism. To this end, the CIA
set about creating its now-famous Armee Clandestine., a process begun by the US Army
in the mid-1950s when it organized Meo hill tribesmen (the same ethnic group
organized in Vietnaml. Over the years, other peoples of Laos were added, reaching at
least 30,000 in the mid-1960s, half of them more or less full-time soldiers ... many
thousands more from Thailand ... hundreds of other Asians came on board, South
Vietnamese, Filipinos, Taiwanese, South Koreans, men who had received expert
training from their American mentors in their home countries for other wars, now being
recycled ... an army, said the New York Times, "armed, equipped, fed, paid, guided,
strategically and tactically, and often transported into and out of action by the United
States" ... trained and augmented by the CIA, and by men
of every branch of the US military with their multiple specialties, the many
pilots of the CIA's Air America, altogether some 2,000 Americans in and over Laos, and
thousands more in Asia helping with the logistics. A Secret Array, secret, that is, from
the American people and Congress — US military personnel were there under various
covers, some as civilians in mufti, having "resigned" from the service for the occasion
and been hired by a private company created by the CIA; others served as embassy
attaches; CIA pilots were officially under contract to the Agency for International
Development (AID); Americans who were killed in Laos were reported to have died in
Vietnam 17 ... all this in addition to the "official" government forces, the Royal Laotian
Army, greatly expanded and totally paid for by the United States ... 18
Laos was an American plantation, a CIA playground. During the 1960s, the
Agency roamed over much of the land at will, building an airstrip, a hangar, or a base
here, a warehouse, barracks, or a radar site there; 19 relocating thousands of people,
entire villages, whole tribes, to suit strategic military needs; recruiting warriors "through
money and/or the threat or use of force and/or promises of independent kingdoms which
it had no intention of fulfilling, and then keeping them fighting long beyond the point
when they wished to stop;" 20 while the "legendary" pilots of Air America roamed far
141
and wide as well, hard drinking, daredevil flying, death defying, great stories to tell the
guys back home, if you survived. 21
Some of the stories had to do with drugs. Flying opium and heroin all over
Indochina to serve the personal and entrepreneurial needs of the CIA's various military
and political allies, ultimately turning numerous GIs in Vietnam into addicts. The
operation was not a paragon of discretion. Heroin was refined in a laboratory located on
the site of CIA headquarters in northern Laos. After a decade of American military
intervention, Southeast Asia had become the source of 70 percent of the world's illicit
22
opium and the major supplier of raw materials for America's booming heroin market.
At the same time, the hearts and minds of the Laotian people, at least of those
who could read, were not overlooked. The US Information Agency was there to put out
a magazine with a circulation of 43,000; this, in a country where the circulation of the
largest newspaper was 3,300; there were as well USIA wall newspapers, films, leaflet
drops, and radio programs.
In the face of it all, the Pathet Lao more than held their own. The CIA was over-
extended, and, unlike the motley band of Asians assembled by the Agency, the soldiers
of the Pathet Lao had some idea of what they were fighting for. The Soviet Union,
aware of what the United States was doing in Laos, even if the American public was
not, was alarmed by the establishment of a pro-American government in the country,
and acceded to a cold-war knee-reflex by sending military supplies to the Pathet Lao,
though nothing remotely on the order of the US commitment. 24
Beginning in the early 1960s, the North Vietnamese were aiding them as well.
Hanoi's overriding interest in Laos was not necessarily the creation of a Communist
state, but the prevention of a belligerent government on its border. In January 1961, the
New York Times reported that "Many Western diplomats in Vientiane [capital of Laos]
... feel the Communists would have been content to leave Laos alone provided she
remained neutral and outside the United States sphere of influence." 25
Hanoi was concerned not only by the American political and military operations
in Laos, but by the actions of US Special Forces teams which were entering North
Vietnam to engage in espionage, sabotage, and assassination, 26 and by the bombings of
27
the country being carried out by the US Air Force at a time when the war in South
Vietnam was still but a shadow of what was to come. Later, as the wars in Vietnam and
Laos became intertwined, Laos formed part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the principal
route by which Hanoi supplied its comrades in South Vietnam, and the North
Vietnamese fought to protect it as well as attacking American radar installations in Laos
used to aid US bombing of North Vietnam.
The nature and extent of North Vietnam's aid to the Pathet Lao before this
period is difficult to ascertain from Western sources, because such charges typically
emanated from the Laotian government or the State Department. On a number of
occasions, their report of a North Vietnamese military operation in Laos turned out to be
a fabrication. William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, in A Nation of Sheep, summarized
one of these non-events from the summer of 1959:
The people of the United States were led to believe that Laos physically had been
invaded by foreign Communist troops from across its northern border. Our
Secretary of State called the situation grave; our ambassador to the U.N. called for
world action; our press carried scare headlines; our senior naval officer implied
armed intervention and was seconded by ranking Congressmen ... The entire
affair was a fraud. No military invasion of Laos had taken place ... There seemed
no doubt that a war embracing thousands of troops, tanks, planes, and mass
battles, was raging.
142
Regardless of how the accounts were worded, this was the picture given the
nation. 28
It had all been a ploy to induce Congress not to reduce aid for Laos, something
seriously being considered because of the pervasive corruption which had been exposed
concerning the aid program. 29 The Laotian government and the large American
establishment in Laos, each for their own reasons, were not about to let the golden
goose slip away that easily.
On the East day of 1960, the Laotian government announced to the world that
seven battalions of North Vietnamese troops had invaded the country. By all accounts,
and by the utter lack of evidence, this claim as well cannot be taken seriously. 30
And in 1962, reported Bernard Fall, the renowned French scholar on Indochina:
After a battle between government forces and the Pathet Lao, in spite of the fact that
Col. Edwin Elder, the American commander in the area of the battle, immediately stated
that there was
"no evidence to show that Chinese or [North] Vietnamese had participated in the
attack", the Laotians — and much of the U.S. press, and official Washington with
them — immediately claimed that they were again faced with a large-scale
"foreign invasion". 31
Shortly after Kennedy became president in January 1961, he made a sustained
diplomatic effort to establish a coalition government in Laos, precisely what the
Eisenhower administration and the CIA had done their best to sabotage. Although he
sometimes fell back on conventional cold-war rhetoric when speaking of Laos, one part
of John F. Kennedy realized the absurdity of fighting for the backward country, a land
he considered not "worthy of engaging the attention of great powers". 32 Soviet Premier
Khrushchev, for his part, was reportedly "bored" with the question of Laos, and irritably
asked Kennedy's emissary why Washington bothered so much about the country.
Eventually, in July 1962, a multi-nation conference in Geneva signed an
agreement for a coalition government in Laos. But in the mountains and the plains of
the country, this was no longer a viable option. The CIA had too much time, effort,
material and emotion invested in its Secret Army; it was the best war the Agency had
going anywhere; it was great adventure. And the Pathet Lao were much stronger now
than a few years earlier. They were not about to buy such shopworn, suspect goods
again, although everyone went through the motions.
Both sides regularly accused each other of violating the agreement, and not
without justification. The North Vietnamese, for example, did not withdraw all of their
troops from Laos, while the US left behind all manner of military personnel, American
and Asian, who remained under AID and other civilian cover, but this was nonetheless a
violation of the agreement. Moreover, Christopher Robbins, in his study of Air
America, has noted that US "Military advisers and CIA personnel moved across the
border into Thailand, where they were flown in every day [to Laos] like commuters by
Ait America, whose entire helicopter operation was based in Udorn [Thailand]." 34 Air
35
America, by the early 1970s, had no less than 4,000 employees in Thailand.
Thus it was that the fighting dragged on, though only sporadically. In April
1964, the coalition government, such as it was, was overthrown by the right wing, with
the CIA's man Phoumi Nosavan emerging as part of a rightist government headed by
the perennial survivor Souvanna Phouma to give it a neutralist fig leaf. 36 The Pathet Lao
were once again left out in the cold. For them it was the very last straw. The fighting
greatly intensified, the skirmishes were now war, and the Pathet Lao offensive soon
scored significant advances. Then the American bombing began.
143
Between 1965 and 1973, more than two million tons of bombs rained down
37
upon the people of Laos, considerably mote than the US had dropped on both
Germany and Japan during the Second World War, albeit for a shorter period. For the
first few years, the bombing was directed primarily at the provinces controlled by the
Pathet Lao. Of the bombing, Fred Branfman, a former American community worker in
Laos, wrote: "village after village was leveled, countless people buried alive by high
explosives, or burnt alive by napalm and white phosphorous, or riddled by anti-
personnel bomb pellets" 38 ... "The United States has undertaken," said a Senate report,
"... a large-scale ait war over Laos to destroy the physical and social infrastructure of
Pathet Lao held areas and to interdict North Vietnamese infiltration ... throughout ail
this there has been a policy of subterfuge and secrecy ... through such things as
saturation bombing and the forced evacuation of population from enemy held or
threatened areas — we have helped to create untold agony for hundreds of thousands of
villagers."
The American military, however, kept proper records. AID could report to
Congress that wounds suffered by civilian war casualties were as follows:
1. Type: Soft tissue, 39 percent. Compound fracture, 30 percent. Amputation, 12
percent. Intra-abdominai, 10 percent. Intra-thoracic, 3 percent. Intra-cranial, 1
percent.
2. Location: Lower extremities, 60 percent. Upper extremities, 15 percent. Trunk,
18 percent. Head, 7 percent. 40
There was no happy way out for the Laotian people. In October 1971, one could
read in The Guardian of London ...
although US officials deny it vehemently, ample evidence exists to confirm charges that
the Meo villages that do try to find their own way out of the war — even if it is simply by
staying neutral and refusing to send their 13 -year-olds to fight in the CIA army — are
immediately denied American rice and transport, and ultimately bombed by the US Air
Force. 41
The fledgling society that the United States was trying to make extinct — the CIA
dropped millions of dollars in forged Pathet Lao currency as well, in an attempt to
wreck the economy 42 — was one which Fred Branfman described thus:
The Pathet Lao rule over the Plain of Jars begun in May 1964 brought its people
into a post-colonial era. For the first time they were taught pride in their country
and people, instead of admiration for a foreign culture; schooling and massive adult
literacy campaigns were conducted in Laotian instead of French; and mild but
thorough social revolution — ranging from land reform to greater equality for
women — was instituted. 43
Following on the heels of events in Vietnam, a ceasefire was arrived at in Laos
in 1973, and yet another attempt at coalition government was undertaken. (This one
lasted until 1975 when, after renewed fighting, the Pathet Lao took over full control of
the country.) Laos had become a land of nomads, without villages, without farms; a
generation of refugees; hundreds of thousands dead, many more maimed. When the US
Air Force closed down its radio station, it signed off with the message: "Good-by and
1 1 44
see you next war.
Thus it was that the worst of Washington's fears had come to pass: All of
Indochina — Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos — had fallen to the Communists. During the
144
initial period of US involvement in Indochina in the 1950s, John Foster Dulles, Dwight
Eisenhower and other American officials regularly issued doomsday pronouncements of
the type known as the "Domino Theory", warning that if Indochina should fall, other
nations in Asia would topple over as well. In one instance, President Eisenhower listed
no less than Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Indonesia amongst the
anticipated "falling dominos". 45
Such warnings were repeated periodically over the next decade by succeeding
administrations and other supporters of US policy in Indochina as a key argument in
defense of such policy. The fact that these ominous predictions turned out to have no
basis in reality did not deter Washington officialdom from promulgating the same
dogma up until the 1990s about almost each new world "trouble-spot", testimony to
their unshakable faith in the existence and inter-workings of the International
Communist Conspiracy.
22. Haiti 1959-1963
The Marines land, again
"Duvalier has performed an economic miracle," remarked a Haitian of his country's
dictator. "He has taught us to live without money ... to eat without food ... to live
without life." 1
And when Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier's voodoo magic wore thin, he could
always count on the US Marines to continue his people's education.
During the night of 12-13 August 1959, a boat landed on the northern coast of
Haiti with a reported 30 men, Haitians and Cubans and perhaps others aboard. The men
had set sail from Cuba some 50 miles away. Their purpose was to overthrow the
tyrannical Haitian government, a regime whose secret police, it was said, outnumbered
its army.
In short order, the raiding party, equipped with heavy weapons, captured a small
army post and began to recruit and arm villagers for the cause. 2 The government
reported that about 200 persons had joined them. 3 Haitian exiles in Venezuela, in an
apparently coordinated effort, broadcast appeals to their countrymen to aid the invaders.
They set at 120 the number of men who had landed in Haiti, although this appears to be
an exaggeration. 4
The initial reaction of the Duvalier government was one of panic, and the
police began rounding up opposition sympathizers. 5 It was at this point that the
US military mission, in Haiti to train Duvalier's forces, stepped in. The
Americans instituted an air and sea reconnaissance to locate the rebels. Haitian
soldiers, accompanied by US Marines, were airlifted to the area and went into
the field to do battle with them. 6 Two other US Navy planes and
a helicopter arrived from Puerto Rico. 7
According to their commander, Col- Robert Debs Heinl, Jr., the American
Marines took part in the fighting, which lasted until 22 August. 8 The outcome was a
complete rout of the rebel forces.
Information about the men who came from Cuba derives almost exclusively from
the Haitian government and the American military mission. These sources claim that the
raiding party was composed of about 30 men and that, with the exception of one or two
145
Haitians who led them, they were all Cubans. Another report, referred to in the New
York Times, stated that there were ten Haitians and two Venezuelans amongst the 30
invaders. 9 The latter ratio is probably closer to the truth, for there was a considerable
number of Haitian exiles living in Cuba, many of whom had gained military experience
during the recent Cuban revolution; for obvious reasons of international politics and
fighting incentive, such men were the most likely candidates to be part of an invasion of
their homeland.
The Castro government readily admitted that the raiding party had come from
Cuba but denied that the government had known or approved of it. This claim would
seem rather suspect were it not for the fact that the Cuban coast guard had thwarted a
similar undertaking in April. 10
The first members of the American military mission had arrived in Haiti in
January, largely in response to another invasion attempt the previous July (originating
probably in the Dominican Republic). Regardless of all the horror stories about the
Haitian regime — such as the one Col. Heinl tells of his 12-year-old son being arrested
when he was overheard expressing sympathy for a group of hungry peasants he saw —
Duvalier was Washington's man. After all was said and done, he could be counted upon
to keep his Black nation, which was usually accorded the honor of being Latin
America's poorest, from turning Red. Heinl has recounted the instructions he received
from a State Department Under Secretary in January:
Colonel, the most important way you can support our objectives in Haiti is to help keep Duvalier in power so
he can serve out his full term in office, and maybe a little longer than that if everything works out."
The Kennedy administration, which came to power in January 1961, had little use
for Papa Doc, and supported his overthrow as well as his possible assassination.
According to the later testimony of CIA official Walter Elder before a Senate
investigating committee, the Agency furnished arms to Haitian dissidents seeking to
topple the dictator. Elder added that while the assassination of Duvalier was not
contemplated, the arms were provided "to help [the dissidents] take what measures were
deemed necessary to replace the government," and it was realized, he said, that Duvalier
might be killed in the course of the overthrow. 12
But as Cuba increasingly became the United States' bete noire, the CIA's great
obsession, Washington's policy changed. Haiti's cooperation was needed for the success
of US efforts to have Cuba expelled from the Organization of American States in 1963.
From that point on, Duvalier enjoyed the full diplomatic and economic support of the
US. When the Haitian leader died on 12 April 1971, the American Ambassador Clinton
Knox was the only diplomat present at the midnight swearing-in of 19-year-old Jean-
Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier as the new President for Life, who was to receive the same
economic, political and military support as had "Papa Doc", with only the occasional
hiccup of a protest from Washington when the level of repression became difficult to
ignore.
23. Guatemala 1960
One good coup deserves another
In November 1960, as John F. Kennedy was preparing to succeed Dwight
Eisenhower, the obsessive priority of American foreign policy — to invade Cuba —
146
proceeded without pause. On the beaches and in the jungles of Guatemala, Nicaragua
and Florida, the Bay of Pigs invasion was being rehearsed.
On the 13th of the month, five days after Kennedy's victory, Guatemalan military
personnel broke out in armed rebellion against the government of General Miguel
Ydigoras Fuentes, seizing two military bases and the port city of Puerto Barrios.
Reports of the number of officers involved in the uprising vary from 45 to 120, the latter
figure representing almost half the Guatemalan Army's officer corps. The officers
commanded as many as 3,000 troops, a significant percentage of the armed forces. Their
goals, it later developed, were more nationalistic than ideological. The officers were fed
up with the corruption in the Ydigotas regime and in the army, and were particularly
incensed about the use of their country by a foreign power as a springboard for an
invasion of Cuba, some of them being admirers of Fidel Castro for his nationalist
policies. One of the dissident officers later characterized the American training base in
Guatemala as "a shameful violation of our national sovereignty. And why was it
permitted? Because our government is a puppet." 1
The rebellion was crushed within a matter of days, reportedly by the sole power
of the Guatemalan Air Force. Some years later, a different picture was to emerge.
The rebels were a force to be reckoned with. The ease with which they had taken
over the two garrisons and the real possibility of their mutiny spreading to other bases
set alarms ringing at the CIA base, a large coffee plantation in a remote corner of
southwestern Guatemala, where the Agency and the US Air Force were training the
army of Cuban exiles who were to launch the attack upon their homeland. The CIA
feared, and rightly so, that a new regime would send them, the Cubans, and the whole
operation packing.
In Washington, President Eisenhower ordered US naval and air units to patrol the
Caribbean coast and "shoot if necessary" to prevent any "communist-led" invasion of
Guatemala or Nicaragua. Eisenhower, like Ydigoras, saw the hand of international
communism, particularly Cuba, behind the uprising, although no evidence of this was
ever presented. 3 It was all most ironic in light of the fact that it was the conspiracy of
the two leaders to overthrow Cuba that was one of the reasons for the uprising; and that
the US naval fleet ordered into action was deployed from Guantanamo Naval Base in
Cuba, an American military installation present in that country against the vociferous
objections of the Cuban government.
In Guatemala, meanwhile, the CIA decided upon a solution to the dilemma that
was both remarkably simple and close at hand: American and Cuban pilots took off
from their training ground and bombed and strafed rebel headquarters outside
Guatemala City, and bombed the town and airfield of Puerto Barrios. Caught
completely by surprise, and defenseless against this superior force, the rebels'
insurrection collapsed. 4
Back at the coffee plantation, the CIA resumed the function which had been so
rudely interrupted, the preparation for the overthrow of the Cuban government.
No announcement about the bombings was made in Washington, nor did a report
appear in the American press.
The CIA actions were probably not widely known about in Guatemala either, but
it became public knowledge that President Ydigoras had asked Washington for the naval
and air support, and had even instructed the Guatemalan Ambassador in Washington to
"Get in touch immediately with [Assistant Secretary of State for Inter- American Affairs]
Thomas Mann to coordinate your action." 5 Thus it was that the Guatemalan president,
needing afterward to distance himself a little from so much Yanqui protection, was
147
moved to state that countries like Guatemala are at a disadvantage because "Cuba is a
satellite of powerful Russia", but "we are not a satellite of the United States." 6
The final irony was that some of the dissident officers who went into hiding
became more radicalized by their experience. During their revolt they had spurned
offers of support from some of the peasants — though this would necessarily have been
very limited in any case — because fighting for social change was not at all what the
officers had in mind at the time. But as fugitives, thrown into greater contact with the
peasants, they eventually came to be moved by the peasants' pressing need for land and
for a way out of their wretched existence. 7 In 1962, several of the officers were to
emerge as leaders of a guerrilla movement which incorporated "November Thirteen" as
part of its name. In their opening statement, the guerrillas declared:
Democracy vanished from our country long ago. No people can live in a country
where there is no democracy. That is why the demand for changes is mounting in
our country. We can no longer carry on in this way. We must overthrow the
Ydigoras government and set up a government which represents human rights,
seeks ways and means to save our country from its hardships, and pursues a serious
self-respecting foreign policy. 8
A simple sentiment, stated even simpler, but, as we shall see, a movement fated to
come up against the wishes of the United States. For if Washington could casually do
away with an elected government in Guatemala, as it had in 1 954, it could be moved by
a guerrilla army only as rocks by waves or the moon by howling wolves.
24. France/Algeria 1960s
L'etat, c'est la CIA
When John F. Kennedy assumed office in January 1961, he was confronted with a
CIA at the zenith of its power and credibility. In the Agency's first 14 years, no formal
congressional investigation of it had taken place, nor had any "watchdog" committee
been established; four investigations of the CIA by independent task forces during this
period had ensured that everything relating to things covert remained just that; with the
exception of the U-2 incident the year before, no page-one embarrassments, scandals, or
known failures; what had received a measure of publicity — the coups in Guatemala and
Iran — were widely regarded as CIA success stories. White House denials and a
compliant media had kept the Agency's misadventure in Indonesia in 1958 from the
public scrutiny it deserved.
It is probable that the CIA had more staff officers overseas, under official and
unofficial covers, than the State Department, and this in addition to its countless paid
agents. Often the CIA Chief of Station had been in a particular country longer than the
American ambassador, had more money at his disposal, and exerted more influence.
When it suited their purposes, Agency officers would completely bypass the
ambassador and normal protocol to deal directly with the country's head of state and
other high officials.
The CIA had its own military capabilities, including its own air force; for all
intents and purposes, its own foreign service with, indeed, its own foreign policy,
though never at cross-purposes with fundamental US cold-war, anti-communist
ideology and goals.
148
Seemingly without fear of exposure or condemnation, the Agency felt free to
carry out sundry Dr. Strangelove experiments involving control of the human mind and
all manner of biochemical weapons, including the release of huge amounts of bacteria
into the air in the United States which resulted in much illness and a number of deaths.
It was all very heady stuff for the officers of the CIA, playing their men's games
with their boys' toys. They recognized scarcely any limitation upon their freedom of
action. British colonial governors they were, and all the world was India.
Then, in mid-April, came the disaster at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. The
international repercussions had barely begun to subside when the Agency was again
catapulted into world headlines. On 22 April four French generals in Algeria seized
power in an attempt to maintain the country's union with France. The putsch, which
held out but four days, was a direct confrontation with French President Charles de
Gaulle, who had dramatically proclaimed a policy leading "not to an Algeria governed
from France, but to an Algerian Algeria" .
The next day, the leftist Italian newspaper, // Paese, stated that "It is not by
chance that some people in Paris are accusing the American secret service headed by
Allen Dulles of having participated in the plot of the four 'ultra' generals." 1
Whether // Paese was the original source of this charge remains a mystery. Dulles
himself later wrote that the Italian daily was "one of the first to launch it" (emphasis
added). He expressed the opinion that "This particular myth was a Communist plant,
pure and simple." 2
The New York Times reported that the tumors apparently began circulating by
word of mouth on the day of the putsch, a report echoed by the Washington Star which
added that some of the rumors were launched "by minor officials at the Elysee Palace
itself" who gave reporters "to understand that the generals' plot was backed by strongly
anti-communist elements in the United States Government and military services." 4
Whatever its origins, the story spread rapidly around the world, and the French
Foreign Office refused to refute the allegation, he Monde asserted in a front-page
editorial on 28 April that "the behavior of the United States during the recent crisis was
not particularly skillful. It seems established that American agents more or less
encouraged Challe [the leader of the putsch] ... President Kennedy, of course, knew
nothing of all this." 5
Reports from all sources were in agreement that if the CIA had indeed been
involved in the putsch, it had been so for two reasons: (11 the concern that if Algeria
were granted its independence, "communists" would soon come to power, being those
in the ranks of the National Liberation Front (NLF) which had been fighting the French
Army in Algeria for several years — the legendary Battle of Algiers. It was with the NLF
that de Gaulle was expected to negotiate a settlement; (2) the hope that it would
precipitate the downfall of de Gaulle, an end desired because the French President was a
major stumbling block to US aspirations concerning NATO: among other things, he
refused to incorporate French troops into an integrated military command, and he
opposed exclusive American control over the alliance's nuclear weapons.
By all accounts, it appears that the rebel officers had counted on support from
important military and civilian quarters in France to extend the rebellion to the home
country and overthrow de Gaulle. Fanciful as this may sound, the fact remains that the
French government took the possibility seriously — French Premier Michel Debre went
on television to warn the nation of an imminent paratroop invasion of the Paris area and
to urge mass opposition. 6
Reaction in the American press to the allegations had an unmistakably motley
quality. Washington Post columnist Marquis Childs said that the French were so
149
shocked by the generals' coup that they had to find a scapegoat. At the same time he
quoted "one of the highest officials of the French government" as saying:
Of course, your government, neither your State Department nor your President, had
anything to do with this. But when you have so many hundreds of agents in every
part of the world, it is not to be wondered at that some of them should have got in
touch with the generals in Algiers. 7
Time magazine discounted the story, saying too that the United States was being
made a scapegoat and that the CIA had become a "favorite target in recent weeks". 8
James Reston wrote in the New York Times that the CIA:
was involved in an embarrassing liaison with the anti-Gaullist officers who staged
last week's insurrection in Algiers ... [the Bay of Pigs and Algerian events have]
increased the feeling in the White House that the CIA has gone beyond the bounds
of an objective intelligence -gathering agency and has become the advocate of men
and policies that have embarrassed the Administration. 9
However, C.L. Sulzberger, who had been the man at the New York Times closest
to the CIA since its founding, stated flatly that "No American in Algeria had to do with
any insurrectional leader ... No consular employee saw any rebel." (A few days later,
though, Secretary of State Dean Rusk disclosed that an emissary of the rebellious
French generals had visited the US Consulate in Algiers to request aid but had been
summarily rebuffed.)
The affair, wrote Sulzberger, was "a deliberate effort to poison Franco-American
relationships" begun in Moscow but abetted by "anti- American French officials" and
"naive persons in Washington ... When one checks, one finds all this began in a
Moscow Izvestia article April 25." 10 This last, as we have seen, was incorrect.
Dean of American columnists, Walter Lippmann, who had seen de Gaulle in Paris
shortly before the putsch, wrote:
the reason why the French Government has not really exculpated the CIA of
encouraging the Algerian rebel generals is that it was already so angry with the
CIA for meddling in French internal politics. The French grievance, justified or not,
has to do with recent French legislation for the French nuclear weapon, and the
alleged effort of CIA agents to interfere with that legislation. 1 1
Newsweek repeated the claim that it was "French officials" who had been "the
main sources" of the rumors in the first place. When challenged by the American
administration the French denied their authorship and tended to soften the charges.
Some French officials eventually declared the matter to be closed, though they still
failed to explicitly rule out the allegations about American involvement. 12
In early May 1961, L'Express, the widely-read French liberal weekly, published
what was perhaps the first detailed account of the mysterious affair. Their Algerian
correspondent, Claude Krief, reported: 13
Both in Paris and Washington the facts are now known, though they will never be
publicly admitted. In private, the highest French personalities make no secret of it.
What they say is this; "The CIA played a direct part in the Algiers coup, and
certainly weighed heavily on the decision taken by ex-general Challe to start his
putsch. "
Not long before, Challe had held the position of NATO Commander-in-Chief,
Allied Forces, Central Europe, as a result of which he had been in daily contact with US
150
military officers. Krief wrote that certain American officials in NATO and the
Pentagon had encouraged Challe, and that the general had several meetings with CIA
officers who told him that "to get rid of de Gaulle would render the Free World a great
service". Krief noted that Challe, despite an overweening ambition, was very cautious
and serious-minded: "All the people who know him well, are deeply convinced that he
had been encouraged by the CIA to go ahead."
At a luncheon in Washington the previous year, Jacques Soustelle, the former
Governor-General of Algeria who had made public his disagreement with de Gaulle's
Algeria policy, had met with CIA officials, including Richard Bissell, head of covert
operations. Soustelle convinced the Agency officials, according to Krief, that Algeria
would become, through de Gaulle's blundering, "a Soviet base". This luncheon became
something of a cause celebre in the speculation concerning the CIA's possible role. The
New York Times and others reported that it had been given by the Agency for
Soustelle. 15 US officials, however, insisted that the luncheon had been arranged by
someone at the French Embassy at Soustelle's request. This French official, they said,
had been present throughout the meeting and thus there could have been no dark
conspiracy. 16 Why the French Embassy would host a luncheon for a prominent and
bitter foe of de Gaulle, a man who only two months earlier had been kicked out of de
Gaulle's cabinet for his "ultra" sympathies, was not explained. Nor, for that matter, why
in protocol-minded Washington of all places, the CIA would attend. In any event, it
seems somewhat fatuous to imply that this was the only chance Soustelle and the CIA
had to talk during his stay in the United States, which lasted more than a week.
A clandestine meeting in Madrid also received wide currency within the
controversy. Krief dates it 12 April 1961, and describes it as a meeting of "various
foreign agents, including members of the CIA and the Algiers conspirators, who
disclosed their plans to the CIA men". The Americans were reported to have angrily
complained that de Gaulle's policy was "paralyzing NATO and rendering the defense of
Europe impossible", and assured the generals that if they and their followers succeeded,
Washington would recognize the new Algerian Government within 48 hours.
It may well be that the French Government did have evidence of the CIA's
complicity. But in the unnatural world of international diplomacy, this would not
necessarily lead to an unambiguous public announcement. Such a move could result in
an open confrontation between France and the United States, a predicament both sides
could be expected to take pains to avoid. Moreover, it might put the French in the
position of having to do something about it. And what could they do? Breaking relations
with the United States was not a realistic option; neither were the French in any position
to retaliate economically or militarily. But French leaders were too angry to simply let
the matter pass into obscurity. Thus, to complete the hypothetical scenario, they took the
backdoor approach with all its shortcomings.
In a similar vein, the United States knew that the Russians, for at least one year,
were intercepting telephone calls in the US of government and congressional officials,
but said nothing publicly because it was unable to end the practice for technical
reasons. 17 And this concerned an "enemy", not an ally.
Between 1958 and the middle of the 1960s, there occurred some 30 serious
assassination attempts upon the life of Charles de Gaulle, in addition to any number of
1 8
planned attempts which didn't advance much beyond the planning stage. A world
record for a head of state, it is said. In at least one of the attempts, the CIA may have
been a co-conspirator against the French president. By the mid-1960s, differences
151
between de Gaulle and Washington concerning NATO had almost reached the breaking
point; in February 1966, he gave NATO and the United States a deadline to either place
their military bases in France under French control or dismantle them.
In 1975, the Chicago Tribune featured a front-page story which read in part:
Congressional leaders have been told of Central Intelligence Agency involvement
in a plot by French dissidents to assassinate the late French President Charles De
Gaulle. Within the last two weeks, a CIA representative disclosed sketchy details
of the scheme ... Sometime in the mid-1960s — probably in 1965 or 1966 —
dissidents in the De Gaulle government are said to have -made contact with the
CIA to seek help in a plot to murder the French leader. Which party instigated the
contact was not clear... According to the CIA briefing officer, discussions were
held on how best to eliminate De Gaulle, who by then had become a thorn in the
side of the Johnson administration because of his ouster of American military
bases from French soil and his demands that United States forces be withdrawn
from the Indochina War. Thus the following plan is said to have evolved after
discussions between CIA personnel and the dissident French. There is, however,
no evidence the plot got beyond the talking stage.
A hired assassin, armed with a poison ring, was to be slipped into a crowd of old
soldiers of France when General De Gaulle was to be the host at a reception for
them. The killer would make his appearance late in the day when it could be
presumed De Gaulle's hand would be weary and perhaps even numb from shaking
hundreds of hands. The assassin would clasp the general's hand in lethal
friendship and De Gaulle would fail to detect the tiny pin prick of poison as it
penetrated his flesh. The executioner would stroll off to become lost in the crowd
as the poison began coursing through De Gaulle's veins either to his heart or
brain, depending on the deadly poison used. How quickly death would come was
not divulged, if that was even discussed at the time ...
In the outline presented to the congressional leaders, there is no hint of what the
CIA's actual role might have been had the plot reached fruition. 19
The dissidents involved in the alleged plot were embittered French army officers
and former Algerian settlers who still bore deep resentment toward de Gaulle for having
"sold out French honor" by his retreat from the North African colony.
There was no mention in the reported CIA testimony about any involvement of
Lyndon Johnson, although it was well known that there was no love lost between
Johnson and de Gaulle. The French leader was firmly convinced that the United States
was behind the failure of his trip to South America in 1964. He believed that the CIA
20
had used its network of agents in South America to prevent a big turnout of crowds.
There is some evidence to indicate that the General was not just paranoid. In 1970, Dr
Alfred Stepan, a professor of political science at Yale, testified before Congress about
his experience in South America in 1964 when be was a journalist for The Economist.
When De Gaulle was going to make his trip through Latin America, many of the
Latin Americans interviewed [officers of various embassies] said that they were
under very real pressure by various American groups not to be very warm
towards De Gaulle, because we considered Latin America within the United
States area of influence. 21
After the appearance of the Chicago Tribune story, CIA Director William Colby
confirmed that "foreigners" had approached the Agency with a plot to kill de Gaulle.
The Agency rejected the idea, Colby said, but he did not know' if the French
government had been advised of the plot. 22 It is not clear whether the incident referred
to by Colby was related to the one discussed in the Tribune.
152
In the early evening of Monday, 9 November 1970, Charles de Gaulle died
peacefully at the age of 80, sitting in his armchair watching a sentimental television
serial called "Nanou".
If the Guinness Book of World Records included a category for "cynicism", one
could suggest the CIA's creation of "leftist" organizations which condemned poverty,
disease, illiteracy, capitalism, and the United States in order to attract committed
militants and their money away from legitimate leftist organizations.
The tiny nation of Ecuador in the early 1960s was, as it remains today, a classic of
banana-republic underdevelopment; virtually at the bottom of the economic heap in
South America; a society in which one percent of the population received an income
comparable to United States upper-class standards, while two-thirds of the people had
an average family income of about ten dollars per month — people simply outside the
money economy, with little social integration or participation in the national life; a tale
told many times in Latin America.
In September 1960, a new government headed by Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra came
to power. Velasco had won a decisive electoral victory, running on a vaguely liberal,
populist, something-for-everyone platform. He was no Fidel Castro, he was not even a
socialist, but he earned the wrath of the US State Department and the CIA by his
unyielding opposition to the two stated priorities of American policy in Ecuador:
breaking relations with Cuba, and clamping down hard on activists of the Communist
Party and those to their left.
Over the next three years, in pursuit of those goals, the CIA left as little as
possible to chance. A veritable textbook on covert subversion techniques unfolded. In
its pages could be found the following, based upon the experiences of Philip Agee, a
CIA officer who spent this period in Ecuador. 1
Almost all political organizations of significance, from the far left to the far right,
were infiltrated, often at the highest levels. Amongst other reasons, the left was
infiltrated to channel young radicals away from support to Cuba and from anti-
Americanism; the right, to instigate and co-ordinate activities along the lines of CIA
priorities. If, at a point in time, there was no organization that appeared well-suited to
serve a particular need, then one would be created.
Or a new group of "concerned citizens" would appear, fronted with noted
personalities, which might place a series of notices in leading newspapers denouncing
the penetration of the government by the extreme left and demanding a break with
Cuba. Or one of the noted personalities would deliver a speech prepared by the CIA,
and then a newspaper editor, or a well-known columnist, would praise it, both
gentlemen being on the CIA payroll.
Some of these fronts had an actual existence; for others, even their existence was
phoney. On one occasion, the CIA Officer who had created the non-existent
"Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Front" was surprised to read in his morning paper that a
real organization with that name had been founded. He changed the name of his
organization to "Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Action".
Ecuador
A textbook of dirty tricks
153
Wooing the working class came in for special emphasis. An alphabet-soup of
labor organizations, sometimes hardly more than names on stationery, were created,
altered, combined, liquidated, and new ones created again, in an almost frenzied attempt
to find the right combination to compete with existing left-oriented unions and take
national leadership away from them. Union leaders were invited to attend various
classes conducted by the CIA in Ecuador or in the United States, all expenses paid, in
order to impart to them the dangers of communism to the union movement and to select
potential agents.
This effort was not without its irony either. CIA agents would sometimes
jealously vie with each other for the best positions in these CIA-created labor
organizations; and at times Ecuadorean organizations would meet in "international
conferences" with CIA labor fronts from other countries, with almost all of the
participants blissfully unaware of who was who or what was what.
In Ecuador, as throughout most of Latin America, the Agency planted phoney
anti-communist news items in co-operating newspapers. These items would then be
picked up by other CIA stations in Latin America and disseminated through a CIA-
owned news agency, a CIA-owned radio station, or through countless journalists being
paid on a piece-work basis, in addition to the item being picked up unwittingly by other
media, including those in the United States. Anti-communist propaganda and news
distortion (often of the most farfetched variety) written in CIA offices would also
appear in Latin American newspapers as unsigned editorials of the papers themselves.
In virtually every department of the Ecuadorean government could be found men
occupying positions, high and low, who collaborated with the CIA for money and/or
their own particular motivation. At one point, the Agency could count amongst this
number the men who were second and third in power in the country.
These government agents would receive the benefits of information obtained by
the CIA through electronic eavesdropping or other means, enabling them to gain
prestige and promotion, or consolidate their current position in the rough-and-tumble of
Ecuadorean politics. A high-ranking minister of leftist tendencies, on the other hand,
would be the target of a steady stream of negative propaganda from any or all sources in
the CIA arsenal; staged demonstrations against him would further increase the pressure
on the president to replace him.
The Postmaster-General, along with other post office employees, all members in
good standing of the CIA Payroll Club, regularly sent mail arriving from Cuba and the
Soviet bloc to the Agency for its perusal, while customs officials and the Director of
Immigration kept the Agency posted on who went to or came from Cuba. When a
particularly suitable target returned from Cuba, he would be searched at the airport and
documents prepared by the CIA would be "found" on him. These documents, publicized
as much as possible, might include instructions on "how to intensify hatred between
classes", or some provocative language designed to cause a split in Communist Party
ranks. Generally, the documents "verified" the worst fears of the public about
communist plans to take over Ecuador under the masterminding of Cuba or the Soviet
Union; at the same time, perhaps, implicating an important Ecuadorean leftist whose
head the Agency was after. Similar revelations, staged by CIA stations elsewhere in
Latin America, would be publicized in Ecuador as a warning that Ecuador was next.
Agency financing of conservative groups in a quasi-religious campaign against
Cuba and "atheistic communism" helped to seriously weaken President Velasco's power
among the poor, primarily Indians, who had voted overwhelmingly for him, but who
were even more deeply committed to their religion. If the CIA wished to know how the
president was reacting to this campaign it need only turn to his physician, its agent, Dr.
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Felipe Ovalle, who would report that his patient was feeling considerable strain as a
result.
CIA agents would bomb churches or right-wing organizations and make it appear
to be the work of leftists. They would march in left-wing parades displaying signs and
shouting slogans of a very provocative anti-military nature, designed to antagonize the
armed forces and hasten a coup.
The Agency did not always get away clean with its dirty tricks. During the
election campaign, on 19 March 1960, two senior colonels who were the CIA's main
liaison agents within the National Police participated in a riot aimed at disrupting a
Velasco demonstration. Agency officer Bob Weatherwax was in the forefront directing
the police during the riot in which five Velasco supporters were killed and many
wounded. When Velasco took office, he had the two colonels arrested and Weatherwax
was asked to leave the country.
CIA-supported activities were carried out without the knowledge of the American
ambassador. When the Cuban Embassy publicly charged the Agency with involvement
in various anti-Cuban activities, the American ambassador issued a statement that "had
everyone in the [CIA] station smiling". Stated the ambassador: "The only agents in
Ecuador who are paid by the United States are the technicians invited by the
Ecuadorean government to contribute to raising the living standards of the Ecuadorean
people."
Finally, in November 1961, the military acted. Velasco was forced to resign and
was replaced by Vice-president Carlos Julio Arosemana. There were at this time two
prime candidates for the vice-presidency. One was the vice-president of the Senate, a
CIA agent. The other was the rector of Central University, a political moderate. The day
that Congress convened to make their choice, a notice appeared in a morning paper
announcing support for the rector by the Communist Party and a militant leftist youth
organization. The notice had been placed by a columnist for the newspaper who was the
principal propaganda agent for the CIA's Quito station. The rector was compromised
rather badly, the denials came too late, and the CIA man won. His Agency salary was
increased from $700 to $1,000 a month.
Arosemana soon proved no more acceptable to the CIA than Velasco. All
operations continued, particularly the campaign to break relations with Cuba, which
Arosemana steadfastly refused to do. The deadlock was broken in March 1962 when a
military garrison, led by Col. Aurelio Naranjo, gave Arosemana 72 hours to send the
Cubans packing and fire the leftist Minister of Labor. (There is no need to point out here
who Naranjo's financial benefactor was.] Arosemana complied with the ultimatum,
booting out the Czech and Polish delegations as well at the behest of the new cabinet
which had been forced upon him.
At the CIA station in Quito there was a champagne victory celebration. Elsewhere
in Ecuador, people angry about the military's domination and desperate about their own
lives, took to arms. But on this occasion, like others, it amounted to naught ... a small
band of people, poorly armed and trained, infiltrated by agents, their every move known
in advance — confronted by a battalion of paratroopers, superbly armed and trained by
the United States. That was in the field. In press reports, the small band grew to
hundreds; armed not only to the teeth, but with weapons from "outside the country"
(read Cuba), and the whole operation very carefully planned at the Communist Party
Congress the month before.
On 11 July 1963 the Presidential Palace in Quito was surrounded by tanks and
troops. Arosemana was out, a junta was in. Their first act was to outlaw communism;
"communists" and other "extreme" leftists were rounded up and jailed, the arrests
155
campaign being facilitated by data from the CIA's Subversive Control Watch List.
(Standard at many Agency stations, this list would include not only the subject's name,
but the names and addresses of his relatives and friends and the places he frequented —
anything to aid in tracking him down when the time came).
Civil liberties were suspended; the 1964 elections canceled; another tale told
many times in Latin America.
And during these three years, what were the American people told about this
witch brew of covert actions carried out, supposedly, in their name? Very little, if
anything, if the New York Times is any index. Not once during the entire period, up to
and including the coup, was any indication given in any article or editorial on Ecuador
that the CIA or any other arm of the US government had played any role whatever in
any event which had occurred in that country. This is the way the writings read even if
one looks back at them with the advantage of knowledge and hindsight and reads
between the lines.
There is a solitary exception. Following the coup, we find a tiny announcement
on the very bottom of page 20 that Havana radio had accused the United States of
instigating the military takeover. The Cuban government had been making public
charges about American activities in Ecuador regularly, but this was the first one to
make the New York Times. The question must be asked: Why were these charges
deemed unworthy of reporting or comment, let alone investigation?
26. The Congo 1960-1964
The assassination of Patrice Lumumba
Within days of its independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960, the land long
known as the Belgian Congo, and later as Zaire, was engulfed in strife and chaos as
multiple individuals, tribes, and political groups struggled for dominance or
independence. For the next several years the world press chronicled the train of
Congolese governments, the endless confusion of personalities and conspiracies, exotic
place names like Stanleyville and Leopoldville, shocking stories of European hostages
and white mercenaries, the brutality and the violence from all quarters with its racist
overtones.
Into this disorder the Western powers were "naturally" drawn, principally
Belgium to protect its vast mineral investments, and the United States, mindful of the
fabulous wealth as well, and obsessed, as usual, with fighting "communism".
Successive American administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson,
looking through cold-war binoculars perceived an East- West battleground. The CIA
station in the Congo cabled Washington in August that "Embassy and station believe
Congo experiencing classic communist effort [to] takeover government." CIA Director
Allen Dulles warned of a "communist takeover of the Congo with disastrous
consequences ... for the interests of the free world". At the same time, Dulles authorized
a crash-program fund of up to $100,000 to replace the existing government of Patrice
Lumumba with a "pro-western group". 1
It's not known what criteria the CIA applied to determine that Lumumba's
government was going communist, but we do know how the Washington Post arrived at
the same conclusion:
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Western diplomats see ... the part [of the Congo] controlled by volatile Premier
Patrice Lumumba sliding slowly but surely into the Communist bloc. ... Apart from
the fevered activity of Communist bloc nations here, the pattern of events is
becoming apparent to students of Communist policy. Premier Lumumba's startling
changes of position, his open challenge of the United Nations and Secretary
General Dag Hammarskjold, his constant agitation of the largely illiterate
Congolese can be explained in no other way, veteran observers say. 2
Years later, Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon told a Senate
investigating committee (the Church committee) that the National Security Council and
President Eisenhower had believed in 1960 that Lumumba was a "very difficult if not
impossible person to deal with, and was dangerous to the peace and safety of the
world." 3 This statement moved author Jonathan Kwitny to observe:
How far beyond the dreams of a barefoot jungle postal clerk in 1956, that in a few
short years he would be dangerous to the peace and safety of the world! The
perception seems insane, particularly coming from the National Security Council,
which really does have the power to end all human life within hours. 4
Patrice Lumumba became the Congo's first prime minister after his party received
a plurality of the votes in national elections. He called for the nation's economic as well
as political liberation and did not shy away from contact with socialist countries. At the
Independence Day ceremonies he probably managed to alienate all the attending foreign
dignitaries with his speech, which read in part:
Our lot was eighty years of colonial rule ... We have known tiring labor exacted in
exchange for salary which did not allow us to satisfy out hunger ... We have
known ironies, insults, blows which we had to endure morning, noon, and night
because we were "Negroes" ... We have known that the law was never the same
depending on whether it concerned a white or a Negro ... We have known the
atrocious sufferings of those banished for political opinions or religious beliefs ...
We have known that there were magnificent houses for the whites in the cities and
tumble -down straw huts for the Negroes. 5
In 1960, it must be borne in mind, this was indeed radical and inflammatory
language in such a setting.
On 1 1 July, the province of Katanga — home to the bulk of the Congo's copper,
cobalt, uranium, gold, and other mineral wealth — announced that it was seceding.
Belgium, the principal owner of this fabulous wealth, never had any intention of giving
up real control of the country, and it now supported the move for Katanga's
independence, perceiving the advantage of having its investments housed in their own
little country, not accountable to nor paying taxes to the central government in
Leopoldville. Katanga, moreover, was led by Moise Tshombe, a man eminently
accommodating to, and respectful of, whites and their investments.
The Eisenhower administration supported the Belgian military intervention on
behalf of Katanga; indeed, the American embassy had previously requested such
intervention. Influencing this policy, in addition to Washington's ideological aversion to
Lumumba, was the fact that a number of prominent administration officials had
financial ties to the Katanga wealth. 6
The Belgian intervention, which was a very violent one, was denounced harshly
by the Soviet Union, as well as many countries from the Afro-Asian bloc, leading the
UN Security Council on the 14th to authorize the withdrawal of Belgian troops and their
replacement by a United Nations military force. This was fine with the United States,
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for the UN under Dag Hammarskjold was very closely allied to Washington. The UN
officials who led the Congo operation were Americans, in secret collaboration with the
State Department, and in exclusion of the Soviet bloc; the latter's citizens who worked
at the UN Secretariat were kept from seeing the Congo cables. Hammarskjold himself
was quite hostile toward Lumumba. 7
The UN force entered Katanga province and replaced the Belgian troops, but
made no effort to end the secession. Unable to put down this uprising on his own, as
well as one in another province, Lumumba had appealed to the United Nations as well
as the United States to supply him with transport for his troops. When they both refused,
he turned to the Soviet Union for aid, and received it, 8 though military success still
eluded him.
The Congo was in turmoil in many places. In the midst of it, on 5 September,
President Joseph Kasavubu suddenly dismissed Lumumba as prime minister — a step of
very debatable legality, taken with much American encouragement and assistance, as
Kasavubu "sat at the feet of the CIA men". 9 The action was taken, said the Church
committee later, "despite the strong support for Lumumba in the Congolese
Parliament." 10
During the early 1960s, according to a highly-placed CIA executive, the Agency
"regularly bought and sold Congolese politicians". 11 US diplomatic sources
subsequently confirmed that Kasavubu was amongst the recipients. 12
Hammarskjold publicly endorsed the dismissal before the Security Council, and
when Lumumba tried to broadcast his case to the Congolese people, UN forces closed
the radio station. Instead, he appeared before the legislature, and by dint of his
formidable powers of speech, both houses of Parliament voted to reaffirm him as prime
minister. But he could taste the fruits of his victory for only a few days, for on the 14th,
army strongman Joseph Mobutu took power in a military coup designed by the United
States.
Even during this period, with Lumumba not really in power, "CIA and high
Administration officials continued to view him as a threat" ... his "talents and dynamism
appear [to be the] overriding factor in reestablishing his position each time it seems half
lost" ... "Lumumba was a spellbinding orator with the ability to stir masses of people to
action" ... "if he ... started to talk to a battalion of the Congolese Army he probably
would have had them in the palm of his hand in five minutes" ... 13
In late September, the CIA sent one of its scientists, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, to the
Congo carrying "lethal biological material" (a virus) specifically intended for use in
Lumumba's assassination. The virus, which was supposed to produce a fatal disease
indigenous to the Congo area of Africa, was transported via diplomatic pouch. 14
In 1975, the Church committee went on record with the conclusion that Allen
Dulles had ordered Lumumba's assassination as "an urgent and prime objective"
(Dulles's words). 15 After hearing the testimony of several officials who believed that the
order to kill the African leader had emanated originally from President Eisenhower, the
committee decided that there was a "reasonable inference" that this was indeed the
case.
As matters evolved in the Congo, the virus was never used, for the CIA's Congo
station was unable to come up with "a secure enough agent with the right access" to
Lumumba before the potency of the biological material was no longer reliable.' 7
The Church committee observed, however, that the CIA station in Leopoldville
continued to maintain close contact with Congolese who expressed a desire to
assassinate Lumumba. CIA officers encouraged and offered to aid these Congolese
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in their efforts against Lumumba, although there is no evidence that aid was ever
provided for the specific purpose of assassination. 18
Fearing for his life, Lumumba was on the run. For a while he was protected from
Mobutu by the United Nations, which, under considerable international pressure, had
been forced to put some distance between itself and Washington. 19 But on 1 December,
Lumumba was taken into custody by Mobutu's troops. A 28 November CIA cable
indicates that the Agency was involved in tracking down the charismatic Congo leader.
The cable spoke of the CIA station working with the Congolese government to get the
roads blocked and troops alerted to close a possible escape route of Lumumba's. 20
The United States had also been involved in the takeover of government by
Mobutu — whom author and CIA-confidant Andrew Tully described as having been
2 1
"discovered" by the CIA. Mobutu detained Lumumba until 17 January 1961 when he
transferred his prisoner into the hands of Moise Tshombe of Katanga province,
Lumumba's bitter enemy. Lumumba was assassinated the same day.
In 1978, former CIA Africa specialist John Stockwell related in his book how a
ranking Agency officer had told him of driving around with Lumumba's body in the
trunk of his car, "trying to decide what to do with it". 22 What he did do with it has not
yet been made public.
During the period of Lumumba's imprisonment, US diplomats in the Congo were
pursuing a policy of "deploring" his beatings and trying to secure "humane treatment"
for him, albeit due to "considerations of international opinion and not from tender
feelings toward him". 23 The immediate and the long-term effect of Lumumba's murder
was to make him the martyr and symbol of anti-imperial ism all over Africa and
elsewhere in the Third World which such American officials had feared. Even Mobutu
later felt compelled to build a memorial to his victim.
Without a clearcut "communist" enemy like Lumumba, the Kennedy
administration, which came to power on 20 January 1961, was very divided on the
Katanga question. Although the United States wound up supporting — in the name of
Congolese stability — the UN military operation in the summer to suppress the
secession, Tshombe had outspoken support in the US Congress, and sentiment amongst
officials at the State Department and the White House mirrored this division. The
sundry economic and diplomatic ties of these officials appear to have been more diverse
and contradictory than under the Eisenhower administration, and this is reflected in the
lack of a unified policy. However, according to Kennedy adviser and biographer, Arthur
Schlesinger, opinions on both sides of the issue were expressed in terms of hindering
supposed malevolent Soviet/communist designs in the Congo. 24
In an even more marked policy division, US Air Force C-130s were flying
Congolese troops and supplies against the Katangese rebels, while at the same time the
CIA and its covert colleagues in the Pentagon were putting together an air armada of
25
heavy transport aircraft, along with mercenary units, to aid the very same rebels. (This
marked at least the third instance of the CIA acting in direct military opposition to
another arm of the US government.) 26
Washington officials were more in unison when dealing with another prominent
leftist — Antoine Gizenga, who had been Vice-Prime Minister under Lumumba.
Following the latter's dismissal, according to the Church committee, the CIA station
chief in the Congo, Lawrence Devlin, urged "a key Congolese leader" (presumably
Mobutu) to "arrest" or undertake a "more permanent disposal of Lumumba, Gizenga,
and Mulele." (Pierre Mulele was another Lumumba lieutenant.) 27 Gizenga was in fact
159
arrested shortly after Mobutu took power, but a UN contingent from Ghana, whose
leader, Kwame Nkrumah, was Lumumba's ally, intervened and freed him.
In the continuous musical-chairs game of Congolese politics, the first of August
1961 found Gizenga as the Vice-Prime Minister under one Cyrilie Adoula. By the end
of the month, Gizenga was as well, and simultaneously, the leader of a rebel force that
had set up a regime in the Stanleyville area which it proclaimed as the legitimate
government of the entire Congo. He fancied himself the political and spiritual successor
to Lumumba.
The Soviet Union may have believed Gizenga, for apparently they were sending
him arms and money, using Sudan, which borders the Congo on the north, as a conduit.
When the CIA learned that a Czech ship was bound for Sudan with a cargo of guns
disguised as Red Cross packages for refugee relief in the Congo, the Agency turned to
its most practiced art, bribery, to persuade a crane operator to let one of the crates drop
upon arrival. On that day, the dockside was suddenly covered with new Soviet
Kalashnikov rifles. Through an equally clever ploy at the Khartoum (Sudan) airport, the
CIA managed to separate a Congolese courier from his suitcase of Soviet money
destined for Gizenga. 29 The State Department, meanwhile, was, in its own words,
urging Adoula to ... dismiss Gizenga and declare him in rebellion against the
national government so that police action can now be taken against him. We are
also urging the U.N. to take military action to break his rebellion ... We are making
every effort to keep Gizenga isolated from potential domestic and foreign support
... We have taken care to insure that this [US] aid has been channelled through the
central government in order to provide the economic incentive to encourage
support for that government. 30
The CIA was supplying arms and money to Adoula's supporters, as well as to
Mobutu's. 31 Adoula, who had a background of close ties to both the American labor
movement and the CIA international labor movement (via the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions — see British Guiana chapter), was chosen to be
prime minister instead of Gizenga by a parliamentary conference during which the
parliamentarians were bribed by the CIA and even by the United Nations. A subsequent
CIA memorandum was apparently paying tribute to this when it stated: "The U.N. and
the United States, in closely coordinated activities, played essential roles in this
significant success over Gizenga." 32
In January 1962, United Nations forces with strong American backing ousted
Gizenga and his followers from Stanleyville, and a year later finally forced Tshombe to
end his secession in Katanga. These actions were carried out in the name of "uniting the
Congo", as if this were a matter to be decided by other than Congolese. Never before
had the UN engaged in such offensive military operations, and the world organization
was criticized in various quarters for having exceeded its charter. In any event, the
operations served only to temporarily slow down the dreary procession of changing
leaders, attempted coups, autonomous armies, shifting alliances, and rebellions.
Adding an ironic and absurd touch to the American Congo policy, three months
after the successful action against Gizenga, Allen Dulles (thanks to the Bay of Pigs, now
the former Director of the CIA) informed a Television audience that the United States
had "overrated the danger" of Soviet involvement... "It looked as though they were
going to make a serious attempt at takeover in the Belgian Congo, well it did not work
out that way at all." 33
Nonetheless, by the middle of 1964, when rebellion — by the heirs of Lumumba
and Gizenga — was more widespread and furious than ever and the collapse of the
central government appeared as a real possibility, the United States was pouring in a
160
prodigious amount of military aid to the Leopoldville regime. In addition to providing
arms and planes, Washington dispatched some 100 to 200 military and technical
personnel to the Congo to aid government troops, and the CIA was conducting a
paramilitary campaign against the insurgents in the eastern part of the country. 34
The government was now headed by none other than Moise Tshombe, a man
called "Africa's most unpopular African" for his widely-recognized role in the murder of
the popular Lumumba and for his use of white mercenaries, many of them South
Africans and Rhodesians, during his secession attempt in Katanga. Tshombe defended
the latter action by explaining that his troops would not fight without white officers.
Tshombe once again called upon his white mercenary army, numbering 400 to
500 men, and the CIA called upon its own mercenaries as well, a band which included
Americans, Cuban-exile veterans of the Bay of Pigs, Rhodesians, and South Africans,
the latter having been recruited with the help of the South African government.
"Bringing in our own animals" was the way one CIA operative described the operation.
The Agency's pilots carried out regular bombing and strafing missions against the
insurgents, although some of the Cubans were reported to be troubled at being ordered
to make indiscriminate attacks upon civilians. 36 Looking back at the affair in 1966, the
New York Times credited the CIA with having created "an instant air force" in the
Congo? 7
When China protested to the United States about the use of American pilots in the
Congo, the State Department issued an explicit denial, then publicly reversed itself, but
insisted that the Americans were flying "under contract with the Congolese
government". The next day, the Department said that the flights would stop, after
having obtained assurances from "other arms of the [U.S1 Government", although it still
held to the position that the matter was one between the Congolese government and
civilian individuals who were not violating American law.
The Congolese against whom this array of military might was brought to bear
were a coalition of forces. Some of the leading figures had spent time in Eastern
Europe, the Soviet Union or China and were receiving token amounts of arms and
instruction from those countries; but they were never necessarily in the communist
camp any mote than the countless Third Worlders who have gone to university in the
United States and have been courted afterwards ate necessarily in the Western/capitalist
camp. (This does not hold for professional military officers who, unlike students, tend to
be a particularly homogeneous group — conservative, authoritarian, and anticommunist.)
Africa scholar M. Crawford Young has observed that amongst the coalition
leadership, "The destruction of the [Leopoldville] regime, a vigorous reassertion of
Congolese control over its own destiny, and a vague socialist commitment were
recurrent themes. But at bottom it appeared far more a frame of mind and a style of
expression, than an interrelated set of ideas." 39 The rebels had no revolutionary program
they could, or did, proclaim.
Co-existing with this element within the coalition were currents of various
esoteric churches, messianic sects, witch-finding movements, and other occult
inspirations as well as plain opportunists. Many believed that the magic of their witch
doctors would protect them against bullets. One of their leaders, Pierre Mulele, was a
quasi-Catholic who baptized his followers in bis own urine to also make them immune
to bullets. The insurgents were further divided along tribal lines and were rent by
debilitating factionalism. No single group or belief could dominate. 40
"Rebel success created the image of unified purpose and revolutionary promise,"
wrote Young. "Only in its subsequent phase of decay and disintegration" did the
coalition's "dramatic lack of cohesion" and "disparity in purpose and perception"
161
become fully evident. The New York Times addressed the question of the coalition's
ideology as follows:
There is evidence that most supporters of the Stanleyville regime have no
ideological commitment but are mainly Congolese who are disillusioned with the
corruption and irresponsibility that has characterized the Leopoldville regimes. The
rebel leaders have received advice and money from Communists but few if any of
the rebels consider themselves Communists. It is probable that few have heard of
Karl Marx. 42
In the coalition-controlled area of Stanleyville, between 2,000 and 3,000 white
foreign ers found themselves trapped by the war. One of the rebel leaders, Christopher
Gbenye, conditioned their safe release upon various military concessions, principally a
cessation of American bombing, but negotiations failed to produce an agreement. 45
Instead, on 24 November 1964, the United States and Belgium staged a dramatic
rescue mission in which over 500 Belgian paratroopers were dropped at dawn into
Stanleyville from American transport planes. Much chaos followed, and the reports are
conflicting, but it appears that more than 2,000 hostages were rescued, in the process of
which the fleeing rebels massacred about 100 others and dragged several hundred more
into the bush.
American and Belgian officials took great pains to emphasize the purely
"humanitarian" purpose of the mission. However, the rescuers simultaneously executed
a key military maneuver when they "seized the strategic points of the city and
coordinated their operation with the advancing columns of Tshombe's mercenary army
that was moving swiftly towards the city." 44 Moreover, in the process of the rescue, the
rescuers killed dozens of rebels and did nothing to curtail Tshombe's troops when they
reached Stanleyville and began an "orgy of looting and killing". 45
Tshombe may have provided a reminder of the larger-than-humanitarian stake at
hand in the Congo when, in the flush of the day's success, he talked openly with a
correspondent of The Times of London who reported that Tshombe "was confident that
the fall of Stanleyville would give a new impetus to the economy and encourage
investors. It would reinforce a big development plan announced this morning in
collaboration with the United States, Britain and West Germany." 46
The collapse of the rebels' stronghold in Stanleyville marked the beginning of the
end for their cause. By spring 1965 their fortune was in sharp decline, and the arrival of
about 100 Cuban revolutionaries, amongst whom was Che Guevara himself, had no
known effect upon the course of events. Several months later, Guevara returned to Cuba
in disgust at the low level of revolutionary zeal exhibited by the Congolese guerrillas
and the local populace. 47
The concluding tune for the musical chairs was played in November, when
Joseph Mobutu overthrew Tshombe and Kasavubu. Mobutu, later to adopt the name
Mobutu Sese Seko, has ruled with a heavy dictatorial hand ever since.
In the final analysis, it mattered precious little to the interests of the US
government whether the forces it had helped defeat were really "communist" or not, by
whatever definition. The working premise was that there was now fixed in power, over
a more-or-less unified Congo, a man who would be more co-operative with the CIA in
its African adventures and with Western capital, and less accessible to the socialist bloc,
than the likes of Lumumba, Gizenga, et al. would have been. The CIA has chalked this
one up as a victory.
162
What the people of the Congo (now Zaire) won is not clear. Under Mobutu, terror
and repression became facts of daily life, civil liberties and other human rights were
markedly absent. The country remains one of the poorest to be found anywhere despite
its vast natural riches. Mobutu, however, is reputed to be one of the richest heads of
state in the world. (See Zaire chapter)
William Atwood, US Ambassador to Kenya in 1964-65, who played a part in the
hostage negotiations, also saw the US role in the Congo in a positive light. Bemoaning
African suspicions toward American motives there, he wrote: "It was hard to convince
people that we had provided the Congo with $420 million in aid since independence just
to prevent chaos; they couldn't believe any country could be that altruistic." 48
Atwood's comment is easier to understand when one realizes that the word
"chaos" has long been used by American officials to refer to a situation over which the
United States has insufficient control to assure that someone distinctly pro-Western will
remain in, or come to, power. When President Eisenhower, for example, decided to send
troops into Lebanon in 1958, he saw it as a move, he later wrote, "to stop the trend
towards chaos". 49
27. Brazil 1961-1964
Introducing the marvelous new world of Death Squads
When the leading members of the US diplomatic mission in Brazil held a meeting
one day in March 1964, they arrived at the consensus that President Joao Goulart's
support of social and economic reforms was a contrived and thinly veiled vehicle to
seize dictatorial power. 1
The American ambassador, Lincoln Gordon, informed the State Department that
"a desperate lunge [by Goulart] for totalitarian power might be made at any time."
The Brazilian army chief of staff, General Humberto de Alencar Castelo (or
Castello) Branco, provided the American Embassy with a memorandum in which he
stated his fear that Goulart was seeking to close down Congress and initiate a
dictatorship.
Within a week after the expression of these concerns, the Brazilian military, with
Castelo Branco at its head, overthrew the constitutional government of President
Goulart, the culmination of a conspiratorial process in which the American Embassy
had been intimately involved. The military then proceeded to install and maintain for
two decades one of the most brutal dictatorships in all of South America.
What are we to make of all this? The idea that men of rank and power lie to the
public is commonplace, not worthy of debate. But do they as readily lie to each other? Is
their need to rationalize their misdeeds so great that they provide each other a moral
shoulder to lean on? "Men use thoughts only to justify their injustices," wrote Voltaire,
"and speech only to conceal their thoughts."
The actual American motivation in supporting the coup was something rather less
heroic than preserving democracy, even mundane as such matters go. American
163
opposition to Goulart, who became president in 1961, rested upon a familiar catalogue
of complaints:
US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara questioned Brazil's neutral stand in
foreign policy. The Brazilian ambassador in Washington, Roberto Campos, responded
that "neutralism" was an inadequate term and explained that "what was involved was
really a deep urge of the Brazilian people to assert their personality in world affairs. " 4
American officials did not approve of some of the members of Goulart's cabinet,
and said so. Ambassador Campos pointed out to them that it was "quite inappropriate"
for the United States "to try to influence the composition of the cabinet." 5
Attorney-General Robert Kennedy met with Goulart and expressed his uneasiness
about the Brazilian president allowing "communists" to hold positions in government
agencies. (Bobby was presumably acting on the old and very deep-seated American
belief that once you welcome one or two communists into your parlor, they take over
the whole house and sign the deed over to Moscow.) Goulart did not see this as a
danger. He replied that he was in full control of the situation, later remarking to Campos
that it was as if he had been told that he had no capacity for judging the men around
him.
The American Defense Attache in Brazil, Col. Vernon Walters, reported that
Goulart showed favoritism towards "ultra- nationalist" military officers over "pro-U.S."
officers. Goulart saw it as promoting those officers who appeared to be most loyal to his
government. He was, as it happens, very concerned about American-encouraged
military coups and said so explicitly to President Kennedy.
Goulart considered purchasing helicopters from Poland because Washington was
delaying on his request to purchase them from the United States. Ambassador Gordon
told him that he "could not expect the United States to like it". 8
The Goulart administration, moreover, passed a law limiting the amount of profits
multinationals could transmit out of the country, and a subsidiary of ITT was
nationalized. Compensation for the takeover was slow in coming because of Brazil's
precarious financial position, but these were the only significant actions taken against
US corporate interests.
Inextricably woven into all these complaints, yet at the same time standing apart,
was Washington's dismay with Brazil's "drift to the left" ... the communist/leftist
influence in the labor movement ... leftist "infiltration" wherever one looked ..."anti-
Americanism" among students and others (the American Consul General in Sao Paulo
suggested to the State Department that the United States "found competing student
organizations") ... the general erosion of "U.S. influence and the power of people and
groups friendly to the United States" 9 ... one might go so far as to suggest that
Washington officials felt unloved, were it not for the fact that the coup, as they well
knew from much past experience, could result only in intensified anti-Americanism all
over Latin America.
Goulart's predecessor, Janio da Silva Quadros, had also irritated Washington.
"Why should the United States trade with Russia and her satellites but insist that Brazil
trade only with the United States?" he asked, and proceeded to negotiate with the Soviet
Union and other Communist countries to (reestablish diplomatic and commercial
relations. He was, in a word, independent. 10
Quadros was also more-or-less a conservative who clamped down hard on unions,
sent federal troops to the northeast hunger dens to squash protest, and jailed disobedient
students. 11 But the American ambassador at the time, John Moors Cabot, saw fit to
question Brazil's taking part in a meeting of "uncommitted" (non-aligned! nations.
"Brazil has signed various obligations with the United States and American nations," he
164
said. "I am sure Brazil is not going to forget her obligations ... It is committed. It is a
12
fact. Brazil can uncommit itself if it wants." in early 1961, shortly after Quadros took
office, he was visited by Adolf Berle, Jr., President Kennedy's adviser on Latin
American affairs and formerly ambassador to Brazil. Berle had come as Kennedy's
special envoy to solicit Quadros's backing for the impending Bay of Pigs invasion.
Ambassador Cabot was present and some years later described the meeting to author
Peter Bell. Bell has written:
Ambassador Cabot remembers a "stormy conversation" in which Berle stated the
United States had $300 million in reserve for Brazil and in effect "offered it as a
bribe" for Brazilian cooperation ... Quadros became "visibly irritated" after Berle
refused to heed his third "no". No Brazilian official was at the airport the next day
to see the envoy off. 13
Quadros, who had been elected by a record margin, was, like Goularr, accused of
seeking to set up a dictatorship because he sought to put teeth into measures unpopular
with the oligarchy, the military, and/or the United States, as well as pursuing a "pro-
communist" foreign policy. After but seven months in office he suddenly resigned,
reportedly under military pressure, if not outright threat. In his letter of resignation, he
blamed his predicament on "reactionaries" and "the ambitions of groups of individuals,
some of whom are foreigners ... the terrible forces that arose against me." 14
A few months later, Quadros reappeared, to deliver a speech in which he named
Berle, Cabot, and US Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon as being among those who had
contributed to his downfall. Dillon, he said, sought to mix foreign policy with Brazil's
needs for foreign credits. 15 (Both Berle and Cabot had been advocates of the 1954
overthrow of Guatemalan President Arbenz, whose sins, in Washington's eyes, were
much the same as those Goulart was now guilty of.) 16 At the same time, Quadros
announced his intention to lead a "people's crusade" against the "reactionaries, the
corrupt and the Communists". 17
As Quadros's vice president, Goulart succeeded to the presidency in August 1961
despite a virtual coup and civil war initiated by segments of the military to block him
because he was seen as some sort of dangerous radical. Only the intervention of loyalist
military units and other supporters of the constitutional process allowed Goulart to take
office. 18 The military opposition to Goulart arose, it should be noted, before he had the
opportunity to exhibit his alleged tendencies toward dictatorship. Indeed, as early as
1954, the military had demonstrated its antipathy toward him by forcing President
Vargas to fire him from his position as Minister of Labor. 19 The American doubts about
Goulart also predated his presidency. In 1960, when Goulart was elected vice president,
"concern at the State Department and the Pentagon turned to panic" according to an
20
American official who served in Brazil.
Goulart tried to continue Quadros's independent foreign policy. His government
went ahead with resumption of relations with socialist countries, and at a meeting of the
Organization of American States in December 1961 Brazil abstained on a vote to hold a
special session aimed at discussing "the Cuban problem", and stood strongly opposed to
2 1
sanctions against the Castro government. A few months later, speaking before the US
Congress, Goulart affirmed Brazil's right to take its own stand on some of the cold-war
issues. He declared that Brazil identified itself "with the democratic principles which
unite the peoples of the West", but was "not part of any politico-military bloc". 22
Time magazine, in common with most US media, had (has) a difficult time
understanding the concept and practice of independence amongst America's allies. In
November 1961, the magazine wrote that Brazil's domestic politics were "confused" and
165
that the country was "also adrift in foreign affairs. Goulart is trying to play the old
Quadros game of international 'independence', which means wooing the East while
panhandling from the West." Time was critical of Goulart in that he had sought an
invitation to visit Washington and on the same day he received it he "called in
Communist Poland's visiting Foreign Minister, Adam Rapacki, [and] awarded him the
Order of the Southern Cross — the same decoration that Quadros hung on Cuba's
Marxist mastermind, Che Guevara".
Former Time editor and Latin America correspondent, John Gerassi, commented
that every visiting foreign dignitary received this medal, the Cruzeiro do Sul, as part of
protocol. He added:
Apparently Time thinks that any President who wants to visit us must necessarily hate our
enemies as a consequence, and is "confused" whenever this does not occur. But, of course,
Time magazine is so unused to the word "independent" that an independent foreign policy
must be very confusing indeed. In South America, where everyone would like to follow an
independent foreign policy but where only Brazil has, at times, the courage, no one was
confused. 24
Goulart, a millionaire land-owner and a Catholic who wore a medal of the Virgin
around his neck, was no more a communist than was Quadros, and he strongly
supported the United Stares during the "Cuban Missile Crisis" of October 1962. He
offered Ambassador Gordon a toast "To the Yankee Victory!", 25 perhaps unaware that
only three weeks earlier, during federal and state elections in Brazil, CIA money had
been liberally expended in support of anti-Goulart candidates. Former CIA officer
Philip Agee has stated that the Agency spent between 12 and 20 million dollars on
behalf of hundreds of candidates. 26 Lincoln Gordon says the funding came to no more
than 5 million. 27
In addition to the direct campaign contributions, the CIA dipped into its bag of
dirty tricks to torment the campaigns of leftist candidates. 28 At the same time, the
Agency for International Development (AID), at the express request of President
Kennedy, was allocating monies to projects aimed at benefiting chosen gubernatorial
candidates. (While Goulart was president, no new US economic assistance was given
to the central government, while regional assistance was provided on a markedly
ideological basis. When the military took power, this pattern was sharply altered.) 30
Agee adds that the CIA carried out a consistent propaganda campaign against
Goulart which dated from at least the 1962 election operation and which included the
financing of mass urban demonstrations, "proving the old themes of God, country,
family and liberty to be as effective as ever" in undermining a government. 31
CIA money also found its way to a chain of right-wing newspapers, Diarias
Associades, to promote anti-communism; for the distribution of 50 thousand books of
similar politics to high school and college students; and for the formation of women's
groups with their special Latin mother's emphasis on the godlessness of the communist
enemy. The women and other CIA operatives also went into the rumor- mongering
business, spreading stories about outrages Goulart and his cronies were supposed to be
planning, such as altering the constitution so as to extend his term, and gossip about
Goulart being a cuckold and a wife-beater. 32
All this to overthrow a man who, in April 1962, had received a ticker-tape parade
in New York City, was warmly welcomed at the White House by President Kennedy,
and had addressed a joint session of Congress.
166
The intraservice confrontation which had attended Goulart's accession to power
apparently kept a rein on coup-minded officers until 1963. In March of that year the
CIA informed Washington, but not Goulart, of a plot by conservative officers. 33 During
the course of the following year, the plots thickened. Brazilian military officers could
not abide by Goulart's attempts at populist social reforms, though his program was
timid, his rhetoric generally mild, and his actions seldom matched either. (He himself
pointed out that Genera! Douglas Mac Arthur had carried out a more radical distribution
of land in Japan after the Second World War than anything planned by the Brazilian
Government.) The military men were particularly incensed at Goulart's support of a
weakening of military discipline and his attempts to build up a following among non-
commissioned officers. 34 This the president was genuinely serious about because of his
"paranoia" about a coup.
Goulart's wooing of NCOs and his appeals to the population over the heads of a
hostile Congress and state governors (something President Reagan later did on several
occasions) were the kind of tactics his enemies labeled as dictatorial.
In early 1964, disclosed Fortune magazine after the coup, an emissary was sent
by some of the military plotters "to ask U.S. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon what the U.S.
position would be if civil war broke out". The emissary "reported back that Gordon was
cautious and diplomatic, but he left the impression that if the [plotters] could hold out
for forty-eight hours they would get U.S. recognition and help." 35
The primary American contact with the conspirators was Defense Attache Vernon
Walters who arrived in Brazil after having been apprised that President Kennedy would
not be averse to the overthrow of Joao Goulart/ 6 Walters, who later became Deputy
Director of the CIA, had an intimacy with leading Brazilian military officers,
particularly General Castelo Branco, going back to World War II when Walters had
served as interpreter for the Brazilian Expeditionary Force then fighting in Italy with the
Allies. Brazil was the only Latin American country to send ground combat troops to the
war, and it allowed the United States to build huge aircraft staging bases on its
territory. 37 The relationship between US and Brazilian officers was continued and
enhanced after the war by the creation of the Higher War College (Escola Superior de
Guerra) in Rio de Janeiro in 1949. Latin America historian Thomas E. Skidmore has
observed:
Under the U.S. -Brazilian military agreements of the early 1950s, the U.S. Army
received exclusive rights to render assistance in the organization and operation of
the college, which had been modeled on the National War College in Washington.
In view of the fact that the Brazilian War College became a rallying point for
leading military opponents of civilian populist politicians, it would be worm
examining the extent to which the strongly anti-Communist ideology — bordering
on an anti-political attitude — (of certain officers) was reinforced (or moderated?)
by their frequent contacts with United States officers. 38
There was, moreover, the ongoing US Military Assistance Program, which
Ambassador Gordon described as a "major vehicle for establishing close relationships
with personnel of the armed forces" and "a highly important factor in influencing [the
Brazilian] military to be pro-US." 39
A week before the coup, Castelo Branco, who emerged as the leader of the
conspirators, gave Walters a copy of a paper he had written which was in effect a
justification for a military coup, another variation on the theme of upholding the
constitution by preventing Goulart from instituting a dictatorship. 40
167
To Lincoln Gordon and other American officials, civil war appeared a real
possibility as the result of a coup attempt. As the scheduled day approached,
contingency plans were set up.
A large quantity of petroleum would be sent to Brazil and made available to the
insurgent officers, an especially vital commodity if Goulart supporters in the state oil
union were to blow up or control the refineries. 41
A US Navy task force would be dispatched to Brazilian coastal waters, the
presence of which would deliver an obvious message to opponents of the coup. 42
Arms and ammunition would be sent to Branco's forces to meet their fighting
needs.
Concerned that the coup attempt might be met by a general strike, Washington
discussed with Gordon the possible need "for the U.S. to mount a large material
program to assure the success of the takeover." 44 The conspirators had already requested
economic aid from the United States, in the event of their success, to get the
government and economy moving again, and had received a generally favorable
response.
At the same time, Gordon sent word to some anti-Goulart state governors
emphasizing the necessity, from the American point of view, that the new regime has a
claim to legitimacy. The ambassador also met with former president Juscelino
Kubitschek to urge him to take a stronger position against Goulart and to use his
considerable influence to "swing a large congressional group and thereby influence the
legitimacy issue". 46
Of the American contingency measures, indications are that it was the naval show
of force — which, it turned out, included an aircraft carrier, destroyers, and guided
missiles — which most encouraged the Brazilian military plotters or convinced those
still wavering in their commitment. 47
Another actor in the unfolding drama was the American Institute for Free Labor
Development. The AIFLD came formally into being in 1961 and was technically under
the direction of the American labor movement (AFL-CIO), but was soon being funded
almost exclusively by the US government (AID) and serving consistently as a CIA
instrument in most countries of Latin America. In May 1963, the AIFLD founded the
Instituto Cultural Trabalho in Brazil which, over the next few years, gave courses to
more than 7,000 union leaders and members. 48 Other Brazilians went to the United
States for training. When they returned to Brazil, said AIFLD executive William
Doherty, Jr., some of them:
became intimately involved in some of the clandestine operations of the revolution
before it took place on April 1. What happened in Brazil on April 1 did not just
happen — it was planned — and planned months in advance. Many of the trade union
leaders — some of whom were actually trained in our institute — were involved in
the revolution, and in the overthrow of the Goularr regime. 49
Doherty did not spell out any details of the AIFLD role in the coup (or revolution
as he called it), although Reader's Digest later reported that one of the AIFLD-trained
labor leaders set up courses for communication workers in combatting communism in
the labor movement in Brazil, and "After every- class he quietly warned key workers of
coming trouble and urged them to keep communications going no matter what
happened." 50 Additionally, Richard Martinez, an unwitting CIA contract employee who
was sent to Brazil to work with the Agency's Post, Telegraph and Telephone Workers
International (formerly Doherty's domain), has revealed that his field workers in Brazil
burned down Communist Party headquarters at the time of the coup. 51
168
The coup began on 31 March 1964 with the advance upon Rio of troops and
tanks. Officers obtained the support of some units of enlisted men by telling them they
were heading for the city to secure it against Goulart's enemies. But at the main air force
base pro-Goulart enlisted men, hearing of the move toward Rio, seized the base and put
their officers under arrest. Indecision and cold feet intervened, however, and what might
have reversed the course of events instead came to nought. Other military units loyal to
Goulart took actions elsewhere, but these too fizzled out. 52
Here and there a scattering of workers went, out on strike; several short-lived,
impotent demonstrations took place, but there was little else. A number of labor leaders
and radicals were rounded up on the orders of certain state governors; those who were
opposed to what was happening were not prepared for violent resistance; in one incident
a group of students staged a protest — some charged up the stairs of an Army
organization, but the guard fired into their midst, killing two of them and forcing the
53
others to fall back.
Most people counted on loyal armed forces to do their duty, or waited for the
word from Goulart. Goulart, however, was unwilling to give the call for a civil war; he
did not want to be responsible, he said, for bloodshed amongst Brazilians, and fled to
Uruguay.
Lincoln Gordon cabled Washington the good news, suggesting the "avoidance of
a jubilant posture". He described the coup as "a great victory for the free world", adding,
in a remark that might have had difficulty getting past the lips of even John Foster
Dulles, that without the coup there could have been a "total loss to the West of all South
American Republics". Following a victory parade in Rio on 2 April by those pleased
with the coup — a March of Family with God for Liberty — Gordon informed the State
Department that the "only unfortunate note was the obviously limited participation in
the march of the lower classes." 55
His cable work done, the former Harvard professor turned his attention back to
trying to persuade the Brazilian Congress to bestow a seal of "legitimacy" upon the new
government
Two years later, Gordon was to be questioned by a senator during hearings to
consider his nomination as Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. "I am
particularly concerned," said the senator, "with the part you may have played, if any, in
encouraging, promoting, or causing that overthrow."
Said Lincoln Gordon: "The answer to that, senator, is very simple. The movement
which overthrew President Goulart was a purely, 100 percent — not 99.44 — but 100
percent purely Brazilian movement. Neither the American Embassy nor I personally
played any part in the process whatsoever." 57
Gordon's boss, Dean Rusk, was not any more forthright. When asked about
Cuban charges that the United States was behind the coup, the Secretary of State
responded: "Well, there is just not one iota of truth in this. It's just not so in any way,
shape, or form." 58 While Attorney General Robert Kennedy's view of the affair, stated to
Gordon, was: "Well, Goulart got what was coming to him. Too bad he didn't follow the
advice we gave him when I was there." 59
Gordon artfully combined fast talk with omission of certain key facts about
Brazilian politics — his summary of Goulart's rise and fall made no mention at all of the
military's move to keep him from taking office in 1961 — to convince the assembled
senators that Goulart was indeed seeking to set up a personal dictatorship. 60
Depending on the setting, either "saving Brazil from dictatorship" or "saving
Brazil from communism" was advanced as the rationale for what took place in 1964.
(General Andrew O'Meara, head of the US Southern [Latin America] Command, had it
169
both ways. He told a House committee that "The coming to power of the Castelo
Branco government in Brazil last April saved that country from an immediate
dictatorship which could only have been followed by Communist domination.") 61
The rescue-from-communism position was especially difficult to support, the
problem being that the communists in Brazil did not, after all, do anything which the
United States could point to. Moreover, the Soviet Union was scarcely in the picture.
Early in 1964, reported a Brazilian newspaper, Russian leader Khrushchev told the
Brazilian Communist Party that the Soviet government did not wish either to give
financial aid to the Goulart regime or to tangle with the United States over the country. 62
In his reminiscences — albeit, as mentioned earlier, not meant to be a serious work of
history — Khrushchev does not give an index reference to Brazil.
A year after the coup, trade between Brazil and the USSR was running at $120
million per year and a Brazilian mission was planning to go to Moscow to explore
Soviet willingness to provide a major industrial plant. 63 The following year, the
Russians invited the new Brazilian president-to-be, General Costa e Silva, to visit the
Soviet Union. 64
During the entire life of the military dictatorship, extending into the 1980s, Brazil
and the Soviet bloc engaged in extensive trade and economic cooperation, reaching
billions of dollars per year and including the building of several large hydroelectric
plants in Brazil. A similar economic relationship existed between the Soviet bloc and
the Argentine military dictatorship of 1976-83, so much so that in 1982, when Soviet
leader Brezhnev died, the Argentine government declared a national day of mourning. 65
It was only by ignoring facts like these during the cold war that the anti-
communist propaganda machine of the United States could preach about the
International Communist Conspiracy and claim that the coup in Brazil had saved the
country from communism. For a typical example of this propaganda, one must read
"The Country That Saved Itself," which appeared in Reader's Digest several months
after the coup. The innumerable lies about what occurred in Brazil, fed by the magazine
to its millions of readers, undoubtedly played a role in preparing the American public
for the great anti-communist crusade in Vietnam just picking up steam at the time. The
article began:
Seldom has a major nation come closer to the brink of disaster and yet recovered
than did Brazil in its recent triumph over Red subversion. The communist drive for
domination — marked by propaganda, infiltration, terror — was moving in high gear.
Total surrender seemed imminent — and then the people said No! 66
The type of independence shown by the Brazilian military government in its
economic relations with the Soviet Union was something Washington could accept from
a conservative government, even the occasional nationalization of American property,
when it knew that the government could be relied upon to keep the left suppressed at
home and to help in the vital cold-war, anti-communist campaigns abroad. In 1965,
Brazil sent 1,100 troops to the Dominican Republic in support of the US invasion, the
only country in Latin America to send more than a token force. And in 1971 and 1973,
the Brazilian military and intelligence apparatuses contributed to the American efforts
in overthrowing the governments of Bolivia and Chile.
The United States did not rest on its laurels. CIA headquarters immediately began
to generate hemisphere-wide propaganda, as only the Agency's far-flung press-asset
network could, in support of the new Brazilian government and to discredit Goulart. 67
Dean Rusk, concerned that Goulart might be received in Uruguay as if he were still
170
Brazil's president on the grounds that he had not resigned, cabled the American
Embassy in Montevideo that "it would be useful if you could quietly bring to the
attention of appropriate officials the fact that despite his allegations to the contrary
Goulart has abandoned his office." 68
At the same time, the CIA station in Uruguay undertook a program of
surveillance of Brazilian exiles who had fled from the military takeover, to prevent them
from instigating any kind of insurgency movement in their homeland. It was a simple
matter for the Agency to ask their (paid) friend, the head of Uruguayan intelligence, to
place his officers at the residences of Goulart and other key Brazilians. The officers kept
logs of visitors while posing as personal security men for the exiles, although it is
unlikely that the exiles swallowed the story. 69
In the first few days following the coup, "several thousand" Brazilians were
70
arrested, "communist and suspected communist" all. AIFLD graduates were promptly
7 1
appointed by the new government to purge the unions. Though Ambassador Gordon
had assured the State Department before the coup that the armed forces "would be quick
to restore constitutional institutions and return power to civilian hands," 72 this was not
to be. Within days, General Castelo Branco assumed the presidency and over the next
few years his regime instituted all the features of military dictatorship which Latin
America has come to know and love: Congress was shut down, political opposition was
reduced to virtual extinction, habeas corpus for "political crimes" was suspended,
criticism of the president was forbidden by law, labor unions were taken over by
government interveners, mounting protests were met by police and military firing into
crowds, the use of systematic "disappearance" as a form of repression came upon the
stage of Latin America, peasants' homes were burned down, priests were brutalized ...
the government had a name for its program: the "moral rehabilitation" of Brazil ... then
there was the torture and the death squads, both largely undertakings of the police and
7 ^
the military, both underwritten by the United States.
In the chapters on Guatemala and Uruguay, we shall see how the US Office of
Public Safety (OPS), the CIA and AID combined to provide the technical training, the
equipment, and the indoctrination which supported the horrors in those countries. It was
no less the case in Brazil. Dan Mitrione of the OPS, whom we shall encounter in his full
beauty in Uruguay, began his career in Brazil in the 1960s. By 1969, OPS had
established a national police force for Brazil and had trained over 100,000 policemen in
the country, in addition to 523 receiving more advanced instruction in the United
States. 74 About one-third of the students' time at the police academies was devoted to
75
lectures on the "communist menace" and the need to battle against it. The "bomb
school" and techniques of riot control were other important aspects of their education.
Tortures range from simple but brutal blows from a truncheon to electric shocks.
Often the torture is more refined: the end of a reed is placed in the anus of a naked
man hanging suspended downwards on the pau de arara [parrot's perch] and a
piece of cotton soaked in petrol is lit at the other end of the reed. Pregnant women
have been forced to watch their husbands being tortured. Other wives have been
hung naked beside their husbands and given electric shocks on the sexual parts of
their body, while subjected to the worst kind of obscenities. Children have been
tortured before their parents and vice versa. At least one child, the three month old
baby of Virgilio Gomes da Silva was reported to have died under police torture.
The length of sessions depends upon the resistance capacity of the victims and have
sometimes continued for days at a time.
Amnesty International
171
Judge Agamemnon Duarte indicated that the CCC [Commandos to Hunt
Communists, a death squad armed and aided by the police] and the CIA are
implicated in the murder of Father Henrique Neto. He admitted that... the American
Secret Service (CIA) was behind the CCC.
Jornal do Brazil'
Chief of Staff of the Brazilian Army, General Breno Borges Forte, at the Tenth
Conference of American Armies in 1973:
The enemy is undefined ... it adapts to any environment and uses every means, both
licit and illicit, to achieve its aims. It disguises itself as a priest, a student or a
campesino, as a defender of democracy or an advanced intellectual, as a pious soul
or as an extremist protestor; it goes into the fields and the schools, the factories and
the churches, the universities and the magistracy; if necessary, it will wear a
uniform or civil garb; in sum, it will take on any role that it considers appropriate to
deceive, to lie, and to take in the good faith of Western peoples." 78
In 1970, a US Congress study group visited Brazil. It gave this summary of
statements by American military advisers there:
Rather than dwell on the authoritarian aspects of the regime, they emphasize
assertions by the Brazilian armed forces that they believe in, and support,
representative democracy as an ideal and would return government to civilian
control if this could be done without sacrifice to security and development. This
withdrawal from the political arena is not seen as occurring in the near future. For
that reason they emphasize the continued importance of the military assistance
training program as a means of exerting U.S. influence and retaining the current
pro-U.S. attitude of the Brazilian armed forces. Possible disadvantages to U.S.
interests in being so closely identified with an authoritarian regime are not seen as
particularly important. 79
The CIA never rests ... a footnote: the New York Times reported in 1966 ...
When the CIA learned last year that a Brazilian youth had been killed in 1963,
allegedly in an auto accident, while studying on a scholarship at the Lumumba
University in Moscow, it mounted a massive publicity campaign to discourage
other South American families from sending their youngsters to the Soviet
It was a CIA dream come true. A commando raid by anti-Castro Cubans upon the
Cuban Embassy in Lima had uncovered documentary proof that Cuba had paid out
"hundreds of thousands" of dollars in Peru for propaganda to foster favorable attitudes
toward the Cuban revolution and to promote Communist activities within the country.
This was no standard broad-brush, cold-war accusation, for the documents
disclosed all manner of details and names — the culprits who had been on the receiving
end of the tainted money; men in unions and universities and in politics; men who had
secretly visited Cuba, all expenses paid. 1 To top it all off, these were men the CIA
looked upon as enemies.
Union.
so
Fort Bragg moves to the jungle
112
The only problem — and it wasn't really a problem — was that some of the
documents were counterfeit. The raid had certainly taken place, on 8 November 1960 to
be exact. And documents had indeed been seized, at gunpoint. But the most
incriminating of the documents, presented a month later with the authentic ones, had
been produced by the experts of the CIA's Technical Services Division. 2
It was a propaganda windfall. The story received wide media coverage in Latin
America and the United States, accompanied by indignant anti-communist articles and
editorials. The Wall Street Journal was moved to run an extremely long, slightly
hysterical piece, obviously based on Washington handouts, strikingly unquestioned,
which warned that "mountainous stacks of intelligence data from the 20 nations
stretching from Mexico to Argentina tell of a widening Communist push into the
hemisphere". 3
To be sure, the Cubans insisted that the documents were not genuine, but that was
only to be expected. The affair was to cast a shadow over Castro's foreign relations for
some time to come.
The most propitious outcome, from the CIA's standpoint, was that within days
after the disclosure the Peruvian government broke diplomatic relations with Cuba. This
was a major priority of the Agency in Lima, as in most other CIA stations in Latin
America, and led further to the Cuban news agency, Prensa Latina, being barred from
operating in Peru. The news agency's dispatches, the Peruvian authorities now decided,
were "controlled from Moscow". 4
A week later, there was further welcome fallout from the incident. The
government enacted legislation making it easier to arrest members of the Communist
Party, although this was repealed a year later. During its deliberations the Peruvian
legislature accepted a sworn statement from one Francisco Ramos Montejo, a recent
defector from the Cuban Embassy who had been present during the raid, who
"confirmed" that all the documents were genuine. Ramos, who was now living in Miami
and working for the CIA, added fresh revelations that there had been detailed plans for
the assassination of Peruvian officials and for the overthrow of the government, and that
arms had been smuggled into Peru from Bolivia and Ecuador, presumably for these
purposes.
Of such stuff is the battle for the hearts and minds of Latin Americans made.
The political history of Peru has been of the classic South American mold — an
oligarchy overthrown by a military coup replaced by another oligarchy ... periodically
punctuated by an uprising, sporadic violence from the forgotten below to remind those
above that they ate still alive, albeit barely. Veteran Latin America newsman John
Gerassi described the state of those below in the Peru of the early 1960s:
In Lima, [he capital, whose colonial mansions enveloped by ornate wooden
balconies help make it one of the most beautiful cities in the world, half of the 1.3
million inhabitants live in rat-infested slums. One, called El Monton, is built
around, over, and in the city dump. There, when I visited it, naked children, some
too young to know how to walk, competed with pigs for a few bits of food scraps
accidentally discarded by the garbage men ... [The peasants] chew cocaine-
producing coca leaves to still hunger pains, and average 500 calories a day.
Where there is grass, the Peruvian Andes Indian eats it — and also the sheep he
kills when it gets so hungry that it begins tearing another sheep's wool off for its
food. The peons who work the land of the whites average one sol (4 cents) a day,
and ... labor from sunup to sundown. 6
173
During this period, a movement led by Hugo Blanco organized peasants into
unions, staged strikes and seized land. The movement engaged in little which could be
termed guerrilla warfare, using its meagre arms to defend the squatters, and was easily
and brutally put down by the police and army, apparently without significant American
assistance other than the "routine" arming and training of such forces.
By 1965, however, several guerrilla groups had evolved in the eastern slopes of
the Andes, cognizant of the bare truth that organizing peasants was, by itself, painfully
inadequate; some would say suicidal. Inspired by the Cuban revolution, impressed with
the social gains which had followed, and, in some cases, trained by the Cubans, these
sons of the middle class met in May to plan a common strategy. Guerrilla warfare began
in earnest the following month. By the end of the year, however, a joint Peruvian-
American counter-insurgency operation had broken the back of three rebel groups, two
of them in less than two months. Those guerrillas who remained alive and active were
reduced to futile and impotent skirmishes over the next year or so.
The role of the CIA in this definitive military mop-up has been concisely depicted
by the former high official of the Agency, Victor Marchetti:
Green Berets participated ... in what was the CIA's single large-scale Latin
American intervention of the post-Bay of Pigs era. This occurred in the mid-1960s,
when the agency secretly came to the aid of the Peruvian government, then plagued
by guerrilla troubles in its remote eastern regions. Unable to cope adequately with
the insurgent movement, Lima had turned to the U.S. government for aid, which
was immediately and covertly forthcoming.
The agency financed the construction of what one experienced observer described
as "a miniature Fort Bragg" in the troubled Peruvian jungle region, complete with
mess halls, classrooms, barracks, administrative buildings, parachute jump towers,
amphibious landing facilities, and all the other accoutrements of paramilitary
operations. Helicopters were furnished under cover of official military aid
programs, and the CIA flew in arms and other combat equipment. Training was
provided by the agency's Special Operations Division personnel and by Green
Beret instructors on loan from the Army. 8
In February 1966, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara summed up this effort
in a Senate hearing: "In Peru, the Government has already made good progress against
guerrilla concentrations, and U.S. trained and supported Peruvian army and air force
units have played prominent roles in this counter-guerrilla campaign." 9
Typically, and ironically, such training would have included instilling in the
Peruvian officers the motivation for doing battle with the insurgents in the first place.
As US military affairs scholar Michael Klare has pointed out:
Many Latin American military officers would rather command elite units like jet
fighter squadrons, naval flotillas, or armored brigades than slug it out with the
guerrillas in long, unspectacular jungle campaigns. U.S. training programs are
designed, therefore, to emphasize the importance of counterguerrilla operations
(and to suggest, thereby, that the United States will reward those officers who make
a good showing at this kind of warfare). 10
The extent to which American military personnel engaged directly in combat is
not known. They did, however, set up their headquarters in the center of an area of
heavy fighting, in the village of Mazanari, and in September 1965 the New York Times
reported that when the Peruvian army opened a major drive against the guerrillas, "At
least one United States Army counter-insurgency expert was said to have helped plan
and direct the attack." 11
174
In the urban areas a concurrent round-up of guerrilla supporters was carried out,
based materially on CIA intelligence: the list of "subversives" regularly compiled by
Agency stations throughout the world for just such occasions. 12 The CIA is usually in a
much better position to collect this information than the host government, due to its
superior experience in the field, funds available for hiring informants, technical
equipment for eavesdropping, and greater motivation.
While this was taking place the war in Vietnam and the militant protest against it
had already captured the front pages of American newspapers, and the isolated New
York Times dispatch referred to above easily passed into oblivion. Yet, the American
objective in Peru — to crush a movement aimed at genuine land reform and the social
and political changes inevitably stemming from such — was identical to its objective in
Vietnam. And the methods employed were similar: burning down peasants' huts and
villages to punish support for the guerrillas, defoliating the countryside to eliminate
guerrilla sanctuaries, saturation bombing with napalm and high explosives, even
1 Q
throwing prisoners out of helicopters.
The essential difference, one which spelled disaster for the Peruvian insurgents,
was that their ranks were not augmented in any appreciable number by the Indian
peasants, a group with little revolutionary consciousness and even less daring; four
centuries of dehu-manization had robbed them of virtually all hope and the sense of a
right to revolt; and when this sense stirred even faintly, such as under Hugo Blanco, it
was met head-on by the brick wall of official violence.
As common in the Third World as it is ludicrous, the bulk of the armed forces
employed to keep the peasants pacified were soldiers of peasant stock themselves. It is a
measure of the ultimate cynicism of the Peruvian and American military authorities that
soldiers were stationed outside their home areas to lessen their resistance when the order
was given to shoot. 14
But it all worked. It worked so well that more than a decade was to pass before
desperate men took to arms again in Peru.
29. Dominican Republic 1960-1966
Saving democracy from communism by getting rid of democracy
On the night of 30 May 1961, Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo, mass murderer,
torturer par excellence, absolute dictator, was shot to death on a highway in the outskirts
of the capital city, Ciudad Trujillo.
The assassination set off a chain of events over the next five years which
featured sustained and remarkably gross intervention into the internal affairs of the
Dominican Republic by the United States, the likes of which had not been seen in Latin
America since the heyday of American gunboat diplomacy.
The United States had been an accomplice in the assassination itself of the man
it had helped to climb to power and to endure for some 30 years. It marked one of the
rare occasions that the US government acted to overthrow a right-wing despot, albeit
anti-commu-nism was still the motivating force.
Whatever repugnance individual Washington policy makers may have felt
toward Trujillo's incredible violations of human rights over the years, his fervent
adherence to American policies, his repression of the left, and, as a consequence, the
vigorous support he enjoyed in Congress (where Trujillo's money was no strangerl and
175
in other influential American circles, were enough to keep successive United States
administrations looking the other way.
When, in January 1959, Fulgencio Batista fell before the forces of Fidel Castro
in nearby Cuba, a reconsideration of this policy was thrust upon Washington's agenda.
This historic event seemed to suggest that support of right-wing governments might no
longer be the best way of checking the rise of revolutionary movements in Latin
America, but rather might be fostering them. Indeed, in June a force of Dominican
exiles launched an invasion of their homeland from Cuba. Although the invasion was a
complete failure, it could only serve to heighten Washington's concern about who was
swimming around in "The American Lake".
'"Batista is to Castro as Trujillo is to ' was the implicit assumption, and
Washington wanted to ensure that it could help fill in the blank," is the way one
analysis formulated the problem. "As a result, the United States began to cast about for
a way to get rid of Trujillo and at the same time to ensure a responsible successor." 1
Ironically, it was to Trujillo's Dominican Republic that Batista had fled.
The decision to topple Trujillo was reinforced in early 1960 when the United
States sought to organize hemispheric opposition to the Castro regime. This policy ran
head-on into the familiar accusation that the United States opposed only leftist
governments, never those of the right, no matter how tyrannical. The close association
with Trujillo, widely regarded as Washington's "protege", was proving increasingly to
be an embarrassment. The circumstances were such that President Eisenhower was led
to observe that "It's certain that American public opinion won't condemn Castro until we
have moved against Trujillo." (The president's apparent belief in the independence of
the American mind may have been overly generous, for Washington was supporting
right-wing dictatorships in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti and elsewhere before and after
Trujillo's assassination, yet the American public fell readily into line in condemning
Castro.)
As early as 1958, the then-CIA chief of station in the Dominican Republic, Lear
Reed, along with several Dominicans, had plotted an assassination of Trujillo, one
which never got off the ground. 3 What the Agency's motivation was, and whether it was
acting on its own or at the behest of higher echelons in Washington, is not known.
However, in February 1960 the National Security Council's Special Group in
Washington gave consideration to a program of covert aid to anti-Trujillo Dominicans. 4
Two months later, Eisenhower approved a contingency plan which provided, in part,
that if the situation deteriorated still further: "the United States would immediately take
political action to remove Trujillo from the Dominican Republic as soon as a suitable
successor regime can be induced to take over with the assurance of U.S. political,
economic, and — if necessary — military support." 5
Seemingly unaware of the currents swirling about him, Trujillo continued to live
up to his gangster reputation. In June, his henchmen blew up a car carrying Venezuelan
President Romulo Betancourt, an outspoken critic of the Dominican dictator. As a
result, Washington came under renewed pressure from several of the more democratic
Caribbean countries for action against Trujillo. Betancourt, who had survived the blast,
told US Secretary of State Christian Herter: "If you don't eliminate him, we will
invade."
For a full year, the dissidents and various American officials played cloak-and-
dagger games: There were meetings in New York and Washington, in Ciudad Trujillo
and Venezuela; Americans living in the Dominican Republic were enlisted for the cause
by the CIA; schemes to overthrow Trujillo were drawn up at different times by the State
Department, the CIA, and the dissidents, some approved by the Special Group. A
176
training camp was set up in Venezuela for Dominican exiles flown there from the
United States and Puerto Rico by the CIA; the dissidents made numerous requests for
weapons, from sniper rifles to remote-control detonating devices, for the understood
purpose of assassinating Trujillo and other key members of his regime. Several of the
requests were approved by the State Department or the CIA; support for the dissidents
was regularly reiterated at high levels of the US government ... yet, after all was said
and done, none of the ambitious plans was even attempted (the actual assassination was
essentially a spur-of-the-moment improvised affair), only three pistols and three
carbines were ever passed to the anti-Trujillistas, and it is not certain that any of these
guns were used in the assassination.'
In the final analysis, the most significant aid received by the dissidents from the
United States was the assurance that the "Colossus to the North" would not intervene
militarily to prevent the assassination and would support them afterwards if they set up
a "suitable" government. In Latin America this is virtually a sine qua non for such
undertakings, notably in the Dominican Republic where American marines have landed
on four separate occasions in this century, the last intervention having created a
centralized Dominican National Guard which the US placed under the control of a
young officer it had trained named Rafael Trujillo.
The gap between the word and the deed of the American government concerning
the assassination appears to have been the consequence of a growing uncertainty in
Washington about what would actually cake place in the wake of Trujillo's demise —
would a pro-Castro regime emerge from the chaos? A secondary consideration, perhaps,
was a reluctance to engage in political assassination, both as a matter of policy and as a
desire to avoid, as one State Department official put it, "further tarnishing in the eyes of
the world" of the "U.S. moral posture". 8 This was particularly the expressed feeling of
President John Kennedy and others in his administration who had assumed office in
January 1961, although they were later to undertake several assassination attempts
against Castro.
The dismal failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April further dampened the
enthusiasm of Washington officials for Caribbean adventures (except against Cuba in
revenge) and induced them to request a postponement of the assassination. The plotters,
however, were well past the point of no return.
The Dominicans who pulled the triggers and their fellow conspirators were in no
way revolutionaries. They came from the ranks of the conservative, privileged sectors of
Dominican society and were bound together primarily by an intense loathing of Trujillo,
a personal vendetta — each of them, or someone close to them, had suffered a deep
humiliation at the hands of the diabolical dictator, if not torture or murder.
Their plan as to what would follow the elimination of Trujillo was only half-
baked, and even this fell apart completely. As matters turned out, the day after the
assassination, Rafael ("Ramfis") Trujillo, Jr. rushed home from his playboy's life in
Paris to take over the reins of government. Little had been resolved, either in the
Dominican Republic or in Washington. The Kennedy administration was confronted
with the same ideological questions which had caused them so much indecision before
the assassination, as they had the Eisenhower administration. To wit: What is the best
way of preventing the establishment of left-wing governments intent upon radical social
change? The traditional iron fist of right-wing dictatorship, or a more democratic
society capable of meeting many of the legitimate demands of the populace? How much
democracy? Would too much open the door for even greater, and unacceptable,
demands and provide the left with a legal platform from which TO sway ("dupe",
177
Washington would call it) the public? And if it is a dictatorship that is to be supported,
how are liberal American leaders to explain this to the world and to their own citizens?
John F. Kennedy and his men from Harvard tended to treat such policy questions
in a manner more contemplative than American political figures are usually inclined to
do: on occasion, it might be said, they even agonized over such questions. But in the
end, their Latin American policy was scarcely distinguishable from that of conservative
Republican administrations. A leader who imposed "order" with at least the facade of
democracy, who kept the left submerged without being notoriously brutal about it; in
short, the anti-communist liberal, still appeared to be the safest ally for the United
States.
"There are three possibilities," Kennedy said, "in descending order of
preference: a decent democratic regime, a continuation of the Trujillo regime or a
Castro regime. We ought to aim at the first but we really can't renounce the second until
we are sure we can avoid the third." 9
Rafael Trujillo, Jr. was clearly not ideal. Besides bearing the inescapable stigma
of his name and family, he proceeded to carry out a bloodbath of revenge over the next
six months. 10 But, unlike his father in his last years, Ramfis could be prodded by
Washington into making a few token reforms, and both parties might have been content
to continue in this fashion indefinitely had not many people of the Dominican Republic
felt terribly cheated by the turn of events. Their elation over the assassination had
soured in the face of business-as-usual.
Resentment spilled over into the streets. By October, the protests were occurring
daily and were being put down by tanks; students were shot dead by government troops.
The United States began to make moves, for the situation in the streets and high places
of the government was anarchic enough, Washington feared, to provide an opening for
the proverbial (and seemingly magical) "communist takeover", although, in fact, the left
in the Dominican Republic was manifestly insignificant from years of repression.
American diplomats met in the capital city with the Trujillo clan and Dominican
military leaders and bluntly told them that US military power would, if necessary, be
used to compel the formation of a provisional government headed by Joaquin Balaguer
until elections could be held. Balaguer had been closely tied to the Trujillo family for
decades, was serving as president under Trujillo at the time of the assassination, and had
remained in the same capacity under Ramfis, but he was not regarded as a threat to
continue the tyranny. As Kennedy put it: "Balaguer is our only tool. The anticommunist
liberals aren't strong enough. We must use our influence to take Balaguer along the road
to democracy." 11 Just how committed John F. Kennedy was to democracy in the
Dominican Republic we shall presently see.
To make certain that the Dominicans got the message, a US naval task force of
eight ships with 1,800 Marines aboard appeared off the Dominican coast on 19
November, just outside the three-mile limit but in plain sight of Ciudad Trujillo.
Spanish-language broadcasts from the offshore ships warned that the Marines were
prepared to come ashore; while overhead, American jet fighters streaked along the
coastline. Brigadier General Pedro Rodriguez Echevarria, a key military figure, was
persuaded by the United States to put aside any plans for a coup he may have been
harboring and to support the American action. Rodriguez proceeded — whether of his
own initiative is not clear — to order the bombing of the air base outside the capital
where Trujillistas had been massing troops. Over the next two days, Ramfis returned to
the pleasure temples of Europe while other prominent Trujillistas left for the good life in
Florida. 12
178
However, when Balaguer proved to be a major obstacle to beginning the process
of democratization and indicated that he did not regard his regime as temporary, the
United States added its own special pressure to that of Balaguer's domestic opposition to
force him to resign after only two months in office. Washington then turned around and
issued another stern warning to General Rodriguez, threatened Dominican leaders with
a large loss of aid if they supported a coup, and mounted another naval show-of-force to
help other military officers block the general's attempt to seize power. 1 - 1
While a seven-man "Council of State" then administered the affairs of
government, the US continued to treat the Dominican Republic as its private experiment
in the prevention of communism. The American Ambassador, John Bartlow Martin,
pressed the Council to curb left-wing activity. By his own admission, Martin urged the
use of "methods once used by the police in Chicago": harassment of suspects by
repeated arrests, midnight raids on their homes, beatings, etc. 14
When street disturbances erupted, US Attorney General Robert Kennedy
arranged for riot-control equipment to be sent to Santo Domingo (the original name of
the capital, now restored). The equipment came complete with two Spanish-speaking
Los Angeles detectives to impart to their Dominican counterparts the fine art of quelling
such uprisings that they had acquired in the Mexican barrios of east Los Angeles. In a
few weeks. Ambassador Martin could report that the Council had "rewon the streets,
thanks almost entirely to those two detectives". 15
This riot-control unit remained as a permanent part of the Santo Domingo police
force. Known as the Cascos Blancos (white helmets), they came to be much hated by
the populace. Shortly afterwards, the US military undertook a long-range program to
transform the country's armed forces into what was hoped would be an efficient anti-
guerrilla organization, though guerrillas were as rare on the Caribbean island as
members of the Trujillo family. 1
Finally, in December 1962, elections were held, under terms dictated in large
part by Ambassador Martin to the two major candidates. His purpose was to introduce
into the Dominican Republic some of the features that Americans regard as necessary to
a viable and democratic electoral system, but Martin's fiat was inescapably a highly
condescending intrusion into the affairs of a supposedly sovereign nation. His
instructions extended down to the level of what the loser should say in his concession
speech.
Further, under an "Emergency Law", the United States and the Council arranged
for the deportation of some 125 Trujillistas and "Castro communists" to the United
States, from where they were not allowed to leave until after the election in order "to
help maintain stability so elections could be held". 17
The winner, and first more-or-less-democratically elected president of the
Dominican Republic since 1924, was Juan Bosch, a writer who had spent many years in
exile while Trujillo reigned. Here at last was Kennedy's liberal anti-communist, non-
military and legally elected by a comfortable majority as well. Bosch's government was
to be the long-sought-after "showcase of democracy" that would put the lie to Fidel
Castro. He was given the grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office in
February 1963.
Bosch was true to his beliefs. He called for land reform, including transferring
some private land to the public sector as required; low-rent housing; modest
nationalization of business; an ambitious project of public works, serving mass needs
more than vested interests; a reduction in the import of luxury items; at the same time,
he favored incentives to private enterprise and was open to foreign investment provided
it was not excessively exploitative of the country — all in all, standard elements in the
179
program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was likewise
serious about the thing called civil liberties; Communists, or those labeled as such, or
anyone else, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.
A number of American officials and congressmen expressed their discomfort
with Bosch's plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States. Land
reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in Washington, the stuff that
"creeping socialism" is made of. In several quarters of the US press Bosch was red-
baited and compared with Castro, and the Dominican Republic with Cuba. (Castro, for
his part, branded Bosch a "Yankee puppet".) Some of the press criticism was clearly
1 8
orchestrated, in the manner of many CIA campaigns.
In both the United States and the Dominican Republic, the accusations most
frequently cast at Bosch were the ones typically used against Latin American leaders
who do not vigorously suppress the left (cf. Arbenz and Goulart): Bosch was allowing
"communists" to "infiltrate" into the country and into the government, and he was not
countering "communist subversion", the latter referring to no more than instances of
people standing up for their long-denied rights. Wrote a reporter for the Miami News:
"Communist penetration of the Dominican Republic is progressing with incredible
speed and efficiency." He did not, however, name a single communist in the Bosch
government. As it happens, the reporter, Hal Hendrix, was a valuable press asset and a
"secret operative" of the CIA in the 1960s. 19 The CIA made a further contribution to the
anti-Bosch atmosphere. Ambassador Martin has reported that the Agency "gave rumors
[about communists in the Dominican Republic] a credibility far higher than 1 would
have ... In reporting a Castro/Communist plot, however wildly implausible, it is
obviously safer to evaluate it as 'could be true' than as nonsense." 20
John F. Kennedy also soured on Bosch, particularly for his refusal to crack down
on radicals. Said the president to Ambassador Martin one day:
I'm wondering if the day might not come when he'd [Bosch] like to get rid of some
of the left. Tell him we respect his judgment, we're all for him, but the time may
come when he'll want to deport 30 or 50 people, when it'd be better to deport them
than to let them go. I suppose he'd have to catch them in something. 21
When the United States failed to commit any new economic assistance to the
Dominican Republic and generally gave the indication that Juan Bosch was a doomed
venture, right-wing Dominican military officers could only be encouraged in their
craving to be rid of the president and his policies. Sam Halper, former Caribbean Bureau
Chief of Time magazine, later reported that the military coup ousting Bosch went into
action "as soon as they got a wink from the U.S. Pentagon". 22
In July, a group of officers formally presented Bosch with a statement of
principie-cum-ultimatum: Their loyalty to his regime was conditioned upon his adoption
of a policy of rigorous and -communism. Bosch reacted by going on television and
delivering a lecture about the apolitical role required of the military in a democratic
society, surely an occult subject to these products of 3 1 years of Trujilloism.
The beleaguered president could see that a premature demise lay ahead for his
government. His speech on television had sounded very much like a farewell. The
failure of Washington to intervene on his behalf could only enlarge the writing on the
wall. Indeed, Bosch and some of his aides strongly suspected that the US military and
the CIA were already conspiring with the Dominican officers. Several American
military officers had disregarded diplomatic niceties by expressing their reservations
about Bosch's politics loud enough to reach his ears. 23
180
A week before the inevitable coup, the CIA/AIFLD-created union federation in
the Dominican Republic, CONATRAL, which had been set up to counter and erode
Bosch's support in the labor movement, placed an ad in a leading newspaper urging the
people to put their faith in the army to defend them against communism. 24
The end came in September, a scant seven months after Bosch had taken office.
He had not had the time to accomplish much that was worthwhile in this hopelessly
corrupt society before the military boots marched, as they have always marched in Latin
America.
The United States, which can discourage a military coup in Latin America with a
frown, did nothing to stand in the way of the Dominican officers. There would be no
display of American military might this time — although Bosch asked for it — "unless a
Communist takeover were threatened," said the State Department. 25
"Democracy," said Newsweek magazine, "was being saved from Communism by
getting rid of democracy." 26
There were the customary expressions of regret in Washington about the death
of democracy, and there was the de rigueur withholding of recognition of the new
regime. But two months later, when opposition to the yet-again repressive dictatorship
began to manifest itself noticeably, the junta yelled "communist" and was quickly
embraced by the United States with recognition and the other perquisites which attach
to being a member in good standing of the "Free World". 27
Nineteen months later, a revolution broke out in the Dominican Republic which
promised to put the exiled Bosch back in power at the hands of a military-civilian force
that would be loyal to his program. But for the fifth time in the century, the American
Marines landed and put an abrupt end to such hopes.
In the early morning of Saturday, 24 April 1965, a group of young army officers
of middle rank, acting in concert with civilian Bosch partisans, declared themselves in
revolt against the government. The "constitutionalists", as they called themselves, were
soon joined by other officers and their units. Spurred by ecstatic radio proclamations,
thousands of Dominicans poured into the streets shouting "Viva Bosch" and grabbed up
the arms handed out by the rebel military forces.
The television station was taken over and for two days a "potpourri of
politicians, soldiers, women, children, adventurers, hoodlums and anyone who wished
to, shouted against the status quo." 28
The participants in the uprising were a mixed bag, not all of them sympathetic to
Bosch or to social reform; some were on the right, with their own varied motivations.
But the impetus deafly lay with the constitutionalists, and the uprising was thus viewed
with alarm by the rest of the military and the US Embassy as a movement to restore
Bosch to power with all that that implied.
Philip Geyelin of the Wall Street Journal (and formerly with the CIA), who had
access to the official embassy cables and the key actors in the drama, has written:
What the record reveals, in fact, is that from the very outset of the upheaval, there
was, a concerted U.S. Government effort, if not actually a formal decision, to
checkmate the rebel movement by whatever means and at whatever cost.
By Sunday, April 25 ... the Santo Domingo embassy had clearly cast its lot with the
"loyalist" military cabal and against the rebellion's original aim: the return of Juan
Bosch ... Restoration of the Bosch regime would be "against U.S. interests", the
embassy counseled. Blocking Bosch could mean further bloodshed, the embassy
conceded. Nonetheless, Washington was advised, the embassy military attaches
had given "loyalist" leaders a go-ahead to do "everything possible" to prevent what
was described as the danger of a "Communist take-over". 29
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The attaches as well as the US Consul made emergency visits to several still-
uncommitted Dominican military commanders to persuade them, apparently with
notable success, to support the government. 30
A bloody civil war had broken out in the streets of Santo Domingo. During the
first few days, the momentum of battle swung to one side, then the other. By the night
of 28 April, however, the military and police inside Santo Domingo had collapsed, and
the constitutionalists were preparing to attack the military's last bastion, San Isidro, their
main base about 10 miles away. 31
"The Generals at San Isidro were dejected, several were weeping, and one was
hysterically urging 'retreat','' read the cable sent by the American ambassador, W.
Tapley Bennett, to Washington in the early evening of the 28th. (Bennett, as we shall
see, was given to hyperbole of the worst sort, but the Dominican military certainly were
isolated and demoralized.) Bennett added, whether in the same cable or another one is
not clear, that if US troops did not immediately land, American lives would he lost and
"Castro-type elements" would be victorious. 32
Within hours, the first 500 US Marines were brought in by helicopter from ships
stationed a few miles off the coast. Two days later, American forces ashore numbered
over 4,000. At the peak, some 23,000 troops. Marine and Army, were to take up
positions in the beleaguered country, with thousands more standing by on a 35-ship task
force offshore.
The American action was in clear violation of several international agreements,
including the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS) which prohibited
intervention "directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external
affairs of any other state".
During the entire course of the US military occupation, American
pronouncements would have had the world believe that its forces were in the
Dominican. Republic in a "neutral" capacity: to protect the lives of Americans and other
foreigners, establish a ceasefire, ensure free elections, etc. As we have seen, however,
the United States had committed itself to one side from the start of hostilities. This
continued to he the case. The morning after the landing of the first Marines,
Ambassador Bennett was instructed by the State Department that US military officers
should be used "to help San Isidro develop operational plans take the rebel stronghold
downtown".
Within a few days, American troops were deployed in an armed corridor through
the cen-ter of Santo Domingo so as to divide the constitutionalists' zone and cut off their
main body from access to the rest of the country, bottling them up in a small downtown
area with their backs to the sea. Other American forces were stationed throughout the
countryside. The rebel offensive against San Isidro had been prevented. It was the end
of their revolution.
The American forces came to the aid of the Dominican military in a number of
ways, supplying them with equipment, food and even their salaries, but it was the direct
military involvement that was most telling. On one striking occasion, the sea of
American troops parted to allow the Dominican military to pass through and brutally
attack and mop up the northern section of the rebel zone while the main rebel force in
the south remained helplessly blocked behind the American line. This "smashing
victory," the New York Times reported, was "visibly aided by United States troops".
Other American journalists also reported that US troops took part in the fighting,
although Washington officials angrily denied it. 34
182
The rebels were reduced to little more than sniping attacks on American
soldiers, for which they paid a heavy price. US forces blasted apart a building in
downtown Santo Domingo from which sniper fire was coming; advancing into a
constitutionalist zone, again after sniper fire, they killed some 67 rebels and bystanders;
American paratroops were seen firing at rebels who were retreating, and the
constitutionalists' Minister of justice and Police was "reported to have been killed by
United States machine-gun fire as he attempted to capture the empty Presidential Palace
in midtown with a squad of his troops." 35
When the Johnson administration was not denying such actions outright, it was
claiming that they were either contrary to orders, "individual indiscretions", or "isolated
incidents".
A covert team of Green Berets arrived at one point to help ensure the safety of
American civilians. But when they discovered that some of the Americans were
assisting rebel forces, "their main objective shifted from protecting their fellow
countrymen to spying on them" 36
The Green Berets also found the time to lay the groundwork for the
assassination of one of the leading constitutionalist leaders, Col. Francisco Caamano.
The plot was canceled at the last moment due to the excessive risk involved. 37
Another group of American visitors was that of some leaders of the National
Student Association, ostensibly come to the Dominican Republic to talk with their
counterparts about educational matters, but actually there at the behest of the CIA to
gather information on local students. This was still two years before the expose of the
TO
long-lasting relationship between the CIA and the prominent student organization.
Throughout this period, the communication guns of the US government were
aimed at the people of the United States, the Dominican Republic and the world to
convince them that "communists" were a dominant element amongst the
constitutionalists, that they represented a threat to take over the movement, or that they
had already taken it over, with frightening consequences for all concerned.
At various times the Johnson administration released lists of "communists and
Castroites" in the ranks of the rebels. These lists totaled 53 or 58 or 77 names and
became a cause celebre as well as an object of media ridicule. Besides the laughably
small numbers involved (in a rebellion of tens of thousands with numerous leaders),
several of those on the lists, it turned out, were in prison while others were out of the
country.
The American Embassy in Santo Domingo assured reporters that if they went to
rebel headquarters, they would see the named communists in the flesh. The newspeople
went and looked but could find no identifiable communists (however one identifies a
communist). Subsequently, administration officials explained that the reason that
newspeople had seen such little evidence of communist activity was that the American
landings had scared the Reds into hiding.
Eventually, American officials admitted their doubt that they could prove that
communists had gained control of the constitutionalists, although President Johnson had
pressed the CIA and FBI into an intensive search for evidence. (A CIA cable to
Washington on 25 April reported that the Communist Party [Partido Socialista
Dominicano] had been "unaware of the coup attempt".) 39
Former CIA officer Philip Agee, stationed in Uruguay at the time, wrote later
that the new password at his station became "Fifty-eight trained communists". The
proper reply was "Ten thousand marines". 40
The embassy, and Ambassador Bennett in particular, poured forth "a rising
stream of hysterical rumors, atrocity stories, and alarmist reports" 41 about the rebels,
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reminiscent of the Bolshevik horror stories which had filled the pages of the American
press following the Russian Revolution: embassies being ransacked ... "Castroite-style
mass executions" ... rebels parading in the streets with the heads of their victims on
poles ...
President Johnson made reference to the "atrocities" in public statements, but
none of the stories were ever proven, for none were true; no one ever located any of the
many headless Dominicans; and American officials, in a monument to chutzpah, later
denounced the press for reporting such unverified rumors. 42
Meanwhile, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the US Information
Agency were conducting their own intensive propaganda campaign in the Dominican
Republic to give credence to the American position and discredit Dominican groups
opposed to it. Experts on psychological warfare arrived to ply their trade, radio stations
and newspapers were covertly set up, rebel radio stations jammed, leaflets airdropped in
the countryside. The USIA also secretly subsidized the publication of pro-
administration material aimed for distribution in the United States. 43
From all the wild charges and the frequent contradictory statements made by
American officials, the expression "credibility gap" entered the American popular
language and soon came to haunt the Johnson presidency. 44
Historian Richard Barnet has noted another interesting side to the American
propaganda effort:
To justify the intervention, which had aroused violent opposition from traditional
friends of the United States because of its crudeness and the swathe of lies in
which it was wrapped ... [Washington] began a direct assault on the concept of
non-intervention, the rhetorical foundation stone of Latin-American policy
enshrined in numerous treaties, declarations, and Pan-American Day speeches ...
Under Secretary Thomas Mann told newspaper correspondents that the OAS and
UN charters were drawn up in "19th-century terms" ... Averell Harriman
remarked in Montevideo that the principle of non-intervention was becoming
"obsolete". By a vote of 315 to 52 the House of Representatives passed a
resolution ... justifying the unilateral use of force on foreign territory by any
nation which considers itself threatened by "international communism, directly or
indirectly." ... The President [declared in a speech]: "The first reality is that old
concepts and old labels are largely obsolete. In today's world, with enemies of
freedom talking about 'Wars of national liberation,' the old distinction between
'Civil War' and International War' has already lost much of its meaning ... The
moment of decision must become the moment of action."
"This is the essence of the Johnson Doctrine," wrote Barnet, "a virtually
unlimited claim of legitimacy for armed intervention in civil strife." 45
The last American troops did not leave the Dominican Republic until September
1966. The interim period witnessed a succession of ceasefires, broken truces, and
protracted negotiations under provisional governments.
In June 1966, elections were held in which Joaquin Balaguer defeated Juan
Bosch by a surprisingly large margin. Yet, it was not all that surprising. For five long
years the people of the Dominican Republic had lived under a cloud of chaos and
violence. The experience bad instilled in them a deep longing for a return to
"normalcy", to order, without foreign intervention, without soldiers patrolling their
streets, without curfews, tear gas and bloodshed. With the US Army still very much in
evidence and the American distaste for Bosch well known ... with the ubiquitous
American propaganda hammering home fear of The Red Menace and associating the
constitutionalists, and thus Bosch, with communism ... with the Dominican military still
184
largely Trujillista in personnel and ideology ... a victory for Bosch would be seen by
many voters as a danger that all the horrors would rain down upon their heads once
more. Bosch, who had returned several months prior to the election, was himself so
fearful for his personal safety that he never left his home during the campaign.
Joaquin Balaguer remained in office for the next 12 years, ruling his people in
the grand Latin American style: The rich became richer and the poor had babies, hungry
babies; democracy remained an alien concept; the police and military regularly
kidnapped, tortured and murdered opponents of the government and terrorized union
organizers.
But the man was not, personally, the monster that Trujillo was. There was
relative calm and peace. No "communist threat" hovered over the land. The pot was
sweetened for foreign investors, and American corporations moved in with big bucks.
There was stability and order. And the men who ran the United States looked and were
satisfied. Perhaps some of them had come to the realization that the anti-communist
liberal government was an impossible ideal; for any movement seeking genuine
democracy and social reform would invariably attract individuals whom the United
States would invariably categorize as "communist"; the United States would then feel
driven to discredit, subvert and eventually overturn the movement. A Catch 22.
30. Cuba 1959 to 1980s
The unforgivable revolution
The existence of a revolutionary socialist government with growing ties to the
Soviet Union only 90 miles away, insisted the United States Government, was a
situation which no self-respecting superpower should tolerate, and in 1961 it undertook
an invasion of Cuba.
But less than 50 miles from the Soviet Union sat Pakistan, a close ally of the
United States, a member since 1955 of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization
(SEATO), the US-created anti-communist alliance. On the very border of the Soviet
Union was Iran, an even closer ally of the United States, with its relentless electronic
listening posts, aerial surveillance, and infiltration into Russian territory by American
agents. And alongside Iran, also bordering the Soviet Union, was Turkey, a member of
the Russians' mortal enemy, NATO, since 195 1 .
In 1962 during the "Cuban Missile Crisis", Washington, seemingly in a state of
near-panic, informed the world that the Russians were installing "offensive" missiles in
Cuba. The US promptly instituted a "quarantine" of the island — a powerful show of
naval and marine forces in the Caribbean would stop and search all vessels heading
towards Cuba; any found to contain military cargo would be forced to turn back.
The United States, however, had missiles and bomber bases already in place in
Turkey and other missiles in Western Europe pointed toward the Soviet Union. Russian
leader Nikita Khrushchev later wrote:
The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us
with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have
enemy missiles pointing at you; we'd be doing nothing more than giving them a
little of their own medicine. ... After all, the United States had no moral or legal
quarrel with us. We hadn't given the Cubans anything more than the Americans
were giving to their allies. We had the same rights and opportunities as the
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Americans. Our conduct in the international arena was governed by the same rules
and limits as the Americans. 1
Lest anyone misunderstand, as Khrushchev apparently did, the rules under
which Washington was operating, Time magazine was quick to explain. "On the part of
the Communists," the magazine declared, "this equating [referring to Khrushchev's offer
to mutually remove missiles and bombers from Cuba and Turkey] had obvious tactical
motives. On the part of neutralists and pacifists [who welcomed Khrushchev's offer] it
betrayed intellectual and moral confusion." The confusion lay, it seems, in not seeing
clearly who were the good guys and who were the had guys, for "The purpose of the
U.S. bases [in Turkey] was not to blackmail Russia but to strengthen the defense system
of NATO, which had been created as a safeguard against Russian aggression. As a
member of NATO, Turkey welcomed the bases as a contribution to her own defense."
Cuba, which had been invaded only the year before, could have, it seems, no such
concern. Time continued its sermon:
Beyond these differences between the two cases, there is an enormous moral
difference between U.S. and Russian objectives ... To equate U.S. and Russian
bases is in effect to equate U.S. and Russian purposes ... The U.S. bases, such as
those in Turkey, have helped keep the peace since World War II, while the Russian
bases in Cuba threatened to upset the peace. The Russian bases were intended to
further conquest and domination, while U.S. bases were erected to preserve
freedom. The difference should have been obvious to all. 2
Equally obvious was the right of the United States to maintain a military base on
Cuban soil — Guantanamo Naval Base by name, a vestige of colonialism staring down
the throats of the Cuban people, which the US, to this day, refuses to vacate despite the
vehement protest of the Castro government.
In the American lexicon, in addition to good and bad bases and missiles, there
ate good and bad revolutions. The American and French Revolutions were good. The
Cuban Revolution is bad. It must be bad because so many people have left Cuba as a
result of it.
But at least 100,000 people left the British colonies in America during and after
the American Revolution. These Tories could not abide by the political and social
changes, both actual and feared, particularly that change which attends all revolutions
worthy of the name: Those looked down upon as inferiors no longer know their place.
(Or as the US Secretary of State put it after the Russian Revolution: the Bolsheviks
sought "to make the ignorant and incapable mass of humanity dominant in the earth.") 3
The Tories fled to Nova Scotia and Britain carrying tales of the godless,
dissolute, barbaric American revolutionaries. Those who remained and refused to take
an oath of allegiance to the new state governments were denied virtually all civil
liberties. Many were jailed, murdered, or forced Into exile. After the American Civil
War, thousands more fled to South America and other points, again disturbed by the
social upheaval. How much more is such an exodus to be expected following the Cuban
Revolution? — a true social revolution, giving rise to changes much more profound than
anything in the American experience. How many more would have left the United
States if 90 miles away lay the world's wealthiest nation welcoming their residence and
promising all manner of benefits and rewards?
After the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, we learned that there are also good
and bad hijackings. On several occasions Cuban planes and boats were hijacked to the
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United States but they were not returned to Cuba, nor were the hijackers punished.
Instead, some of the planes and boats were seized by US authorities for non-payment of
debts claimed by American firms against the Cuban government. 4 But then there were
the bad hijackings — planes forced to fly from the United States to Cuba. When there
began to be more of these than flights in the opposite direction, Washington was obliged
to reconsider its policy.
It appears that there are as well good and bad terrorists. When the Israelis
bombed PLO headquarters in Tunis in 1985, Ronald Reagan expressed his approval.
The president asserted that nations have the right to retaliate against terrorist attacks "as
long as you pick out the people responsible". 5
But if Cuba had dropped bombs on any of the headquarters of the anti-Castro
exiles in Miami or New Jersey, Ronald Reagan would likely have gone to war, though
for 25 years the Castro government had been on the receiving end of an extraordinary
series of terrorist attacks carried out in Cuba, in the United States, and in other countries
by the exiles and their CIA mentors. (We shall not discuss the consequences of Cuba
bombing CIA headquarters.)
Bombing and strafing attacks of Cuba by planes based in the United States
began in October 1959, if not before. 6 In early 1960, there were several fire-bomb air
raids on Cuban cane fields and sugar mills, in which American pilots also took part — at
least three of whom died in crashes, while two others were captured. The State
Department acknowledged that one plane which crashed, killing two Americans, had
taken off from Florida, but insisted that it was against the wishes of the US
government.
In March a French freighter unloading munitions from Belgium exploded in
Havana taking 75 lives and injuring 200, some of whom subsequently died. The United
States denied Cuba's accusation of sabotage but admitted that it had sought to prevent
the shipment. 8
And so it went ... reaching a high point in April of the following year in the
infamous CIA-organized invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Over 100 exiles died in
the attack. Close to 1,200 others were taken prisoner by the Cubans. It was later
revealed that four American pilots flying for the CIA had lost their lives as well. 9
The Bay of Pigs assault had relied heavily on the Cuban people rising up to join
the invaders, 10 but this was not to be the case. As it was, the leadership and ranks of the
exile forces were riddled with former supporters and henchmen of Fulgencio Batista,
the dictator overthrown by Castro, and would not have been welcomed back by the
Cuban people under any circumstances.
Despite the fact that the Kennedy administration was acutely embarrassed by the
unmitigated defeat — indeed, because of it — a campaign of smaller-scale attacks upon
Cuba was initiated almost immediately. Throughout the 1960s, the Caribbean island
was subjected to countless sea and air commando raids by exiles, at times accompanied
by their CIA supervisors, inflicting damage upon oil refineries, chemical plants and
railroad bridges, cane fields, sugar mills and sugar warehouses; infiltrating spies,
saboteurs and assassins ... anything to damage the Cuban economy, promote
disaffection, or make the revolution look bad ... taking the lives of Cuban militia
members and others in the process ... pirate attacks on Cuban fishing boats and
merchant ships, bombardments of Soviet vessels docked in Cuba, an assault upon a
Soviet army camp with 12 Russian soldiers reported wounded ... a hotel and a theatre
shelled from offshore because Russians and East Europeans were supposed to be
present there ... u
187
These actions were not always carried out on the direct order of the CIA or with
its foreknowledge, but the Agency could hardly plead "rogue elephant". It had created
an operations headquarters in Miami that was truly a state within a city — over, above,
and outside the laws of the United States, not to mention international law, with a staff
of several hundred Americans directing many more Cuban agents in just such types of
actions, with a budget in excess of $50 million a year, and an arrangement with the local
press to keep operations in Florida secret except when the CIA wanted something
publicized.
Title 18 of the US Code declares it to be a crime to launch a "military or naval
expedition or enterprise" from the United States against a country with which the United
States is not (officially) at war. Although US authorities now and then aborted an exile
plot or impounded a boat — sometimes because the Coast Guard or other officials had
not been properly clued in — no Cubans were prosecuted under this act. This was no
more than to be expected inasmuch as Attorney General Robert Kennedy had
determined after the Bay of Pigs that the invasion did not constitute a military
expedition.
The commando raids were combined with a total US trade and credit embargo,
which continues to this day, and which genuinely hurt the Cuban economy and chipped
away at the society's standard of living. So unyielding has the embargo been that when
Cuba was hard hit by a hurricane in October 1963, and Casa Cuba, a New York social
club, raised a large quantity of clothing for relief, the United States refused to grant it an
export license on the grounds that such shipment was "contrary to the national
interest".
Moreover, pressure was brought to bear upon other countries to conform to the
embargo, and goods destined for Cuba were sabotaged: machinery damaged, chemicals
added to lubricating fluids to cause rapid wear on diesel engines, a manufacturer in
West Germany paid to produce ball-bearings off-center, another to do the same with
balanced wheel gears — "You're talking about big money," said a CIA officer involved
in the sabotage efforts, "when you ask a manufacturer to go along with you on that kind
of project because he has to reset his whole mold. And he is probably going to worry
about the effect on future business. You might have to pay him several hundred
thousand dollars or more." 15
One manufacturer who defied the embargo was the British Leyland Company,
which sold a large number of buses to Cuba in 1964. Repeated expressions of criticism
and protest by Washington officials and congressmen failed to stem deliveries of some
of the buses. Then, in October, an East German cargo ship carrying another 42 buses to
Cuba collided in thick fog with a Japanese vessel in the Thames. The Japanese ship was
able to continue on, but the cargo ship was beached on its side; the buses would have to
be "written off, said the Leyland company. In the leading British newspapers it was just
an accident story. 16 In the New York Times it was not even reported. A decade was to
pass before the American columnist Jack Anderson disclosed that his CIA and National
Security Agency sources had confirmed that the collision had been arranged by the CIA
with the cooperation of British intelligence. 17 Subsequently, another CIA officer stated
that he was skeptical about the collision story, although admitting that "it is true that we
were sabotaging the Leyland buses going to Cuba from England, and that was pretty
sensitive business." 18
What undoubtedly was an even more sensitive venture was the use of chemical
and biological weapons against Cuba by the United States. It is a remarkable record.
In August 1962, a British freighter under Soviet lease, having damaged its
propeller on a reef, crept into the harbor at San Juan, Puerto Rico for repairs. It was
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bound for a Soviet port with 80,000 bags of Cuban sugar. The ship was put into dry
dock and 14,135 sacks of sugar were unloaded to a warehouse to facilitate the repairs.
While in the warehouse, the sugar was contaminated by CIA agents with a substance
that was allegedly harmless but unpalatable. When President Kennedy learned of the
operation he was furious because it had taken place in US territory and if discovered
could provide the Soviet Union with a propaganda field-day and could set a terrible
precedent for chemical sabotage in the cold war. He directed that the sugar not be
returned to the Russians, although what explanation was given to them is not publicly
known. 19 Similar undertakings were apparently not canceled. The CIA official who
helped direct worldwide sabotage efforts, referred to above, later revealed that "There
was lots of sugar being sent out from Cuba, and we were putting a lot of contaminants
in it." 20
The same year, a Canadian agricultural technician working as an adviser to the
Cuban government was paid $5,000 by "an American military intelligence agent" to
infect Cuban turkeys with a virus which would produce the fatal Newcastle disease.
Subsequently, 8,000 turkeys died. The technician later claimed that although he had
been to the farm where the turkeys had died, he had not actually administered the virus,
hut had instead pocketed the money, and that the turkeys had died from neglect and
other causes unrelated to the virus. This may have been a self-serving statement. The
Washington Post reported that "According to U.S. intelligence reports, the Cubans — and
some Americans — believe the turkeys died as the result of espionage." 21
Authors Warren Hinckle and William Turner, citing a participant in the project,
have reported in their book on Cuba that:
During 1969 and 1970, the CIA deployed futuristic weather modification
technology to ravage Cuba's sugar crop and undermine the economy. Planes from
the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in the California desert, where hi tech was
developed, overflew the island, seeding rain clouds with crystals that precipitated
torrential rains over non-agricultural areas and left the cane fields arid (the
downpours caused killer flash floods in some areas). 22
In 1971, also according to participants, the CIA turned over to Cuban exiles a
virus which causes African swine fever. Six weeks later, an outbreak of the disease in
Cuba forced the slaughter of 500,000 pigs to prevent a nationwide animal epidemic. The
outbreak, the first ever in the Western hemisphere, was called the "most alarming event"
of the year by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. 23
Ten years later, the target may well have been human beings, as an epidemic of
dengue fever swept the Cuban island. Transmitted by blood-eating insects, usually
mosquitos, the disease produces severe flu symptoms and incapacitating bone pain.
Between May and October 1981, over 300,000 cases were reported in Cuba with 158
24
fatalities, 101 of which were children under 15. In 1956 and 1958, declassified
documents have revealed, the US Army loosed swarms of specially bred mosquitos in
Georgia and Florida to see whether disease-carrying insects could be weapons in a
biological war. The mosquitos bred for the tests were of the Aedes Aegypti type, the
25
precise carrier of dengue fever as well as other diseases. In 1967 it was reported by
Science magazine that at the US government center in Fort Detrick, Maryland, dengue
fever was amongst those "diseases that are at least the objects of considerable research
and that appear to be among those regarded as potential BW [biological warfare]
agents." 26 Then, in 1984, a Cuban exile on trial in New York testified that in the latter
part of 1980 a ship travelled from Florida to Cuba with
189
a mission to carry some germs to introduce them in Cuba to be used against the
Soviets and against the Cuban economy, to begin what was called chemical war,
which later on produced results that were not what we had expected, because we
thought that it was going to be used against the Soviet forces, and it was used
against our own people, and with that we did not agree. 27
It's not clear from the testimony whether the Cuban man thought that the germs
would somehow be able to confine their actions to only Russians, or whether he had
been misled by the people behind the operation.
The full extent of American chemical and biological warfare against Cuba will
never be known. Over the years, the Castro government has in fact blamed the United
28
States for a number of other plagues which afflicted various animals and crops. And in
1977, newly -released CIA documents disclosed that the Agency "maintained a
clandestine anti-crop warfare research program targeted during the 1960s at a number of
countries throughout the world. " 29
It came to pass that the United States felt the need to put some of its chemical
and biological warfare (CBW) expertise into the hands of other nations. As of 1969,
some 550 students, from 36 countries, had completed courses at the US Army's
Chemical School at Fort McClellan, Alabama. The CBW instruction was provided to
the students under the guise of "defense" against such weapons — just as in Vietnam, as
we have seen, torture was taught. As will be described in the chapter on Uruguay, the
manufacture and use of bombs was taught under the cover of combating terrorist
bombings.
The ingenuity which went into the chemical and biological warfare against Cuba
was apparent in some of the dozens of plans to assassinate or humiliate Fidel Castro.
Devised by the CIA or Cuban exiles, with the cooperation of American mafiosi, the
plans ranged from poisoning Castro's cigars and food to a chemical designed to make
his hair and beard fall off and LSD to be administered just before a public speech. There
were also of course the more traditional approaches of gun and bomb, one being an
attempt to drop bombs on a baseball stadium while Castro was speaking; the B-26
3 1
bomber was driven away by anti-aircraft fire before it could reach the stadium. It is a
combination of such Cuban security measures, informers, incompetence, and luck
which has served to keep the bearded one alive to the present day.
Attempts were also made on the lives of Castro's brother Raul and Che Guevara.
The latter was the target of a bazooka fired at the United Nations building in New York
in December 1964. 32 Various Cuban exile groups have engaged in violence on a regular
basis in the United States with relative impunity for decades. One of them, going by the
name of Omega 7 and headquartered in Union City, New Jersey, was characterized by
the FBI in 1980 as "the most dangerous terrorist organization in the United States".
Attacks against Cuba itself began to lessen around the end of the 1960s, due probably to
a lack of satisfying results combined with ageing warriors, and exile groups turned to
targets in the United States and elsewhere in the world.
During the next decade, while the CIA continued to pour money into the exile
community, more than 100 serious "incidents" took place in the United States for which
Omega 7 and other groups claimed responsibility. (Within the community, the
distinction between a terrorist and a non-terrorist group is not especially precise; there is
much overlapping identity and frequent creation of new names.) There occurred
repeated bombings of the Soviet UN Mission, its Washington Embassy, its automobiles,
a Soviet ship docked in New Jersey, the offices of the Soviet airline Aeroflot, with a
190
number of Russians injured from these attacks; several bombings of the Cuban UN
Mission and its Interests Section in Washington, many attacks upon Cuban diplomats,
including at least one murder; a bomb discovered at New York's Academy of Music in
1976 shortly before a celebration of the Cuban Revolution was to begin; a bombing two
years later of the Lincoln Center after the Cuban ballet had performed ... 34
The single most violent act of this period was the blowing up of a Cubana
Airlines plane shortly after it took off from Barbados on 6 October 1976, which took the
lives of 73 people including the entire Cuban championship fencing team. CIA
documents later revealed that on 22 June, a CIA officer abroad had cabled a report to
Agency headquarters that he had learned from a source that a Cuban exile group
planned to bomb a Cubana airliner flying between Panama and Havana. The group's
leader was a baby doctor named Orlando Bosch. After the plane crashed in the sea in
October, it was Bosch's network of exiles that claimed responsibility. The cable showed
that the CIA had the means to penetrate the Bosch organization, but there's no indication
in any of the documents that the Agency undertook any special monitoring of Bosch and
his group because of their plans, or that the CIA warned Havana.
in 1983, while Orlando Bosch sat in a Venezuelan prison charged with
masterminding the plane bombing, the City Commission of Miami proclaimed a "Dr.
Orlando Bosch Day." 36 In 1968, Bosch had been convicted of a bazooka attack on a
Polish ship in Miami. Cuban exiles themselves have often come in for harsh treatment.
Those who have visited Cuba for any reason whatever, or publicly suggested, however
timidly, a rapprochement with the homeland, they too have been the victims of
bombings and shootings in Florida and New Jersey. American groups advocating a
resumption of diplomatic relations or an end to the embargo have been similarly
attacked, as have travel agencies handling trips to Cuba and a pharmaceutical company
in New Jersey which shipped medicines to the island. Dissent in Miami has been
effectively silenced, while the police, city officials, and the media look the other way,
when not actually demonstrating support for the exiles' campaign of intimidation. 37 In
Miami and elsewhere, the CIA — ostensibly to uncover Castro agents — has employed
exiles to spy on their countrymen, to keep files on them, as well as on Americans who
TO
associate with them.
Although there has always been the extreme lunatic fringe in the Cuban exile
community (as opposed to the normal lunatic fringe) insisting that Washington has sold
out their cause, over the years there has been only the occasional arrest and conviction
of an exile for a terrorist attack in the United States, so occasional that the exiles can
only assume that Washington's heart is not wholly in it. The exile groups and their key
members are well known to the authorities, for the anti-Castroites have not excessively
shied away from publicity. At least as late as the early 1980s, they were training openly
in southern Florida and southern California; pictures of them flaunting their weapons
appeared in the press. The CIA, with its countless contacts-cum-informers amongst
the exiles, could fill in many of the missing pieces for the FBI and the police, if it
wished to. In 1980, in a detailed report on Cuban-exile terrorism, The Village Voice of
New York reported:
Two stories were squeezed out of New York police officials ... "You know, it's
funny," said one cautiously, "there have been one or two things ... but let's put it
this way. You get just so far on a case and suddenly the dust is blown away. Case
closed. You ask the CIA to help, and they say they aren't really interested. You
get the message."" Another investigator said he was working on a narcotics case
involving Cuban exiles a couple of years ago, and telephone records he obtained
showed a frequently dialed number in Miami. He said he traced the number to a
191
company called Zodiac, "which turned out to be a CIA front." He dropped his
investigation.
In 1961, amid much fanfare, the Kennedy administration unveiled its showpiece
program, the Alliance for Progress. Conceived as a direct response to Castro's Cuba, it
was meant to prove that genuine social change could take place in Latin America
without resort to revolution or socialism. "If the only alternatives for the people of Latin
America are the status quo and communism," said John F. Kennedy, "then they will
inevitably choose communism." 41
The multi-billion dollar Alliance program established for itself an ambitious set
of goals which it hoped to achieve by the end of the decade. These had to do with
economic growth, more equitable distribution of national income, reduced
unemployment, agrarian reform, education, housing, health, etc. In 1970, the Twentieth
Century Fund of New York — whose list of officers read like a Who's Who in the
government/industry revolving-door world — undertook a study to evaluate how close
the Alliance had come to realizing its objectives. One of the study's conclusions was
that Cuba, which was not one of the recipient countries, had
come closer to some of the Alliance objectives than most Alliance members. In
education and public health, no country in Latin America has carried out such
ambitious and nationally comprehensive programs. Cuba's centrally planned
economy has done more to integrate the rural and urban sectors (through a national
income distribution policy) than the market economies of the other Latin American
countries. 42
Cuba's agrarian reform program as well was recognized as having been more
widesweeping than that of any other Latin American country, although the study took a
wait-and-see attitude towards its results. 43
These and other economic and social gains were achieved despite the US
embargo and the inordinate amount of resources and labor Cuba was obliged to devote
to defense and security because of the hovering giant to the north. Moreover, though not
amongst the stated objectives of the Alliance, there was another area of universal
importance in which Cuba stood apart from many of its Latin neighbors: there were no
legions of desaparecidos, no death squads, no systematic, routine torture.
Cuba had become what Washington had always feared from the Third World — a
good example.
Parallel to the military and economic belligerence, the United States has long
maintained a relentless propaganda offensive against Cuba. A number of examples of
this occurring in other countries can be found in other chapters of this book. In addition
to its vast overseas journalistic empire, the CIA has maintained anti-Castro news-article
factories in the United States for decades. The Agency has reportedly subsidized at
times such publications in Miami as Avarice, El Mundo, El Prensa Libre, Bohemia and
El Diario de Las Americas, as well as AIP, a radio news agency that produced programs
sent free of charge to more than 100 small stations in Latin America. Two CIA fronts in
New York, Foreign Publications, Inc, and Editors Press Service, also served as part of
the propaganda network. 44
Was it inevitable that the United States would attempt to topple the Cuban
government? Could relations between the two neighboring countries have taken a different
path? Based on the American record of invariable hostility towards even moderately leftist
governments, the answer would appear to be that there's no reason to believe that Cuba's
192
revolutionary govern-: ment could have been an exception. Washington officials, however,
were not immediately ill-disposed towards the Cuban Revolution. There were those who
even expressed their tentative approval or optimism. This was evidently based on the
belief that what had taken place in Cuba was little more than another Latin American
change in government, the kind which had occurred with monotonous regularity for over a
century, where the names and faces change but subservience to the United States remains
fixed.
Then Castro revealed himself to be cut from a wholly different cloth. It was not to
be business as usual in the Caribbean. He soon became outspoken in his criticism of the
United States. He referred acrimoniously to the 60 years of American control of Cuba;
how, at the end of those 60 years, the masses of Cubans found themselves
impoverished; how the United States used the sugar quota as a threat. He spoke of the
unacceptable presence of the Guantanamo base; and he made it clear enough to
Washington that Cuba would pursue a policy of independence and neutralism in the
cold war. It was for just such reasons that Castro and Che Guevara had forsaken the
prosperous bourgeois careers awaiting them in law and medicine to lead the revolution
in the first place. Serious compromise was nor on their agenda; nor on Washington's,
which was not prepared to live with such men and such a government.
A National Security Council meeting of 10 March 1959 included on its agenda the
feasibility of bringing "another government to power in Cuba". 45 This was before Castro
had nationalized any US property. The following month, after meeting with Castro
in Washington, Vice President Richard Nixon wrote a memo in which he stated that he
was convinced that Castro was "either incredibly naive about Communism or under
Communist discipline" and that the Cuban leader would have to be treated and dealt with
accordingly. Nixon later wrote that his opinion at this time was a minority one within the
Eisenhower administration. 46 But before the year was over, CIA Director Allen Dulles
had decided that an invasion of Cuba was necessary. In March of 1960, it was approved
by President Eisenhower. 4 ' Then came the embargo, leaving Castro no alternative but to
turn more and more to the Soviet Union, thus confirming in the minds of Washington
officials that Castro was indeed a communist. Some speculated that he had been a covert
Red all along.
In this context, it's interesting to note that the Cuban Communist Party had long
supported Batista, had served in his cabinet, and had been unsupportive of Castro and his
followers until their accession to power appeared imminent. 48 To add to the irony,
during 1957-58 the CIA was channeling funds to Castro's movement; this while the US
continued to support Batista with weapons to counter the rebels; in all likelihood,
another example of the Agency hedging its bets 49
If Castro had toned down his early rhetoric and observed the usual diplomatic
niceties, but still pursued the policies of self-determination and socialism which he felt
were best for Cuba (or inescapable if certain changes were to be realized), he could only
have postponed the day of reckoning, and that not for long. Jacobo Arbenz of
Guatemala, Mossadegh of Iran, Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana, and other Third World
leaders have gone out of their way to avoid stepping on Washington's very sensitive toes
unnecessarily, and were much less radical in their programs and in their stance toward
the United States than Castro; nonetheless, all of them fell under the CIA axe.
In 1996 it was revealed that in August, 1961, four months after the Bay of Pigs,
Che Guevara had met with Richard Goodwin, President Kennedy's assistant special
counsel, at an international gathering in Uruguay. Guevara had a message for Kennedy.
Cuba was prepared to forswear any political alliance with the Soviet bloc, pay for
193
confiscated American properties in trade, and consider curbing Cuba's support for leftist
insurgencies in other countries. In return, the US would cease all hostile actions
against Cuba. Back in Washington, Goodwin's advice to the president was to "quietly
intensify" economic pressure on Cuba. In November, Kennedy authorized Operation
Mongoose.
3 1 . Indonesia 1965
Liquidating President Sukarno ... and 500,000 others
Armed with wide-bladed knives called parangs, Moslem bands crept at night into the homes of communists, killing
entire families. ... Travellers ... tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies. River
transportation has at places been seriously impeded.
Time magazine, December 1965 1
Nearly 100 Communists, or suspected Communists, were herded into the town's botanical garden
and mowed down with a machine gun ... the head chat had belonged to the school principal, a P.K.I.
[Communist Party] member, was stuck on a pole and paraded among his former pupils, convened in
special assembly.
New York Times, May 1966 2
Estimates of the total number of Indonesians murdered over a period of several
years following an aborted coup range from 500,000 to one million. 3
In the early morning hours of 1 October 1965, a small force of junior military
officers abducted and killed six generals and seized several key points in the capital city of
Jakarta. They then went on the air to announce that their action was being taken to
forestall a putsch by a "Generals' Council" scheduled for Army Day, the fifth of October.
The putsch, they said, had been sponsored by the CIA and was aimed at capturing power
from President Sukarno. By the end of the day, however, the rebel officers in Jakarta had
been crushed by the army under the direction of General Suharto, although some
supportive army groups in other cities held out for a day or two longer. 4
Suharto — a man who had served both the Dutch colonialists and the Japanese
invaders 5 — and his colleagues charged that the large and influential PKI was behind the
junior officers' "coup attempt", and that behind the party stood Communist China. The
triumphant armed forces moved in to grab the reins of government, curb Sukarno's authority
(before long he was reduced to little more than a figurehead), and carry out a bloodbath to
eliminate once and for all the PKI with whom Sukarno had obliged them to share national
power for many years. Here at last was the situation which could legitimate these long-
desired actions.
Anticommunist organizations and individuals, particularly Muslims, were
encouraged to join in the slaying of anyone suspected of being a PKI sympathizer.
Indonesians of Chinese descent as well fell victim to crazed zealots. The Indonesian
people were stirred up in part by the display of photographs on television and in the press
of the badly decomposed bodies of the slain generals. The men, the public was told, had
been castrated and their eyes gouged out by Communist women. (The army later made the
mistake of allowing official medical autopsies to be included as evidence in some of the
trials; and the extremely detailed reports of the injuries suffered mentioned only bullet
wounds and some bruises, no eye gougings or castration.) 6
194
What ensued was called by the New York Times "one of the most savage mass
slaughters of modem political history." Violence, wrote Life magazine, "tinged not only
with fanaticism but with blood-lust and something like witchcraft." 8
Twenty-five years later, American diplomats disclosed that they had
systematically compiled comprehensive lists of "communist" operatives, from top
echelons down to village cadres, and turned over as many as 5,000 names to the
Indonesian army, which hunted those persons down and killed them. The Americans
would then check off the names of those who had been killed or captured. Robert
Martens, a former member of the US Embassy's political section in Jakarta, stated in
1990: "It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I
probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that's not all bad. There's a time when you
have to strike hard at a decisive moment."
"I know we had a lot more information [about the PKI] than the Indonesians
themselves," said Marshall Green, US Ambassador to Indonesia at the time of the coup.
Martens "told me on a number of occasions that... the government did not have very good
information on the Communist setup, and he gave me the impression that this
information was superior to anything they had."
"No one cared, as long as they were Communists, that they were being
butchered," said Howard Federspiel, who in 1965 was the Indonesia expert at the State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. "No one was getting very worked up
about it."
Although the former deputy CIA station chief in Indonesia, Joseph Lazarsky, and
former diplomat Edward Masters, who was Martens' boss, confirmed that CIA officers
contributed in drawing up the death lists, the CIA in Langley categorically denied any
involvement.
The massacre put a horrific end to the well-organized PKT national organization.
But it did not put to rest the basic questions underlying the events of 1965, to wit:
Was there in actual fact a Generals' Council aiming to take over the government
within a matter of days? A semi-official account of the whole affair published in Indonesia
in 1968 denied the existence of the Council. 10 However, a study written and published by
the CIA the same year confirmed that there was indeed a Generals' Council but that its
purpose was only to devise a way to protect itself from a purported plan of Sukarno to
crush the army. 11
What was the nature and extent, if any, of PKI involvement in the alleged
coup attempt? Did some members of the party know of the junior officers' plans in
advance and simply lend moral support, or did they take a more active role? The semi-
official account stated that the PKT's aim was not to seize political power for itself but to
"prevent the army from eliminating the Parry after Sukarno's death." 12 (Sukarno had
suffered a kidney attack in August, although he quickly recovered. His part in the affair
also remains largely a mystery.) The CIA study comes to a similar conclusion: "It now
seems clear that the Indonesian coup was not a move to overthrow Sukarno and/or the
established government of Indonesia. Essentially, it was a purge of the Army
leadership."
What was the role, if any, of the CIA? Was the coup attempt instigated by an agent
provocateur who spread the story of the Generals' Council and its imminent putsch? (The
killing, or even the abduction, of the six generals probably could not have been
foreseen — three of them were actually slain resisting abduction.) 14 Was PKT
participation induced to provide the excuse for its destruction? There are, in fact,
indications of an agent provocateur in the unfolding drama, one Kamarusaman bin
195
Ahmed Mubaidah, known as "Sjam". According to the later testimony of some of the
arrested officers, it was Sjam who pushed the idea of the hostile Generals' Council and
for the need to counteract it. At the trials and in the CIA Study, the attempt is made to
establish that, in so doing, Sjam was acting on behalf of PKI leader Aidit. Presentation
of this premise may explain why the CIA took the unique step of publishing such a
book; i.e., to assign responsibility for the coup attempt to the PKI so as to "justify" the
horror which followed.
But Sjam could just as easily have been acting for the CIA and/or the generals in
the same manner. He apparently was a trusted aide of Aidit and could have induced the
PKI leader into the plot instead of the other way around. Sjam had a politically
checkered and mysterious background, and his testimony at one of the trials, in which
he appeared as a defendant, was aimed at establishing Aidit as the sole director of the
coup attempt. 15
The CIA, in its intimate involvement in Indonesian political affairs since at least
the mid-1950s (see Indonesia, 1957-58 chapter), had undoubtedly infiltrated the PKI at
various levels, and the military even more so, and was thus in a good position to
disseminate disinformation and plant the ideas for certain actions, whether through Sjam
or others.
The desire of the US government to be rid of Sukarno — a leader of the non-
aligned and anti-imperialist movements of the Third World, and a protector of the
PKI — did not diminish with the failure of the Agency-backed military uprising in 1958.
Amongst the various reports of the early 1960s indicating a continuing interest in this
end, a CIA memorandum of June 1962 is strikingly to the point. The author of the
memo, whose name is deleted, was reporting on the impressions he had received from
conversations with "Western diplomats" concerning a recent meeting between President
Kennedy and British Prime Minister Macmillan. The two leaders agreed, said the
memo, to attempt to isolate Sukarno in Asia and Africa. Further, "They agreed to
liquidate President Sukarno, depending upon the situation and available opportunities.
(It is not clear to me [the CIA officer] whether murder or overthrow is intended by the
word liquidate.)" 16
Whatever was intended, Sukarno was now, for all practical purposes, eliminated
as an international thorn in the flesh. Of even greater significance, the PKI, which had
been the largest Communist Party in the world outside the Soviet bloc and China, had
been decimated, its tattered remnants driven underground. It could not have worked out
better for the United States and the new military junta if it had been planned.
If the generals had been planning their own coup as alleged, the evidence is
compelling that the United States was intimately involved before, during and after the
events of 30 September/1 October. One aspect of this evidence is the closeness of the
relationship between the American and Indonesian military establishments which the
United States had been cultivating for many years. President Kennedy, his former aide
Arthur Schlesinger has written, was "anxious to strengthen the anti-communist forces,
especially the army, in order to make sure that, if anything happened to Sukarno, the
powerful Indonesian Communist Party would not inherit the country." 17
Roger Hilsman, whose career spanned the CIA and the State Department, has
noted that by 1963 ...
one-third of the Indonesian general staff had had some sort of training from
Americans and almost half of the officer corps. As a result of both the civic action
project and the training program, the American and Indonesian military had come
to know each other rather well. Bonds ofpersonal respect and even affection
existed. 18
196
This observation is reinforced by reports of the House Committee on Foreign
Affairs:
At the time of the attempted Communist coup and military counter-coup [sic] of
October 1965, more than 1,200 Indonesian officers including senior military figures,
had been trained in the United States. As a result of this experience, numerous
friendships and contacts existed between the Indonesian and American military
establishments, particularly between members of the two armies. In the post-coup
period, when the political situation was still unsettled, the United States, using these
existing channels of communication, was able to provide the anti-Communist forces
with moral and token material support. 19
When the average MAP [Military Assistance Program] trainee returns home he may
well have some American acquaintances and a fair appreciation of the United States.
This impact may provide some valuable future opportunity for communication as
occurred in Indonesia during and immediately after the attempted Communist-backed
coup of October 1965. 20
The CIA, wrote the New York Times, was said "to have been so successful at
infiltrating the top of the Indonesian government and army that the United States was
reluctant to disrupt CIA covering operations by withdrawing aid and information
programs in 1964 and 1965. What was presented officially in Washington as toleration of
President Sukarno's insults and provocations was in much larger measure a desire to keep
the CIA fronts in business as long as possible." 21
Finally, we have the testimony of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara before
a Senate Committee in 1966:
Senator Sparkman: At a time when Indonesia was kicking up pretty badly — when we
were getting a lot of criticism for continuing military aid — at that time we could not
say what that military aid was for. Is it secret any more?
McNamara: I think in retrospect, that the aid was well justified.
Sparkman: You think it paid dividends?
McNamara: I do, sir. 22
There are other statements which may be pertinent to the question of American
involvement. Former US Ambassador Marshall Green, speaking in Australia in 1973
where he was then ambassador, is reported as saying: "In 1965 I remember, Indonesia was
poised at the razor's edge. I remember people arguing from here that Indonesia wouldn't go
communist. But when Sukarno announced in his August 17 speech that Indonesia would
have a communist government within a year [?] then I was almost certain. ... What we did
we had to do, and you'd better be glad we did because if we hadn't Asia would be a different
place today." 23
James Reston, writing in the New York Times in 1966:
Washington is being careful not to claim any credit for this change [from Sukarno to
Suharto] ... bur this does not mean that Washington had nothing to do with it. There
was a great deal more contact between the anti-Communist forces in chat country and
at least one very high official in Washington before and during the Indonesian
massacre than is generally realized. General Suharto's forces, at times severely short
of food and munitions, have been getting aid from here through various third
countries, and it is doubtful if the [Suharto] coup would ever have been attempted
without the American show of strength in Vietnam or been sustained without the clan-
destine aid it has received indirectly from here. 24
197
Neville Maxwell, Senior Research Officer, Institute of Commonwealth Studies,
Oxford University:
A few years ago I was researching in Pakistan into the diplomatic background of the
1965 Indo-Pakistan conflict, and in foreign ministry papers to which I had been given
access came across a letter to the then foreign minister, Mr Bhutto, from one of his
ambassadors in Europe (I believe Mr J.A. Rahim, in Paris) reporting a conversation
with a Dutch intelligence officer with NATO. According to my note of that letter,
the officer had remarked to the Pakistani diplomat that Indonesia was "ready to fall
into the Western lap like a rotten apple". Western intelligence agencies, he said,
would organize a "premature communist coup ... [which would be] foredoomed to
fail, providing a legitimate and welcome opportunity to the army to crush the
communists and make Soekarno a prisoner of the army's goodwill". The
ambassador's report was dated December 1 964. 25
It should be remembered that Indonesia had been a colony of the Netherlands, and
the Dutch still had some special links to the country.
The record of the "New Order" imposed by General Suharto upon the people of
Indonesia for almost three decades has been remarkable. The government administers the
nation on the level of Chicago gangsters of the 1930s running a protection racket. Political
prisoners overflow the jails. Torture is routine. 26 ... Death squads roam at will, killing not
only "subversives" but "suspected criminals" by the thousands. 27 ... "An army officer [in
the province of Aceh] fires a single shot in the air, at which point all young males must
run to a central square before the soldier fires a second shot. Then, anyone arriving late —
or not leaving his home — is shot on the spot." 28
And 200,000 more
In 1975 Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony of East Timor, which
lies at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago and which had proclaimed its
independence after Portugal relinquished control. It was the beginning of a massacre that
continues into the 1990s. By 1989, Amnesty International estimated that Indonesian
troops, with the aim of forcibly annexing East Timor, had killed 200,000 people out of a
population of between 600,000 and 700,000. 29 The level of atrocity has often been on a par
with that carried out against the PKI in Indonesia itself.
The invasion of 7 December 1975 — of which, said the New York Times: "By any
definition, Indonesia is guilty of naked aggression" 30 — was launched the day after US
President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger left Indonesia following a
meeting with President Suharto. Columnist Jack Anderson later reported:
By December 3, 1975, an intelligence dispatch to Washington reported that "Ranking
Indonesian civilian government leaders have decided that the only solution in the
Portuguese Timor situation is for Indonesia to launch an open offensive against Fretilin [the
leading East Timorese resistance movement]."
But it was essential to neutralize the United States. For the Indonesian army relied heavily on
U.S. arms which, under our laws, could not be used for aggression.
As it happened, President Gerald Ford was on his way to Indonesia for a state visit. An intel-
ligence report forewarned that Suharto would bring up the Timor issue and would "try and
elicit a sympathetic attitude."
198
That Suharto succeeded is confirmed by Ford himself. The United States had suffered a dev-
astating setback in Vietnam, leaving Indonesia as the most important American ally in the
area. The U.S. national interest, Ford concluded, "had to be on the side of Indonesia."
Ford gave his tacit approval on December 6, 1975 ... Five days after the invasion, the United
Nations voted to condemn the attack as an arrant act of international aggression. The
United States abstained. Thereafter, the U.S. delegate maneuvered behind the scenes to resist U.N. moves
aimed at forcing Indonesia to give up its conquest. 31
Throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s, US State Department officials, in
statements to the press and in testimony before Congress, consistently supported
Indonesia's claim to East Timor (unlike the United Nations and the European Community),
and downplayed the slaughter to a remarkable extent. Meanwhile, the omnipresent
American military advisers, the training, the weapons, the helicopter gunships, and all the
other instruments indispensable to efficient, modern, counter-insurgency warfare, were
kept flowing into the hands of the Indonesian military. This may not be all, for Fretilin
reported on a number of occasions that American advisers were directing and even
participating in the combat. 32
In October of the year 1965, Kwame Nkrumah, the President of Ghana, published
his famous-to-be book, Neo-Colonialism — The Last Stage of Imperialism, dedicated to
"the Freedom Fighters of Africa, living and dead". In the book, Nkrumah accused the
CIA of being behind numerous setbacks and crises in the Third World and Eastern
Europe. He later wrote that "the American Government sent me a note of protest, and
promptly refused Ghana $35 million of 'aid'." 1 Four months later he was overthrown in a
CIA-backed military coup.
To be sure, the coup-makers — members of the Ghanaian army and police — had
their own motivations. They were fearful of having their powers stripped from them by a
suspicious Nkrumah who was building up his own private army, and they were intent
upon furthering their individual professional careers and status. Within days, even hours,
of the successful coup in February 1966, majors had become colonels and colonels had
become generals. There was more than a touch of the Keystone Kops to the whole
episode.
Kwame Nkrumah was a man who, as a student in the United States during the Great
Depression, had roamed Harlem, slept in the subway and lined up at Father Divine's soup
kitchens. Later he was to be hailed as "Africa's brightest star", a leader in the call for an
anti-imperialist, pan-African organization and an international movement of nations non-
aligned in the cold war. But from all accounts, Nkrumah engaged in idiosyncratic, one-
man rule and thought that socialism could be promoted by edict from above. And
though he spoke out boldly against neo-colonialism, he was unable, ultimately, to keep
Ghana from falling under the sway of the multinationals. When he attempted to lessen his
country's dependence on the West by strengthening economic and military ties to the
Soviet Union, China and East Germany, he effectively sealed his fate.
The United States wanted him out. Great Britain, the former colonial power in
Ghana when it was known as the Gold Coast, wanted him out. France and West Germany
Ghana 1966
Kwame Nkrumah steps out of line
199
wanted him out. Those Ghanaians who carried out the coup suffered from no doubts that a
move against Nkrumah would be supported by the Western powers.
At the time of the coup, the Soviet press charged that the CIA had been involved,
and in 1972 The Daily Telegraph, the conservative London newspaper, reported that "By
1965 the Accra [capital of Ghana] CIA Station had two-score active operators,
distributing largesse among President Nkrumah's secret adversaries." By February, 1966,
the report continued, the CIA had its plans ready to end Nkrumah's regime: "The patient
and assiduous work of the Accra CIA station was fully rewarded." 2
It wasn't until 1978, however, that the story "broke" in the United States. Former
CIA officer John Stockwell, who had spent most of his career in Africa, published a book
in which he revealed the Agency's complicity. Shortly afterwards, the New York Times,
quoting "first-hand intelligence sources", corroborated that the CIA had advised and
supported the dissident Ghanaian army officers.
Stockwell disclosed that the CIA station in Accra "was given a generous budget,
and maintained intimate contact with the plotters as a coup was hatched. So close was the
station's involvement that it was able to coordinate the recovery of some classified Soviet
military equipment by the United States as the coup took place." 3
The CIA station had also proposed to headquarters in Washington that a small
squad of paramilitary experts, members of the agency's Special Operations Group, be on
hand at the moment of the coup, with their faces blacked, storm the Chinese Embassy, kill
everyone inside, steal their secret records, and blow up the building to cover the fact. 4
"This proposal was squashed," Stockwell wrote, "but inside CIA headquarters
the Accra station was given full, if unofficial credit for the eventual coup, in which eight
Soviet advisers were killed." 5 (The Soviet Union categorically denied that any of its
advisers had been killed.)
Other intelligence sources who were in Ghana at the time of the coup have taken
issue with Stockwell's view that the CIA deserved full credit for Nkrumah's downfall. But
they considered the Agency's role to have been pivotal, and at least some officials in
Washington apparently agreed, for the CIA station chief in Accra, Howard T. Bane, was
quickly promoted to a senior position in the agency. 6
"When he was successful," one of the New York Times sources said of Bane,
"everyone in the African division knew it. If it had failed, he would have been transferred
and no CIA involvement revealed."
Bane, nevertheless, was enraged by the CIA's high-level decision not to permit the
raid on the Chinese Embassy, at the time the Peking government's only embassy in
Africa. "They didn't have the guts to do it," he subsequently told an associate.
After the coup, the CIA made a payment of "at least $100,000" to the new
Ghanaian regime for the confiscated Soviet material, one item of which was a cigarette
lighter that also functioned as a camera.
The Ghanaian leaders soon expelled large numbers of Russians as well as Chinese
and East Germans. Virtually all state-owned industries were allowed to pass into private
hands. In short order the channels of aid, previously clogged, opened wide, and credit,
food and development projects flowed in from the United States, the European powers,
and the International Monetary Fund. Washington, for example, three weeks after the
coup, approved substantial emergency food assistance in response to an urgent request
from Ghana. A food request from Nkrumah four months earlier had been turned down. 9
One month after his ouster, the international price of cocoa — Ghana's economic
lifeblood — had risen 14 percent. 10
200
The CIA's reluctance to approve the action at the Chinese Embassy may have
stemmed from the fact that the National Security Council had specifically refused to
authorize the Agency's involvement in the coup at all. This was, as we have seen, not the
first instance of the CIA taking American foreign policy into its own hands. On such
occasions, the modus operandi calls for putting as little into writing as feasible, or keeping
records out of official CIA files, thus making them immune to Freedom of Information
disclosures or congression al investigations; technically the records do not exist, legally
they can be destroyed at anytime. This was the case with the Ghanaian coup and may
explain why more details of the CIA role have never been revealed.
The American right-wing view of what happened
According to John Barron, the Reader's Digest's resident KGB expert, Nkrumah
was overthrown by only native insurgents, the only foreigners in the picture being 1 1 KGB
officers who were found in Nkrumah's headquarters and summarily executed. The
Soviet Union didn't say a word about this, he wrote, because they didn't want "the world
to know that KGB officers were actually sitting in the Ghanian President's office running
the country." Barron offers no evidence at all to support his claim of the KGB running the
country, nor does he explain why the new government didn't publicize this very interesting
fact.
He goes on to write of "the copious secret files of the Nkrumah regime" which were
discovered and then studied and analyzed. The files revealed, he says, that "the KGB had
converted Ghana into one vast base of subversion, which the Soviet Union fully intended
to use to capture the continent of Africa". For reasons best known to himself perhaps,
Barron fails to offer the reader a single quotation from any of the copious secret files to
support his allegations. 11
"The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired
effect." 1
The words of an instructor in the art of torture. The words of Dan Mitrione, the
head of the Office of Public Safety (OPS) mission in Montevideo.
Officially, OPS was a division of the Agency for International Development, but
the director of OPS in Washington, Byron Engle, was an old CIA hand. His organization
maintained a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often
operated abroad under OPS cover, although Mitrione was not one of them. 2
OPS had been operating formally in Uruguay since 1965, supplying the police with
the equipment, the arms, and the training it was created to do. Four years later, when
Mitrione arrived, the Uruguayans had a special need for OPS services. The country was in
the midst of a long-running economic decline, its once-heralded prosperity and
democracy sinking fast toward the level of its South American neighbors. Labor strikes,
Torture — as American as apple pie
201
student demonstrations, and militant street violence had become normal events during
the past year; and, most worrisome to the Uruguayan authorities, there were the
revolutionaries who called themselves Tupamaros. Perhaps the cleverest, most
resourceful and most sophisticated urban guerrillas the world has ever seen, the
Tupamaros had a deft touch for capturing the public's imagination with outrageous
actions, and winning sympathizers with their Robin Hood philosophy. Their members
and secret partisans held key positions in the government, banks, universities, and the
professions, as well as in the military and police.
"Unlike other Latin-American guerrilla groups," the New York Times stated in
1970, "the Tupamaros normally avoid bloodshed when possible. They try instead to
create embarrassment for the Government and general disorder." 3 A favorite tactic was to
raid the files of a private corporation to expose corruption and deceit in high places, or
kidnap a prominent figure and try him before a "People's Court". It was heady stuff to
choose a public villain whose acts went uncensored by the legislature, the courts and the
press, subject him to an informed and uncompromising interrogation, and then publicize
the results of the intriguing dialogue. Once they ransacked an exclusive high-class nightclub
and scrawled on the walls perhaps their most memorable slogan: O Bailan Todos O No
Baila Nadie ... Either everyone dances or no one dances.
Dan Mitrione did not introduce the practice of torturing political prisoners to
Uruguay. It had been perpetrated by the police at times from at least the early 1960s.
However, in a surprising interview given to a leading Brazilian newspaper in 1970, the
former Uruguayan Chief of Police Intelligence, Alejandro Otero, declared that US advisers,
and in particular Mitrione, had instituted torture as a more routine measure; to the means
of inflicting pain, they had added scientific refinement; and to that a psychology to create
despair, such as playing a tape in the next room of women and children screaming and
telling the prisoner that it was his family being tortured. 4
"The violent methods which were beginning to be employed," said Otero, "caused
an escalation in Tupamaro activity. Before then their attitude showed that they would use
violence only as a last resort." 5
The newspaper interview greatly upset American officials in South America and
Washington. Byron Engle later tried to explain it all away by asserting: "The three Brazilian
reporters in Montevideo all denied filing that story. We found out later that it was slipped
into the paper by someone in the composing room at the Jornal do Brasil. " 6
Otero had been a willing agent of the CIA, a student at their International Police
Services school in Washington, a recipient of their cash over the years, but he was not a tor-
turer. What finally drove him to speak out was perhaps the torture of a woman who,
while a Tupamaro sympathizer, was also a friend of his. When she told him that Mitrione
had watched and assisted in her torture, Otero complained to him, about this particular
incident as well as his general methods of extracting information. The only outcome
of the encounter was Otero's demotion. 7
William Cantrell was a CIA operations officer stationed in Montevideo, ostensibly
as a member of the OPS team. In the mid-1960s he was instrumental in setting up a
Department of Information and Intelligence (DII), and providing it with funds and
equipment. Some of the equipment, innovated by the CIA's Technical Services Division,
was for the purpose of torture, for this was one of the functions carried out by the DII. 9
"One of the pieces of equipment that was found useful," former New York Times
correspondent A. J. Langguth learned, "was a wire so very thin that it could be fitted into
the mouth between the teeth and by pressing against the gum increase the electrical charge.
202
And it was through the diplomatic pouch that Mitrione got some of the equipment he
needed for interrogations, including these fine wires." 10
Things got so bad in Mitrione's time that the Uruguayan Senate was compelled to
undertake an investigation. After a five-month study, the commission concluded unani-
mously that torture in Uruguay had become a "normal, frequent and habitual
occurrence", inflicted upon Tupamatos as well as others. Among the types of torture the
commission's report made reference to were electric shocks to the genitals, electric needles
under the fingernails, burning with cigarettes, the slow compression of the testicles, daily
use of psychological torture ... "pregnant women were subjected to various brutalities and
inhuman treatment" ... "certain women were imprisoned with their very young infants
and subjected to the same treatment" ... n
Eventually the DII came to serve as a cover for the Escuadron de la Muerte
(Death Squad), composed, as elsewhere in Latin America, primarily of police officers, who
bombed and strafed the homes of suspected Tupamaro sympathizers and engaged in
assassination and kidnapping. The Death Squad received some of its special explosive
material from the Technical Services Division and, in all likelihood, some of the skills
12
employed by its members were acquired from instruction in the United States. Between
1969 and 1973, at least 16 Uruguayan police officers went through an eight- week course at
CIA/OPS schools in Washington and Los Fresnos, Texas in the design, manufacture and
employment of bombs and incendiary devices. 13 The official OPS explanation for these
courses was that policemen needed such training in order to deal with bombs placed by
terrorists. There was, however, no instruction in destroying bombs, only in making them;
moreover, on at least one reported occasion, the students were not policemen, but
members of a private right-wing organi-zation in Chile (see chapter on Chile). Another
part of the curriculum which might also have proven to be of value to the Death Squad
was the class on Assassination Weapons — "A discussion of various weapons which may
be used by the assassin" is how OPS put it. 14
Equipment and training of this kind was in addition to that normally provided by
OPS: riot helmets, transparent shields, tear gas, gas masks, communication gear, vehicles,
police batons, and other devices for restraining crowds. The supply of these tools of the trade
was increased in 1968 when public disturbances reached the spark-point, and by 1970
American training in riot-control techniques had been given to about a thousand Uruguayan
policemen.
Dan Mitrione had built a soundproofed room in the cellar of his house in
Montevideo. In this room he assembled selected Uruguayan police officers to observe a
demonstration of torture techniques. Another observer was Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, a
Cuban who was with the CIA and worked with Mitrione. Hevia later wrote that the
course began with a description of the human anatomy and nervous system ...
Soon things turned unpleasant. As subjects for the first testing they took beggars, known in
Uruguay as bichicomes, from the outskirts of Montevideo, as well as a woman apparently from
the frontier area with Brazil. There was no interrogation, only a demonstration of the effects of
different voltages on the different parts of the human body, as well as demonstrating the use of a
drug which induces vomiting — I don't know why or what for — and another chemical substance.
The four of them died. 16
In his book Hevia does not say specifically what Mitrione's direct part in all this
was, but he later publicly stated that the OPS chief "personally tortured four beggars to
death with electric shocks". 17
203
On another occasion, Hevia sat with Mitrione in the latter's house, and over a
few drinks the American explained to the Cuban his philosophy of interrogation. Mitrione
considered it to be an art. First there should be a softening-up period, with the usual
beatings and insults. The object is to humiliate the prisoner, to make him realize his
helplessness, to cut him off from reality. No questions, only blows and insults. Then, only
blows in silence.
Only after this, said Mitrione, is the interrogation. Here no pain should be
produced other than that caused by the instrument which is being used. "The precise pain,
in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect," was his motto.
During the session you have to keep the subject from losing all hope of life,
because this can lead to stubborn resistance. "You must always leave him some hope ...
a distant light."
"When you get what you want, and I always get it," Mitrione continued, "it may
be good to prolong the session a little to apply another softening-up. Not to extract
information now, but only as a political measure, to create a healthy fear of meddling in
subversive activities."
The American pointed out that upon receiving a subject the first thing is to
determine his physical state, his degree of resistance, by means of a medical examination.
"A premature death means a failure by the technician ... It's important to know in advance
if we can permit ourselves the luxury of the subject's death." 18
Not long after this conversation, Manual Hevia disappeared from Montevideo
and turned up in Havana. He had been a Cuban agent — a double agent — all along.
About half a year later, 31 July 1970 to be exact, Dan Mitrione was kidnapped by
the Tupamaros. They did not torture him. They demanded the release of some 150
prisoners in exchange for him. With the determined backing of the Nixon
administration, the Uruguayan government refused. On 10 August, Mitrione's dead
body was found on the back seat of a stolen car. He had turned 50 on his fifth day as a
prisoner.
Back in Mitrione's home town of Richmond, Indiana, Secretary of State
William Rogers and President Nixon's son-in-law David Eisenhower attended the
funeral for Mitrione, the city's former police chief. Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis came
to town to stage a benefit show for Mitrione's family.
And White House spokesman, Ron Ziegler, solemnly stated that "Mr.
Mitrione's devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will
remain as an example for free men everywhere." 19
"A perfect man," his widow said.
"A great humanitarian," said his daughter Linda. 20
The military's entry into the escalating conflict signaled the beginning of the end for
the Tupamaros. By the end of 1972, the curtain was descending on their guerrilla theatre.
Six months later, the military was in charge, Congress was dissolved, and everything not
prohibited was compulsory. For the next 11 years, Uruguay competed strongly for the
honor of being South America's most repressive dictatorship. It had, at one point, the
largest number of political prisoners per capita in the world. And, as every human rights
organization and former prisoner could testify, each one of them was tortured. "Torture,"
said an activist priest, "was routine and automatic." 21
No one was dancing in Uruguay.
204
In 1981, at the Fourteenth Conference of American Armies, the Uruguayan
Army offered a paper in which it defined subversion as "actions, violent or not, with
ultimate pur-poses of a political nature, in all fields of human activity within the internal
sphere of a state and whose aims are perceived as not convenient for the overall political
system." 22
The dissident Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano, summed up his country's era
of dictatorship thusly: "People were in prison so that prices could be free." 23
The film "State of Siege" appeared in 1972. It centered around Mitrione and
the Tupamaros and depicted a Uruguayan police officer receiving training at a secret
bomb school in the United States, though the film strove more to provide a composite
picture of the role played by the US in repression throughout Latin America. A
scheduled premier showing of the film at the federally-funded John F. Kennedy Arts
Center in Washington was canceled. There was already growing public and congressional
criticism of this dark side of American foreign policy without adding to it. During the
mid-1970s, however, Congress enacted several pieces of legislation which abolished the
entire Public Safety Program. In its time, OPS had provided training for more than one
million policemen in the Third World. Ten thousand of them had received advance
training in the United States. An estimated $150 million worth of equipment had been
shipped to police forces abroad. 24 Now, the "export of repression" was to cease.
That was on paper. The reality appears to be somewhat different.
To a large extent, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) simply picked
up where OPS had left off. The drug agency was ideally suited for the task, for its agents
were already deployed all over Latin America and elsewhere overseas in routine liaison
with foreign police forces. The DEA acknowledged in 1975 that 53 "former" employees of
the CIA were now on its staff and that there was a close working relationship between the
two agencies. The following year, the General Accounting Office reported that DEA
agents were engaging in many of the same activities the OPS had been carrying out.
In addition, some training of foreign policemen was transferred to FBI schools in
Washington and Quantico, Virginia; the Defense Department continued to supply police-
type equipment to military units engaged in internal security operations; and American
arms manufacturers were doing a booming business furnishing arms and training to Third
World governments. In some countries, contact between these companies and foreign law
enforcement officials was facilitated by the US Embassy or military mission. The largest
of the arms manufacturers, Smith and Wesson, ran its own Academy in Springfield,
Massachusetts, which provided American and foreign "public and industrial security forces
with expert training in riot control".
Said Argentine Minister Jose Lopez Rega at the signing of a US-Argentina anti-
drug treaty in 1974: "We hope to wipe out the drug traffic in Argentina. We have caught
guerrillas after attacks who were high on drugs. The guerillas are the main drug users
in Argentina. Therefore, this anti-drug campaign will automatically be an anti-guerrilla
campaign as well." 26
And in 1981, a former Uruguayan intelligence officer declared that US manuals
were being used to teach techniques of torture to his country's military. He said that most
of the officers who trained him had attended classes run by the United States in Panama.
Among other niceties, the manuals listed 35 nerve points where electrodes could be
applied.
205
Philip Agee, after he left Ecuador, was stationed in Uruguay from March 1964
to August 1966. His account of CIA activities in Montevideo is further testimony to the
amount of international mischief money can buy. Amongst the multifarious dirty tricks
pulled off with impunity by Agee and his Agency cohorts, the following constitute an inter-
esting sample: 28
A Latin American students' conference with a leftist leaning, held in Montevideo,
was undermined by promoting the falsehood that it was nothing more than a creature
of the Soviet Union — originated, financed and directed by Moscow. Editorials on this
theme authored by the CIA appeared in leading newspapers to which the Agency had daily
access. This was followed by publication of a'forged letter of a student leader thanking the
Soviet cultural attache for his assistance. A banner headline in one paper proclaimed:
"Documents for the Break with Russia", which was indeed the primary purpose of the
operation.
An inordinate amount of time, energy and creativity was devoted, with moderate
success, to schemes aimed at encouraging the expulsion of an assortment of Russians, East
Germans, North Koreans, Czechs, and Cubans from Uruguayan soil, if not the breaking of
relations with these countries. In addition to planting disparaging media propaganda, the
CIA tried to obtain incriminating information by reading the mail and diplomatic cables to
and from these countries, tapping embassy phones, and engaging in sundry bugging and
surreptitious entry. The Agency would then prepare "Intelligence" reports, containing
enough factual information to be plausible, which then made their way innocently into the
hands of officials of influence, up to and including the president of the republic.
Anti-communist indoctrination of secondary-level students was promoted by
financing particular school organizations and publications.
A Congress of the People, bringing together a host of community groups, labor
organizations, students, government workers, etc., Communist and non-Communist,
disturbed the CIA because of the potential for a united front being formed for electoral
purposes. Accordingly, newspaper editorials and articles were generated attacking the
Congress as a classic Communist takeover/duping tactic and calling upon non-
Communists to refrain from participating; and a phoney handbill was circulated in which
the Congress called upon the Uruguayan people to launch an insurrectional strike with
immediate occupation of their places of work. Thousands of the handbills were handed
out, provoking angry denials from the Congress organizers, but, as is usual in such cases,
the damage was already done.
The Uruguayan Communist Party planned to host an international conference to
express solidarity with Cuba. The CIA merely had to turn to their (paid) friend, the
Minister of the Interior, and the conference was banned. When it was shifted to Chile, the
CIA station in Santiago performed the same magic.
Uruguay at this time was a haven for political exiles from repressive regimes such
as in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. The CIA, through surveillance and
infiltration of the exile community, regularly collected information on exiles' activities,
associates, etc., to be sent to CIA stations in the exiles' homelands with likely transmission
to their governments, which wanted to know what these troublemakers were up to and
which did not hesitate to harass them across frontiers.
"Other operations," wrote Agee, "were designed to take control of the streets
away from communists and other leftists, and our squads, often with the participation of
off-duty policemen, would break up their meetings and generally terrorize them. Torture of
communists and other extreme leftists was used in interrogation by our liaison agents
in the police."
206
The monitoring and harassment of Communist diplomatic missions by the CIA, as
described above, was standard Agency practice throughout the world. This rarely stemmed
from anything more than a juvenile cold-war reflex: making life hard for the commies.
Postscript: In 1998, Eladio Moll, a retired Uruguayan navy rear admiral and former
intelligence chief, testifying before a commission of the Uruguayan Chamber of Deputies,
stated that during Uruguay's "dirty war" (1972-1983), orders came from the United States
to kill captive members of the Tupamaros after interrogating them. "The guidance that
was sent from the US," said Moll, "was that what had to be done with the captured
guerrillas was to get information, and that afterwards they didn't deserve to live." 29
When Salvador Allende, a committed Marxist, came within three percent of
winning the Chilean presidency in 1958, the United States decided that the next election,
in 1964, could not be left in the hands of providence, or democracy.
Washington took it all very gravely. At the outset of the Kennedy administration
in 1961, an electoral committee was established, composed of top-level officials from the
State Department, the CIA and the White House. In Santiago, a parallel committee of
embassy and CIA people was set up. 1
"U.S. government intervention in Chile in 1964 was blatant and almost obscene,"
said one intelligence officer strategically placed at the time. "We were shipping people off
right and left, mainly State Dept. but also CIA, with all sorts of covers." All in all, as
many as 100 American operatives were dedicated to the operation. 2
They began laying the groundwork for the election years ahead, a Senate
investigating committee has disclosed, "by establishing operational relationships with
key political parties and by creating propaganda and organizational mechanisms
capable of influencing key sectors of the population." Projects were undertaken "to help
train and organize 'anti-comrnunists'" among peasants, slum dwellers, organized
labor, students, the media, etc.
After channeling funds to several non-leftist parties, the electoral team eventually
settled on a man of the center, Eduardo Frei, the candidate of the Chtistian Democratic
Party, as the one most likely to block Allende's rise to power. The CIA underwrote more
than half the party's total campaign costs, 4 one of the reasons that the Agency's overall
electoral operation reduced the U.S. Treasury by an estimated $20 million 5 — much more
per voter than that spent by the Johnson and Goldwater campaigns combined in the same
year in the United States. The bulk of the expenditures went toward propaganda. As the
Senate committee described it:
In addition to support for political parties, the CIA mounted a massive anti-communist propa-
ganda campaign. Extensive use was made of the press, radio, films, pamphlets, posters, leaflets,
direct mailings, paper streamers, and wall painting. It was a "scare campaign", which relied
heavily on images of Soviet tanks and Cuban firing squads and was directed especially to
women. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the anti-communist pastoral letter of Pope Pius XI
were distributed by Christian Democratic organizations. They carried the designation, "printed
privately by citizens without political affiliation, in order more broadly to disseminate its con-
Chile
A hammer and sickle stamped on your child's forehead
207
tent." "Disinformation" and "black propaganda" — material which purported to originate from
another source, such as the Chilean Communist Party — were used as well. 6
The scare campaign played up to the fact that women in Chile, as elsewhere in
Latin America, are traditionally more religious than men, more susceptible to being
alarmed by the specter of "godless, atheist communism". One radio spot featured the
sound of a machine gun, followed by a woman's cry: "They have killed my child — the
communists." The announcer then added in impassioned tones: "Communism offers only
blood and pain. For this not to happen in Chile, we must elect Eduardo Frei president." 7
Other scare tactics centered around warnings of Russian control, and that the
left would confiscate everything near, dear and holy.
The committee report continued:
The propaganda campaign was enormous. During the first week of intensive propaganda activity
(the third week of June 1964), a CIA-funded propaganda group produced twenty radio spots per
day in Santiago and on 44 provincial stations; twelve-minute news broadcasts five times daily on
three Santiago stations and 24 provincial outlets; thousands of cartoons, and much paid press
advertising. By the end of June, the group produced 24 daily newscasts in Santiago and the
provinces, 26 weekly "commentary" programs, and distributed 3,000 posters daily. 8
One poster which appeared in the thousands showed children with a hammer and
sickle stamped on their foreheads. 9
Newspaper articles from elsewhere in Latin America which supported the political
lines of the CIA campaign were collected and reprinted in Chile. Undoubtedly, many of
these articles had been written in the first place by CIA stations in the particular countries.
There were also endorsements of Frei solicited from famous personages abroad,
advertisements such as a "message from the women of Venezuela", 10 and a vitriolic anti-
communist radio broadcast by Juanita Castro, sister of Fidel, who was on a CIA-organized
speaking tour of South America: "If the Reds win in Chile," she said, "no type of religious
activity will be possible ... Chilean mother, I know you will not allow your children to be
taken from you and sent to the Communist bloc, as in the case of Cuba." 11
The Senate committee also revealed that:
In addition to buying propaganda piecemeal, the [CIA] Station often purchased it wholesale by
subsidizing Chilean media organizations friendly to the United States. Doing so was propaganda
writ large. Instead of placing individual items, the CIA supported — or even founded — friendly
media outlets which might not have existed in the absence of Agency support.
From 1953 through 1970 in Chile, the Station subsidized wire services, magazines written for
intellectual circles, and a right-wing weekly newspaper. 12
Of one subsidized newspaper, a State Department veteran of the campaign recalls
that "The layout was magnificent. The photographs were superb. It was a Madison
Avenue product far above the standards of Chilean publications." 13
The same could be said about the electioneering itself. Besides tunning political
action projects on its own in a number of important voting blocks, the CIA directed the
Christian Democrats' campaign along American- style lines, with voter registration, get-
out-the-vote drives, and professional management firms to carry out public opinion
surveys. 14 To top it all off, they sent for a ringer — an election specialist from the staff of
that eminent connoisseur and guardian of free elections, Mayor Richard Daley of
Chicago. 15 What the function of Daley's man in Chile was, can only be guessed at.
Several of the grassroots programs funded by the CIA were those run by Roger
Vekemans, a Belgian Jesuit priest who arrived in Chile in 1957 and founded a network
of social-action organizations, one of which grew to have 100 employees and a $30
million annual budget. By his own declaration in 1963, Vekemans received $5 million
208
from the CIA as well as a like amount from AID to guide his organizations' resources in
support of the
Christian Democrats and Eduardo Frei, with whom Vekemans had close
relations. 16 The Jesuit's programs served the classic function of channeling revolutionary
zeal along safe reformist paths. Church people working for the CIA in the Third World
have typically been involved in gathering information about the activities and attitudes of
individual peasants and workers, spotting the troublemakers, recruiting likely agents,
preaching the gospel of anti-communism, acting as funding conduits, and serving as a
religious "cover" for various Agency operations. An extreme anti-communist, Vekemans
was a front-line soldier in the struggle of the Christian Democrats and the Catholic Church
against the "liberation theology" then gaining momentum amongst the mote liberal clergy
in Latin America and which would lead to the historic dialogue between Christianity and
Marxism.
The operation worked. It worked beyond expectations. Frei received 56 percent of
the vote to Allende's 39 percent. The CIA regarded "the anti-communist scare campaign
as the most effective activity undertaken", noted the Senate committee. 18 This was the
tactic directed toward Chilean women in particular. As things turned out, Allende won the
men's vote by 67,000 over Frei (in Chile men and women vote separately), but amongst
the women Frei came out ahead by 469,000 ... testimony, once again, to the remarkable
ease with which the minds of the masses of people can be manipulated, in any and all
societies.
What was there about Salvador Allende that warranted all this feverish activity?
What threat did he represent, this man against whom the great technical and economic
resources of the world's most powerful nation were brought to bear? Allende was a man
whose political program, as described by the Senate committee report, was to "redistribute
income (two percent of the population received 46 percent of the income] and reshape the
Chilean economy, beginning with the nationalization of major industries, especially the
copper companies; greatly expanded agrarian reform; and expanded relations with
socialist and communist countries." 19
A man committed to such a program could be expected by American policy
makers to lead his country along a path independent of the priorities of US foreign policy
and the multinationals. (As his later term as president confirmed, he was independent of
any other country as well.)
The CIA is an ongoing organization. Its covert activities are ongoing, each day, in
each country. Between the 1964 and 1970 presidential elections many of the programs
designed to foster an anti-leftist mentality indifferent sections of the population
continued; much of the propaganda and electioneering mechanisms remained in place to
support candidates of the 1965 and 1969 congressional elections; in the latter election,
financial support was given to a splinter socialist party in order to attract votes away
from Allende's Socialist Party; this reportedly deprived the party of a minimum of seven
congressional seats. 20
The Senate committee described some of the other individual covert projects
undertaken by the CIA during this period:
• Wresting control of Chilean university student organizations from the communists;
• Supporting a women's group active in Chilean political and intellectual life;
• Combatting the communist-dominated Central Unica de Trabajadores Cbilenos (CUTCh)
and supporting democratic [i.e., anti-communist] labor groups; and,
209
• Exploiting a civic action front group to combat communist influence within cultural and
intellectual circles. 21
In 1968, at the same time the CIA was occupied in subverting unions
dominated by the Chilean Communist Party, a US Senate committee was
concluding that the Latin American labor movement had largely abandoned
its revolutionary outlook: "Even the Communist-dominated unions,
especially those which follow the Moscow line, now generally accept the
peaceful road as a viable alternative." 22
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist
because of the irresponsibility of its own people." 23
Thus spoke Henry Kissinger, principal adviser to the President of the United States
on matters of national security. The date was 27 June 1970, a meeting of the National
Security Council's 40 Committee, and the people Kissinger suspected of imminent
irresponsibility were the Chileans whom he feared might finally elect Salvador Allende as
their president.
The United States did not stand by idly. At this meeting approval was given to
a $300,000 increase in the anti-Allende "spoiling" operation which was already
underway. The CIA trained its disinformation heavy artillery on the Chilean electorate,
24
firing shells marked: "An Allende victory means violence and Stalinist repression."
Black propaganda was employed to undermine Allende's coalition and support by sowing
dissent between the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, the main members of the
coalition, and between the Communist Party and the CUTCh. 25
Nonetheless, on 4 September Allende won a plurality of the votes. On 24 October,
the Chilean Congress would meet to choose between him and the runnerup, Jorge
Alessandri of the conservative National Party. By tradition, Allende was certain to become
president.
The United States had seven weeks to prevent him from taking office. On
15 September, President Nixon met with Kissinger, CIA Director Richard Helms, and
Attorney General John Mitchell. Helms' handwritten notes of the meeting have become
famous: "One in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile! ... not concerned with risks
involved ...$10,000,000 available, more if necessary ... make the economy scream ... " 26
Funds were authorized by the 40 Committee to bribe Chilean congressmen to vote
for Alessandri, 27 but this was soon abandoned as infeasible, and under intense pressure
from Richard Nixon, American efforts were concentrated on inducing the Chilean
military to stage a coup and then cancel the congressional vote altogether. 8 At the same
time, Nixon and Kissinger made it clear to the CIA that an assassination of Allende would
not be unwelcome. One White House options-paper discussed various ways this could be
carried out. 29
A fresh propaganda campaign was initiated in Chile to impress upon the
military, amongst others, the catastrophe which would befall the nation with Allende as
president. In addition to the standard communist horror stories, it was made known that
there would be a cutoff of American and other foreign assistance; this was
accompanied by predictions/rumors of the nationalization of everything down to small
shops, and of economic collapse. The campaign actually affected the Chilean economy
adversely and a major financial panic ensued. 30
In private, Chilean military officers were warned that American military aid
would come to a halt if Allende were seated. 31
210
During this interim period, according to the CIA, over 700 articles, broadcasts,
editorials and similar items were generated in the Latin American and European media as a
direct result of Agency activity. This is apart from the "real" media stories inspired by the
planted ones. Moreover, journalists in the pay of the CIA arrived in Chile from at least ten
different countries to enhance their material with on-the-spot credibility. 32
The following portion of a CIA cable of 25 September 1970 offers some
indication of the scope of such media operations:
Sao Paulo, Tegucigalpa, Buenos Aires, Lima, Montevideo, Bogota, Mexico City report
continued replay of Chile theme materials. Items also carried in New York Times and
Washington Post. Propaganda activities continue to generate good coverage of Chile
developments along our theme guidance.
The CIA also gave "inside" briefings to American journalists about the situation
in Chile. One such briefing provided to Time enlightened the magazine as to Allende's
intention to support violence and destroy Chile's free press. This, observed the Senate
report, "resulted in a change in the basic thrust" of the Time story. 34
When Allende criticized the leading conservative newspaper El Mercurio (heavily
funded by the CIA), the Agency "orchestrated cables of support and protest from foreign
newspapers, a protest statement from an international press association, and world press
coverage of the association's protest." 35
A cable sent from CIA headquarters to Santiago on 19 October expressed concern
that the coup still had
no pretext or justification that it can offer to make it acceptable in Chile or Latin America. It
therefore would seem necessary to create one to bolster what will probably be [the military's]
claim to a coup to save Chile from communism.
One of headquarters' suggestions was the fabrication of:
Firm intelligence] that Cubans planned to reorganize all intelligence services along Soviet/Cuban
mold thus creating structure for police state ... With appropriate military contact can determine
how to "discover" intelligence] report which could even be planted during raids planned by
Carabineros [the police]. 36
Meanwhile, the Agency was in active consultation with several Chilean military
officers who were receptive to the suggestion of a coup. (The difficulty in finding such
officers was described by the CIA as a problem in overcoming "the apolitical, constitutional-
37
oriented inertia of the Chilean military".) They were assured that the United States would
give them full support short of direct military involvement. The immediate obstacle faced by
the officers was the determined opposition of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Rene
Schneider, who insisted that the constitutional process be followed. He would have to be
"removed".
In the early morn of 22 October the CIA passed "sterilized" machine guns and
ammunition to some of the conspirators. (Earlier they had passed tear gas.) That same
day, Schneider was mortally wounded in an attempted kidnap (or "kidnap") on his
way to work. The CIA station in Santiago cabled its headquarters that the general had
been shot with the same kind of weapons it had delivered to the military plotters,
although the Agency later claimed to the Senate that the actual assassins were not the
same ones it had passed the weapons to. 38
The assassination did not avail the conspirators" purpose. It only served to rally the
army around the flag of constitutionalism; and time was running out. Two days later,
Salvador Allende was confirmed by the Chilean Congress. On 3 November he took office as
president.
211
The stage was set for a clash of two experiments. One was Allende's "socialist"
experiment aimed at lifting Chile from the mire of underdevelopment and dependency
and the poor from deprivation. The other, was, as CIA Director William Colby later put
it, a "prototype or laboratory experiment to test the techniques of heavy financial
investment in an effort to discredit and bring down a government."
Although there were few individual features of this experiment which were
unique for the CIA, in sum total it was perhaps the most multifarious intervention ever
undertaken by the United States. In the process it brought a new word into the language:
destabilization.
"Not a nut or bolt [will] be allowed to reach Chile under Allende", warned then-
American Ambassador Edward Korry before the confirmation. 40 The Chilean economy, so
extraordinarily dependent upon the United States, was the country's soft underbelly, easy
to pound. Over the next three years, new US government assistance programs for Chile
plummeted almost to the vanishing point; similarly with loans from the US Export-Import
Bank and the Inter- American Development Bank, in which the United States held what
amounted to a veto; and the World Bank made no new loans at all to Chile during 1971-
73. US government financial assistance or guarantees to American private investment in
Chile were cut back sharply and American businesses were given the word to tighten
the economic noose. 41
What this boycott translated into were things like the many buses and taxis out of
commission in Chile due to a lack of replacement parts; and similar difficulties in the
copper, steel, electricity and petroleum industries. American suppliers refused to sell
needed parts despite Chile's offer to pay cash in advance. 42
Multinational ITT, which didn't need to be told what to do, stated in a 1970
memorandum: "A more realistic hope among those who want to block Allende is that a
swiftly-deteriorating economy will touch off a wave of violence leading to a military
coup.
In the midst of the neat disappearance of economic aid, and contrary to its
warning, the United States increased its military assistance to Chile during 1972 and 1973
as well as training Chilean military personnel in the United States and Panama. 44 The
Allende government, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, was reluctant to
refuse this "assistance" for fear of antagonizing its military leaders.
Perhaps nothing produced more discontent in the population than the shortages,
the little daily annoyances when one couldn't get a favorite food, or flour or cooking oil,
or toilet paper, bed sheets or soap, or the one part needed to make the TV set or the car
run; or, worst of all, when a nicotine addict couldn't get a cigarette. Some of the scarcity
resulted from Chile being a society- in transition: various changeovers to state
ownership, experiments in workers' control, etc. But this was minor compared to the
effect of the aid squeeze and the practices of the omnipresent American corporations.
Equally telling were the extended strikes in Chile, which relied heavily on CIA financial
support for their prolongation 45
In October 1972, for example, an association of private truck owners instituted a
work-stoppage aimed at disrupting the flow of food and other important commodities,
including in their embargo even newspapers which supported the government (subtlety
was not the order of the day in this ultra-polarized country). On the heels of this came
store closures, countless petit-bourgeois doing their bit to turn the screws of public
inconvenience — and when they were open, many held back on certain goods, like
cigarettes, to sell them on the black market to those who could afford the higher prices.
Then most private bus companies stopped tunning; on top of this, various professional
212
and white-collar workers, largely unsympathetic to the government, walked out, with or
without CIA help.
Much of this campaign was aimed at wearing down the patience of the public,
convincing them that "socialism can't work In Chile". Yet there had been worse shortages
for most of the people before the Allende government — shortages of food, housing, health
care, and education, for example. At least half the population had suffered from
malnutrition. Allende, who was a medical doctor, explained his free milk program by
pointing out that "Today in Chile there are over 600,000 children mentally retarded
because they were not adequately nourished during the first eight months of their lives,
because they did not receive the necessary proteins." 46
Financial aid was not the CIA's only input into the strike scene. More than 100
members of Chilean professional associations and employers' guilds were graduates of the
school run by the American Institute for Free Labor Development in Front Royal,
Virginia — "The Little Anti-Red Schoolhouse". AIFLD, the CIA's principal Latin
America labor organization, also assisted in the formation of a new professional
association in May 1971: the Confederation of Chilean Professionals. The labor
specialists of AIFLD had more than a decade's experience in the art of fomenting
economic turmoil (or keeping workers quiescent when the occasion called for it). 47
CIA propaganda merchants had a field day with the disorder and the shortages,
exacerbating both by instigating panic buying. All the techniques, the whole of the media
saturation, the handy organizations created for each and every purpose, so efficiently
employed in 1964 and 1970, were facilitated by the virtually unlimited license granted
the press: headlines and stories which spread rumors about everything from
nationalizations to bad meat and undrinkable water ... "Economic Chaos! Chile on Brink
of Doom!" in the largest type one could ever expect to see in a newspaper ... raising the
specter of civil war, when not actually calling for it, literally ... alarmist stories which
anywhere else in the world would have been branded seditious ... the worst of
London's daily tabloids or the National Enquirer of the United States appear as staid as
a journal of dentistry by comparison 48
In response, on a few occasions, the government briefly closed down a newspaper
or magazine, on the left as well as on the right, for endangering security. 49
The Agency's routine support of the political opposition was extended to include
the extreme rightist organization Patria y Libertad, which the CIA reportedly helped to
form, and whose members it trained in guerrilla warfare and bombing techniques at
schools in Bolivia and Los Fresnos, Texas. Patria y Libertad marched in rallies in full
riot gear, engaged repeatedly in acts of violence and provocation, and its publications
openly called for a military coup. 50
The CIA was engaged in courting the military for the same end. Providing military
equipment meant the normal presence of US advisers and the opportunity for Americans to
work closely with the Chileans. Since 1969, the Agency had been establishing "intelligence
assets" in all three branches of the Chilean armed services, and included "command-level
officers, field- and company-grade officers, retired general staff officers and enlisted men."
Employing its usual blend of real and fabricated information, along with forged
documents, the CIA endeavored to keep the officers "on the alert". One approach was to
convince them that, with Allende's approval, the police investigations unit was acting in
concert with Cuban intelligence to gather information prejudicial to the army high
command.
Newspapers in Santiago supported by the CIA, particularly El Mercurio, often
concentrated on influencing the military. They alleged communist plots to disband or
213
destroy the armed services, Soviet plans to establish a submarine base in Chile, North
Korea setting up a training base, and so forth. The papers stirred up hatred against the
government in the ranks, and in some cases entire columns were published which were
calculated to change the opinion of a single officer, in one case an officer's wife. 52
The Agency also subsidized a number of books and other kinds of
publications in Chile. One was a short-lived anti-government newsletter directed at the
military. 53 Later the CIA made use of a weekly humor and political magazine, SEPA,
aimed at the same audience. The covet of the 20 March 1973 issue featured the
headline: "Robert Moss. An English Recipe for Chile — Military Control." Moss was
identified by the magazine as a British sociologist. A more relevant description would have
been that he was a "news" specialist associated with known CIA media fronts. One of
these. Forum World Features of London (see Western Europe chapter), published Moss's
book, Chile's Marxist Experiment, in 1973, which was widely circulated by the junta to
justify its coup. 54
Moss was associated with a CIA-funded think-tank in Santiago which went by the
supremely innocuous name of the Institute of General Studies. The IGS, amongst other
activities, conducted seminars for Chilean military officers in which it was explained, in
technical, apolitical terms, why Allende was a disaster for the economy and why a laissez-
faire system offered a solution to Chile's ills. There is no way of measuring to what extent
such lectures influenced future actions of the military, although after the coup the junta did
appoint several IGS people to top government posts. 55
The CIA's Santiago station was meanwhile collecting the operational intelligence
necessary in the event of a coup: "arrest lists, key civilian installations and personnel that
needed protection, key government installations which need to be taken over, and
government contingency plans which would be used in case of a military uprising." 56 The
CIA later asserted that this information was never passed to the Chilean military, a claim
that does not give one the feeling of having been united with the probable. It should be
noted in this context that in the days immediately following the coup the Chilean military
went directly to the residences of many Americans and other foreigners living in Santiago
who had been sympathetic to the Allende government. 57
The government contingency plans were presumably obtained by the Agency
through its infiltration of the various parties which made up Allende's Unidad Popular
(UP) coalition. CIA agents in the upper echelons of Allende's own Socialist Party were
"paid to make mistakes in their jobs" . In Washington, burglary was the Agency's tactic of
choice for obtaining documents. Papers were taken from the homes of several
employees of the Chilean Embassy; and the embassy itself, which had been bugged for
some time, was burgled in May 1972 by some of the same men who the next month
staged the Watergate break-in. 59
In March 1973, the UP won about 44 percent of the vote in congressional elections,
compared to some 36 percent in 1970. It was said to be the largest increase an incumbent
party had ever received in Chile after being in power more than two years. The opposition
parties had publicly expressed their optimism about capturing two-thirds of the congres-
sional seats and thus being able to impeach Allende. Now they faced three more years
under him, with the prospect of being unable, despite their best and most underhanded
efforts, to prevent his popularity from increasing even further.
During the spring and summer the destabilization process escalated. There was a
whole series of demonstrations and strikes, with an even longer one by the truckers. Time
magazine reported: "While most of the country survived on short rations, the truckers
seemed unusually well equipped for a lengthy holdout." A reporter asked a group of
214
truckers who were camping and dining on "a lavish communal meal of steak, vegetables,
wine and empanadas" where the money for it came from. "From the CIA," they answered
laughingly.
There was as well daily sabotage and violence, including assassination. In June,
an abortive attack upon the Presidential Palace was carried out by the military and
Patria y Libertad.
In September the military prevailed. "It is clear," said the Senate investigating
committee, "the CIA received intelligence reports on the coup planning of the group
which carried out the successful September 1 1 coup throughout the months of July,
August, and September 1.973." 61
The American role on that fateful day was one of substance and shadow. The
coup began in the Pacific coast port of Valparaiso with the dispatch of Chilean naval
troops to Santiago, while US Navy ships were present offshore, ostensibly to participate
in joint maneuvers with the Chilean Navy. The American ships stayed outside of
Chilean waters, but remained on the alert. A US WB-575 plane — an airborne
communications control system — piloted by US Air Force officers, cruised in the Chilean
sky. At the same time, 32 American observation and fighter planes were landing at the
US air base in Mendoza, Argentina, not far from the Chilean border.
In Valparaiso, while US military officers were meeting with their Chilean
counterparts, a young American, Charles Horman, who lived in Santiago and was
stranded near Valparaiso by the coup, happened to engage in conversation with several
Americans, civilian and military. A retired naval engineer told him: "We came down to
do a job and it's done." One or two American military men also gave away clues they
shouldn't have. A few days later, Horman was arrested in his Santiago residence. They
knew where to find him. He was never seen again. 63
Thus it was that they closed the country to the outside world for a week, while
the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sounds of
execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture
centers opened for business; the subversive books were thrown to the bonfires; soldiers
slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that "In Chile women wear dresses!"; the poor
returned to their natural state; and the men of the world in Washington and in the halls of
international finance opened up their check-books.
One year later, President Gerald Ford was moved to declare that what the
United States had done in Chile was "in the best interest of the people in Chile and
certainly in our own best interest." 64 The remark could have been punctuated with a pinch
of snuff.
What the United States had done in Chile, thought Gerald Ford, or so he said, "was
to help and assist the preservation of opposition newspapers and electronic media and to
preserve opposition political parties." 65 The reporters present were kind, or obsequious,
enough not to ask Ford what he thought of the junta's Chile where all opposition, of any
kind, in any form, in any medium, was forbidden.
It was of course de rigueur for some other officials and congressmen to assert that
what the United States had really done in Chile was repel the Soviet threat to the Western
hemisphere. But Soviet behavior toward the Allende government simply did not tally with
any such hypothesis; the language of US intelligence reports confirms that: "Soviet
overtures to Allende ... characterized by caution and restraint"; "Soviet desire to avoid"
another Cuba-type commitment; Russians "advising Allende to put his relations with
the United States in order ... to ease the strain between the two countries." 66
215
Chile 1964-1973
A CIA study of 7 September 1970, three days after Allende's electoral victory, concluded:
1. The U.S. has no vital national interests within Chile. There would, however, be tangible eco-
nomic losses.
2. The world military balance of power would not be significantly altered by an Allende govern-
ment
3. An Allende victory would, however, create considerable political and psychological costs:
a Hemispheric cohesion would be threatened by the challenge that an Allende government
would pose to the OAS [Organization of American States], and by the reactions that it would
create in other countries. ...
b. An Allende victory would represent a definite psychological set-back to the US and a defi-
nite psychological advantage for the Marxist idea. 67
The "tangible economic losses" likely referred to the expected nationalization of US
copper-mining companies. This in fact occurred, with no compensation paid to the compa-
nies by the Unidad Popular, which calculated that due to "excess profits" over many years
the companies actually owed Chile money.
"The reactions that it would create in other countries" ... What can this mean but that
the people of other countries might be inspired to consider their own socialist solution to
the economic and social problems that beset them? Allende's Chile might thus turn out to
be that specter that haunted the corridors of official Washington: a successful example of an
alternative to the capitalist model.
Washington knows no heresy in the Third World but independence. In the case of
Salvador Allende independence came clothed in an especially provocative costume — a
Marxist constitutionally elected who continued to honor the constitution. This would not
do. It shook the very foundation stones upon which the anti-communist tower is built: the
doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that "communists" can take power only
through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and
brainwashing the population. There could be only one thing worse than a Marxist in
power — an elected Marxist in power.
35. Greece 1964-1974
"Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution,"
said the President of the United States
"It's the best damn Government since Pericles," the American two-star General
declared. 1 (The news report did not mention whether he was chewing on a big fat cigar.)
The government, about which the good General was so ebullient, was that of the Colonels'
junta which came to power in a military coup in April 1967, followed immediately by the tradi-
tional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, torture, and killings, die victims totaling some
8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this
was all being done to save the nation from a "communist takeover". Corrupting and subversive
influences in Greek life were to be removed. Among these were miniskirts, long hair, and for-
eign newspapers; church attendance for the young would be compulsory. 2
So brutal and so swift was the repression, that by September, Denmark, Norway,
Sweden and the Netherlands were before the European Commission of Human Rights to
accuse Greece of violating most of the Commission's conventions. Before the year was over,
215
KILLING HOPE
Amnesty International had sent representatives to Greece to investigate the situation. From
this came a report which asserted that "Torture as a deliberate practice is carried out by the
Security Police and the Military Police." 3
The coup had taken place two days before the campaign for national elections was to
begin, elections which appeared certain to bring the veteran liberal leader George
Papandreou back as prime minister. Papandteou had been elected in February 1964 with
the only outright majority in the history of modern Greek elections. The successful machi-
nations to unseat him had begun immediately, a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek
military, and the American military and CIA stationed in Greece.
Philip Deane (the pen name of Gerassimos Gigantes) is a Greek, a former UN official,
who worked during this period both for King Constantine and as an envoy to Washington
for the Papandreou government. He has written an intimate account of the subtleties and
the grossness of this conspiracy to undermine the government and enhance the position of
the military plotters, and of the raw power exercised by the CIA in his country. 4 We saw
earlier how Greece was looked upon much as a piece of property to be developed according
to Washington's needs. A story related by Deane illustrates how this attitude was little
changed, and thus the precariousness of Papandreou's position; During one of the perennial
disputes between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, which was now spilling over onto
NATO, President Johnson summoned the Greek ambassador to tell him of Washington's
"solution". The ambassador protested that it would be unacceptable to the Greek parlia-
ment and contrary to the Greek constitution. "Then listen to me, Mr. Ambassador," said
the President of the United States, "fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. America is
an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just
get whacked by the elephant's trunk, whacked good.... We pay a lot of good American dol-
lars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about
Democracy, Parliament and Constitutions, he, his Parliament and his Constitution may not
last very long." 5
In July 1965, George Papandreou was finally maneuvered out of office by royal prerog-
ative. The king had a coalition of breakaway Center Union Deputies (Papandreou's party)
and rightists waiting in the wings to form a new government. It was later revealed by a
State Department official that the CIA Chief-of-Station in Athens, John Maury, had
"worked in behalf of the palace in 1965. He helped King Constantine buy Center Union
Deputies so that the George Papandreou Government was toppled." 6
For nearly two years thereafter, various short-lived cabinets ruled until it was no longer
possible to avoid holding the elections prescribed by the constitution.
What concerned the opponents of George Papandreou most about him was his son.
Andreas Papandreou, who had been head of the economics department at the University of
California at Berkeley and a minister in his father's cabinet, was destined for a leading role
in the new government. But he was by no means the wide-eyed radical. In the United States,
Andreas had been an active supporter of such quintessential moderate liberals as Adlai
Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey. His economic views, wrote Washington Post columnist
Marquis Childs, were "those of the American New Deal". 8
But Andreas Papandreou did not disguise his wish to take Greece out of the cold war.
He publicly questioned the wisdom of the country remaining in NATO, or at least remain-
ing in it as a satellite of the United States. He leaned toward opening relations with the
Soviet Union and othet Communist countries on Greece's border. He argued that the
swollen American military and intelligence teams in Greece compromised the nation's free-
dom of action. And he viewed the Greek Army as a threat to democracy, wishing to purge it
216
Greece 1964-1974
of its most dictatorial- and royalist-minded senior officers.
Andreas Papandreou's bark was worse than his bite, as his later presidency was to
amply demonstrate. (He did not, for example, pull Greece out of NATO or US bases out of
Greece.) But in Lyndon Johnson's Washington, if you were not totally and unquestioningly
with us, you were agin' us. Johnson felt that Andteas, who had become a naturalized US
citizen, had "betrayed America". Said LBJ:
We gave the son of a bitch American citizenship, didn't we? He was an American, with all the
rights and privileges. And he had sworn allegiance to the flag. And then he gave up his American
citizenship. He went back to just being a Greek. You can't trust a man who breaks his oath of
allegiance to the flag of these United States. 10
What, then, are we to make of the fact that Andreas Papandreou was later reported to
have worked with the CIA in the early 1960s? (He criticized publication of the report, but
did not deny the charge.) 11 If true, it would not have been incompatible with being a liber-
al, particularly at that time. It was incompatible, as be subsequently learned, only with his
commitment to a Greece independent from US foreign policy.
As for the elder Papandreou, his anti-communist credentials were impeccable, dating
back to his role as a British-installed prime minister during the civil war against the left in
1944-45. But he, too, showed stirrings of independence from the Western superpower. He
refused to buckle under Johnson's pressure to compromise with Turkey over Cyprus. He
accepted an invitation to visit Moscow, and when his government said that it would accept
Soviet aid in preparation for a possible war with Turkey, the US Embassy demanded an
explanation. Moreover, in an attempt to heal the old wounds of the civil war, Papandreou
began to reintroduce certain civil liberties and to readmit into Greece some of those who
had fought against the government in the civil war period.' 12
When Andreas Papandreou assumed his ministerial duties in 1964 he was shocked to
discover what was becoming a fact of life for every techno-industrial state in the world: an
intelligence service gone wild, a shadow government with powers beyond the control of the
nation's nominal leaders. This, thought Papandreou, accounted for many of the obstacles
the government was encountering in trying to catty out its policies. 13
The Greek intelligence service, KYP, as we have seen, was created by the OSS/CIA in
the course of the civil war, with hundreds of its officers receiving training in the United
States. One of these men, George Papadopoulos, was the leader of the junta that seized
power in 1967. Andreas Papandreou found that the KYP routinely bugged ministerial con-
versations and turned the data over to the CIA. (Many Western intelligence agencies have
long provided the CIA with information about their own government and citizens, and the
CIA has reciprocated on occasion. The nature of much of this information has been such
that if a private citizen were to pass it to a foreign power be could be charged with treason.)
As a result of his discovery, the younger Papandreou dismissed the two top KYP men
and replaced them with reliable officers. The new director was ordered to protect the cabi-
net from surveillance. "He came back apologetically," recalls Papandreou, "to say he
couldn't do it. All the equipment was American, controlled by the CIA or Greeks under CIA
supervision. There was no kind of distinction between the two services. They duplicated
functions in a counterpart relationship. In effect, they were a single agency." 14
Andreas Papandreou's order to abolish the bugging of the cabinet inspired the Deputy
Chief of Mission of the US Embassy, Norbert Anshutz (of Anschuetz), to visit him.
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KILLING HOPE
Anshutz, who has been linked to the CIA, demanded that Papandreou rescind the order.
Andreas demanded that the American leave his office, which he did, but not before warning
that "there would be consequences". 15
Papandreou then requested that a thorough search be made of his home and office for
electronic devices by the new KYP deputy director. "It wasn't until much later," says
Andreas, "that we discovered he'd simply planted a lot of new bugs. Lo and behold, we'd
brought in another American-paid operative as ourNo.2." 16
An endeavor by Andreas to end the practice of KYP's funds coming directly from the CIA
without passing through any Greek ministry also met with failure, but he did succeed in trans-
ferring the man who had been liaison between the two agencies for several years. This was
George Papadopoulos. The change in his position, however, appears to have amounted to little
more than a formality, for die organization still took orders from him; even afterwards, Greek
"opposition politicians who sought the ear (or the purse) of James Potts, CIA [deputy] chief in
Athens before the coup, were often told: 'See George — he's my boy." 17
In mid-February 1967, a meeting took place in the White House, reported Marquis
Childs, to discuss CIA reports which "left no doubt that a military coup was in the making
... It could hardly have been a secret. Since 1947 the Greek army and the American military
aid group in Athens, numbering several hundred, have worked as part of the same team ...
The solemn question was whether by some subtle political intervention the coup could be
prevented" and thus preserve parliamentary government. It was decided that
no course of action was feasible. As one of the senior civilians present recalls it, Walt Rostow,
the President's adviser on national security affairs, closed the meeting with these words: I hope
you understand, gentlemen, that what we have concluded here, or rather have failed to conclude,
makes the future course of events in Greece inevitable.-"
A CIA report dated 23 January 1967 had specifically named the Papadopoulos group
as one plotting a coup, and was apparently one of the reports discussed at the February
meeting. 19
Of the cabal of five officers which took power in April, four, reportedly, were intimate-
ly connected to the American military or to the CIA in Greece. The fifth man had been
brought in because of the armored units he commanded. 20 George Papadopoulos emerged
as the de facto leader, taking the title of prime minister later in the year.
The catchword amongst old hands at the US military mission in Greece was that
Papadopoulos was "the first CIA agent to become Premier of a European country". "Many
Greeks consider this to be the simple truth," reported Charles Foley in The Observer of
London. 21
At die time of the coup, Papadopoulos had been on the CIA payroll for some 15 years. 22
One reason for the success of their marriage may have been Colonel Papadopoulos's World War
II record. When the Germans invaded Greece, Papadopoulos served as a captain in the Nazis'
Security Battalions whose main task was to track down Greek resistance fighters. 23 He was, it is
said, a great believer in Hitler's "new order", and his later record in power did little to cast
doubt upon that claim. Foley writes that when he mentioned the junta leader's pro-German
background to an American military adviser he met at a party in Athens, the American hinted
that it was related to Papadopoulos's subservience to US wishes: "George gives good value," he
smiled, "because there are documents in Washington he wouldn't like let out." 24
Foley relates that under Papadopoulos:
218
Greece 1964-1974
intense official propaganda portrayed Communism as the only enemy Greece had ever had and
minimized the German occupation until even Nazi atrocities were seen as provoked by the
Communists. This rewriting of history clearly reflects the dictator's concern at the danger that
the gap in his official biography may some day be filled in. 25
As part of the rewriting, members of the Security Battalions became "heroes of the
resistance". 26
It was torture, however, which most indelibly marked the seven-year Greek nightmare.
James Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by Amnesty International, wrote in
December 1969 that "a conservative estimate would place at not less than two thousand" the
number of people tortured. 27 It was an odious task for Becket to talk to some of the victims:
People had been mercilessly tortured simply for being in possession of a leaflet criticizing the
regime. Brutality and cruelty on one side, frustration and helplessness on the other. They were
being tortured and there was nothing to be done. It was like listening to a friend who has cancer.
What comfort, what wise reflection can someone who is comfortable give? Torture might last a
short time, but the person will never be the same. 28
Becket reported that some torturers had told prisoners that some of their equipment
had come as US military aid: a special "thick white double cable" whip was one item;
another was the head-screw, known as an "iron wreath", which was progressively tightened
around the head or ears. 29
The Amnesty delegation described a number of the other torture methods commonly
employed. Among these were:
a) Beating the soles of the feet with a stick or pipe. After four months of this, the soles of one pris-
oner were covered with thick scar tissue. Another was crippled by broken bones.
b) Numerous incidents of sexually-oriented torture: shoving fingers or an object into the vagina and
twisting and tearing brutally; also done with the anus; or a tube is inserted into the anus and
water driven in under very high pressure.
c) Techniques of gagging: the throat is grasped in such a way that the windpipe is cut df, or a filthy
rag, often soaked in urine, and sometimes excrement, is shoved down the throat.
d) Tearing out the hair from the head and the pubic region.
e) Jumping on the stomach.
f) Pulling out toe nails and finger nails. 30
These were not the worst. The worst is what one reads in the many individual testi-
monies. But these are simply too lengthy to be repeated here. 31
The junta's response to the first Amnesty report was to declare that it was comprised of
charges emanating from "International Communism" and to hire public relations firms in
New York and London to improve its image. 32
In 1969, the European Commission of Human Rights found Greece guilty of torture,
murder and other violations. For these reasons and particularly for the junta's abolition of
parliamentary democracy, The Council of Europe — a consultative body of, at that time, 18
European states, under which the Commission falls — was preparing to expel Greece. The
Council rejected categorically Greece's claim that it had been in danger of a communist
takeover. Amnesty International later reported that the United States, though not a member
of the Council, actively applied diplomatic pressure on member states not to vote for the
expulsion. (Nonetheless, while the Council was deliberating, the New York Times reported
219
KILLING HOPE
that "The State Department said today that the United States had deliberately avoided tak-
ing any position on the question of continued Greek membership in the Council of
Europe.") The European members, said Amnesty, believed that only the United States had
the power to bring about changes in Greece, yet it chose only to defend the junta. 33
On the specific issue of torture, Amnesty's report concluded that:
American policy on the torture question as expressed in official statements and official testimony
has been to deny it where possible and minimize it where denial was not possible. This policy
flowed naturally from general support for the military regime. 34
As matters transpired, Greece walked out before the Council could formalize the expul-
sion.
In a world grown increasingly hostile, the support of the world's most powerful nation
was sine qua non for the Greek junta. The two governments thrived upon each other. Said
the American ambassador to Greece, Henry Tasca, "This is the most anti-communist group
you'll find anywhere. There is just no place like Greece to offer these facilities with the back
up of the kind of Government you have got here." ("You", not "we", noted the reporter,
was the only pretense.) 35
The facilities the ambassador was referring to were dozens of US military installations,
from nuclear missile bases to major communication sites, housing tens of thousands of
American servicemen. The United States, in turn, provided the junta with ample military
hardware despite an official congressional embargo, as well as the police equipment
required by the Greek authorities to maintain their rigid control.
In an attempt to formally end the embargo, the Nixon administration asked
Papadopoulos to make some gesture towards constitutional government which the White
House could then point to. The Greek prime minister was to be assured, said a secret White
House document, that the administration would take "at face value and accept without
reservation" any such gesture. 36
US Vice-president Spiro Agnew, on a visit to the land of his ancestors, was moved to
exalt the "achievements" of the Greek government and its "constant co-operation with US
needs and wishes". 37 One of the satisfied needs Agnew may have had in mind was the con-
tribution of $549,000 made by the junta to the 1968 Nixon-Agnew election campaign.
Apart from any other consideration, it was suspected that this was money given to the junta
by the CIA finding its way back to Washington. A Senate investigation of this question was
abruptly canceled at the direct request of Henry Kissinger. 38
Perhaps nothing better captures the mystique of the bond felt by the Greeks to their
American guardians than the story related about Chief Inspector Basil Lambrou, one of
Athens' well-known torturers:
Hundreds of prisoners have listened to the little speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who
sits behind his desk which displays the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American
aid. He tries to show the prisoner the absolute futility of resistance: "You make yourself ridicu-
lous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on
that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are
we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind
NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans." 39
Amnesty International adds that some torturers would tell their victims things like: "The
Human Rights Commission can't help you now ... The Red Cross can do nothing for you ...
Tell them all, it will do no good, you are helpless." "The torturers from the start," said
220
Greece 1964-1974
Amnesty, "had said that the United States supported them and that was what counted."
In November 1973, a falling-out within the Greek inner circle culminated in the oust-
ing of Papadopoulos and his replacement by Col. Demetrios loannidis, Commander of the
Military Police, torturer, graduate of American training in anti-subversive techniques, confi-
dant of the CIA, 41 loannidis named as prime minister a Greek- American, A.
Androutsopoulos, who came to Greece after the Second World War as an official employee
of the CIA, a fact of which Mr. Androutsopoulos had often boasted. 42
Eight months later, the loannidis regime overthrew the government of Cyprus. It was a
fatal miscalculation. Turkey invaded Cyprus and the reverberations in Athens resulted in
the military giving way to a civilian government. The Greek nightmare had come to an end.
Much of the story of American complicity in the 1967 coup and its aftermath may
never be known. At the trials held in 1975 of junta members and torturers, many witnesses
made reference to the American role. This may have been the reason a separate investiga-
tion of this aspect was scheduled to be undertaken by the Greek Court of Appeals. 43 But it
appears that no information resulting from this inquiry, if it actually took place, was ever
announced. Philip Deane, upon returning to Greece several months after the civilian govern-
ment took over, was told by leading politicians that "for the sake of preserving good rela-
tions with the US, the evidence of US complicity will not be made fully public". 44
Andreas Papandreou had been arrested at the time of the coup and held in prison for
eight months. Shortly after his release, he and his wife Margaret visited the American
ambassador, Phillips Talbot, in Athens. Papandreou related the following:
I asked Talbot whether America could have intervened the night of the coup, to prevent the
death of democracy in Greece. He denied that they could have done anything about it. Then
Margaret asked a critical question: What if the coup had been a Communist or a Leftist coup?
Talbot answered without hesitation. Then, of course, they would have intervened, and they
would have crushed the coup. 45
36. Bolivia 1964-1975
Tracking down Che Guevara in the land of coup d'etat
Victor Paz Estenssoro was given a choice when he was overthrown by yet another
Bolivian military coup. He could be taken — one of the officers told him — "either to the
cemetery, or to the airport". The president opted to fly to Lima and exile. 1
The man who led the coup in November 1964 and replaced Paz was none other than
his vice-president, General Rene Barrientos Ortuiio. It marked something like the 185th
change of government (no one seems certain of the precise number) in Bolivia's 139 years of
independence from Spanish rule, very few by elections.
Paz was unseated despite support from the American ambassador, Douglas Henderson,
for it happened that both the CIA and the Pentagon wanted the president out. Barrientos,
the former commander of the air force, had formed a close relationship with both institu-
221
KILLING HOPE
tions, primarily through the person of Col. Edward Fox, his "flying instructor and drinking
companion", dating back to the Bolivian's military-training days in the United States. The
year 1964 found Fox in the Bolivian capital of La Paz working with the CIA, though listed
officially as a military attache. 2
Not surprisingly, Cuba was one of the sore points between the American colonel and
the Bolivian president. Paz had directly opposed American policy by voting against Cuba's
expulsion from the Organization of American States in 1962, by declining to join in on the
OAS sanctions against the Castro government two years later, and by refusing to break
diplomatic relations with Havana. It was not until August 1964, when Bolivian- American
relations were "just short of an open quarrel", that Paz finally broke with the United
States' bite noire. "It was a case of conforming or of facing a severe cut in United States
aid", observed a New York Times editorial. 4
The Bolivian government's attempts to attract economic aid and investment from coun-
tries other than the United States, such as the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia,
were a further source of friction between the two countries. Here, too, the Bolivians eventu-
ally yielded. 5
Although Fox and Ambassador Henderson were divided — deeply it was said — on the
question of Paz remaining in office, 6 both were uneasy about the political and economic
power wielded by the tin miners and their leader Juan Lechin, the former vice-president
who was an open candidate for Paz's job. The miners controlled their own area of the coun-
try; they had their own radio station and their own armed militia; they were intensely
opposed to the military; and they were seen as a force potentially more radical than the
president. A volatile four-month strike in the mines in mid- 1963 which reached crisis pro-
portion could only have served to ring the alarm bells louder in the American Embassy. The
Minister of Mines under Paz, Rene Zavaleta Mercado, later wrote that "For over a year
and a half, the American Embassy, in the form of Mr. Henderson, urged with almost week-
ly regularity that the army be sent to the mining zones, and threatened that otherwise [an
American financial program for the mines] would be suspended." 7
Paz recognized the challenge to his own rule posed by the miners and Lechin, but the
likely political damage ensuing from an armed intervention was more than he was willing to
risk.
The very existence of an army to send in owed more than a little to American efforts to
rebuild the shattered Bolivian armed forces. In 1952 that rarity had occurred — an armed
popular revolt had defeated the military, displaced the oligarchy, nationalized the tin mines,
instituted land reform, and set up a new government under the Movitniento Hacionalista
Revolucionario, The MNR reduced the military to a small, impotent and discredited force,
at the same time fostering "people's militias". Decades of coups and other abuses had cut a
wide swathe of anti-military sentiment across the Bolivian population. Despite the entreaties
of certain segments of the left, however, the traditional armed forces were not completely
dismantled. It proved to be a fatal error for the MNR and the country's fledgling democrat-
ic institutions.
Primarily to serve as a counterweight to the strength of the militias, and because of
American pressure, both Pax and his predecessor had permitted, however reluctantly, the
slow but certain rejuvenation of the military. Under US guidance, the Bolivian army became
the first in Latin America to launch a "civic action" program, building roads, schools, etc.,
designed to improve its image amongst the population.
"No country in the Western hemisphere is more dependent on Washington's aid,"
wrote the New York Times shortly after the coup, "and nowhere has the United States
222
Bolivia 1964-1975
Embassy played a more obtrusive role in establishing that fact." Washington employed its
potent economic leverage to spur a distinctly more favorable government policy towards the
military, one which allowed the US to "professionalize" the armed forces. More money fol-
lowed, more recruits, new equipment ... selected officers were sent to the United States for
training ... political indoctrination courses for officers given by MNR adherents and acade-
mics were allowed to lapse, and were replaced by indoctrination at the US School of the
Americas in the Panama Canal Zone ... by 1964, some 1,200 Bolivian officers and men had
received training either in the United States or Panama, including 20 of the 23 senior Army
officers ... the military had come a long way towards recouping its former size and efficien-
cy, its prestige and its independence. 9
The School of the Americas, observed the Washington Post in 1968, "counts so many
important Latin officers as alumni ... that it is known throughout Latin America as the
'esciiela de golpes' or coup school". 10
Whether the American motivation for reviving the military derived from a desire for an
eventual military takeover is impossible to say. At a minimum, it evidenced a basic distrust
of the Bolivian revolution with its potential for genuine independence from the United
States; and, given the country's history, the culmination of the military process would
appear to have been plainly inevitable. The Pentagon has long seen the military of Latin
America as its natural partners, the proper "nation builders". This conviction was spelled
out by Col. Truman F. Cook of the American military assistance mission in Bolivia in the
foreword to a pamphlet on the use of the army in civic action programs. In the pamphlet,
published in Bolivia in 1964 and authored by Bolivian Lt. Col. Julio Sanjines, a confidant of
Pentagon and CIA officers, Cook wrote:
the military organization is perhaps the only institution endowed with the organization, order,
discipline, and self-sacrificing attitude towards objectives for the common good ... Should politi-
cal and economic institutions tail ,„ then there is a real possibility that the military would move
in against graft and corruption in government... [It is] naive to assume that they might not move
to power in a classic sense. 1 1
Another unknown is at what point General Barrientos and his co-conspirators actually
decided to oust Paz. What is certain is: (1) the general's ascendancy to the office of vice-
president was a crucial part of the process; (2) the role played by the CIA and the Pentagon
in obtaining that office for Barrientos was sine qua non.
At the MNR's convention in January 1964, Paz sidestepped Barrientos, who had made
his candidacy known, and chose a civilian, Frederico Fortun, to be his running mate.
Barrientos proved to be a bad loser. He declared publicly that the nomination was a mis-
take and continued politicking, finally compelling the president to ask for his resignation as
ait force chief. The general was given one week in which to submit it. 12 A few days later,
however, a scenario began to unfold which grabbed Barrientos from the edge of the abyss.
On the evening of 25 February, there supposedly took place a shooting attempt on
Barrientos's life. Some accounts have the general near death, others "only wounded". In
either event, it does appear rather incongruous that he was moved by military vehicle to the
airport and then flown in a US Air Force pEane to an American hospital in the Panama
Canal Zone — 2,000 miles away. No Bolivian doctor ever examined Barrientos. 13
In the days following, while Barrientos was still in the hospital following a "lengthy
operation", he was extolled as a national hero by the press in Bolivia. This was particularly
the case with El Diario, an influential, conservatives and strongly anti-Paz newspaper.
According to the later testimony of a member of Barrientos's new cabinet, some of the
223
KILLING HOPE
newspaper's staff worked with the CIA. Moreover, one of El Diario 's board members was
the aforementioned Lt. Col. Sanjines. Sanjines, a graduate of West Point, was an employee
of the US Embassy, working on Alliance for Progress programs. After the coup he was
appointed minister of economics, later ambassador to Washington.' 4
The press coverage included the story that Barrientos's life was spared only because the
bullet had struck the US Air Force silver wings which he wore on his uniform. This became
the "silver bullet" affair and great sympathy was generated for the courageous general. On
top of this, notes one historian of Bolivia, the commander of the army and the political
opposition
hinted publicly that Paz's police had been responsible for the alleged attack Strong pressures
from other high officers as well were exerted upon Paz to vindicate both himself and Barrientos
by belatedly including the general on the ticket, and Paz felt he could not refuse. 1 - 5
Ten days after the mysterious incident, the president dumped Fortun, replaced him
with Barrientos, and went on to re-election.
Bartientos himself later conceded that without the "silver bullet" (or "magic bullet", as
others dubbed it), he would never have become vice-president. 16 His eight months as candi-
date and as vice-president in office served, in turn, to tie up all the loose ends required for
the military to return from 12 years in the political wilderness and stage their coup with a
minimum of opposition; indeed, with a measure of support.
Barrientos's ascendancy furnished a distinct legitimacy to the military, and the general
regularly used his platform to champion the armed forces and defend it against the deep-
seated anti-militarism. He denounced the militias, called for their dissolution, and took the
anomalous step of undermining the government of which he was the vice-president (or to
be) by publicly reproaching the president and the MNR — particularly when they were criti-
cal of the military — and by throwing his support to ami-government groups. These tactics
served to show up the president's weakness and succeeded in rallying to Barrientos's side
many of the military officers who had been dubious about the wisdom or safety of re-enter-
ing the political arena and unsure of their own political muscle. 17
It appears that little if anything further was heard of Barrientos's "injury", although
during this period he "miraculously" escaped several other reported assassination attempts,
including a bomb which blew up his car when no one was in it and another bomb which
somehow found its way to under his bed. He used the latter occasion to declare that he
"had more enemies within the MNR than in the ranks of the opposition". 18
Paz Estenssoro had been "re-elected" because the opposition — claiming, amongst other
things, unfair electoral procedure — had decided to abstain. Without pausing for breath, the
masochistic, tangled mess that is Bolivian politics continued at his throat. Widespread dis-
content, arising from long-standing grievances and fueled by a conflux of personal ambi-
tions, erupted in a series of strikes, demonstrations and violent confrontations, with
Barrientos lending his weight to the dissident elements, attacking the beleaguered president,
and taking upon himself the role of the defender of order. In October, the vice-president
withdrew to his home town and declared himself a rebel.
This period of public chaos and government crisis may have hastened the timing of the
coup, at the same time convincing some still-reluctant officers who were disgusted by the
constant civilian warfare. When the military finally made its move against Paz at the begin-
ning of November it was not unwelcomed by various segments of the population.
Three years later, the Washington Posfs veteran Latin America correspondent, John
224
Bolivia 1964-1975
Goshko, reported that Paz "still insists that Fox was behind his ouster. Among Bolivians
with an awareness of politics, it is hard to find anyone who disagrees." 19
Rene' Barrientos pressed an unrelenting hard line against the tin miners. He inflicted
upon them an extraordinary 50 percent cut in salary. Miners' boss Juan Lechin and other
union and MNR leaders were ordered into exile and a principal labor confederation was
banned. All Bolivian unions were directed to reorganize under guidelines designed to pro-
duce an apolitical labor movement.
Then the army moved in. Repeated invasions and occupations of the mining camps
over a period of time were needed to pacify the ultra-militant miners. The fighting was
bloody, 70 miners losing their lives in one raid alone — La Noche de San Juan as it came to
be known. 20 The Revolution of 19,12 had come to an end.
The United States was not a disinterested observer. In February 1966, Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara, presenting his department's regular "Assessment of the
International Situation", told a congressional committee: "Violence in the mining areas and
in the cities of Bolivia has continued to occur intermittently, and we are assisting this coun-
try to improve the training and equipping of its military forces." 21
This was all that the Defense Secretary had to report about Bolivia — a routine report,
routinely written by some faceless Pentagon researcher, routinely delivered by the quintes-
sential technocrat, as if the American action was the most natural and innocuous thing in
the world.
As natural as American financial contributions to Barrientos. Antonio Argue das, Minister
of the Interior under Barrientos, later disclosed that the CIA contributed $600,000 to the
Bolivian leader in 1966 when he decided to hold an election. Several right-wing parties
received lesser sums. Arguedas, an admitted agent of the CIA who, in 1968, gave the world
Che Guevara's diary, claiming that the Agency had pushed him too hard, also revealed that
Gulf Oil Corp. donated $200,000 to Barrientos's campaign as well as a helicopter for his
tours around the provinces. Gulf subsequently admitted that it had paid Bolivian officials,
mainly Barrientos, a total of $460,000 in "political contributions" during the period 1966-69
at the CIA's recommendation, although the company may have needed but little prodding, for
the Bolivian president had opened up the economy to multinationals to a greater degree than
his predecessors, bestowing upon Gulf especially generous concessions. 22
In the two years following the disappearance of Che Guevara from public view in early
1965, rumours had placed him at different times in the Dominican Republic, Brazil,
Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Guatemala, the Congo (which was true), China,
Vietnam, and even New York, "always plotting revolution with some menacing and
inscrutable bunch of desperados". 23 Word also had it that he had gone mad and was con-
fined to an asylum somewhere, or that he had been imprisoned or executed by his erstwhile
comrade-in-arms Fidel Castro for challenging Castro's authority. These latter stories or oth-
ers like them may well have been CIA handiwork. The Agency, ever inventive, had begun
generating unfavorable press speculation about Guevara's disappearance as early as autumn
1965 in the hope that he would reappear in order to put an end to the tales, 24
When evidence began to drift back to CIA headquarters in early 1967 that Che was
leading a band of guerrillas in the southern mountains of Bolivia, there was understandable
skepticism amongst some Agency officials. Nevertheless, obsessed as the CIA was with
tracking down the legendary guerrilla, a multi-phased operation was put into motion. In
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KILLING HOPE
April, American military supplies suitable for combatting guerrilla forces began to arrive in
Bolivia: light arms, communication equipment, helicopters, etc. At the end of the month, a
unit of 16 Green Berets was dispatched from Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone to
Bolivia to provide on-the-spot training in counter-insurgency tactics to a hand-picked bat-
talion of Bolivian Rangers who had little or no experience in the real thing. The Green
Berets had at their disposal a team of experts in communications, intelligence and recon-
naissance work, and, before long, aerial photographs taken of approximately 23,500 square
miles of southern Bolivia. This undertaking made use of an infra-red detection system, sen-
sitive to thermal radiation father than visible light, and as such could be employed at night
and on cloudy days. The infra-red cameras were able to discriminate targets having less
than one degree temperature difference with their background, thus picking up campfires,
vehicles, even people. Or so the technocrats would have one believe. In any event, the guer-
rillas rarely built fires or used vehicles. 25
In La Paz, the CIA station informed Interior Minister Arguedas that it was sending him
several "advisors" whose presence was required, it was stated, because of the ineffectiveness of
Bolivia's intelligence services. A few days later, according to Arguedas, four Cuban exiles
arrived and assumed their "advisory" positions in his ministry. One of them proceeded to set
up two houses of interrogation where Bolivians suspected of aiding the guerrillas were brought
for questioning. When Atguedas learned of this, and that in some cases the Cubans were resort-
ing to torture, he was furious and demanded that the CIA put a stop to the operation. 26
Other Cuban CIA agents were attached to the military high command and sent to the
area of guerrilla fighting to collect detailed information from prisoners and peasants. This
kind of investigation probably contributed more to locating the elusive Guevara than did
the CIAs assortment of technological marvels, although the ultimate value of the Agency's
role cannot be stated with any precision. What is clear, however, is that it was a case of
overkill. Che's guerrilla movement never amounted to much of a threat. Barely more than
50 men and one woman at its peak, reduced to less than half that number at the end, the
rebels could show to their credit only a scattering of skirmishes with the army. They had
been largely ignored by the left in Bolivia and hardly "swam like fish in the peasants' sea".
"The inhabitants of this region," wrote Che in his diary, "are as impenetrable as rocks.
You speak to them, but in the deepness of their eyes you can see that they do not believe
you." As in the Congo, this man who made social revolution his life had failed to win over
the peasantry. "You can waken men," said Alexander Hertzen a century ago in Russia,
"only by dreaming their dreams more clearly than they can dream them themselves."
On 8 October 1967, Che Guevara was captured. The next day the Bolivian govern-
ment ordered his execution in cold blood to prevent him from becoming the object of a
worldwide clemency campaign, and despite the vociferous objections of CIA men in the
country who clung to the hope that Guevara would eventually talk openly about his sundry
guerrilla adventures.
Following the death of Rend Barrientos in April 1969 (crashing in Gulfs helicopter),
Bolivia's statesmen soon reverted to their normal Byzantine convolutions. For a start, the
vice-president who succeeded Barrientos lasted but five months before being ousted by
General Alfredo Ovando Candia.
Ovando's long-held nationalist sentiments came to the fore. In his first month, he
nationalized the Gulf Oil Corporation. The prevailing attitude toward the multinational,
said Bolivian leaders, was that Gulf "constituted itself as a shadow government of vast
powers over a poor land". 27
226
Bolivia 1964-1975
The nationalization left Bolivia open, as the New York Times expressed it in
December, to "the wrath of the United States".
Since the seizure, the United States, which has been the mainstay of Bolivia's economy for years,
lias indicated that further aid will not be forthcoming ... Washington has not been impressed by
Bolivia's offer to compensate Gulf for the property, which is valued at S140 million, about 50
per cent more than Bolivia's annual budget ... Two Bolivian cabinet ministers interviewed this
week said privately that the United States and Argentina were aware, as were most educated peo-
ple in this capital, that well financed groups were plotting to overthrow the new Bolivian
regime. 28
This was followed by a dispatch from La Paz of Inter Press Service (a major Latin
American news agency) reporting that the United States was planning to bring down the
Ovando government through economic strangulation. 29 Then, two days later, the govern-
ment alerted the public about a conspiracy "that was being organized by the CIA in close
collaboration with Gulf Oil and some Bolivian rightists." 30
What fire all this smoke pointed to is not known. Ovando, who had walked the corri-
dors of the Bolivian power structure for many years (it was he who had presented Paz with
the choice of cemetery or airport), was no stranger to CIA intrigue in his country, and he
may have seen the bright spotlight of publicity as the only means of forestalling his over-
throw. This would also explain why, in January 1970, the government made it a point to
announce the ordinary: that it had uncovered a CIA office in La Pa2 with radio transmis-
sion and bugging equipment. 31 The same month, Ovando also advocated a rapprochement
with Cuba, and it looked like he and the CIA were on a collision course.
But then ... it seems ... someone got to Ovando with an offer he couldn't refuse. Slowly
but surely, the president drifted to the right; amongst other indications: several anti-US stu-
dent demonstrations were firmly put down by the police, nothing more was heard about
Cuba, and Ovando removed General Juan Jose Tortes as commander of the armed forces, a
man highly regarded by most of the Bolivian left. 52 By September, matters had progressed
to the point that State Department officials were publicly expressing concern that a deepen-
ing split between the Ovando government and its former leftist allies was on the brink of
open showdown and might result in a "communist" government. 33
By whatever label, there was indeed fresh political conflict in Bolivia. Two weeks later,
the power struggle erupted into a military revolt.
General Ovando was out. General Torres was in. Ovando had lasted one year.
Juan Jose Torres's ten months in office produced the archetypical Latin American polit-
ical drama. In the opening act, Torres did all the things which make Washington officials
see Red: He made overtures of friendship to Allende's Chile and Castro's Cuba; increased
commercial ties with the Soviet Union; nationalized tin mines owned by American interests
(leading the US to threaten to release large amounts of its tin stockpile onto the world mar-
ket to deflate the international price); expelled the Peace Corps; and closed down the Inter-
American Regional Labor Organization (ORIT, an important vehicle for CIA labor opera-
tions in Latin America); on top of all this, Torres indulged at times in Marxist rhetoric,
talking of workers' and peasants' power and the like. 34
Act Two brought on stage one Hugo Banker, a Bolivian colonel with long and close ties
to the American military establishment. He too had attended the escuela de golpes. in
Panama. Later there was further military training at Fort Hood in Texas; eventually, a post-
ing to Washington as Bolivian military attache". Along the way he picked up the Order of
Military Merit from the United States government. Banzer was also reported to be one of
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KILLING HOPE
the beneficiaries of Gulf Oil's largesse when he served in Barrientos's cabinet.
In January 1971, Col. Banzer led a coup attempt which came to nothing except his
own exile to Argentina. The CIA in La Paz had known of Banzer' s plan at least two weeks
earlier, and had advised Washington of it. 35 Over the next six months, as Banzer and his
military cohorts diligently plotted their next attempt to oust Torres, Banzer regularly
crossed over the Argentine border into Bolivia where he was in close contact with US Major
Robert Lundin, an adviser to the Bolivian Air Force School in Santa Cruz. 36
Act Three, or the coup that succeeded, took place in August, a few days after Torres
had announced an agreement with the Soviet Union for a major development of the
Bolivian iron industry, 37 few days before he was to meet with Salvador Allende to re-
establish diplomatic relations with Chile.
When the plotters were in military control of Santa Cruz, a breakdown in their radio
communications network caused a delay in rallying other Bolivian military units to their
side. At this moment, Major Lundin stepped in to fill the breach by placing the US Air
Force radio system at the rebels' disposal.
How important this aid was to the success of the coup, which turned out to be very
bloody, or what Lundin's role was otherwise, has not been determined.
One week later, the San Francisco Chronicle reported: "Although it has been officially
dented, CIA money, training and advice was liberally given to the rebel strategists who mas-
terminded [the], overthrow of Bolivia's leftist President Juan Jose Torres." 39
In the finale, we find that the military-political coalition that took power was so far to
the right that one of its member parties called itself by the customary fascist designation
"Falange", and that Banzer immediately announced that: his government would maintain
very close relations with the United States, efforts to restore ties with Cuba and Chile would
be abandoned, the trend toward nationalizations would halt, some already-completed nation-
alizations would be rescinded, the government would welcome private foreign investment, and
all schools would be closed for at least four months because they were hotbeds of "political
subversive agitation provoked by anarchists opposed to the new institutional order". 4 Before
long, the government ordered the entire Soviet Embassy to leave the country, and Banzer
eventually raised a foreign loan to pay Gulf Oil gready increased compensation.
At the same time, the time-honored scene known popularly as "reign of terror" was
performed: Within the first two years of the new regime, more than 2,000 persons were
arrested for political reasons without being brought to trial, "all the fundamental laws pro-
tecting human rights were regularly violated", torture was "commonly used on prisoners
during interrogation ... beaten, raped and forced to undergo simulated executions ... hung
for hours with their hands tied behind their backs" . 41
By 1975, Catholic religious groups and clergy had taken upon themselves the danger-
ous burden of speaking out in defense of human rights in Bolivia. The Banzer government
responded with a calculated and methodical campaign to divide the church, to isolate its
progressive members, harass and censor them, and smear them as communists. Foreign
priests and nuns, who made up the bulk of the country's clergy, were especially vulnerable
to arrest and deportation. One of them, an American missionary from Iowa, Father
Raymond Herman, was found murdered.
The CIA, it has been reported, assisted the Bolivian government in this endeavor by
"providing full information on certain priests — persona! data, studies, friends, addresses,
writings, contacts abroad, etc." The Agency, with its international data network, was par-
ticularly valuable concerning the foreign clergy. 42
228
Bolivia 1964-1975
"I will observe the constitution," said Banzer, "whenever it does not contradict mili-
tary decrees." 43
"Since the formulation of the current Bolivian Government in August 1971," stated a
report of the US Comptroller General's Office in 1975, "the objective of U.S. military assis-
tance has been to "provide stability and security. To assist in the objective, the United States
provides materiel and training to develop adequate counter-insurgent forces." 44
In 1978, Hugo Banzer was overthrown in yet another Bolivian coup. The new Bolivian
strongman, former Air Force General Juan Pereda Asbun, announced, as Banzer had
announced, that he was saving the nation from "international communism". 45
37. Guatemala 1962 to 1980s
A less publicized "final solution"
Indians tell harrowing stories of village raids in which their homes have been burned, men
tortured hideously and killed, women raped, and scarce crops destroyed. It is Guatemala's
final solution to insurgency: only mass slaughter of the Indians will prevent them joining
a mass uprising*
This newspaper item appeared in 1983. Very similar stories have appeared many times
in the world press since 1966, for Guatemala's "final solution" has been going on rather
longer than the more publicized one of die Nazis.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the misery of the mainly-Indian peasants and urban
poor of Guatemala who make up three-quarters of the population of this beautiful land so
favored by American tourists. The particulars of their existence derived from the literature
of this period sketch a caricature of human life. In a climate where everything grows, very
few escape the daily ache of hunger or the progressive malnutrition ... almost half the chil-
dren die before the age of five ... the leading cause of death in the country is gastroenteritis.
Highly toxic pesticides sprayed indiscriminately by airplanes, at times directly onto the
heads of peasants, leave a trail of poisoning and death ... public health services in rural
areas are virtually non-existent ... the same for public education ... near-total illiteracy. A
few hundred families possess almost all the arable land ... thousands of families without
land, without work, jammed together in communities of cardboard and tin houses, with no
running water or electricity, a sea of mud during the rainy season, sharing their bathing and
toilet with the animal kingdom. Men on coffee plantations earning 20 cents or 50 cents a
day, living in circumstances closely resembling concentration camps ... looked upon by
other Guatemalans more as beasts of burden than humans. A large plantation to sell, reads
the advertisement, "with 200 hectares and 300 Indians" ... this, then was what remained of
the ancient Mayas, whom the American archaeologist Sylvanus Morely had called the most
splendid indigenous people on the planet. 2
The worst was yet to come.
We have seen how, in 1954, Guatemala's last reform government, the legally-elected
regime of Jacobo Arbenz, was overthrown by the United States. And how, in 1960, nation-
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KILLING HOPE
alist elements of the Guatemalan military who were committed to slightly opening the door
to change were summarily crushed by the CIA. Before long, the ever-accumulating discon-
tent again issued forth in a desperate lunge for alleviation — this time in the form of a guer-
rilla movement — only to be thrown back by a Guatemalan-American operation reminiscent
of the Spanish conquistadores in its barbarity.
In the early years of the 1960s, the guerilla movement, with several military officers of
the abortive 1960 uprising prominent amongst the leadership, was slowly finding its way:
organizing peasant support in the countryside, attacking an army outpost to gather arms,
staging a kidnapping or bank robbery to raise money, trying to avoid direct armed clashes
with the Guatemalan military.
Recruitment amongst the peasants was painfully slow and difficult; people so drained
by the daily struggle to remain alive have little left from which to draw courage; people so
downtrodden scarcely believe they have the right to tesist, much less can they entertain
thoughts of success; as fervent Catholics, they tend to believe that their misery is a punish-
ment from God for sinning.
Some of the guerrilla leaders flirted with Communist Party and Trotskyist ideas and
groups, falling prey to the usual factional splits and arguments. Eventually, no ideology or
sentiment dominated the movement more than a commitment to the desperately needed
program of land reform aborted by the 1954 coup, a simple desire for a more equitable
society, and nationalist pride vis-a-vis the United States. New York Times, correspondent
Alan Howard, after interviewing guerrilla leader Luis Tutcios, wrote:
Though he has suddenly found himself in a position of political leadership, Turcios is essentially
a soldier fighting for a new code of honor. If he has an alter ego, it would not be Lenin or Mao
or even Castro, whose works he has read and admires, but Augusto Sandino, the Nicaraguan
general who fought the U.S. Marines sent to Nicaragua during the Coolidge and Hoover
Administrations.-'
In March 1962, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in protest against the
economic policies, the deep-rooted corruption, and the electoral fraud of the government of
General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes. Initiated by students, the demonstrations soon picked up
support from worker and peasant groups. Police and military forces eventually broke the
back of the protests, but not before a series of violent confrontations and a general strike
had taken place.
The American military mission in Guatemala, permanently stationed there, saw and
heard in this, as in the burgeoning guerrilla movement, only the omnipresent "communist
threat". As US military equipment flowed in, American advisers began to prod a less-
alarmed and less-than-aggressive Guatemalan army to take appropriate measures. In May
the United States established a base designed specifically for counter-insurgency training.
(The Pentagon prefers the term "counter-insurgency" to "countet-revolutionary" because of
the latter's awkward implications.) Set up in the northeast province of Izabal, which,
together with adjacent Zacapa province, constituted the area of heaviest guerrilla support,
the installation was directed by a team of US Special Forces (Green Berets) of Puerto Rican
and Mexican descent to make the North American presence less conspicuous. The staff of
the base was augmented by 15 Guatemalan officers trained in counter-insurgency at the US
School of the Americas at Fort Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone, 4
American counter-insurgency strategy is typically based on a carrot-and-stick philoso-
phy. Accordingly, while the Guatemalan military were being taught techniques of ambush,
booby-traps, jungle survival and search-and-destroy warfare, and provided with aircraft
230
Guatemala 1962 to 1980s
and pilot training, a program of "civil action" was begun in the northeast area: some wells
were built, medicines distributed, school lunches provided etc., as well as promises of other
benefits made, all aimed at stealing a bit of the guerrillas' thunder and reducing the peas-
ants' motivation for furnishing support to them; and with the added bonus of allowing
American personnel to reconnoitre guerrilla territory under a non-military cover. Land
reform, overwhelmingly the most pressing need in rural Guatemala, was not on the agenda.
As matters were to materialize, the attempt at "winning the hearts and minds" of the
peasants proved to be as futile in Guatemala as it was in southeast Asia. When all the acad-
emic papers on "social systems engineering" were in, and all the counter-insurgency studies
of the RAND Corporation and the other think-tanks wee said and done, the recourse was
to terror: unadulterated, dependable terror. Guerrillas, peasants, students, labor leaders,
and professional people were jailed or killed by the hundreds to put a halt, albeit temporari-
ly, to the demands for reform. 5
The worst was yet to come.
In March 1963, General Ydigoras, who had been elected in 1958 for a six-year term, was
overthrown in a coup by Col. Enrique Peralta Azurdia. Veteran Latin American correspon-
dent Georgie Anne Geyer later reported that "Top sources within the Kennedy administration
have revealed the U.S. instigated and supported the 1963 coup." Akeady in disfavor with
Washington due to several incidents, Ydigoras apparently sealed his fate by allowing the
return to Guatemala of Juan Jose Arevalo who had led a reform government before Arbenz
and still had a strong following. Ydigoras was planning to step down in 1964, thus leaving the
door open to an election and, like the Guatemalan army, Washington, including President
Kennedy personally, believed that a flee election would reinstate Arevalo to power in a gov-
ernment bent upon the same kind of reforms and independent foreign policy that had led the
United States to overthrow Arbenz. 6 Arevalo was the author of a book called The Shark and
the Sardines in which he pictured the US as trying to dominate Latin America, But he had also
publicly denounced Castro as "a danger to the continent, a menace". 7
The tone of the Peralta administration was characterized by one of its first acts: the
murder of eight political and trade union leaders, accomplished by driving over them with
rock-laden trucks. 8 Repressive and brutal as Peralta was, during his three years in power US
military advisers felt that the government and the Guatemalan army still did not appreciate
sufficiently the threat posed by the guerrillas, still were strangers to the world of unconven-
tional warfare and the systematic methods needed to wipe out the guerrillas once and for
all; despite American urging, the army rarely made forays into the hills.
Peralta, moreover, turned out to be somewhat of a nationalist who resented the exces-
sive influence of the United States in Guatemala, particularly in his own sphere, the mili-
tary. He refused insistent American offers of Green Beret troops trained in guerrilla warfare
to fight the rebels, preferring to rely on his own men, and he restricted the number of
Guatemalan officers permitted to participate in American training programs abroad.
Thus it was that the United States gave its clear and firm backing to a civilian, one
Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro, in the election held in March 1966. Mendez won what
passes for an election in Guatemala and granted the Americans the free hand they had been
chafing at the bit for. He served another important function for the United States: as a civil-
ian, and one with genuine liberal credentials, Mendez could be pointed to by the Johnson
administration as a response to human rights critics at home,
However, whatever social conscience Julio Cesar Mendez may have harbored deep within,
he was largely a captive of the Guatemalan army, and his administration far exceeded Peralta's
in its cruelty. Yet the army did not trust this former law school professor — in the rarefied
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KILLING HOPE
atmosphere of Guatemala, some military men regarded him as a communist — and on at
least two occasions, the United States had to intervene to stifle a coup attempt against him.
Within days after Mendez took office in July, US Col. John D. Webber, Jr. arrived in
Guatemala to take command of the American military mission. Time magazine later
described his role:
Webber immediately expanded rounrerinsurgency training within Guatemala's 5,000-man army,
brought in U.S. Jeeps, trucks, communications equipment and helicopters to give the army more
firepower and mobility, and breathed new life into the army's civic-action program. Towards the
end of 1966 the army was able to launch a major drive against the guerrilla strongholds ... To
aid in the drive, the army also hired and armed local bands of "civilian collaborators" licensed to
Mil peasants whom they considered guerrillas or "potential" guerrillas. There were those who
doubted the wisdom of encouraging such measures in violence-prone Guatemala, but Webber
was not among them "That's the way this country is," he said. "The communists are using
everything they have including terror. And it must be met" 9
The last was for home consumption. There was never any comparison between the two
sides as to the quantity and cruelty of their terror, as well as in the choice of targets; with
rare exceptions, the left attacked only legitimate political and military enemies, clear and
culpable symbols of their foe; and they did not torture, nor take vengeance against the fami-
lies of their enemies.
Two of the left's victims were John Webber himself and the US naval attache, assassi-
nated in January 1968. A bulletin later issued by a guerrilla group stated that the assassina-
tions had "brought to justice the Yanqui officers who were teaching tactics to the
Guatemalan army for its war against the people". 10
In the period October 7966 to March 1968, Amnesty International estimated, some-
where between 3,000 and 8,000 Guatemalans were killed by the police, the military, right-
wing "death squads" (often the police or military in civilian clothes, carrying out atrocities
too bloody for the government to claim credit for), and assorted groups of civilian anti-
communist vigilantes. By 1972, the number of their victims was estimated at 13,000. Four
years later the count exceeded 20,000, murdered or disappeared without a trace.
Anyone attempting to organize a union or other undertaking to improve the lot of the
peasants, or simply suspected of being in support of the guerrillas, was subject... unknown
armed men broke into their homes and dragged them away to unknown places ... their tor-
tured or mutilated or burned bodies found buried in a mass grave, or floating in plastic
bags in a lake or river, or lying beside the road, hands tied behind the back ... bodies
dropped into the Pacific from airplanes. In the Gualan area, it was said, no one fished any
more; too many corpses were caught in the nets ... decapitated corpses, or castrated, or pins
stuck in the eyes ... a village rounded up, suspected of supplying the guerrillas with men or
food or information, all adult males taken away in front of their families, never to be seen
again ... or everyone massacred, the village bulldozed over to cover the traces ... seldom
were the victims actual members of a guerrilla band.
One method of torture consisted of putting a hood filled with insecticide over the head
of the victim; there was also electric shock — to the genital area is the most effective; in those
days it was administered by using military field telephones hooked up to small generators;
the United States supplied the equipment and the instructions for use to several countries,
including South Vietnam where the large-scale counter-insurgency operation was producing
new methods and devices for extracting information from uncooperative prisoners; some of
these techniques were finding their way to Latin America. 11
232
Guatemala 1962 to 1980s
The Green Berets taught their Guatemalan trainees various methods of "interroga-
tion", but they were not solely classroom warriors. Their presence in the countryside was
reported frequently, accompanying Guatemalan soldiers into battle areas; the line separat-
ing the advisory role from the combat role is often a matter of public relations.
Thomas and Marjorie Melville, American Catholic missionaries in Guatemala from the
mid-1950s until the end of 1967, have written that Col. Webber "made no secret of the fact
that it was his idea and at his instigation that the technique of counter-terror had been
implemented by the Guatemalan Army in the Zacapa and Izabal areas." 12 The Melvilles
wrote also of Major Bernard Westfall of Iowa City who:
perished in September 1967 in the crash of a Guatemalan Air Force jet that he was piloting
alone. The official notices stated that the US airman was "testing" the aeroplane. That statement
may have been true, but it is also true that it was a common and public topic of conversation at
Guatemala's La Aurora air base that the Major often "tested" Guatemalan aircraft in strafing
and bombing runs against guerrilla encampments in the Northeastern territory. 13
F-51(D) fighter planes modified by the United States for use against guerrillas in
Guatemala ... after modification, the planes are capable of patrolling for five hours over a
limited area ... equipped with six .50-cahbre machine guns and wing mountings for bombs,
napalm and 5-inch air-to-ground rockets. 14 The napalm falls on villages, on precious crops,
on people ... American pilots take off from Panama, deliver loads of napalm on targets sus-
pected of being guerrilla refuges, and return to Panama 15 ... the napalm explodes like fire-
works and a mass of brilliant red foam spreads over the land, incinerating all that falls in its
way, cedars and pines are burned down to the roots, animals grilled, the earth scorched ...
the guerrillas will not have this place for a sanctuary any longer, nor will they or anyone
else derive food from it... halfway around the world in Vietnam, there is an instant replay.
In Vietnam they were called "free-fire zones"; in Guatemala, "zonas libres": "Large
areas of the country have been declared off limits and then subjected to heavy bombing.
Reconnaissance planes using advanced photographic techniques fly over suspected guerrilla
country andjet planes, assigned to specific areas, can be called in within minutes to kill any-
thing that moves on the ground." 1 *
"The military guys who do this are like serial killers. If Jeffrey Dahmer had been in
Guatemala, he would be a general by now." ... In Guatemala City, right-wing terrorists
machine-gunned people and houses in full light of day ... journalists, lawyers, students,
teachers, trade unionists, members of opposition parties, anyone who helped or expressed
sympathy for the rebel cause, anyone with a vaguely leftist political association or a moder-
ate criticism of government policy ... relatives of the victims, guilty of kinship ... common
criminals, eliminated to purify the society, taken fromjails and shot. "See a Communist, kill
a Communist", the slogan of the New Anticommunist Organization ... an informer with
hooded face accompanies the police along a city street or into the countryside, pointing peo-
ple out: who shall live and who shall die ... "this one's a son of a bitch" ... "that one ... "
Men found dead with their eyes gouged out, their testicles in their mouth, without hands or
tongues, women with breasts cut off ... there is rarely a witness to a killing, even when peo-
ple are dragged from their homes at high noon and executed in the street ... a relative will
choose exile rather than take the matter to the authorities ... the government joins the fami-
ly in mourning the victim ... 17
One of the death squads, Mario Blanca (White Hand), sent a death warning to a stu-
dent leader. Former American Maryknoll priest Blase Bonpane has written:
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KILLING HOPE
I went alone to visit the head of the Mano Blanca and asked him why he was going to kill this
lad. At first he denied sending the letter, but after a bit of discussion with him and his first assis-
tant, the assistant said, "Well, I know he's a Gommunist and so we're going to kill him,"
"How do you know?" I asked.
He said, "I know he's a Communist because I heairi him say he would give his life for the
poor."**
Mano Blanca distributed leaflets in residential areas suggesting that doors of left-
wingers be marked with a black cross. 19
In November 1967, when the American ambassador, John Gordon Mem, presented the
Guatemalan armed forces with new armored vehicles, grenade launchers, training and radio
equipment, and several HU-1B jet powered helicopters, he publicly stated:
These articles, especially the helicopters, are not easy to obtain at this time since they are being
utilized by our faces in defense of the cause of liberty in other parts of the world [i.e., southeast
Asia. But liberty must be defended wherever it is threatened and that liberty is now being threat-
ened in Guatemala. 20
In August 1968, a young French woman, Michele Kirk, shot herself in Guatemala City
as the police came to her room to make "inquiries". In her notebook Michele had written:
It is hard to find the words to express the state of putrefaction that exists in Guatemala, and the
permanent terror in which the inhabitants live. Every day bodies are pulled out of the Motagua
River, riddled with bullets and partially eaten by fish. Every day men are kidnapped right in the
street by unidentified people in cars, armed to the teeth, with no intervention by the polite
patrols."
The US Agency for International Development (AID), its Office of Public Safety (OPS),
and the Alliance for Progress were all there to lend a helping hand. These organizations
with their reassuring names all contributed to a program to greatly expand the size of
Guatemala's national police force and develop it into a professionalized body skilled at
counteracting urban disorder. Senior police officers and technicians were sent for training at
the Inter-American Police Academy in Panama, replaced in 1964 by the International Police
Academy in Washington, at a Federal School in Los Fresnos, Texas (where they were taught
how to construct and use a variety of explosive devices — see Uruguay chapter), and other
educational establishments, their instructors often being CIA officers operating under OPS
cover. This was also the case with OPS officers stationed in Guatemala to advise local
police commands and provide in-country training for rank-and-file policemen. At times,
these American officers participated directly in interrogating political prisoners, took part in
polygraph operations, and accompanied the police on anti-drug patrols.
Additionally, the Guatemala City police force was completely supplied with radio patrol
cars and a radio communications network, and funds were provided to build a national police
academy and pay for salaries, uniforms, weapons, and riot-control equipment.
The glue which held this package together was the standard OPS classroom tutelage, simi-
lar to that given the military, which imparted the insight that "communists", primarily of the
Cuban variety, were behind all the unrest in Guatemala; the students were further advised to
"stay out of politics"; that is, support whatever pro-US regime happens to be in power.
Also standard was the advice to use "minimum force" and to cultivate good communi-
ty relations. But the behavior of the police and military students in practice was so far
removed from this that continued American involvement with these forces over a period of
234
Guatemala 1962 to 1980s
decades makes this advice appear to be little more than a self-serving statement for the
record, the familiar bureaucratic maxim: Cover your ass. 22
According to AID, by 1970, over 30,000 Guatemalan police personnel had received
OPS training in Guatemala alone, one of the largest OPS programs in Latin America. 23
"At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA
people," disclosed John Gilligan, Director of AID during the Carter administration. "The
idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volun-
teer, religious, every kind." 24
By the end of 1968, the counter-insurgency campaign had all but wiped out the guerril-
la movement by thwarting the rebels' ability to operate openly and casually in rural areas as
they had been accustomed to, and, through sheer terrorization of villagers, isolating the
guerrillas from their bases of support in the countryside.
It had been an unequal match. By Pentagon standards it had been a "limited" war, due
to the absence of a large and overt US combat force. At the same time, this had provided
the American media and public with the illusion of their country's non-involvement.
However, as one observer has noted: "In the lexicon of counterrevolutionaries, these wars
are 'limited' only in their consequences for the intervening power. For the people and coun-
try under assault, they are total." 25
Not until 1976 did another serious guerrilla movement arise, the Guatemalan Army of
the Poor (EGP) by name. Meanwhile, others vented their frustration through urban warfare
in the face of government violence, which reached a new high during 1970 and 1971 under
a "state of siege" imposed by the president, Col. Carlos Arana Osorio. Arana, who had
been close to the US military since serving as Guatemalan military attache in Washington,
and then as commander of the counter-insurgency operation in Zacapa (where his commit-
ment to his work earned him the title of "the butcher of Zacapa"), decreed to himself virtu-
ally unlimited power to curb opposition of any stripe. 26
Amnesty International later stated that Guatemalan sources, including the Committee
of the Relatives of Disappeared Persons, claimed that over 7,000 persons disappeared or
were found dead in these two years. "Foreign diplomats in Guatemala City," reported Le
Monde in 1971, "believe that for every political assassination by left-wing revolutionaries
fifteen murders are committed by right-wing fanatics." 27
During a curfew so draconian that even ambulances, doctors and fire engines reported-
ly were forbidden outside ... as American police cars and paddy wagons patrolled the streets
day and night ... and American helicopters buzzed overhead ... the United States saw fit to
provide further technical assistance and equipment to initiate a reorganization of Arana's
police forces to make them yet more efficient.
"In response to a question [from a congressional investigator in 1971] as to what he
conceived his job to be, a member of the US Military Group (MILGP) in Guatemala replied
instantly that it was to make the Guatemalan Armed Forces as efficient as possible. The
next question as to why this was in the interest of the United States was followed by a long
silence while he reflected on a point which had apparently never occurred to him." 2
As for the wretched of Guatemala's earth ... in 1976 a major earthquake shook the
land, taking over 20,000 lives, largely of the poor whose houses were the first to crumble ...
the story was reported of the American church relief worker who arrived to help the vic-
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KILLING HOPE
tims; he was shocked at their appearance and their living conditions; then he was informed
that he was not in the earthquake area, that what he was seeing was normal. 30
"The level of pesticide spraying is the highest in the world," reported the New York
Times in 1977, "and little concern is shown for the people who live near the cotton fields"
... 30 or 40 people a day are treated for pesticide poisoning in season, death can come with-
in hours, or a longer lasting liver malfunction ... the amounts of DDT in mothers' milk in
Guatemala are the highest in the Western world. "It's very simple," explained a cotton
planter, "more insecticide means more cotton, fewer insects mean higher profits." In an
attack, guerrillas destroyed 22 crop-duster planes; the planes were quickly replaced thanks
to the genius of American industry 11 ... and all the pesticide you could ever want, from
Monsanto Chemical Company of St. Louis and Guatemala City.
During the Carter presidency, in response to human-rights abuses in Guatemala and
other countries, several pieces of congressional legislation were passed which attempted to
curtail military and economic aid to those nations. In the years preceding, similar prohibi-
tions regarding aid to Guatemala had been enacted into law. The efficacy of these laws can
be measured by their number. In any event, the embargoes were never meant to be more
than partial, and Guatemala also received weapons and military equipment from Israel, at
least part of which was covertly underwritten by Washington. 32
As further camouflage, some of the training of Guatemala's security forces was report-
edly maintained by transferring it to clandestine sites in Chile and Argentina. 33
Testimony of an Indian woman:
My name is Rigoberta Menchti Turn. I am a representative of the " Vincente Menchu" [her
father] Revolutionary Christians ... On 9 December 1979, my 16-year-old brother Patrocino was
captured and tortured for several days and then taken with twenty other young men to the
square in Chajul ... An officer of [President] Lucas Garcia's army of murderers ordered the pris-
oners to be paraded in a. line. Then he started to insult and threaten the inhabitants of the village,
who were forced to come out of their houses to witness the event. I was with my mother, and we
saw Patrocino; he had had his tongue cut out and his toes cut off The officer jackal made a
speech. Every time he paused the soldiers beat the Indian prisoners.
When he finished his ranting, the bodies of my brother and the other prisoners were swollen,
bloody, unrecognizable. It was monstrous, but they were still alive.
They were thrown on the ground and drenched with gasoline. The soldiers set fire to the
wretched bodies with torches and the captain laughed like a hyena and forced the inhabitants of
Chajul to watch. This was his objective — that they should be terrified and witness the punish-
ment given to the "guerrillas". 34
In 1992, Rigoberta Menchii Turn was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Testimony of Fred Sherwood (CIA pilot during the overthrow of the Arbenz govern-
ment in 1954 who settled in Guatemala and became president of the American Chamber of
Commerce), speaking in Guatemala, September 1980:
Why should we be worried about the death squads? They're bumping off the commies, our ene-
mies. Td give them more power. Hell, I'd get some cartridges if I could, and everyone else would
too ... Why should we criticize them? The death squad — I'm for it ... Shit! There's no question,
we can't wait 'til Reagan gets in. We hope Carter falls in the ocean real quick ... We all feel that
he [Reagan] is our saviour. 35
236
Guatemala 1962 to 1980s
The Movement for National Liberation (MLN) was a prominent political party. It was
the principal party in the Arana regime. An excerpt from a radio broadcast in 1980 by the
head of the party, Mario Sandoval Alarcon ...
I admit that the MLN is the party of organized violence. Organized violence is vigor, just as
organized color is scenery and organized sound is harmony. There is nothing wrong with orga-
nized violence; it is vigor, and the MLN is a vigorous movement.
Mario Sandoval Alarcon and former president Arana ("the butcher of Zacapa") "spent
inaugural week mingling with the stars of the Reagan inner circle", reported syndicated
columnist Jack Anderson, Sandoval, who had worked closely with the CIA in the overthrow
of Arbenz, announced that he had met with Reagan defense and foreign-policy advisers even
before the election. Right-wing Guatemalan leaders were elated by Reagan's victory. They
looked forward to a resumption of the hand-in-gtove relationship between American and
Guatemalan security teams and businessmen which had existed before Carter took office. 37
Before that could take place, however, the Reagan administration first had to soften
the attitude of Congress about this thing called human rights. In March 1981, two months
after Reagan's inaugural, Secretary of State Alexander Haig told a congressional committee
that there was a Soviet "hit list ... for the ultimate takeover of Central America". It was a
"four phased operation" of which the first part had been the "seizure of Nicaragua".
"Next," warned Haig, "is El Salvador, to be followed by Honduras and Guatemala." 38
This was the kind of intelligence information which one would expect to derive from a
captured secret document or KGB defector. But neither one of these was produced or men-
tioned, nor did any of the assembled congressmen presume to raise the matter.
Two months later, General Vernon Walters, former Deputy Director of the CIA, on a
visit to Guatemala as Haig's special emissary, was moved to proclaim that the United States
hoped to help the Guatemalan government defend "peace and liberty". 39
During this period, Guatemalan security forces, official and unofficial, massacred at
least 2,000 peasants (accompanied by the usual syndrome of torture, mutilation and decapi-
tation), destroyed several villages, assassinated 76 officials of the opposition Christian
Democratic Party, scores of trade unionists, and at least six catholic priests. 40
19 August 1981 ... unidentified gunmen occupy the town of San Miguel Acatan, force
the Mayor to give them a list of all those who had contributed funds for the building of a
school, pick out 15 from the list (including three of the Mayor's children), make them dig
their own graves and shoot them. 41
In December, Ronald Reagan finally spoke out against government repression. He
denounced Poland for crushing by "brute force, the stirrings of liberty ... Our Government
and those of our allies, have expressed moral revulsion at the police-state tactics of Poland's
oppressors.
Using the loopholes in the congressional legislation, both real and loosely interpreted,
the Reagan administration, in its first two years, chipped away at the spirit of the embargo:
S3.1 million of jeeps and trucks, $4 million of helicopter spare parts, S6.3 million of other
military supplies. 43 These were amongst the publicly announced aid shipments; what was
transpiring covertly can only be guessed at in light of certain disclosures: Jack Anderson
revealed in August 1981 that the United States was using Cuban exiles to train security
forces in Guatemala; in this operation, Anderson wrote, the CIA had arranged "for secret
training in the finer points of assassination". 44 The following year, it was reported that the
Green Berets had been instructing Guatemalan Army officers for over two years in the finer
237
KILLING HOPE
points of warfare. And in 1983, we learned that in the previous two years Guatemala's
Air Force helicopter fleet had somehow increased from eight to 27, all of them American
made, and that Guatemalan officers were once again being trained at the US School of the
Americas in Panama. 46
In March 1982, a coup put General Efrain Rios Montt, a "born-again Christian" in
power. A month later, the Reagan administration announced that it perceived signs of an
improvement in the state of human rights in the country and took the occasion to justify a
shipment of military aid. 47 On the first of July, Rios Montt announced a state of siege. It was
to last more than eight months. In his first six months in power, 2,600 Indians and peasants
were massacred, while during his 17-month reign, more than 400 villages were brutally wiped
off the map. 48 In December 1982, Ronald Reagan, also a Christian, went to see for himself.
After meeting with Rios Montt, Reagan, referring to the allegations of extensive human-rights
abuses, declared that the Guatemalan leader was receiving "a bad deal." 49
Statement by the Guatemalan Army of the Poor, made in 1981 (by which time the toll
of people murdered by the government since 1954 had reached at least the 60,000 mark,
and the sons of one-time death-squad members were now killing the sons of the Indians
killed by their fathers):
The Guatemalan revolution is entering its third decade. Ever since the government of Jacobo
Arbenz was overthrown in 1954, the majority of the Guatemalan people have been seeking a
way to move the country towards solving the same problems which were present then and have
only worsened over time.
The counterrevolution, put in motion by the U.S. Government and those domestic sectors
committed to retaining every single one of their privileges, dispersed and disorganized the popu-
lar and democratic forces. However, it did not resolve any of the problems which had first given
rise to demands for economic, social and political change. These demands have been raised again
and again in the last quarter century, by any means that seemed appropriate at the time, and
have received each time the same repressive response as in 1954. 5 "
Statement by Father Thomas Melville, 1968:
Having come to the conclusion that the actual state of violence, composed of the malnutrition,
ignorance, sickness and hunger of the vast majority of the Guatemalan population, is the direct
result of a capitalist system that makes the defenseless Indian compete against the powerful and
well-armed landowner, my brother [Father Arthur Melville] and I decided not to be silent accom-
plices of the mass murder that this system generates.
We began teaching the Indians that no one will defend their rights, if they do not defend
themselves. If the government and oligarchy are using arms to"maintain them in their position of
misery, then they have the obligation to take up arms and defend their God-given right to be
men.
We were accused of being communists along with the people who listened to us, and were
asked to leave the country by our religious superiors and the U.S. ambassador [John Gordon
Mein]. We did so.
But I say here that I am a communist only if Christ was a communist. I did what I did and
will continue to do so because of the teachings of Christ and not because of Marx or Lenin. And
I say here too, that we are many more than the hierarchy and the U.S. government think.
When the fight breaks out more in the open, let the world know that we do it not for Russia,
not for China, nor any other country, but for Guatemala. Our response to the present situation is
not because we have read either Marx or Lenin, but because we have read the New Testament. 51
238
Guatemala 1962 to 1980s
Postscript, a small sample:
1988: Guatemala continues to suffer the worst record of human-rights abuses in Latin
America, stated the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in its annual report on human rights in
the Western Hemisphere. 52
1990: Guatemalan soldiers at the army base in Santiago Atitlan opened fire on
unarmed townspeople carrying white flags, killing 14 and wounding 24. The people had
come with their mayor to speak to the military commander about repeated harassment
from the soldiers. 53
1990: "The United States, said to be disillusioned because of persistent corruption in
the government of President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, is reportedly turning to Guatemala's
military to promote economic and political stability ... even though the military is blamed
for human rights abuses and is believed to be involved in drug trafficking." 54
This was reported in May. In June, a prominent American businessman living in
Guatemala, Michael DeVine, was kidnapped and nearly beheaded by the Guatemalan mili-
tary after he apparently stumbled upon the military's drug trafficking and/or other contra-
band activities. The Bush administration, in a show of public anger of the killing, cut off
military aid to Guatemala, but, we later learned, secretly allowed the CIA to provide mil-
lions of dollars to the military government to make up for the loss. The annual payments of
$5 to $7 million apparently continued into the Clinton administration.
1992: In March, Guatemalan guerilla leader, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, was captured
and disappeared. For the next three years, his American wife, attorney Jennifer Harbury,
waged an impassioned international campaign — including public fasts in Guatemala City
(nearly to death) and in Washington — to pressure the Guatemalan and American govern-
ments for information about her husband's fate. Both governments insisted that they knew
nothing. Finally, in March 1995, Rep. Robert Torricelli of the House Intelligence
Committee revealed that Bamaca had been tortured and executed the same year of his cap-
ture, and that he, as well as DeVine, had been murdered on the orders of Col. Julio Roberto
Alpirez, who had been on the CIA payroll for several years. (Alpirez thus becoming another
illustrious graduate of Fort Benning's School of the Americas). The facts surrounding these
cases were known early on by the CIA, and by officials at the State Department and
National Security Council at least a few months before the disclosure. Torricelli's
announcement prompted several other Americans to come forward with tales of murder,
rape or torture of themselves or a relation at the hands of the Guatemalan military. Sister
Dianna Ortiz, a nun, related how, in 1989, she was kidnapped, burned with cigarettes,
raped repeatedly, and lowered into a pit full of corpses and rats. A fair-skinned man who
spoke with an American accent seemed to be in charge, she said. 55
38. Costa Rica 1970-1971
Trying to topple an ally, part II
Jose Figueres, who headed the Costa Rican government three times, was always a
rather improbable target of de-stabilization by the United States. He was a bona fide (North)
Americaphile, fluent in English, educated at MIT, lecturer at Harvard and other American
universities, well-connected in US intellectual circles, particularly among Kennedyites,
accorded an honorary membership in the Americans for Democratic Action. Figueres was
239
KILLING HOPE
typically referred to as an "outstanding friend" of the United States, and had long been
associated with the CIA in a variety of activities and fronts in Latin America. And if that
weren't enough, both of Figueres's wives had been American.
Yet, the CIA tried to overthrow him during his term in office in the 1950s and twice
tried to assassinate the man (see Costa Rica, mid-1950s chapter) and perhaps tried again to
overthrow him in the 1970s.
To liberal American political figures, Figueres was the quintessential "liberal democ-
rat" , the kind of statesman they liked to think, and liked the world to think, was the natural
partner of US foreign policy rather than the military dictators who, somehow, keep popping
up as allies.
To American conservatives, Figueres was of questionable ilk, the type that, if not actu-
ally a communist himself, doesn't sufficiently appreciate the nature and degree of The
International Communist Conspiracy and consequently allows communists too much room
to maneuver.
It was the latter conviction that was stirred up by Figueres soon after becoming presi-
dent again in May 1970. He began "building bridges" to the Communist bloc, with Costa
Rica becoming the first Central American country to establish diplomatic relations with the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
"This diplomatic recognition in no way shakes our loyalty to the United States or to
the democratic cause," Figueres cautioned. "People everywhere are tired of the cold war.
Russia controls half of Europe, and we want to make the Russians drink coffee [Costa
Rica's principal export] instead of tea." 1
In the previous two years the Soviet Union had purchased $10 million worth of coffee
from Costa Rica, an "economic offensive" which reportedly "disturbed United States offi-
cials" 2
Earl (Ted) Williamson, officially listed as First Secretary of the US Embassy in San Jose,
but actually CIA Chief of Station, was heard to declare at a party that the Figuetes govern-
ment would not last much longer. He spoke openly against the president's bridge-building
endeavors.
Williamson's comments got back to Costa Rican officials, as did reports of his close
ties with Figueres's conservative political opponents, and indiscreet remarks made by his
Cuban wife regarding the country's alleged march toward communism. Williamson, who
had served in Cuba before the revolution and married the niece of a wealthy sugar baron,
was also blamed for the seizure and burning of some Marxist literature coming in thtough
the Costa Rican airport. The blame arose through his involvement in a CIA "technical assis-
tance program on security".
By autumn, the Costa Rican government felt compelled to make an informal suggestion
through the State Department's Costa Rican desk in Washington that Williamson be
removed. The request was ignored.
Then, on 17 December, a fisherman reported sighting a mysterious ship which had
unloaded "long wooden boxes" on a remote Costa Rican beach. The ship was identified as
the -Waltham and the Costa Rican government later received information that the vessel was
registered to the "commercial section of the State Department". This was never verified.
However, the US Commerce Department at that time did own a 455-foot vessel named the
Waltham Victory.
It was first reported that the boxes contained weapons. Subsequently, a story was cir-
culated that it was contraband whisky that had been put ashore.
240
Costa Rica 1970-1971
The Miami Herald, which had first broken this story, commented that: "The contra-
band story presumably was put out to dispel rumors of a coup against the government."
Americaphile that he was, Figueres was probably anxious to downplay the entire controver-
sy which must have been acutely embarrassing to him. Three congressmen of his party,
however, unencumbered by such loyalties, released a statement that accused the CIA of
being involved in the ship movements and the alleged arms drop.
By early January 1971, the Costa Rican government seriously feared an uprising. It
again asked the Nixon administration to recall Williamson. Not long before, Williamson
had publicly forecast that the Figueres government would not survive another two weeks.
The Guardia Civil, Costa Rica's only armed force, was alerted and plans were made to
remove Figueres from the capital to a hiding place in the mountains. At Figuetes's request,
the Panama government covertly delivered over 100 semi-automatic rifles to Costa Rica.
During this entire period, the American Embassy in San Jose was reported to be deeply
divided between liberals and conservatives. Perhaps the most conservative, along with
Williamson, was Ambassador Walter Ploeser, a Nixon political appointee with a long histo-
ry of ultra-anti-communist activity. Ploeser vehemently defended Williamson and was said
to have made no effort to curb the CIA official's public outbursts against Figueres. At the
same time, Ploeser fired the director of the US AID program in Costa Rica, Lawtence
Harrison, who took a pro-Figueres stand. The two men reportedly clashed over priorities,
with Ploeser wanting an increase in military assistance, although Costa Rica, ostensibly, had
little use for such, and a reduction in American economic aid to the country.
Official cables reaching Washington from Ploeser's embassy described the situation in
Costa Rica as "dangerous". Figueres was accused of abandoning the West and facing East,
of having accepted financial assistance from the communists for his campaign, and of per-
mitting communists to infiltrate his government.
In February, Williamson was finally recalled by Washington. Costa Rican officials
hoped and expected that Ploeset would be replaced as well, as soon as it could be done with
the customary diplomatic face-saving. As it was, Ploeser lingered on at his post for a full
year before resigning for "personal reasons".
The announcement of Williamson's departure was perhaps hastened by the fact that a
few days earliest the House Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs had held a briefing to
look into the matter. But the congressmen were not about to become the authors of an
expose. After hearing the testimony of two State Department officials, the committee
announced that it had all been a big misunderstanding due to "personality conflicts" within
the embassy which had "repercussions" outside its walls, and "over-zealous actions" by
some US officials who would remain nameless, as would everything else heard at the closed-
door briefing. 4
The same day, the Miami Herald stated in an editorial: "What is abundantly clear ... is
the power and influence of the United States Embassy in a small country such as Costa
Rica. An embassy that even quietly passes the word that it opposes the government can
stimulate opposition and perhaps inspire efforts to overthrow it. Open antipathy almost
asks for it." 5
241
39. Iraq 1972-1975
Covert action should not be contused with missionary work
Into the land of ancient Mesopotamia reached the long arm of the CIA, and the
Kurdish people of the Zagros and Taurus mountains, but a few decades removed from the
life of nomads, joined the Agency's list of clients.
In May of 1972, President Richard Nixon and his National Security Affairs adviser,
Henry Kissinger, went to the Soviet Union to meet their Russian counterparts. Afterward,
Kissinger told a press conference in Moscow that the two nations had agreed to defuse the
tensions in the Middle East and "to contribute what they can to bringing about a general
settlement... such a settlement would also contribute to a relaxation of the armaments race
in that area. ... Speaking for our side," he added, "I can say we will attempt to implement
these principles in the spirit in which they were promulgated." 1
Kissinger and Nixon were moved by the spirit for perhaps 24 hours. On their way
home, they stopped in Teheran to visit their friend, the Shah of Iran. It seems that Iran and
Iraq were embroiled once again in their perennial feud — a border dispute and the like — and
the Shah asked his pal Richard for a little favor. Could he help arm the Kurds in Iraq who
were fighting for autonomy? Just generally heat things up so as to sap the Iraqi resources
and distract them from Iran? 2
Anything for a friend and loyal ally, said Richard Milhous, two weeks before the
Watergate burglary and still on top of the world.
The Shah was quite capable of arming the Kurds himself, and in fact was doing so to
some extent, but the Kurds didn't trust him. They trusted the United States and wanted to
be armed by them. Several years later, the congressional committee known as the Pike
Committee, which investigated various CIA operations, put it thinly: "The U.S. acted in
effect as a guarantor that the Kurds would not be summarily dropped by the Shah."
Before long, the CIA was reaching into its warehouses and a range of Soviet and Chinese
small arms and rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition were on their way to the Kurdish
rebels, the Communist origin of the weapons being a standard means of ensuring the standard
"plausible denial". Ultimately, the military aid was to total some $16 million.
The Kurds are a distinct ethnic group, Muslim but, unlike most other Iraqis, not Arab.
Their people are to be found primarily in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. For decades, the
Iraqi Kurds had been engaged in intermittent warfare against the government in pursuance
of a goal of "autonomy", a concept not terribly well-defined by them, it being cleat only
that it feel short of being an independent state, perhaps.
The political history of the Iraqi Kurds in their recent past was a baffling piece of
patchwork. Ten years earlier, they had been in close alliance with the Iraqi Communist
Party, such that when the ruling Ba'ath party began to persecute the Communists, they took
refuge amongst the Kurds. The Kutdish leader, Mustafa al-Batzani, a man in his seventies,
had spent a dozen years in the Soviet Union and spoke Russian. Now, in 1972, the
Communists were allies of the Ba'aths in an attempt to suppress the "imperialist agent
Barzani", and Kurdish propaganda emphasized Soviet military support of the Iraqi govern-
ment, including claims that Russians were flying bombing missions against the Kurds. At
the same time the Kurds painted themselves as "social democrats" of the European variety,
going so far as to apply for membership in the Socialist International. 4 Nonetheless, Batzani
stated frequently that "he trusted no other major power" than the United States and assert-
242
Iraq 1972-1975
ed that if his cause were successful, the Kurds were "ready to become the 51st state". 5 All
this on top of desiring to establish a Muslim society.
In October 1973, when the Yom Kippur surprise attack on Israel took place, and Iraq
was preoccupied as an ally of Egypt and Syria, the Kurds were willing to launch a major
attack, at Israel's suggestion, that might have been very beneficial to their own cause as well
as taking some pressure off Israel by tying down the Iraqi army. But Kissinger refused to let
the Kurds move. On 16 October he had the CIA send them a cable which read: "We do not
repeat not consider it advisable for you to undertake the offensive military actions that
Israel has suggested to you." The Kurds obeyed. 6
The Pike Report regarded this incident as an example of the apparent "no win" policy
of the United States and Iran, The committee stated:
The progressively deteriorating position of the Kurds reflected the fact that none of the nations
who were aiding them seriously desired that they realize their objective of an autonomous state.
A CIA memo of March 22, 1974 states Iran's and the United States' position clearly: "We would
think that Iran would not look with favor on the establishment of a formalized autonomous gov-
ernment. Iran, like ourselves, has seen benefit in a stalemate situation ... in which Iraq is intrinsi-
cally weakened by the Kurds' refusal to relinquish [their] semi-autonomy. Neither Iran nor our-
selves wish to see the matter resolved one way or the other. " 7
"This policy," said the report, "was not imparted to our clients, who were encouraged
to continue fighting. Even in the context of covert action, ours was a cynical enterprise," 8
The day after the CIA memo referred to above, 23 March 1974, Soviet Defense
Mnister Andrei Grechko, who had befriended Barzani when the latter lived in the Soviet
Union, arrived in Iraq to help the government reach a settlement with the Kurds. On the
advice of Iran and the United States, however, Barzani refused to come to any terms. 9
Earlier that month, the Iraqi government had actually passed a law offering a limited
amount of autonomy to the Kurds, but they had rejected that as well, whether or not at the
request of their "allies" is not know.
The congressional committee discovered that "The CIA had early information which
suggested that the Shah would abandon the Kurds the minute he came to an agreement with
Iraq over border disputes." Agency documents characterized the Shah's view of the Kurds
as "a card to play" in this dispute with Iraq. And a CIA memo characterized the Kurds as
"a uniquely useful tool for weakening Iraq's potential for international adventurism". 10
The last may have been a reference to Iraq signing a pact of Friendship and
Cooperation with the Soviet Union in April 1972, under which it received military aid and
granted the Soviet Navy certain port privileges. Then, in June, super oil-rich Iraq had
nationalized the Western-owned consortium, the Iraq Petroleum Company (23.75 percent
US), a move warmly applauded by the Soviets, after which the two countries proceeded to
conclude a trade and economic accord."
As it was, it was oil that brought Iran and Iraq together. In 1973, the Shah wanted to
strengthen Iran's position with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC),
and a crucial part of the inducement to Iraq and other Arab neighbors was Iran's willing-
ness to double-cross the troublesome Kurds. 12 None of these countries wanted their own
minorities to be getting any ideas from a Kurdish success.
It was not until March 1975 that the Shah was ready to make his move. Events moved
swiftly then. The Shah met with the vice-president of Iraq and, by agreement, the Shah cut
off all supplies to the Kurds, including the American part. The next day the Iraqis unleashed
their biggest offensive ever. Several days later the stunned Kurds sent a desperate message to
243
KILLING HOPE
the CIA: "There is confusion and dismay among our people and forces. Our people's fate in
unprecedented danger. Complete destruction hanging over our head. No explanation for all
this. We appeal you and USG [United States government] intervene according to your
promises .,." 13
The same day, the Kurds appealed to Kissinger as well:
Your Excellency, having always believed in the peaceful solution of disputes including those
between Iran and Iraq, we are pleased to see that their two countries have come to some agree-
ment ... However, our hearts bleed to see that an immediate byproduct of their agreement is the
destruction of our defenseless people ... Our movement and people are being destroyed in an
unbelievable way with silence firm everyone. We fed your Excellency that the United States has
a moral and political responsibility towards our people who have committed themselves to your
Country's policy: 14
The hapless Kurds received no response to their pleas, from either the CIA or Henry
Kissinger. By the end of the month their forces had been decimated. Several hundred
Kurdish leaders were executed.
In conclusion, the Pike report noted:
Over 200,000 refugees managed to escape into Iran. Once there, however, neither the United
States nor Iran extended adequate humanitarian assistance. In fact, Iran was later to forcibly
return over 40,000 of the refugees and the United States government refused to admit even one
refugee into the United States by way of political asylum even though they qualified for such
admittance 15 .
When Henry Kissinger was interviewed by the staff of the Pike Committee about the
United States' role in this melodrama, he responded with his now-famous remark: "Covert
action should not be confused with missionary work." 16
40. Australia 1973-1975
Another free election bites the dust
When the leader of a Communist country was removed from office by the Politburo,
this was confirmation to the Western mind of the totalitarian, or, at best, the arbitrary,
nature of the Communist system.
What then are we to make of the fact that in 1975 Edward Gough Whidam, the legally
elected prime minister of Australia, was summarily dismissed by a single non-elected indi-
vidual, one functioning under the title of "Governor-General"?
Whitlam took office in December 1972 as the head of the first Labor Party government
in Australia in 23 years. In short order he set about proving to the opposition patties the
correctness of their historical prediction that Labor in power would be "irresponsible and
dangerous" 1 — to whom, of course, had always been the question.
The war in Vietnam was an immediate example. Australian military personnel serving
there under the command of the United States were called home, conscription was halted,
and young men jailed for refusing military service were released. 2 Moreover, the Whitlam
government recognized North Vietnam, several of his ministers publicly denounced
American bombing of Hanoi and called for rallies to oppose it, and protesting dock work-
244
Australia 1973-1975
ers felt inspired to impose a temporary boycott on American shipping, although the last was
opposed by Whitlam. 3
Condemnation of President Nixon and his administration volunteered by Labor minis-
ters was most undiplomatic: "corrupt" ... "maniacs" ... "mass murderers" ... were some of
the epithets hurled at Washington. American officials were reported to be "shocked and
angered". 4
The overseas side of Australian intelligence (ASIS by acronym), it turned out, was
working with the CIA in Chile against the Allende government. Whitlam ordered an imme-
diate halt to the operation in early 1973, although at the time of Allende's downfall in
September, ASIS was reportedly still working with the Agency 5
The Labor government showed itself less than committed to the games security people
play at home as well. Whitlam let it be known immediately that he did not wish to have his
staff members undergo the usual security checks because he knew and trusted them. The
Australian Security and Intelligence Organization (ASIO) was taken aback by such unortho-i
doxy and informed its CIA colleagues in Australia; cables went to Washington; before long,
a political officer at the American Embassy was informing Richard Hall, one of Whitlam's
advisers, "Your Prime Minister has just cut off one of his options." Hal! took the remark to
be a threat to cut off intelligence information. 6 Whethet bowing to American/ASIO pressure
or not, Whitlam soon afterward agreed to the security checks.
The new administration also put an end to the discrimination against immigrants who
were being denied naturalization for having opposed the military juntas in places like
Greece and Chile. 7 Most exceptional and alarming to the security professionals was the
behavior of the Attorney General who showed up unannounced at ASIO headquarters one
day in March 1973 with the police and carted away certain files because he suspected that
the intelligence agency was withholding information from him. In all likelihood, ASIO was
deliberately keeping certain information from its own government, as does every other intel-
ligence agency in the world. The difference here, once again, was that the Labor govern-
ment simply refused to accept such a state of affairs as normal.
A few years later, after Whitlam's ouster, James Angleton, who had been a high CIA
officer in 1973 and directly concerned with intelligence relations with Australia, complained
to an Australian television interviewer about the "Attorney General moving in, barging in,
we were deeply concerned as to the sanctity of this information which could compromise
sources and methods and compromise human life." The CIA, he said, seriously considered
breaking intelligence relations with Austtalia. 8
As a consequence of Whitlam's unconventional way of running a government, the CIA
became rather concerned about the security and continued functioning of its many military
and intelligence facilities in Australia. By the Agency's standards, it was a highly important
setup, employing thousands of persons — a vital part of the early warning system; a key
tracking station in the United States' global spy satellite system of extremely sophisticated
photography and monitoring of activities within the Soviet Union; a US naval communica-
tions station which dealt with nuclear submarines; a huge electronics control center set up
by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept messages, of voice, telex, etc., com-
ing in and out of Australia and its Pacific region — that is, eavesdropping on everybody and
everything. 3
Most of this had been built in the latter part of the 1960s and was run in such secrecy
that not even senior members of die Australian Foreign Ministry had been briefed on exact-
ly what went on in those buildings in Australia's wide open spaces, and the CIA connection
was never officially acknowledged.
245
KILLING HOPE
After the Labor Party took power, some of its members voiced strong criticism of the
secret facilities. They increasingly demanded an official explanation for their presence and
at times even voted for their removal. This was not carried out because the leaders of the
Whitlam administration, for all their radical posturing, were not about to leap into political
no-man's-land by cutting off ties to the West. They spoke of neutralism and non-alignment
on occasion, but they were willing to settle for independence; which is all the Papandreous
wanted before they were ousted in Greece, another site of an American electronics state-
within-a-state in which the host intelligence and defense establishments typically demon-
strate mote loyalty to their American counterparts than to their own "government of the
day".
In 1976, an investigation by the Australian Royal Commission on Intelligence and
Security concluded that for many years members of ASIO had been providing the CIA with
potentially damaging information about prominent Australian politicians and governmental
officials. The information reportedly ranged from accusations of subversive tendencies to
details about personal peccadillos. 1
Moreover, it was later learned that in addition to Chile, Australian intelligence had
aided US operations in Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia. 11
The Whitlam government displayed its independence where it could. In 1973, Whitlam
disclosed the existence of an Australian Defence Signals Directorate unit in Singapore —
another cold-war toy of the CIA and ASIO which monitoted military and civilian radio
traffic in Asia. (The DSD is comparable to the American NSA and the British GCHQ.)
Later, the Australian prime minister closed the unit down, although he re-established part
of it in Australia. His administration also expressed its disapproval of US plans to build up
the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia as another military-intelligence-nuclear outpost. 2
And in February 1.975, the Labor Party conference voted to allow the Provisional
Revolutionary Government of Vietnam (the Vietcong) to set up an office in Australia. This
was before the fall of Saigon.
"By the end of 1974," writes Joan Coxsedge, a Labor Party member of Parliament in
the state of Victoria,
almost every move by the Whitlam Government or by individual Labor parliamentarians,
whether it was a departmental decision, a staff appointment, an international cable, a telex, a
phone call, or a confidential letter, quickly became the property of the news media There was an
unparalleled campaign of personal vituperation, hinting at incompetence, dissension, corruption
and private scandal within the ranks of the government. 13
Matters reached the spark point in autumn 1975. Whitlam dismissed the heads of both
ASIO and ASIS in separate incidents, the latter because his agency had been secretly assist-
ing the CIA in covert activities in nearby East Timor. 14 Then, at the beginning of
November, it was revealed in the press that a former CIA officer, Richard Lee Stallings, had
been channeling funds to J. Douglas Anthony, leader of the National Country Party, one of
the two main opposition parties. It was reported that Stallings was a close friend and for-
mer tenant of Anthony's, that the secret facilities in the hinterland were indeed CIA cre-
ations, and that Stallings had been the first head of much of the operation. 15
A year earlier, an Australian political journalist, Ray Aitchison, had published a book
called Looking at the Liberals (the Liberal Party, the other important opposition party, was
actually rather conservative}, in which he claimed that the CIA had offered the opposition
unlimited funds in their unsuccessful attempt to defeat the Labor Party in the May 1974 parlia-
mentary elections. 16 Subsequently, a Sydney newspaper reported that the Liberals had been on
246
Australia 1973-1975
the receiving end since the late 1960s, and quoted the remarks of former CIA officer Victor
Marchetti, who confirmed that the CIA had funded both of the major opposition parties. 17
Whitlam publicly repeated the charges about Stallings and insisted upon an investiga-
tion of the facilities, to identify once and for all their true nature and purpose. {Whether any
of it was part of a weapons system was one question which seriously concerned the admin-
istration.) At the same time he demanded a list of all CIA operatives in Australia.
The Australian military-intelligence complex appears Co have been spurred into a flurry
of activity. On 6 November, the head of the Defence Department reportedly met with the
Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, and afterward declared publicly: "This is the greatest risk
to the nation's security there has ever been." 18
On the eighth, another senior defence official held a meeting with Kerr in which he
briefed the Governor-General about allegations from the CIA that Whitlam was jeopardiz-
ing the security of the American bases in Australia. 19 The same day, the CIA in Washington
informed the ASIO station there that all intelligence links with Australia would be cut off
unless a satisfactory explanation was given of Mt. Whitlam's behavior. 20 The Agency had
already expressed reservations about releasing intelligence information to certain govern-
ment ministers. 21
If this had been a Third World country, the CIA would likely have already sent the
government packing.
On 9 November, Kerr was received at the Defence Signals Directorate for yet another
briefing. 22 The following day, the ASIO station in Washington, at the request of the CIA,
sent a telex to its headquarters in Australia in which it stated that "CIA can not see how
this dialogue with continued reference to CIA can do other than blow the lid off these
installations". 23 In addition to Stallings, the names of his successors (senior CIA officers)
and the CIA station chief in Canberra had appeared in the press.
Kerr, who was taken with the world of spookery and regularly saw classified material,
in all likelihood was aware of the ASIO telex and the CIA ultimatum. 24 On the 1 1th, he
dismissed Whitlam as Prime Minister, dissolved both houses of Parliament, and appointed
Malcolm Fraset, the leader of the Liberal Party, to head an interim government until new
elections could be held on 13 December. In the hours between the appointment of Fraser
and the dissolution of Parliament, the Labor majority in the House of Representatives
pushed through a no-confidence motion against Fraser, an act which obliged the Governor-
General to dismiss the Liberal leader in turn. Kerr chose to ignore this maneuver, which was
a legalistic one, although his dismissal of Whitlam was no Jess a legalistic act.
On 15 October, the opposition-controlled Senate had refused to vote on a new budget
appropriation bill (called "Supply" in Australia) in order to force the government to dis-
solve Parliament and hold new elections, hoping thus to regain power. Though the constitu-
tion gave the Senate the technical right to withhold approval of the budget, it was seldom
interpreted literally, as it is in the United States. Precedent was of greater importance, and
the fact was that in Australia's 75-year history as a Federation the Senate had never exer-
cised this right against the federal government. Only days earlier, eight leading law profes-
sors had publicly declared such action to be constitutionally improper. The opposition tac-
tic was thus at least debatable.
When Whitlam refused to dissolve Parliament and tried to govern without the budget,
a constitutional and financial crisis steadily built up over the course of several weeks. Then
Kerr invoked a power as archaic and as questionable as that employed by the Senate. It was
the first time a Governor-General had ever dismissed a federal prime minister; it had
occurred but once before on a state level. 25
247
KILLING HOPE
The Melbourne newspaper, The Age {which, said theAfew York Times, was "generally
held to be one of the nation's most responsible papers"), 26 wrote that Kerr's action was "a
triumph of narrow legalism over common sense and popular feeling". It added:
By bringing down the Government because the Senate refused it Supply, Sir John Kerr acted at least
against the spirit of the Australian Constitution. Since 1901, it has been a firmly held convention that
the Senate should not reject budgets ... Sir John has created an awesome president — that a hostile
Senate can bring down a government whenever it denies it Supply. [Kerr] breathed life into a consti-
tutional relic — the right of kings and queens to unilaterally appoint governments. 27
The office of Governor-General had traditionally been only that of a figurehead repre-
sentative of the Queen of England. Kerr's decision, however, appears as a calculated politi-
cal act. He gave Whitlam no warning or ultimatum before dismissing him, no opportunity
to request the dissolution of parliament, which would have permitted him to remain in
office. One must read Kerr's own account of his confrontation with Whitlam to appreciate
how he maneuvered the Prime Minister into stalking out of the Governor-General's office
without requesting the dissolution. Kerr claims he refrained from issuing Whitlam an ulti-
matum because he feared that the prime minister would leave and then ask the Queen for
his removal as Governor-General. But he fails to explain why he didn't give Whitlam an
ultimatum that had to be responded to on the spot.
Kerr had been appointed, at least in theory, by the Queen. Ironically, she had done so
at Whitlam's recommendation, which he had made against the wishes of his party's left-
wing. Kerr's action added to Whitlam's reputation as a bad judge of character, a man easily
taken in.
Certainly the warning signs were there, for John Kerr had been intimately involved
with CIA fronts for a number of years. In the 1950s he joined the Australian Association
for Cultural Freedom, an organization spawned by the CIA's Congress for Cultural
Freedom (see Western Europe chapter), Kerr became a member of the organization's execu-
tive board in 1957 and also wrote for its magazine Quadrant. One article, in 1960, was
entitled "The struggle against communism in the trade unions", a program and tactic, as we
have seen, the CIA has consistently accorded a high priority to throughout the world.
In 1966 Kerr helped to found Lawasia (or Law Asia), an organization of lawyers in the
Far East funded by the Asia Foundation. The Foundation was one of the most prominent
CIA fronts for over a decade, with offices and representatives in all the major capitals of
Asia; one of its prime missions, Victor Marchetti has written, was "to disseminate through-
out Asia a negative vision of mainland China, North Vietnam, and North Korea". 29 Ken-
became Lawasia's first president, a position he held until 1970. He describes the organiza-
tion as "a non-communist group of Asian lawyers" which the Asia Foundation supported
because "the rule of law is a good thing, a strong legal profession is a good thing, and talk
between lawyers is a good thing. " 30
"There was a bit of a celebration" in the CIA when Whitlam was dismissed by Kerr,
reported Christopher Boyce. Boyce is an American who was working at the time for TRW
Systems, Inc., Los Angeles, in a cryptographic communications center which linked CIA
headquarters in Virginia with the Agency's satellite surveillance system in Australia. In his
position, Boyce was privy to telex communications between the two stations. The CIA, he
said, referred to Kerr as "our man". 31
Boyce also revealed that the CIA had infiltrated Australian labor unions, had been
"manipulating the leadership", and had "suppressed their strikes", particularly those
248
Australia 1973-1975
involving railroads and airports. The last was reportedly because the strikes were holding
up deliveries of equipment to the Agency's installations. Some unions as well had been in
the forefront of opposition to the installations. 32
As matters turned out, Whitlam lost the new election.
One other CIA operation in Australia deserves mention. This is the Nugan Hand
Merchant Bank of Sydney, truly a CIA bank. Founded in 1973 by Frank Nugan, an
Australian, and Michael Hand, an American formerly with the Green Berets in Vietnam and
with the CIA airline Air America, the bank exhibited phenomenal growth over the next few
years. It opened branch offices in Saudi Arabia, Hamburg, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong,
Singapore, the Philippines, Argentina, Chile, Hawaii, Washington and Annapolis,
Maryland, run by men with backgrounds in the CIA, OSS, Green Berets, and similar spe-
cialty areas of banking. Former CIA Director William Colby was one of the bank's attor-
neys.
The Nugan Hand Bank succeeded in expanding the scope of normal banking services.
Among the activities it was reportedly involved in were: drug trafficking, international arms
dealing, links to organized crime, laundering money for President Suharto of Indonesia,
unspecified services for President and Mrs. Marcos of the Philippines, assisting the Shah of
Iran's family to shift money out of Iran, channeling CIA money into pro- American political
parties and operations in Europe, transferring $2.4 million to the Australian Liberal Party
through one of the bank's many associated companies, attempting to blackmail an
Australian state minister who was investigating organized crime (the CIA opened a Swiss
bank account in his name and threatened to leak the information), and a host of other
socially useful projects.
In addition, several mysterious deaths have been connected to the bank, including that
of a ranking CIA officer in Maryland. And on 27 January 1980, Frank Nugan was himself
found shot dead in his car. In June, Michael Hand disappeared without a trace. The Nugan
Hand Merchant Bank collapsed, $50 million or so in debt. 33
It is spring 1975. Saigon has just fallen. The last of the Americans are fleeing for their
lives. Fallout from Watergate hangs heavy in the air in the United States. The Pike
Committee of the House of Representatives is investigating CIA foreign covert activities. On
the Senate side, the Church Committee is doing the same. And the Rockefeller Commission
has set about investigating the Agency's domestic activities. The morning papers bring fresh
revelations about CIA and FBI misdeeds.
The CIA and its influential supporters warn that the crescendo of disclosures will
inhibit the Agency from carrying out the functions necessary for national security.
At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, they are busy preparing for their next secret
adventure: Angola.
To undertake a military operation at such a moment, the reasons, one would imagine,
must have been both compelling and urgent. Yet, in the long history of American Interven-
The Great Powers Poker Game
249
KILLING HOPE
tions it would be difficult to find one more pointless of with less to gain for the United
States or the foreign people involved.
The origin of our story dates back to the beginning of the 1960s when two political
movements in Angola began to oppose by force the Portuguese colonial government: the
MPLA, led by Agostinho Neto, and the FNLA, led by Holden Roberto. (The latter group
was known by other names in its early years, but for simplicity will be referred to here only
as FNLA.)
The United States, not normally in the business of supporting "liberation" movements,
decided that inasmuch as Portugal would probably be unable to hold on to its colony forev-
er, establishing contact with a possible successor regime might prove beneficial. For reasons
lost in the mists of history, the United States, or at least someone in the CIA, decided that
Roberto was their man and around 1961 or '62 onto the Agency payroll he went. 1
At the same time, and during the ensuing years, Washington provided their NATO
ally, the Salazar dictatorship in Lisbon, with the military aid and counter-insurgency train-
ing needed to suppress the rebellion. John Marcum, an American scholar who walked 800
miles through Angola into the FNLA guerrilla camps in the early 1960s, has written:
By January 1962 outside observers could watch Portuguese planes bomb and sttafe African vil-
lages, visit the charred remains of towns like Mbanza MPangu and MPangala, and copy the
data ftem 750-point napalm bomb casings from which the Portuguese had not removed the
labels marked 'Property U.S. Air Force". 2
The Soviet Union, which had also given some support to Roberto, embraced Neto
instead in 1964, arguing that Roberto had helped the discredited Moise Tshombe in the
Congo and curtailed his own guerrilla operations in Angola under pressure from
Washington. 3 Before long, another movement, UNITA by name, entered the picture and
China dealt itself into The Great Powers Poker Game, lending support to UNITA and
FNLA.
Although MPLA may have been somewhat more genuine in its leftist convictions than
FNLA or UNITA, there was little to distinguish any of the three groups from each other
ideologically. When the press made any distinction amongst them it was usually to refer to
MPLA as "Marxist", but this was ill-defined, if defined at all, and simply took on a media
life of its own. Each of the groups spoke of socialism and employed Marxist rhetoric when
the occasion called for it, and genuflected to other gods when it did not. In the 1960s, each
of them was perfectly willing to accept support from any country willing to give it without
excessive strings attached. Neto, for example, went to Washington in December 1962 to
put his case before the American government and press and to emphasize the fallacy of cate-
gorizing the MPLA as communist. During the following two years, Roberto appealed for
aid to the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Algeria, and Nasser's Egypt. Later, Jonas Savimbi,
the leader of UNITA, approached the same countries (with the exception perhaps of the
Soviet Union) as well as North Vietnam, and accepted military training for his men from
North Korea.
Each group was composed predominantly of members of a particular tribe; each tried
to discourage aid or recognition being given to the others; they each suffered from serious
internal splits and spent as much time fighting each other as they did the Portuguese army.
The Vietcong they were not.
Author Jonathan Kwitny has observed that the three tribal nations had a long history
of fighting each other ...
250
Angola 1975 to 1980s
It was not until the latter part of the twentieth century, however, that Dr. Henry Kissinger and
other political scientists discovered that the real reason the Mbundu, the Ovirnbundu, and the
Kongo had been fighting off and on for the past 500 years was that the Mbundu were "Marxist"
and the Ovirnbundu and Kongo were "pro- Western". 5
That the CIA's choosing of its ally was largely an arbitrary process is further under-
lined by a State Department cable to its African Embassies in 1963 which stated: "U.S. poli-
cy is not, repeat not, to discourage [an] MPLA ... move toward West and not to choose
between these two movements." 6
Even in 1975, when the head of the CIA, William Colby, was asked by a congressional
committee what the differences were between the three contesting factions, he responded:
They are all independents. They are all for black Africa They are all for some iuzzy kind of
social system, you know, without really much articulation, but some sort of let's not be exploited
by the capitalist nations.
And when asked why the Chinese were backing the FNLA or UNITA, he stated:
"Because the Soviets are backing the MPLA is the simplest answer,"
"It sounds," said Congressman Aspin, "like that is why we are doing it."
"It is," replied Colby. 7
Nonetheless, the committee, in its later report, asserted that in view of Colby's state-
ment, "The U.S.'s expressed opposition to the MPLA is puzzling". 8
Finally, it is instructive to note that all three groups were denounced by the Portuguese
as communists and terrorists.
Before April 1974, when a coup in Portugal ousted the dictatorship, the aid given to
the Angolan resistance movements by their various foreign patrons was sporadic and
insignificant, essentially a matter of the patrons keeping their hands in the game. The coup,
however, raised the stakes, for the new Portuguese government soon declared its willingness
to grant independence to its African colonies.
In an agreement announced on 15 January 1975, the three movements formed a transi-
tional government with elections to be held in October and formal independence to take
place the following month.
Since 1969, Roberto had been on a $10,000-a-year retainer from the CIA. 9 On 22
January, the Forty Committee of the National Security Council in Washington authorized
the CIA to pass $300,000 to Roberto and the FNLA for "various political action activities,
restricted to non-military objectives." 10 Such funds of course can always free up other funds
for military uses.
In March, the FNLA, historically the most warlike of the groups, attacked MPLA
headquarters and later gunned down 51 unarmed, young MPLA recruits. 11 These incidents
served to spark what was to be a full-scale civil war, with UNTTA aligning itself with FNLA
against MPLA. The scheduled elections would never take place.
Also in March, the first large shipment of arms reportedly arrived from the Soviet Union
for the MPLA. 12 The House investigating committee subsequently stated that "Later events
have suggested that this infusion of US aid [the $300,000], unprecedented and massive in the
underdeveloped colony, may have panicked the Soviets into arming their MPLA clients" . 13
The Soviets may have been as much influenced by the fact that China had sent a huge
arms package to the FNLA the previous September and had dispatched over one hundred
military advisers to neighboring Zaire to train Roberto's soldiers only a month after the
coup in Portugal. 14
251
KILLING HOPE
The CIA made its first major weapons shipment to the FNLA in July 1975. Thus,
like the Russians and the Chinese, the United States was giving aid to one side of the
Angolan civil war on a level far greater than it had ever provided during the struggle
against Portuguese colonialism.
The United States was directly involved in the civil war to a marked degree. In addi-
tion to training Angolan combat units, US personnel did considerable flying between Zaire
and Angola carrying out reconnaissance and supply missions, 15 and the CIA spent over a
million dollars on an ambitious mercenary program. 16 Several reports appeared in the US
press stating that many American mercenaries were fighting in Angola against the
MPLA — from "scores" to "300" — and that many others were being recruited and trained
in the United States to join them. But John Stockwell, the head of the CIA's Angola task
force, puts the number of American mercenaries who actually made it to Angola at only
24, 17 However, Holden Roberto was using CIA money, with the Agency's tacit approval,
to recruit many other mercenaries — over 100 British p]us a scattering of French and
Portuguese. 18 The CIA was also directly financing the arming of British mercenaries. 19
(The mercenaries included amongst their number the well-known Englishman and psy-
chopath George Cullen who lined up 14 of his fellow soldiers of fortune and shot them all
dead because they had mistakenly attacked the wrong side.) 20
Subsequently, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger informed the Senate that "the CIA
is not involved™ in the recruitment of mercenaries for Angola. 21
There were also well over a hundred CIA officers and American military advisers
scurrying about Angola, Zaire, Zambia and South Africa helping to direct the military
operations and practicing their propaganda skills. 22 Through recruited journalists repre-
senting major news services, the Agency was able to generate international coverage for
false reports of Soviet advisers in Angola. One CIA story, announced to the press by
UNITA, was that 20 Russians and 35 Cubans had been captured. Another fabrication
concerned alleged rapes committed by Cuban soldiers in Angola; this was elaborated to
include their capture, trial, and execution, complete with photos of the young women
killing the Cubans who had raped them. 23
Both stories were reported widely in the American and British press and elsewhere.
Some of the major newspapers, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and
The Guardian of London, were careful to point out that the only source of the informa-
tion was UNITA and their articles did not attempt to ascribe any special credence to the
reports. 24 But this could not of course prevent the placing of seeds of belief in the minds
of readers already conditioned to believe the worst about communists.
The disinformation campaign took place within the United States as well. FNLA
delegates came to New York in September to lobby for support at the UN and with the
New York press, distributing as they went copies of a "white paper" on the Angolan
conflict prepared at CIA headquarters but made to look like it was produced in Zaire,
French and all. 25 John Stockwell described the paper as sometimes "false to the point of
being ludicrous" and other times "simply inaccurate". 26
Afterward, representatives of UNITA went to Washington and presented to mem-
bers of Congress, the State Department, the White House and the media, verbal reports
about the situation in Angola which were the product of briefings given them by their
CIA case officers. 27
In January 1976, William Colby sat before the Senate investigating committee and
solemnly assured the Senators:
252
Angola 1975 to 1980s
We have taken particular caution to ensure that our operations are focused abroad and not at
the United States to influence the opinion of the American people about things from the CIA
point of view. 28
There was virtually no important aspect of the Angolan intervention which Colby,
Kissinger, and other high officials did not misrepresent to Congress and the media.
The odds never favored a military victory for the US-backed forces in Angola, par-
ticularly in the absence of a relatively large-scale American commitment which, given
the political atmosphere, was not in the cards. The MPLA was the most organized and
best led of the three factions and early on controlled the capital city of Luanda, which
housed almost the entire governmental machinery. Yet, for no reason, apparently, other
than anti-Soviet spite, the United States was unwilling to allow a negotiated settlement.
When Savimbi of UNIT A sent out feelers to the MPLA in September 1975 to discuss a
peaceful solution he was admonished by the CIA. Similarly, the following month when
an MPLA delegation went to Washington to once again express their potential friendli-
ness to the United States, they received a cool reception, being seen only by a low-level
State Department official. 29
In November MPLA representatives came to Washington to plead for the release of
two Boeing jet airliners which their government had paid for but which the State
Department would not allow to be exported. John Stockwell relates the unusual devel-
opment that the MPLA men were accompanied by Bob Temmons, who until shortly
before had been the head of the CIA station in Luanda, as well as by the president of
Boeing. While the two Angolans and the man from Boeing petitioned the State
Department, the CIA man made known to Agency headquarters that he had come to
share the view of the US Consul General in Luanda "that the MPLA was best qualified
to run the country, that it was not demonstrably hostile to the United States, and that
the United States should make peace with it as quickly as possible."
The State Department's response to the MPLA representatives was simple: the price
for any American co-operation with the Angolan government was Soviet influence out,
US influence in. 30
At one time or another almost two dozen countries, East and West, felt the urge to
intervene in the conflict. Principal amongst these were the United States, China, South
Africa and Zaire on the side of FNLA / UNITA, and the Soviet Union, Cuba, the Congo
Republic and Katangese troops (Zairean rebels) supporting MPLA. The presence of
South African forces on their side cost the United States and its Angolan allies dearly in
support ftom other countries, particularly in Africa. Yet, South Africa's participation in
the war had been directly solicited by the United States. 31 In sharp contrast to stated
American policy, the CIA and the National Security Agency had been collaborating with
Pretoria's intelligence service since the 1960s and continued to do so in regard to
Angola. One of the principal focuses of the intelligence provided by the US to South
Africa was the African National Congress, the leading anti-apartheid organization
which had been banned and exiled. 32 In 1962, the South African police arrested ANC
leader Nelson Mandela based on information as to his whereabouts and disguise pro-
vided them by CIA officer Donald Rickard. Mandela spent almost 28 years in prison, 33
In 1977, the Carter administration banned the sharing of intelligence with South
Africa, but this was largely ignored by the American intelligence agencies. Two years
253
KILLING HOPE
earlier, the CIA had set up a covert mechanism whereby arms were delivered to the
South Africans; this practice, in violation of US law, continued until at least 1978, and a
portion of the arms were more than likely put to use in Angola. 54 South Africa in turn
helped to ferry American military aid from Zaire into Angola.
In fairness to the CIA, it must be pointed out that its people were not entirely obliv-
ious or insensitive to what South Africa represented. The Agency was very careful about
letting its black officers into the Angola program. 36
A congressional cutoff of aid to the FNLA/UNiTA, enacted in January 1976, ham-
mered a decisive nail into their coffin. Congressmen did not yet know the fall truth
about the American operation, but enough of the public dumb show had been exposed
to make them incensed at how Kissinger, Colby, et al, had lied to their faces. The conse-
quence was one of the infrequent occasions in modern times that the US Congress has
exercised a direct and pivotal influence upon American foreign policy. In the process, it
avoided the slippery slope to another Vietnam, on top of which stood Henry Kissinger
and the CIA with shoes waxed. 37
By February, the MPLA, with indispensable help from Cuban troops and Soviet
military equipment, had all but routed their opponents. The Cuban presence in Angola
was primarily a direct response to South African attacks against the MPLA. Wayne
Smith, director of the State Department's Office of Cuban Affairs from 1977 to 1979,
has written that "in August and October [1975] South African troops invaded Angola
with full U.S. knowledge. No Cuban troops were in Angola prior to this interven-
tion. "38
Savimbi at this time again considered reaching an understanding with the MPLA,
The response from Washington was: Keep fighting. Kissinger personally promised
UNITA continued support if they maintained their resistance, knowing full well that
there was no more support to give. During the two weeks that Savimbi waited for his
answer, he lost 600 men in a single battlefield. 39 Yet, incredibly, less than two months
before, the Secretary of State had stated: "We are not opposed to the MPLA as such ...
We can live with any of the factions in Angola." 40 The man was wholly obsessed with
countering Soviet moves anywhere on the planet — significant or trivial, real or imag-
ined, fait accompli or anticipated. He was perhaps particularly driven in this case, for as
he later wrote: "Angola represents the first time that the Soviets have moved militarily
at long distance to impose a regime of their choice." 41
If this seems far removed from how the academics tell us American foreign policy is
made, it's still more plausible than the other explanation commonly advanced for the
policy in Angola, v V; it was done to please Sese Seko Mobutu, the head of Zaire, char-
acterized as America's most important ally /client in Africa, if not in the Third World. 42
(Zaire was home to the CIA's largest station in Africa.) Mobutu desired an Angolan
government be could sway, primarily to prevent Angola being used as a sanctuary by his
arch foes, the rebels from Katanga province in Zaire. Accordingly, the Zairean leader
committed his US-equipped armed forces into combat in Angola, on the side of the
FNLA, for Holden Roberto happened to be a relation of his, although Roberto and the
FNLA had little else going for them. As Professor Gerald Bender, a leading American
authority on Angola, testified before Congress in 1978:
Although the United States has supported the FNLA in Angola for 17 years, it is virtually impos-
sible to find an American official, scholar or journalist, who is familiar with that party, who will
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testify positively about its organization or leadership. After a debate with a senior State
Department official at the end of the Angolan civil war, I asked him why the United States ever
bet on the FNLA He replied, 'Til be damned if I know; I have never seen a single report or
memo which suggests that the FNLA has any organization, solid leaders, or an ideology which
we could count on." Even foreign leaders who have supported Holden Roberto, such as General
Mobutu, agree with that assessment. When asked by a visiting U.S. Senator if he thought
Roberto would make a good leader for Angola, Moburu replied, "Hell no! " 43
Kissinger himself told the House investigating committee that promoting the stabili-
ty of Mobutu was one of the prime reasons for the American policy in Angola. 44 Yet,
even if this were one of Kissinger's rare truthful remarks about the Angola situation,
and even if this could be a valid justification for serious intervention in a civil war in a
third country, his statement challenges, if it does not defeat, comprehension; for in June
1975, a month before the United States shipped its first major arms package to the
FNLA, Mobutu had accused the US of plotting his overthrow and assassination, where-
upon he expelled the American ambassador (see Zaire chapter).
The Secretary of State, never at a loss for the glib line custom-made for his immedi-
ate audience, also told Israeli officials that failure to stop the Russians in Angola "could
encourage Arab countries such as Syria to run risks that could lead to a new attack on
Israel, backed up by the Russians." 4
The American ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Moynihan, did not great-i
ly enhance the level of discussion when he declared that if the United States did not step
in "the Communists would take over Angola and will thereby considerably control the
oil shipping lanes from the Persian Gulf to Europe. They will be next to Brazil. They
will have a large chunk of Africa, and the world will be different in the aftermath if they
succeed." 46 A truly baroque train of thought, and another example of what cold-war
conditioning could do to an otherwise intelligent and educated person.
With only a change in place names, similar geo-political-domino theories have been
put forth to give a veneer of rationality to so many American interventions. In this case,
as in the others where the "communists" won, nothing of the sort ensued.
"In all respect to Kissinger," Jonathan Kwitny has written, "one really has to ques-
tion the sanity of someone who looks at an ancient ttibal dispute over control of distant
coffee fields and sees in it a Soviet threat to the security of the United States." 47
The MPLA in power was restricted by the same domestic and international eco-
nomic realities which the FNLA of UNLTA would have faced. Accordingly, it discour-
aged union militancy, dealt sternly with strikes, exhorted the workers to produce more,
entered into commercial contracts with several multinationals, and did not raise the
hammer and sickle over the president's palace. 48 The MPLA urged Gulf Oil Co. to con-
tinue its exclusive operation in Cabinda province and guaranteed the safety of the
American corporation's employees while the fighting was still heavy. Gulf was com-
pletely amenable to this offer, but the CIA and the State Department put pressure on the
company to discontinue its royalty payments to the MPLA, thus jeopardizing the entire
oil venture in a way that the "Marxist" government never did. One aspect of this pres-
sure was a threat by Kissinger to open an investigation of international bribery by the
company. Gulf compromised by putting its payments into an escrow bank account until
the civil war came to an end of sorts a few months later, at which time payments to the
MPLA were resumed. 49
Contrary to accepted Western belief, Cuba did not enter the Angolan war as a
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Soviet surrogate. John Stockwell has noted that after the war the CIA "learned that
Cuba had not been ordered into action by the Soviet Union" but that "the Cuban lead-
ers felt compelled to intervene for their own ideological reasons." 50 In 1977, the New
York magazine Africa Report stated that "The Cubans have supported [MPLA leader
Neto's] pragmatic approach toward Western investment and his attempts to maintain a
foreign policy of non-alignment." The magazine also reported that on 27 May the
Angolan government had announced that, aided by Cuban troops, it had crushed a
rebellion by a faction of the MPLA whose leader claimed to have Soviet support. 51
The civil war in Angola did not actually come to an end in 1976 as it appeared to, for
the fighting lingered on intermittently, sometimes moderately, sometimes ferociously.
In 1984 a confidential memorandum smuggled out of Zaire revealed that the
United States and South Africa had met in November 1983 to discuss destabilization of
the Angola government. Plans were drawn up to supply more military aid to UNITA
(the FNLA was now defunct) and discussions were held on ways to implement a wide
range of tactics: unify the anti-government movements, stir up popular feeling against
the government, sabotage factories and transport systems, seize strategic points, disrupt
joint Angola-Soviet projects, undermine relations between the government and the
Soviet Union and Cuba, bring pressure to bear on Cuba to withdraw its troops, sow
divisions in the ranks of the MPLA leadership, infiltrate agents into the Angolan army,
and apply pressure to stem the flow of foreign investments into Angola.
The United States branded the document a forgery, but UNITA's representative in
Washington would neither confirm nor deny that the meeting took place. He stated,
however, that UNITA had "contacts with US officials at all levels on a regular basis".
The aim of the operation, according to the memorandum, was to force part of the
Angolan leadership to negotiate with UNITA, precisely what Washington had success-
fully discouraged years earlier. 52
A month after the reported US -South Africa meeting, the UN Security Council cen-
sured South Africa for its military operations in Angola, and endorsed Luanda's right to
reparations. Only the United States, abstaining, did not support the resolution. 53
In August 1985, after a three-year battle with Congress, the Reagan administration
won a repeal of the 1976 prohibition against US military aid to rebel forces in Angola.
Military assistance began to flow to UNITA overtly as well as covertly. In January
1987, Washington announced that it was providing the rebels with Stinger missiles and
other anti-aircraft weaponry. Three months earlier, Jonas Savimbi had spoken before
the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France in an appeal for support. Following his
talk, however, a plenary session of the Parliament criticized American support for the
guerrilla leader and passed a resolution which described UNITA as a "terrorist organi-
zation which supports South Africa." 54
Finally, in September 1992, elections were held, but when it became apparent that the
MPLA would be the winner in a run-off — in polling which the UN certified to be free and
fair — Savimbi refused to accept the result. He ended a year old cease-fire and launched one
of UNITA's largest, most sustained offensives of the war, still being supplied by South
Africa, and, in recent years, by American "private" airlines and "relief organizations with
interesting histories such as previous contacts to the Nicaraguan contras. 55
In May 1993, Washington finally recognized the Angolan government. In January,
just before the Clinton administration took over, a senior State Department official had
declared: "Unita is exactly like the Khmer Rouge: elections and negotiations are just one
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Angola 1975 to 1980s
more method of fighting a war; power is all." "
By this time, the war had taken more than 300,000 lives, producing widespread hunger
and what was said to be the highest amputee rate in the world, caused by the innumerable
land mines. The death in combat of Savimbi in February 2002 appeared to offer a ray of
hope for the future.
By 1975, President Mobutu Sese Seko (nee Joseph Mobutu), the Zairian (nee Congo)
strongman regarded by the CIA as one of its "successes" in Africa, had ruled over his hap-
less, impoverished subjects for 10 long years. In the process, with a flair for conspicuous
corruption that ranks amongst the best this century has to offer, Mobutu amassed a person-
al fortune estimated to run into the billions of dollars sitting in the usual Swiss, Paris, and
New York banks, while most of the population suffered from severe malnutrition. 1
It can reasonably be said that his corruption was matched only by his cruelty. Mobutu,
one observer of Zaire has written,
rules by decree with a grotesque impulsiveness that seems to shock even his former [CIA] case
officers. One recalled that in June 1971 Mobutu had forcibly enlisted in the armed forces the
entire student body of Lovanium University. "He was put out by some student demonstrations,"
remembered the official. Mobutu finally relented, but ten of the students were sentenced to life
imprisonment for crimes of "public insult" to the Chief of State.... One intelligence source recalls
a fervent Mobutu approach, eventually deflected, that either Zaire with CIA help or the Agency
alone undertake an invasion against "those bastards across the river" in the Congo Republic
(Brazzaville). He's a "real wild man," said one former official, "and we've had trouble keeping
him under rein." 2
This may not have been for lack of trying. In June 1975 Mobutu announced that he
had uncovered and suppressed a coup attempt aimed at his "physical elimination". He
blamed an unnamed "large foreign power" and Zairean citizens "thirsty for money" (sic).
The charges appeared in a government-controlled newspaper in the form of a letter fom
Mobutu, with an accompanying editorial indicating plainly that the large foreign power
was the United States. A few days later, Zairean newspapers asserted that the CIA had orga-
nized tribal dissidents and black Americans for a coup against Mobutu planned for 30
September. It is not clear what relation this allegation had to the earlier one.
Mobutu declared that the "imperialists" were displeased with his breaking off relations
with Israel, his nationalization of many foreign-owned businesses, and the "sincere and reci-
procal" friendships which were developing between Zaire and China and North Korea.
Several high-ranking Zairean military officers as well as other military men and civilians
were arrested, their number reportedly including most of the CIA's indigenous agents in
Zaire. The government announced that one of the arrested officers had returned four
months ago from a US military school, another had been the Zairean military attache in
Washington until two weeks before, and a third had recently returned from studies at Fort
Bragg, North Carolina where, as a class assignment, he had prepared a report on "How to
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plan and carry out a coup d'etat against the government of Zaire." This last is not as ridicu-
lous as it may sound. Such "hypothetical" exercises have been reported before by former
students at CIA schools, although without the name of a real country being used and under
the cover of learning how to suppress a coup attempt (as torture methods were taught in
Vietnam under the cover of "counter-measures to hostile interrogation"; similarly, as we
have seen, for the teaching of bombing techniques and chemical/biological warfare).
Eventually, seven of those arrested were condemned to death for the alleged plot (includ-
ing some of the CIA's agents), seven men were acquitted, and 27 others given prison sentences.
No Americans were named as conspirators, but the US ambassador, Deane R. Hinton, was
ordered to leave the country and Zaire recalled its ambassador fan Washington.
The State Department denied the allegations and called upon the Zairean government
to provide evidence, which the latter failed to do. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
announced that the charges were based on "totally wrong information that fell into the
hands of Zaire" and "was probably the result of forgery". It is difficult to evaluate
Kissinger's assertion inasmuch as the Zairean government had made no public mention of
any documents, 3
Mobutu may indeed have been taken in by forged documents or, scoundrel that he
was, he may have built a mountain out of a molehill of truth, I: was suggested that his
action was a pretext to get rid of certain Zairean military officers or that he was looking for
a scapegoat for domestic problems.
On the other hand, it would not have been the first time that the CIA was involved in a
plot to eliminate an ostensible ally of the United States — Trujilio, Figueres and Diem are
cases in point, Mobutu, at this time, for his own reasons was deeply involved in the civil
war in Angola on the side of the CIA-supported forces. Zaire was serving as an indispens-
able rear base and training and supply point, and Zairean troops were engaged in the fight-
ing. The Agency may have felt very uneasy that the head of this vital ally in war was a man
as erratic, unpredictable and uncontrollable as Mobutu See Seiko. "Mobutu is screwing up
Zaire pretty good, you know," commented a senior CIA officer upon returning to
Washington from a meeting with the Zairean leader, shortly after his accusation against the
United States. "He simply has no idea of how to run a country." 4
Moreover, although Chinese and North Korean military advisers in Zaire were training
forces fighting on the same side as the United States in the Angolan free-for-all, the simple
tenet of cold-war life was that an American ally does not do things like invite Chinese and
North Korean military advisers to their country. And the Zairean "wild man" had twice
broken relations with the Soviet Union and twice re-established them. There was no telling
what whimsy he might pursue next.
There is also the matter of the expelled American Ambassador. Deane Roesch Hinton
was no ordinary Foreign Service career diplomat. He had worked closely with the CIA since
the 1950s and was no stranger to extra-diplomatic operations. From 1967 to 1969 in
Guatemala and the following two years in Chile (against Allende), Hinton, under the cover
of the Agency for International Development (AID), had played a role in the CIA opera-
tions. He then served on a subcommittee of the National Security Council until taking up
his post in Zaire in 1974. 5
After the brouhaha about the alleged coup, both the CIA and Mobutu acted as if noth-
ing out of the ordinary had happened, although the Agency did make an appeal to the
Zairean president for the freedom of their agents sitting on death row 6 (outcome unknown),
and did seem to be remarkably submissive to Mobutu's usual obnoxious and impulsive
behavior. In October, Mobutu asked the CIA to help him annex Cabinda, a province of
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Zaire 1975-1978
Angola that was separated from the rest of Angola by a narrow strip of Zairean territory,
Mobutu had coveted the province since coming to power in 1965. His greed for it was
heightened a few years later when oil was discovered off the Cabindan coastline. The CIA,
although busily involved in the Angolan civil war at this time, promptly flew in a one-thou-
sand-man arms package for use by Zairean troops who marched into Cabinda. Agency offi-
cials helped to co-ordinate this almost casual invasion of a sovereign nation, but the opera-
tion proved to be singularly unsuccessful. 7
Six months later, in April 7976, the CIA gave Mobutu close to $1.4 million to distrib-
ute to US-backed Angolan forces, thousands of whom were refugees in Zaire, desperate and
hungry. Mobutu simply pocketed the money. The Agency had been aware of this possibility
when they delivered the money to him but, in the words of CIA Africa specialist John
Stockwell, "They rationalized that it would mollify him, bribe him not to retaliate against
the CIA." Stockwell added this observation:
It is an interesting paradox that the Securities and Exchange Commission has since 1971 investi-
gated, and the Justice Department has prosecuted, several large U.S. corporations for using
bribery to facilitate their overseas operations. A: the same time, the U.S. government, through the
CIA disburses tens of millions of dollars each year in cash bribes. Bribery is a standard operating
technique of the U.S. government, via the CIA but it is a criminal offense for U.S. business. 8
The same can be said of murder. A few months earlier, in January 7976, the Justice
Department had concluded that no grounds existed for federal prosecution of CIA officials
involved in plots to assassinate several heads of state, including Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. 9
In early March 1977, during a pause in the Angola war, members of the Lunda (or
Balunda) tribal group of Zaire who had been in exile in Angola and fighting along with their
Angolan tribal kin on the side of the MPLA, crossed the border and invaded Zaire in a resump-
tion of their own civil war. The invaders, numbering at least 2,000, were composed largely of
former residents of Katanga (now Shaba) province who had fled the Congo during the early
1960s following the failure of their secessionist movement (see Congo chapter).
Mobutu urgently requested help from Zaire's traditional arms suppliers, Belgium,
France and the United States, to put down this threat to his control of the mineral-rich
Shaba province which accounted for about 70 percent of Zaire's foreign exchange. The
United States responded immediately with some $2 million of military supplies, reaching
$15 million worth within a month, while Belgium and France provided large amounts of
arms and ammunition as well as 14 Miragejet bombers from the latter.
Jimmy Carter had been in office less than two months when the Zairean conflict broke
out, and he was reluctant to involve his administration deeply in a foreign adventure whose
ultimate commitment could not be foreseen. The Angolan involvement had only recently
wound down under severe congressional criticism. Compared to this and other American
interventions, Carter's action in Zaire constituted a fairly mild response, mild enough to
enable Washington to pass off its policy as one of "non-intervention" and effectively-
obscure the fact that it was actively taking sides in a civil war.
The administration pointed out that its aid was all of a "non-lethal" type (that is, a
military transport plane, spare parts, fuel, communication equipment, parachutes, etc.); that
the aid represented a drawing of credits already authorized by Congress for Zaire — as if the
United States government therefore had no other choice in the matter; and that it had
refused a Zairean request for further assistance. President Carter asserted on more than one
occasion that the Zaire crisis was an African problem, best solved by Africans, yet he appar-
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KILLING HOPE
ently saw no contradiction to this thesis in his own policy, nor did he offer any criticism of
France or Belgium, or of China, which sent Mobutu a substantial amount of military equip-
ment.
Carter denied the suggestion that US aid to Zaire was part of a coordinated venture
with France, Belgium, Morocco, Egypt and the Sudan; and, at the same time, the State
Department characterized American policy as "a neither help nor hinder position" towards
Zaire. Yet, only a few days earlier, the United States had given its tacit approval to
Morocco's decision to send 1,500 of its American-armed troops to aid Mobutu's cause,
while confirming that "both by law and bilateral agreement, Morocco would have to obtain
Washington's permission in advance if its army used American weapons outside
Morocco". 10 Whether the Zairean rebels felt put out by the American non-lethal, non-help-i
nor-hinder, non-intervention policy was not reported.' 1
In mid-April, Newsday broke a story that the CIA was secretly supporting efforts to
recruit several hundred mercenaries in the United States and Great Britain to serve alongside
Zaire's notoriously ineffective army. David Bufkin, a 38-year-old Californian who reported-
ly was an experienced mercenary himself and had recruited other Americans for Angola,
said that American "soldiers of fortune" would leave within a week for Zaire to fight
against the rebels. Bufkin had advertised for former military men with combat experience
for this particular mission.
The New York newspaper stated that the CIA had "strong links" to Bufkin and had
told the Justice Department that it would not cooperate in any investigation of the
Californian. (It is a criminal offense in the United States to recruit an American citizen for
service with foreign armed forces or to enlist for such service.)
"Diplomats in Washington," the New York Times reported, "said they understood
that President Mobutu Sese Seko had indicated several weeks ago that Zaire might have to
recruit mercenaries to repel the invasion." They added that the aid from France, Belgium,
Morocco, the United States and others may have led Mobutu to abandon the idea.
Bufkin denied that he was being financed by the CIA He claimed that his financial aid
"is coming from Africa and that's all I can tell you". 12 (This, of course, would not rule out
the CIA channeling money to Bufkin via Zaire.) Several months later, the soldier of fortune
revealed that he had worked with the CIA, without specifying when or where, as well as
with the Korean CIA, going into some detail about his operations with the latter. 13 What
role, if any, was actually played by mercenaries in Zaire has not come to light.
The more experienced rebels had the upper band during the first month of the 80-day
war, and the continuance of Mobutu's rule was reported to be uncertain. But the repeated
pumping of men and supplies into Zaire by at least eight Western and African nations
proved too much for the Lunda tribesmen. By the end of May, their offensive had been
crushed and they were forced to retreat into Angola once again.
Although the Lunda were engaged in a struggle for tribal autonomy, of the kind which
has erupted in one African country after another following independence, Mobutu knew
that it was the cold-war, anti-communist card he had to play if he was to provoke greater
military support, particularly from the United States. Accordingly, Zaire began to issue reg-
ular accusations against Cuba, which had a large military contingent still stationed in
Angola.
Cuba had trained and armed the rebels, it was charged. This was true to some extent,
but it had not been done necessarily to invade Zaire. Some quarters of the international left
cloaked the Lunda in a revolutionary mantle, but the inspiration for this had more to do
with the rebels being opposed by the likes of Mobutu, the United States and France than
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Zaire 1975-1978
with any demonstrated revolutionary virtues. On the contrary, they were originally trained
by white mercenaries and supported by Belgium and other Western interests in their seces-
sion attempt in Katanga. After fleeing to Angola, in return for sanctuary they served with
the colonial Portuguese army in its campaign to put down the black nationalist guerrillas of
the MPLA. Then, during the ensuing civil war in Angola, they switched over to fighting on
the side of the MPLA and the Cubans. 14
Cuba was leading the rebels ... Cuban, Russian and Portuguese troops were fighting
with them, insisted the Zairean government.
The invasion "could not have taken place — and it could not continue — without the
material support or acquiescence of the Soviet Union — whether or not Cuban troops are
present", announced (now former) Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in a choice example
of knee-reflex anti-communism/wishful thinking, without any evidence whatsoever. 15
And so it went. To the credit of the Carter administration, it resisted the temptation to
embrace all the unfounded and sometimes silly changes, stating on several occasions that
there was no evidence of Cuban involvement, and that the United States did not view the
conflict as a confrontation between the Soviet Union and the West. An increasingly petulant
Mobutu was finally moved to declare that if the United States had indeed "capitulated" in
the face of communist danger, it should announce this clearly. 16
Why then, did the United States intervene at all?
The day after the first American shipment of military aid, Washington expressed its
concern about the possible "loss" to American mining interests in Zaire. However, there
was not necessarily a logical connection between a Lunda capture of Shaba province, or
even toppling Mobutu, and a threat to foreign investment and loans, and the Carter admin-
istration offered no elaboration of its statement. No matter who controlled the mines, they
would be looking to sell the copper, the cobalt, and the other minerals. In 1960, the seces-
sion movement of these same Lunda forces in then-called Katanga province had been sup-
ported by both Washington and Belgium. (Why Belgium now opposed them was not made
clear by events, except that the rebels' sabotage combined with power failure had halted the
mines' water pumps, leading to widespread flooding.) And in neighboring Angola, as we
have seen, when the "Marxist" MPLA took over control of oil-rich Cabinda province, it co-
operated fully in business-as-usual with Gulf Oil Company, The Zaire government, on the
other hand, in 1974, took over most small businesses and plantations without compensat-
ing the owners, and divided the spoils among political leaders loyal to Mobutu, which went
well beyond anything the MPLA did. 17
The expressed concern about US investments may have been no more than one type of
"throw away" remark that has often been put forth by Washington officials to make a par-
ticular foreign involvement sound more reasonable to the American public (most ironic in
this case in light of traditional Marxist analysis), while giving the administration time to
decide what it is they're actually trying to achieve. No further reference to American invest-
ments was made.
The American intervention in this case seems to have been little more than a highly-
developed cold-water reflex action triggered by an invasion originating in a country classified
as a member of the Soviet camp, and against a country ostensibly in the American or
Western camp. Subsequent developments, or lack of them, may have inspired second
thoughts in the administration, producing a dilemma which was succinctly summed up by a
New York Times editorial observation a month into the war: "The instinct tot intervention
seems great but the case for it is not at all clear." 18
Earlier, the Washington Post had expressed similar doubts. In an editorial entitled
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"Why Zaire?", the newspaper stated that it was "a highly dubious proposition for the
United States to deepen its involvement in the murk of Zaire in the way that it has."
President Carter, it added, "has not explained the contingencies or stakes which require
such an abrupt American response, nor the risks of delay". 9
By his second year in the White House, jimmy Carter had managed to acquire the
unfortunate image of an "indecisive" man, a president who was yet to demonstrate the
proverbial sterling qualities of leadership. His moderate response to the events in Zaire the
previous year had contributed to this reputation, particularly amongst the hardline anti-
communists in the United States and amongst some of the European and African nations
which had come to Mobutu's aid.
Thus it was, in the middle of May 1978, when the Lunda again left Angola and invad-
ed their home province in Zaire, that the Carter administration was once again drawn into
the conflict, for reasons no more compelling than in the year before ... "determination this
time, particularly with a meeting in 11 days in Washington of heads of NATO
Governments, to act decisively", was the way the New York Times paraphrased "high
administration officials". 20
Within days the United States had sent several million dollars more of "non-lethal"
military aid to Mobutu (condemned for human-rights violations only three months earlier
by the State Department, under a president who championed human rights) while a fleet of
18 American military transport planes began ferrying Belgian and French troops into Zaire
in a rescue mission of (white) foreigners trapped by the war. In the process of evacuating
the foreigners, the French troops took a markedly active part in the war against the rebels,
inflicting a serious military setback upon them.
Subsequently, the American airlift was extended to delivering Moroccan armed forces
into Shaba province, then army units from Senegal and Gabon, and transporting French
troops out of the region as they were replaced by African forces. 21
The fighting in Shaba this time was over in less than a month. At its conclusion, the
New York Times reported that "Discussions with officials in recent days, have produced no
single cohesive explanation" for American policy in Zaire. 22
The Times apparently was not placing too much weight upon the explanations already
put forth by the administration. There were several of these in addition to the rescue mis-
sion and the need to act decisively. The president, for example, had discovered something
which, it seems, he had not realized the year before; namely, that aiding Zaire was "in the
national security interests of the United States". 23 As is customary with such crucial decla-
rations, it was not felt necessary to explain what this actually meant in real-life terms.
Administration officials also professed "concern for the territorial integrity of all coun-
tries in Africa and elsewhere". 24 This marvelous platitude not only managed to do away
with the previous 80 years of American foreign policy, including the very recent interven-
tion into Angola, but was irrelevant in the context of a civil war ... more throwaways.
Several African governments which came to the aid of Mobutu during these two years
likewise expressed regard for the territorial integrity of African states, but what these states
found disquieting was that a victory for the Shaba rebels might encourage tribal dissidents
within their own vulnerable borders. 25
Another reason offered by the administration was the belief that Cuba and the Soviet
Union, and even Angola, were, after all, somehow responsible. (Mobutu added Algeria and
Libya.) But no more evidence to support these charges was forthcoming from any quarter
than had been the case the year before, and Carter was obliged to fall back on an accusa-
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Zaire 1975-1978
tion of guilt by omission. On 25 May 1978 he declared that Cuba "obviously did nothing"
to hold back the invasion. It then came to light that Castro had informed the US govern-
ment a week earlier that he had learned of the rebel plans to invade Shaba and had tried
unsuccessfully to stop it. Administration officials, clearly embarrassed, had no choice but to
reply that they had not believed him.
"It is not a half-lie," commented Fidel Castro to charges of Cuban involvement. "It is
an absolute, total, complete lie."
Two days later, the president rejoined: "Castro could have done much more had he
genuinely wanted to stop the invasion. He could have interceded with the Katangese them-
selves; he could certainly have imposed Cuban troops near the border." 26
In the final scene of this light comedy, Mobutu announced that he was holding Cuban
prisoners captured in the fighting — the long-awaited proof of Cuban involvement. But when
the American embassy in Zaire checked into the matter it found nothing to substantiate the
claim. "Let's call it charitably a mistake," said one official." 27
43. Jamaica 1976-1980
Kissinger's ultimatum
"I can give you my personal word," said Henry Kissinger to Jamaican Prime Minister
Mchael Manley, "that there is no attempt now underway involving covert action against
the Jamaican government." 1
Manley has written that at this moment "similar assurances given concerning Chile
flashed a little ominously across my mind." 2 (Kissinger had given his personal word
about American non-intervention to the Chilean Ambassador in Washington in 1971 at a
time when the US government, and Kissinger in particular, were actively plotting the
downfall of the Chilean government. When the ambassador mentioned press references to
covert American actions against his country, Kissinger responded: "Absolutely absurd
and without foundation.")
Michael Manley also knew first-hand that American non-intervention in the
affairs of Jamaica was not something to be taken for granted. During the 1972 elec-
tion campaign, the American Ambassador in Jamaica, Vincent de Roulet, had
promised Manley that the United States would not interfere in the campaign if Manley
did not make nationalization of the foreign-owned bauxite industry an election issue.
De Roulet feared that if Manley did so, he would oblige the opposition Jamaica
Labour Party to vie with Manley's party for popular support on the question.
According to de Roulet, Manley agreed and both sides kept their promise. 4
Secretary of State Kissinger had arrived in Jamaica in December 1975 to suggest
to Manley that he change his policies or else US-Jamaican relations "would be
reviewed". 5 Kissinger raised the subject of Jamaica's request for a $100 million trade
credit. "He said they were looking at it," wrote Manley later, "and let the comment
hang in the room for a moment. I had the feeling he was sending me a message. " 6
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KILLING HOPE
The Jamaican prime minister — a graduate of the London School of Economics and the
son of Norman Manley who had led Jamaica to independence from the British in 1962 —
had incurred Washington's displeasure since taking office in 1972 by behavior such as the
following:
• Expressing support for the MPLA regime in Angola which the United States was attempting to
topple at the very moment of the Kissinger-Manley meeting, an issue that was one of the
Secretary of State's obsessions and one which he raised during the talk.
• Establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union and maintaining close ties with
the Castro government, although "no closer," said Manley, "than ... with Mexico and
Venezuela ".
• Advocating a form of democratic socialism, though maintaining a decidedly mixed economy
which featured nothing more radical than could be found in many countries of Western Europe
in the areas of health, education, minimum wage, and social services. Manley's party, the
People's National Party — whose slogan was "Socialism is Love" — belonged to the Socialist
International, as have ruling parties in modem times in Austria, Great Britain, West Germany
and Sweden.
• Prevailing against the transnational aluminum companies, principally American, which operated
on the island because it is rich in bauxite, the raw material of aluminum. The Jamaican govern-
ment had imposed a production levy to obtain a significant — and what was regarded as long-
overdue — increase in the payments made to it by the companies, and had then persuaded other
bauxite-producing countries in the Third World to do the same. The government also intended
to buy out 51 percent of the foreign bauxite mining operations, and planned, along with
Venezuela and Mexico, to build an international aluminum processing complex outside the
multinational system. 8
Manley was pressured by both Washington and the Jamaican left. "Everyone wants me
to be either a capitalist or a communist," he said at one point. "Why can't they just let me
be? ... I've always been a democratic socialist and that's what I want in Jamaica." 9 He
viewed the multinational corporations in a similar vein, declaring that they "have grown
used to two types. One is the mendicant of the neo-colonial syndrome. The other is the rev-
olutionary who simply sends in the army to take over the operation. Here they were dealing
with neither. This was part of our search for the third path." 10
The Jamaican prime minister did not toe the line Kissinger had drawn. Five days after
the Secretary of State had departed, Manley informed him that "Jamaica had decided to
support the Cuban army presence in Angola because we were satisfied that they were there
because of the South African invasion ... I never heard another word about the hundred mil-
lion dollar trade credit. " 1 1
At the time of Kissinger's visit, certain de-stabilization operations had already gotten off
the ground, particularly in the area of propaganda, but it was primarily afterward, begin-
ning in the election year of 1976, that covert actions started to escalate. In January, a few
weeks after Kissinger had left, the US Embassy in Kingston was increased by seven. Manley
has noted: "Yet all aid to Jamaica suddenly slowed to a virtual hair. The pipelines suddenly
became clogged. Economic co-operation contracted as the embassy expanded." 12
Investigative reporters Ernest Volkman and John Cummings, writing in Penthouse
magazine in 1977 and citing "several senior American intelligence sources", stated that the
de-stabilization program drawn up by the CIA station chief in Jamaica {Norman
Descoteaux) contained the following elements:
a) "Covert shipments of arms and other equipment to opposition forces": Politics in
Jamaica had long been spiced with strong-arm tactics, but this now intensified in both fre-
264
Jamaica 1976-1980
quency and deadlines, and in the use of arson, bombing and assassination. "The CIA
quickly sought to organize and expand the violence: shipments of guns and sophisticated
communications equipment began to be smuggled into the island. In one shipment alone,
which was grabbed by Manley's security forces, there were 500 submachine guns." 13
Some of the CIA's traveling army of Cuban exiles arrived on the scene. One was Luis
Posada Carriles, a former officer in Cuban dictator Batista's secret police, now a CIA-
trained explosives expert who was implicated in the mid-air bombing of a Cuban Airlines
plane in 1976 which killed 73 people. Posada was reportedly spotted at the scene of more
than one bombing in Jamaica. 14
The well-publicized violence was a body-blow to Jamaica's vital tourist business. The
foreign tourists stayed away in droves, forcing many hotels to close their doors and consign-
ing thousands of workers to the ranks of the unemployed.
b) "Extensive labor unrest": A wave of strikes by transport, electrical and telephone
workers hit the island, reportedly provoked in part by graduates of the American Institute
for Free Labor Development, the CIA's principal labor organization in Latin America. 15
c) "Economic de-stabilization": In addition to the US credit squeeze and curtailment of
aid, and the damage to tourism, the fragile Jamaican economy suffered from the actions of
the aluminum companies. As an act of retaliation for the bauxite production levy — which
had become law in May 1974 — and with the tacit encouragement of Washington, the com-
panies systematically reduced production, which hurt Jamaica in several ways. 16 In August
1975, the American firm, Revere Copper and Brass Company, closed its aluminum refinery
after only four years of operation, saying that it was uneconomical. 17 In January 1976, the
company announced that it was suing the Jamaican government over the levy. 18 Whether
there was any underlying de- stabilization motive connected to these actions is not known.
A cargo of flour, brought to Jamaica on a German ship, the Heidelberg, was discovered
to have been contaminated with the poison parathion, an insecticide which had been
banned from Jamaica for many years. Much of the flour had already been sold and about
17 people died from it in December 1975 and January 1976. Later in the year, in October,
a large shipment of rice from Costa Rica, on board the ship City of Bocbum, arrived to
relieve a rice shortage Jamaicans had been suffering through for months. This too was
found to be contaminated by parathion and had to be destroyed. 19 The two incidents are
reminiscent of the contaminations of sugar carried out by the CIA against Cuba (q.v.).
d) "Covert financial support for the opposition": This was principally the conservative
Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). In June 1976, Jamaican security forces announced the uncover-
ing of a plot to overthrow the government involving leading members of the JLP; another
arrested party member was found to be making Molotov cocktails in a mineral-bottling
plant he owned. 20 No evidence of CIA involvement in the conspiracy has been revealed.
e) "Mobilization of the middle class into CIA-created anti-government organizations to
carry out well-publicized demonstrations": Groups with names such as "Silent Majority"
and "Christian Women Agitators for Truth" were formed, the latter attacking those who
criticized the United States and the CIA. In one instance, the group brought up the example
of the famed and revered American doctor, Tom Dooley, who had founded seven hospitals
for the poor in southeast Asia. The Christian Women could not have known then that Dr.
Dooley had been a witting, active CIA operative in Indochina. 21 There was also an attempt
by a newly formed "National Council of Women" to replay the pots — and — pans scenario
which had worked so well in Chile, but this fizzled out. 22 (This featured women, mostly of
the upper classes with their maids, banging on pots and pans in a street march to demon-
strate the government's inability to provide enough food for their families.)
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KILLING HOPE
f) "Infiltration of security services and armed forces to turn them against the govern-
ment" : "With liberal bribes, the CIA turned many security personnel into paid informants
for the agency." Several soldiers were part of a plot to assassinate Manley in July, one of at
least three such attempts which "the CIA was directly involved in"; another, in September,
employed Cuban exiles; the third turned to Jamaican gunmen to do the job. This last was in
December, a final act of desperation on election night; all three attempts failed, not even a
shot was fired, and Manley easily won re-election. 23
During the campaign, CIA officer James Holt was accused of contriving a plot to turn
the military against Manley's People's National Party. According to the accusation, a tape
of a PNP youth rally was spliced with a message, purporting to be from Fidel Castro, urging
young people to rise up in armed struggle against the police and the army. The tape was
supposed to fall into the hands of the military and cause dissension. 24
Press attacks against the government were carried out at a level of integrity only slight-
ly above that of Holt's alleged tape. This was particularly the case with the Daily Gleaner
whose campaign was very similar to that of El Mercurio in Chile before the fall of Allende,
and it is eminently reasonable to assume that it was similarly financed by the CIA. Both
newspapers had close links to the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) of Miami, the
Cleaner's Managing Director, Oliver Clarke, being elected to the association's executive in
1976. The IAPA, though not a formal CIA front, had received funding from the Agency and
had been a reliable and valuable press asset for it since the 1950s. 25
The Gleaner emphasized the omnipresent Cuban menace and how Manley was a pris-
oner of Castro and the KGB. One recurrent theme, echoed in the American press, was the
presence of Cuban troops in Jamaica, a bald lie and something that would be impossible to
conceal on the small island.
Propagandists arrived from the United States as well. Evangelists and faith healers
came down to set up their tents and preach against communism and the government to the
highly religious population. 26 a la the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade in British Guiana
during the CIA's campaign against the government of Cheddi Jagan (q.v.).
With Henry Kissinger removed from formal power, and with the less interventionist
Carter administration taking office in January 1977, American policy toward Jamaica was
tempered: the economic pipelines were unclogged to some extent and the CIA, without the
urgency of an upcoming election, diminished its activities.
It cannot be said, however, that Washington officialdom had learned to respect
Manley's wish to "just let me be". Pulitzer prize-winner Les Payne reported in Newsday in
February 1980 that "the Carter Administration remains determined to drive the country's
Socialist prime minister from office unless he moderates his pro-Cuban policies." In an ear-
lier article, Payne quoted a State Department source: "If within a 6-month testing period,
Manley shows some signs of moderating his position, then we will take a softer line. If not,
then we will continue to pursue a hard line." 7
There was no let-up in the Gleaner's diatribes against Manley and his government. The
newspaper reprinted numerous articles from all over the world which bore the standard
CIA themes and syntax and undocumented assertions that the Agency's press assets are paid
for. The Gleaner openly encouraged disaffection and mutiny in the security forces, and
overthrow of the government. The following, from a column by John Hearne in June 1980,
was not very unusual:
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Jamaica 1976-1980
In many other countries, somebody with a disciplined force of men behind him would have long
ago taken the Government away from them ... In most Third World countries, our Ministers,
Ministers of State, Party commanders, heads of statutory boards, among others, would now be
in forced exile or buried in common graves. 28
Throughout, the Gleaner and other anti-Manley newspapers in Jamaica bemoaned the
threat to freedom of the press posed by the government — on the premise, apparently, that
this is only what one can expect from a "communist" government — and continued to print
freely what in other countries would lead to arrest for sedition.
Manley was defeated for re-election in October 1980, due primarily to a continuing deteri-
oration in the standard of living of the masses of people. While recognizing the importance of
this factor, the former prime minister attributed his defeat also to "propaganda and finely cal-
culated violence", the latter having persisted throughout his second term, being particularly
heavy during file election year when 800 people lost their lives in political violence. Manley
wrote drat "Unless there is overwhelming and widely accepted evidence laying the blame for
violence at the door of one party, it tends to damage the government in power, since it is the
government that people look to for their personal security." 29 He added:
The Jamaican establishment had mastered the ways of de-stabilization. It knew how to use fact
and create fiction for maximum effect We do not know what was the part played by the OA in
the last year. By then it may not have mattered because the Cleaner and the ALP had clearly
reached postgraduate level. 30
44. Seychelles 1979-1981
Yet another area of great strategic importance
Mr. Michael Hoare, in 1981, was an elderly accountant leading a relatively sedate life
in Durban, South Africa. There was, however, another side to the man that was somewhat
different. In this other role he was "Mad Mike" Hoare, veteran mercenary. He had fought
for the CIA in various "trouble spots" of the world, including the Congo in the 1960s, and
had done the same for the government of South Africa. In 1981, at the age of 62, he led a
mercenary invasion of the Seychelles on behalf of both his old employers.
The Seychelles is a country made up of a number of small islands in the Indian Ocean,
about 800 miles off the coast of Kenya, with a population of some 62,000. The former
British Crown Colony is also the site of a US Air Force installation, officially described as a
satellite tracking station, and part of an area that the United States regards as being of great
strategic importance. (This should be seen in light of the fact that it would be an arduous
task to locate an area of the globe that Washington policy makers, at one time or another,
have not regarded as being of great strategic importance.)
After France -Albert Rend, a socialist, took power in a 1977 coup, he withdrew South
African landing rights, and the United States had to use all its formidable powers of eco-
nomic and political persuasion to retain its base in the country. Moreover, the lease on the
installation was to expire in 1990, and Washington, which worries about long-term
"national security" needs as well as current trouble spots, was apprehensive that it might
not be renewed. The United States was also worried about what it saw as the growing
friendship between the Seychelles and the Soviet Union, a concern seemingly as common in
267
KILLING HOPE
Washington as areas of great strategic importance.
Rene pursued a policy of non-alignment, a concept which did not preclude friendship
with either superpower as long as the terms were not unduly exploitative. He was also a
strong advocate of turning the Indian Ocean into a nuclear-free zone, without foreign mili-
tary bases, including, ideally, the one in his own country. The Seychelles president was par-
ticularly critical of American efforts to develop the British-owned Indian Ocean island of
Diego Garcia into a major air and naval base. 1
In 1979, a plot to invade the Seychelles and overthrow Rene was aborted when it was
discovered by his government before the mercenaries were able to leave Durban. An official
investigation into the matter by the Seychelles government concluded that the United States
and France had been directly involved with the plotters, that the American ambassador in
Kenya had been in contact with supporters of James Mancham, the man deposed by Rene,
and that the US Charge d'Affaires in the Seychelles was the link man in the conspiracy. 2
Several of the 120 Americans employed at the US base were expelled from the country. 3
Two years later, in November 1981, an invasion force of more than 40 men, pretend-
ing to be members of a rugby club, traveled from South Africa to Swaziland whence they
flew to the Seychelles aboard a regular commercial flight of the Royal Swazi Airlines. It
appears that the attack was not planned for the arrival but for some time later, after the sol-
diers of fortune had settled in. But some of the arms hidden in their luggage were discovered
upon arrival, and a battle broke out at the airport. The would-be invaders were forced to
hijack an Ait India plane back to Durban, although seven of their number were not so
lucky, being caught and detained in the Seychelles. 4 But Mad Mike Hoare had survived
another close call.
A few days after this debacle, the Sunday Tribune, published in Durban, where the
invasion plot was reportedly hatched, cited "reliable local and foreign sources" for the
assertion that the CIA had financed the raising and equipping of the invasion force.
"Despite a terse, one-sentence denial by the US government yesterday," the conservative
newspaper declared, "separate mercenary sources in South Africa are emphatic that funding
for the operation originated with the CIA." At the same time, the Tribune made clear the
complicity of its own government, an act for which several South African editors were duly
prosecuted by the authorities. 5
In 1982, Hoare and 44 other men went on trial in South Africa for airplane hijacking.
Five weeks earlier, all but five of them had been released by the government with a "good-i
of -boys" wave of the hand, but diplomatic protests from "Western nations, including the
United States, which pointed out that South Africa had formally associated itself with a
1978 anti-hijacking declaration, led to a reversal of the earlier decision.
Twenty-three of the men were South Africans and most of these, it turned out, were
reservists in elite units of the South African Defense Force. The head of the security police
said that the men had not been charged at first because they had been misled into thinking
they were on an official mission. Who had misled them, or why, was not reported. The pic-
ture which emerged from the trial was that the government, at a minimum, was well aware
of the plot and ready to be helpful. Hoare produced an invoice, purportedly from the mili-
tary, certifying the delivery to his home of weapons and ammunition before the flight to the
Seychelles. This apparently was not contested by the prosecution. The government also
requested that evidence from some defendants about their involvement in army activities in
1981 should not be heard because it could prejudice state security.
Hoare testified further that he had met someone from the CIA in Pretoria and informed
him of the coup plans. The United States was interested, the soldier of fortune said, but he
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Seychelles 1979-1981
described the CIA man's attitude as "extremely timid" and Hoare didn't suggest that the
United States had played an active role. Under cross-examination, however, he acknowl-
edged telling his troops that the CIA had approved the plan, 6
Motivation seems not to have been an issue raised at the trial. For the mercenaries, the
coup attempt was undertaken presumably for money. Of the two governments involved in
the matter, the United States had a much greater interest than South Africa in toppling the
Rene government, and had, apparently, tried it before. But it would need the help of South
Africa in that part of the world. As we have seen, the US intelligence establishment had
been collaborating with Pretoria's intelligence service since the 1960s and continued to do
so in the mid-1970s in regard to Angola. Circumstances indicate that this relationship con-
tinued, or was renewed, under the Reagan administration, which took office in 1981.
It appears that Mad Mike Hoare was made a scapegoat, for he was imprisoned — an
action he called a "double-cross", and which he attributed to the government wanting to
appear as an innocent party which defended international justice — and was not released
until 1985. Almost all his co-conspirators were released in November 1982, after serving
On 15 December 1981, the UN Security Council decided to send a commission to the
Seychelles to investigate the invasion. Although the United States voted for the motion, the
American ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, suggested that to send the commission was to
assume that the "Seychelles affair was not purely internal", and was "prejudging the situa-
tion". 8 Even by the standards of Kirkpatrick's renowned cold-war-impaired logic, this was
a remarkable statement, when it is considered that South Africans made up about half the
invasion force, with the others emanating from Great Britain, Rhodesia, the US, Germany,
Austria, and elsewhere. The number of Seychellois dissidents amongst their number came to
zero.
It seems that someone was still determined that the Rene government should not
remain in power. In December 1983, South Africa announced that it had arrested five men
for attempting to recruit mercenaries in yet another plot to invade the Seychelles. 9
What can be said about an invasion launched by a nation of 240 million people against
one of 110 thousand? And when the invader is, militarily and economically, the most pow-
erful in the world, and the target of its attack is an underdeveloped island of small villages
1,500 miles away, 133 square miles in size, whose main exports are cocoa, nutmeg and
bananas... ?
The United States government had a lot to say about it. The relation which its pro-
nouncements bore to the truth can be accurately gauged by the fact that three days after the
invasion the deputy White House press secretary for foreign affairs resigned, citing "damage
to his personal credibility". 1
but four months in prison. 7
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KILLING HOPE
One of the fundamental falsehoods concerning the invasion of Tuesday, 25 October
1983 was that the United States had been requested to intervene by an urgent plea on the
21st ftom the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), comprising six countries,
and joined in this instance by Barbados and Jamaica. These countries purportedly feared
some form of aggressive act from the new ultra-leftist regime in Grenada which had
deposed socialist leader Maurice Bishop. Bishop had been expelled from the ruling party on
12 October, placed under house arrest the next day, and murdered on the 19th.
Even if the fears were valid, it would constitute a principle heretofore unknown under
international law, namely that state A could ask state B to invade state C in the absence of
any aggressive act toward state A by state C. In Washington, State Department lawyers
worked overtime, finally settling on sections of an OECS mutual assistance pact, the
Charter of the OAS, and the United Nations Charter as legal justifications for the American
action. These documents, however, even with the most generous interpretation, provide for
nothing of the sort. Moreover, Article Six of the OECS pact requires all members to
approve decisions of the organization's Authority (the heads of government). Grenada, a
member, certainly did not approve. It was not even at the meeting, although US officials
were present to steer the direction of the discussions. 2
As matters later transpired, Tom Adams, the Prime Minister of Barbados, stated that
the United States had approached him on 15 October concerning a military intervention,
(The State Department declined to comment when asked about Adams' statement.) 3 Then,
"sources close to Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga" asserted that the plea by the
Caribbean nations "was triggered by an offer from the United States" — "Issue an appeal
and we'll respond" was the message conveyed by Washington. 4 Furthermore, on 26
October, the US ambassador to France, Evan Galbraith, stated over French television that
the Reagan administration had been planning the invasion for the previous two weeks; 5 that
is, not only well before the putative request from the Caribbean countries, but, if Galbraith
is to be taken literally, even before Bishop was overthrown or before this outcome could
have been known with any certainty, unless the CIA had been mixed up in the intra-party
feud.
Eventually it was disclosed that at some point before the invasion the government of
Eugenia Charles, the Prime Minister of Dominica, who headed the OECS, had been the
recipient of covert CIA money "for a secret support operation". 6
At the same time, the United States, as if to cover its bets, endorsed (if not in fact
devised) the claim by the OECS that the governor-general of Grenada, Paul Scoon, had also
sent an urgent appeal for military intervention to the organization. Apart from the highly
debatable question of whether Scoon — appointed by the British Queen to his largely cere-
monial, figurehead position, a vestige of the days of the Empire — had the constitutional
right to make such a momentous decision on behalf of an independent Grenada, there was
the mystery of how and when he had sent his request, or, indeed, whether he had sent it at
all.
On 31 October, the London press reported that British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey
Howe "was emphatic that there had been no request for intervention from Sir Paul Scoon".
Prime Minister Thatcher unequivocally confirmed this. Scoon, said Sir Geoffrey, "had been
seen by a British diplomat last Monday — the day before the invasion — and had not men-
tioned any such desire." 7 The same day (another report places it on Sunday) Scoon spoke
by phone to the Commonwealth Secretariat in London and to Buckingham Palace, but,
again, made no mention of intervention. 3
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Grenada 1979-1984
Interviewed later by the BBC, Scoon himself said that an invasion was the "last thing"
he wanted. 9
In the end, after the invasion was underway, Scoon signed a piece of paper aboard the
USS Guam that made the whole operation nice and legal. 10
Another justification advanced by the United States for its action, what President
Reagan termed "of overriding importance", was the need to evacuate many hundreds of
Americans from the island, mainly students at St George's Medical College who were sup-
posedly in a dangerous position because of the new regime and the chaos surrounding its
accession to power.
To refute this contention one does not have to dig for evidence; there is a surfeit lying
on the surface, viz. ...
Two members of the US Embassy in Barbados, Ken Kurze and Linda Flohr, reported
over the weekend before the invasion that "US students in Grenada were, for the most part,
unwilling to leave or be evacuated. They were too intent on their studies." 11 Another
report, in the London press, that three US diplomats visited Grenada at the same time and
appeared to have agreed on orderly departures for any Americans wishing to leave, may or
may not refer to the same thing. 12
The White House acknowledged that two days before the invasion, Grenada had
offered the United States "an opportunity to evacuate American citizens. But officials said
the Reagan administration came to distrust the offer." This was, they said, because the
Grenadian government had promised that the airport would be open on Monday for evacu-
ation flights, but it was instead closed. 13 Only later did the White House admit that four
charter flights had indeed left the airport on Monday. 1
Some of those who left on Monday were American medical students. The Chancellor
of the medical school, Dr. Charles Modica, who was visiting New York, declared on the
day of the invasion that he was in touch with amateur radio operators at the college. "I
think the President's information is very wrong," he said, "because some of the Americans
started to go out yesterday." 15
The Grenadian government issued instructions that the American students should be
treated with utmost consideration by the army; vehicles and escorts were provided for them
to shuttle between their two campuses. 16
The Cuban government released documents which showed that it had notified the
United States on 22 October that no American or other foreign citizen was in danger and
said it was ready "to cooperate in the solution of problems without violence or interven-
tion". It received no reply until after the invasion had begun. 17 On the 23rd the Cubans
sent a message to the Grenadian leaders suggesting that the area around the medical school
be demilitarized to avoid providing the United States with an excuse for invasion: "the pre-
text of evacuating its citizens". 18
Asked by journalists if there was any concrete information about threats to Americans in
Grenada, the White House spokesman responded: "Nothing that I know of 19
After subduing the minor resistance of Grenadian soldiers and Cuban construction
workers, the US forces discovered several other things to justify their coming: they found,
said Ronald Reagan, "a complete base of weapons and communication equipment which
makes it clear a Cuban occupation of the island had been planned". One warehouse "con-
tained weapons and ammunition stacked almost to the ceiling, enough to supply thousands
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KILLING HOPE
of terrorists". Grenada, the president declared, was "a Soviet-Cuban colony being readied
as a major military bastion to export terror and undermine democracy, but we got there
just in time." 20
Documents discovered by the American military allegedly showed that "the Cubans
were planning to put their own government in Grenada" (later, CIA Director William
Casey was to admit that the documents "were not a real find") and there was found what
"appeared to have been a terrorist training center". 21 Moreover, missile silos were being
built in Grenada ... there were 1,100 Cubans on the island, it was announced, almost all
professional soldiers; soon the number was 1,600 ... 22
The US/Grenada/Cuba scenario staged in Washington was comparable at the time to
the Soviet Union invading Great Britain and then announcing that it had prevented an
American takeover, and Marx-knows what else, because it had discovered 30,000 US ser-
vicemen there, over 100 American military bases, a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, and
"enough arms to supply millions of terrorists". The Soviet president could then have
declared that "We got there just in time."
Comparable, except that the Soviet discoveries would have been real. The American
claims turned out to be as phantom as the other components of the media package, or, at
best, highly questionable — a correspondent for The Guardian of London reported that in
the warehouse "that contained most of the weapons, there were only five mortars to be
seen, one recoilless rifle, one Soviet-made quadri-barrelled anti-aircraft gun, and two
Korean-vintage British Bren guns on display". 3 The New York Times reported, without
further detail, "significant stockpiles of Soviet arms but also a number of antiquated guns,
including rifles manufactured in the 1870s". 24 Years later it was revealed that a US intelli-
gence report of 30 October had concluded that "the caches of arms and weapons on
Grenada were for the army and the militia and were not sufficient or intended to be used in
overthrowing the governments in the neighboring islands." 25
More to the point, however, is the fact that the Grenadian government had been
threatened with de-stabilization for over four years by the United States. The leaders of the
country knew that they had to develop the country's defenses. They were people who had
read some recent history.
The Cuban government announced that there were 784 of their people in Grenada and
specified all their jobs: 636 were construction workers, mostly in their forties and fifties (an
observation made by several American and British journalists); the remainder, which includ-
ed 44 women, were doctors, dentists, nurses, public health workers, teachers, etc., and 43
military personnel; thereafter, the United States went by the Cuban figures. 26
The world was asked to believe that there was a major Cuban military presence with
imminent control of the country. Yet the Cubans in Grenada were unable even to save
Maurice Bishop and his government which Castro had strongly and warmly supported. The
Cuban government had expressed in no uncertain terms its distaste for the Military
Revolutionary Council (MRC) which had overthrown Bishop. Before the US invasion,
Castro had blamed Bishop's death on "grave errors" by extremists, 27 and later referred to
them as the "Pol Pot Group". 28 He had turned down a request from the MRC for more
troops when the American action seemed imminent. The MRC was told that its request was
"impossible and unthinkable" after what had happened. 25
The Russians, on the other hand, had indicated their support for the MRC and its
coup, although the Soviet interest in Grenada was generally minimal. Cuba was enough of a
Caribbean burden and potential spark-point for Moscow. The Soviet Union condemned the
American invasion, comparing it to "a dating cavalry attack of armed to the teeth white
272
Grenada 1979-1984
settlers on a village of Redskins". But this was de rigueur cold-war fare. The lack of real
concern on the part of Soviet leaders about the invasion, and the fate of Grenada, was made
evident six months later when they announced that the USSR would not take part in the
Olympics in Los Angeles. Grenada was not even mentioned amongst their reasons although
the circumstances truly cried out for it — four years earlier, the United States had cited the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as its sole reason for boycotting the Moscow Olympics.
Finally, there was the question of why Cuba or the Soviet Union would have needed
Granada as a springboard for their dastardly deeds in Latin America when there was
already Cuba itself, militarily and politically more secure and stable than Grenada.
After the invasion, after the overthrow of the Grenadian government, after the US
forces had killed or wounded hundreds of people ... officials of the Reagan administration,
reported the New York Times, "acknowledge that in their effort to rally public support for
the invasion of Grenada, they may have damaged the Government's credibility by making
sweeping charges about Soviet and Cuban influence on the island without so far providing
detailed evidence." The officials simply asked that the public "reserve judgement until all
the information is in". 31
The New Jewel Movement (NJM) under Maurice Bishop had taken power in March
1979 by ousting, to popular acclaim, Eric Gairy, an erratic personality given increasingly to
thuggery to maintain his rule. That accomplished, Bishop, a London-educated lawyer, had
to deal with the exceedingly more formidable task which faces a socialist revolutionary in
power: spurring an underdeveloped country to lift itself up by its own bootstraps when it
doesn't have any boots.
They had to start with the basics: jobs, new schools, teacher training, adult literacy,
social services, clean water ... the NJM left private business undisturbed, but instituted free
health care, free milk for young children, agricultural co-operatives, and the like.
Nicholas Brathwaite, the Chairman of the US-approved Interim Government following
the invasion, and his colleagues, repotted The Guardian, "readily praise the [NJM] for giv-
ing Grenadians new awareness, self-confidence and national pride and admit it is a hard act
to follow." 32
The World Bank gave the Grenadian government good grades also. In 1980 the Bank
praised the NJM's sound fiscal management and two years later wrote that "Government
objectives are centered on the critical development issues and touch on the country's most
promising development areas." 33
The New Jewel Movement did not hold elections. Bishop explained this decision on
one occasion in the following way:
There are those (some of them our friends) who believe that you cannot have a democracy unless
there is a situation where every five years, and for five seconds in those five years, a people are
allowed to put an "X" next to some candidate's name, and for those five seconds in those five years
they become democrats, and for the remainder of the time, four years and 364 days, they return to
being non-people without the right to say anything to their government, without any right to he
involved in running the country. 34
In lieu of the traditional system, the NJM claimed, democracy in Grenada was mani-
fested through numerous mass organizations and decentralized structures which received
and seriously considered input from large numbers of citizens. However well this form of
democracy may have worked, or would have if not interrupted, it inevitably produced
resentment as well. People were expected to attend meeting after meeting and were subject
273
KILLING HOPE
to various forms of pressure to conform to the exigencies of the revolution.
Before long, the leaders of nearby Caribbean states, particularly Tom Adams of
Barbados and Eugenia Charles of Dominica, who were prime supporters of the invasion,
evidenced hostility towards the Grenadian government. Bishop believed that this derived
from fear of their own people's enthusiasm for Grenada's example, an enthusiasm, be said,
which was demonstrated at every public appearance by the Grenadian leaders in the
region. 35 Charles was regarded by Reagan administration people as passionately pro-
American, a "Caribbean Jeane Kirkpatrick," who "made British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher seem like a kitten". 36
The United States adopted its adversarial position almost immediately. Washington
recognized instinctively that the new Grenadian leaders would not fall easily into line in
regard to the American obsession with quarantining Cuba. Indeed, Grenada itself might
turn out to be that long-dreaded beast — "another Cuba". Less than a month after Bishop
assumed power, the American ambassador delivered a note to him which read in part:
Although my government recognizes your concern over allegations of a possible counter-coup, it
also believes that it would not be in Grenada's best interests to seek assistance from a country
such as Cuba to forestall such an attack. We would view with displeasure any tendency on the
part of Grenada to develop closer ties with Cuba. 37
The counter-coup the ambassador was referring to was Bishop's fear that Eric Gairy, in
exile in the United States, would put together a mercenary army to invade the island. The
NJM feared a CIA destabihzation operation even more but, in either case, who but "a
country such as Cuba" could they turn to for help?
Before the year 1979 was out, Grenada had discovered hidden transmitters in its UN
Mission, 38 and representatives of the US government were visiting travel agents in the
United States, spreading travel-scare rumours to discourage tourism to the island's sunny
beaches, a most important source of foreign exchange. 39
Over the next four years, Washington tried to harass Grenada in some of the other
ways in which it was practiced, more so under Ronald Reagan beginning in 1981 than
under President Carter. The United States aggressively lobbied the International Monetary
Fund and several other international lending organizations in an attempt to block loans to
Grenada although, surprisingly, not with marked success. The IMF, for example, approved
a loan to Grenada "despite vigorous opposition from the Reagan Administration", opposi-
tion based ostensibly on "economic grounds". 40
In the summer of 1981, the CIA developed plans "to cause economic difficulties for
Grenada in hopes of undermining the political control of Prime Mnister Maurice Bishop." The
operation reportedly was scrapped because of objections by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
One committee member, however, remarked that "ff they were going to do something ... I'm
not sure they would tell us. I think they would wait until it was all over. " 41
The main thrust of the American campaign against Grenada was in the form of propa-
ganda, the theme of which was that Grenada was a fully paid-up member of the Soviet-i
Cuban-Nicaraguan Terrorist Network which held a dagger at America's throat. Associating
Grenada truly could serve to further discourage tourism as well as justify an invasion.
The propagation of this general theme was punctuated by specific accusations which
were simply fraudulent. One early hoax was that a Soviet submarine base was being con-
structed on the south coast of the island. This report was given wide currency until 1983
when a correspondent for the Washington Post visited the supposed site and pointed out
that no submarine base could possibly be built in an area where the sea was so shallow. 42
274
Grenada 1979-1984
In February 1983, an official of the US Defense Department announced, apparently with a
straight face, that the Soviet Union had shipped to Grenada assault helicopters, hydrofoil torpe-
do boats, and supersonic MIG fighters which gave Grenada an air force of 200 (sic) modern
planes. 43 The whereabouts of this mighty armada have remained a mystery ever since.
The charge which received the greatest media play was the canard that the new airport
being built in Grenada was intended as a military facility for the Russians and Cubans.
Grenada insisted that it was only to encourage tourism, its one growth industry. In March
1983, President Reagan told an American television audience that the airfield would have a
10,000-foot runway, but that
Grenada doesn't even have an air force. Who is it intended for? ... The rapid build-up of Grenada's
military potential is unrelated to any conceivable threat... The Soviet-Cuban militarization of Grenada
... can only be seen as a power projection into the region.
The president displayed aerial photos of the construction site — there were regular
American spy flights over the island — as if to imply something hidden and furtive in the
operation when, in fact, the site was very much open to the public.
There is a plethora of evidence that puts Reagan's analysis into question: At least five
other Caribbean islands, including Barbados, had similar-sized or larger airfields yet did not
possess air forces. 45 The building of the airfield was encouraged by the World Bank, which
also discussed with Grenada the erection of new tourist hotels. 46 The excavation work was
being done by the Layne Dredging Co. of Florida and the communications system installed
by Plessey, a British multinational, the Cubans donating labor and machinery. 47 Plessey
rejected the US claim: "The airport ... was being built to purely civilian specifications," it
said, and listed a number of technical characteristics of a military airport/base which the
new airport would not have. 4S
Further, the European Common Market had contributed money toward the construc-
tion — "In our view the airport is for tourism," said a spokesman. "We stand by our com-
mitment." 49 The airport was being funded by about a dozen nations as well, including
Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. The United States had turned down a request for assis-
tance, and instead had exerted pressure to deter international financing. 50
After the invasion, the airport was completed, by the United States. "The decision has
been taken to complete it by the military, for the military," said one of the sub-contractors.
"Equipment for that purpose is already being moved on to the site." 51 (As far as is known,
the United States has not yet used the airport for military purposes.)
There were also several instances of the Grenadian opposition press featuring entirely
unfounded stories of the type mentioned above, as well as fostering harmful local economic
rumors. In one case in 1979 a Grenadian newspaper reprinted a story from, of all places,
the West German magazine Bunte, which reported that large military and missile bases
were being built in Grenada, something which would be impossible to hide on the tiny
island, but it was a lie made of whole cloth. 52 The reprinting from abroad tactic, as we
have seen, is one often employed by the CIA, and to the NjM leaders it was a clear signal
that the Agency had arrived in town. It led eventually to the government closing down inde-
pendent newspapers. The country, they felt, was simply too vulnerable, even more so than
Chile and Jamaica, where the same CIA tactic had been employed.
It was the same with political prisoners, most of them former members of Gairy's
secret police. 53 The government was afraid to release some of them lest they wind up in a
Gairy and/or CIA mercenary force or engage in actions like the June 1980 bombing at an
outdoor rally which was apparently designed to remove the entire NJM leadership with one
blow, but instead took the lives of three young women.
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KILLING HOPE
As to the invasion itself ... 2,000 American marines and paratroopers the first day, by-
week's end 7,000 on the island, even more waiting offshore ... planes bombing everywhere,
destroying all manner of structures, including a mental hospital, machine-gunning positions
of the People's Revolutionary Army ... "The People's Revolutionary Army — are they on our
side or theirs?" asks the young Marine 54 ... the home of the Cuban ambassador damaged
and looted by American soldiers; on one wall is written "AA", symbol of the 82nd
Airborne Division; beside it the message: "Eat shit, commie faggot" 55 ... captured Cubans
used as hostages, ordered to march in front of American jeeps as they advanced on Cuban
positions, a violation of the Geneva Convention 56 „. promises of all kinds were made to
Cuban prisoners, said Castro, to get them to go to the United States; none accepted 57 ... "I
want to fuck communism out of this little island," says a marine, "and fuck it right back to
Moscow." 58 ... "Britain announced that it was sending a destroyer to assist in the rescue,"
said the American radio station to the Grenadian people the first morning; not a half-truth,
but a complete lie ... Grenadians who heard the broadcasts said they were a powerful
encouragement to accept the occupation- 59 ... the fighting was over in a week, 135
Americans killed or wounded, 84 Cubans, 400 Grenadians, more or less ...
The land conquered, there remained the people's hearts and minds. At the outset, the
invasion radio station engaged in fiery attacks against Bishop — he had brought Grenada
into captivity said the announcer. 60 But then the Americans evidently learned that this was
a tactical error, that Bishop was still enormously popular, because for some time afterward,
criticism of his regime was usually made more indirectly and without naming him.
Before long the Psychological Operations Battalion of the US Army was cruising over
the island in a helicopter offering the Grenadians, via a loudspeaker, a large serving of anti-
Cuban fare: the Cubans had supported those who had killed Bishop, Grenada had been a
pawn of Cuba, Castro/communism were still a threat, and so forth. Posters were put up
showing alleged captured Cuban weapons with the slogan, "Are these the tools that build
airports?" Other posters linked the MRC leaders to Moscow. 61
In March 1984, a visiting London journalist could report:
The island remains visibly under American occupation. Jeeps patrol constantly. Helicopters fly
over the beaches. Armed military police watch the villagers and frequent the cafes. OA men
supervise the security at the courthouse. The island's only newspaper pours out weekly vitriol
about the years of the revolutionary government, "this gruesome period in our history". The
pressures, in a small community, are heavy. 62
And in June we learned that schools called after "heroes of the revolution" had been
given back their old names, though not without pupil protests. And the US Information
Service was showing school children a film entitled "Grenada: Return to Freedom". 63
The invasion was almost universally condemned in Latin America, only the military
dictatorships of Chile, Guatemala and Uruguay expressing support. The United Nations
voted its disapproval overwhelmingly. To this President Reagan responded: "One hundred
nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come before them
where we're involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at all." 64
One of the evils of Communist states, we were always told, is that they were oblivious
to world opinion.
There was, however, the supreme irony that most of the people of Grenada welcomed
the invasion. In addition to the conservative minority who knew that the "socialist" experi-
ment would now be decisively put to rest, there were the greater number who were over-
276
Grenada 1979-1984
joyed to see the murderers of their beloved Maurice Bishop receive the punishment due
them. Despite ail the hostility and lies directed at Bishop by Washington for over four years,
it did not seem to occur to the islanders that the invasion had nothing to do with avenging
his death and that the United States had merely used the event as a convenient pretext for
an action it had desired to carry out for a long time.
If the average Grenadian seems thus rather ingenuous, with a short political memory,
we must consider also that the average American lustily cheered the invasion, believed
everything which crossed the lips of Ronald Reagan (as if this were the first US intervention
in history), and to this day would be hard pressed to recite a single falsehood associated
with the entire affair. The president himself later appeared to have completely repressed the
incident. In March 1986, when asked about the possibility of an American invasion of
Nicaragua, he replied:
You're looking at an individual that is the last one in the world that would ever want to put
American troops into Latin America, because the memory of the great Colossus in the north is so
widespread in Latin America We'd lose all our friends if we did anything of that kind. 65
On the fourth day of the invasion Reagan made a speech which succeeded in giving jin-
goism a bad name. The president managed to link the invasion of Grenada with the shoot-
ing down of a Korean airliner by the Soviet Union, the killing of US soldiers in Lebanon,
and the taking of American hostages in Iran. Clearly, the invasion symbolized an end to this
string of humiliations for the United States. Even Vietnam was being avenged. To commem-
orate the American Renaissance, some 7,000 US servicemen were designated heroes of the
republic and decorated with medals. (Many had done no more than sit on ships near the
island.) America had regained its manhood, by stepping on a flea.
Postscript:
At the end of 1984, former Premier Herbert Blaize was elected prime minister, his
party capturing 14 of the 15 parliamentary seats. Blaize, who in the wake of the invasion
had proclaimed to the United States; "We say thank you from the bottom of our hearts," 66
had been favored by the Reagan administration, 67 The candidate who won the sole opposi-
tion seat announced that he would not occupy it because of what he called "vote rigging
and interference in the election by outside forces." 68
One year later, the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs reported on
Grenada as parr of its annual survey of human rights abuses;
Reliable accounts are circulating of prisoners being beaten, denied medical attention and con-
fined for long periods without being able to see lawyers. The country's new US-trained police
force has acquired a reputation for brutality, arbitrary arrest and abuse of authority.
The report added that an offending all-music radio station had been closed and that
US-trained counter-insurgency forces were eroding civil rights. 69
By the late 1980s, the government began confiscating many books arriving from abroad,
including Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana and Nelson Mandela Speaks. In April 1989, it
issued a list of more than 80 books which were prohibited from being imported. 70
Four months later, Prime Minister Blaize suspended Parliament to forestall a threat-
ened no-confidence vote resulting from what his critics called "an increasingly authoritarian
style". 71
277
46. Morocco 1983
A video nasty
The government of Morocco, in January 1983, had the sad duty to announce the
"grievous death" in a car accident of General Ahmed Dlimi, a confidant of King Hassan for
more than 20 years and commander of the Moroccan Army's southern forces.
When the he Monde correspondent had the temerity to suggest that Dlimi's death was
perhaps not an accident, he was summarily expelled from the country. 1
Then, in March, Ahmed Rami, a Moroccan political scientist living in exile in Sweden,
stated unequivocally that Dlimi had been murdered by Hassan and his security men and
that the CIA was deeply implicated. 2
Ahmed Rami had been a lieutenant in the Moroccan Army and a leader of Le
Mouvement des Officers Litres, the underground movement of army officers dedicated to
overthtowing the king and the monarchy as well as the king's personal corruption and his
"crimes against human rights". Rami was living abroad under sentence of death in
Morocco for his part in a failed attempt to shoot down a plane carrying Hassan in 1972.
The dissident officers supported the establishment of a "democratic Islamic Arab
Republic of Morocco" and a negotiated settlement in the country's ruinous war with the
Polisario guerrillas in the Western Sahara, a war in which US military aid and personnel
had reportedly enabled Morocco to maintain a deadlock. 3
Ahmed Dlimi, while serving as the king's right-hand man, had been secretly associated
with Officiers Litres. When he went abroad he would meet with Rami and during 1982 the
two men were discussing plans for a coup attempt in July of the following year.
"Unknown to us, however," said Rami, "the CIA was investigating him [Dlimi]. When the
CIA handed over a dossier to King Hassan in January [1983] it contained video film of General
Dlimi and I meeting in Stockholm last December. That was enough for Dlimi to be eliminated. " 4
Morocco, said the New York Times, had become the United States' "closest and most
useful ally in the Arab world. " 5 Hassan had clearly tied his fortunes to the Reagan adminis-
tration. In 1981 alone, he was visited by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and
Secretary of State Alexander Haig, as well as the Deputy Director of the CIA, the chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a host of other high-level Washington offi-
cials. The Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security arrived with a team of 23
military advisers and experts; more than 100 Americans were reported to be working with
the Moroccan armed forces. 6
In the years previous, Hassan had co-operated extensively with US policies in Africa. In
both 1977 and 1978 he sent Moroccan troops to Zaire in support of the American actions
there, and since the mid-1970s he had been aiding the UNITA forces in Angola along with
the United States and South Africa in their continuing effort to overthrow the MPLA gov-
ernment. At the same time, King Hassan had allowed the CIA to build up its station in
Morocco to where it was probably one of the Agency's key posts in Africa, 7
In these and other important ways, Hassan had earned the gratitude and protection of
the United States. Thus it was that the CIA exposed General Dlimi's double life to the king,
Dlimi, moreover, had reportedly advocated that Morocco receive aid from France, the for-
mer colonial power, rather than from the United States. The CIA saw this as a threat to the
American position in the country and insisted that Hassan get rid of his confidants who
favored closer relations with France. 8
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Morocco 1983
At eleven o'clock on the night of 23 January 1983, says Ahmed Rami, Dlimi was called
to the palace in Matrakesh. There, ten security men escorted him to an underground inter-
rogation room. At one a.m., "two American officers" arrived with the king and went into
the interrogation room for several hours. Dlimi was tortured, and, at five a.m., he was shot.
His body was later placed in his car which was exploded in a suburb of the city. No one,
not even his family, was allowed to see the body. 9
47. Suriname 1982-1984
Once again, the Cuban bogeyman
It was unusual, to be sure, that the Director of the CIA would inform Congress in
advance of an Agency plan to overthrow a foreign government. President Reagan, said
William Casey to the House and Senate intelligence committees in December 1982, had
authorized the CIA to try to topple Suriname ruler Col. Desi Bouterse. The Agency's plan
reportedly called for the formation of an exile paramilitary force to invade Suriname
because Bouterse, who had taken power in a 1980 military coup, was leading the small
South American country into the proverbial and dreaded "Cuban orbit". 1
The congressional committee members, "while not opposed in principle to the idea of
attempting to overthrow a foreign government" 2 did object to the proposal on the grounds
that there was no evidence that Cuba was "manipulating the government in Suriname, or
gaining a military foothold in the country". 3
Inasmuch as rational argument of this sort had never made too deep an impression
upon the mind of Ronald Reagan or excessively inhibited the CIA, there was no reason to
believe that this was the end of the story.
Or even the beginning. Two months earlier, in October, the Bouterse regime had
threatened to expel two US diplomats it accused of encouraging the country's conservative
trade unions and of playing a key role in organizing anti-government demonstrations and
strikes aimed at bringing the government down. 4 Then, on 8 December, Suriname
announced that a coup attempt had been made against the government. A number of
alleged plotters were arrested, some of them winding up "shot while trying to escape", evi-
dently a euphemism for their execution. Bouterse claimed that the arrested men had been
conspiring with the CIA. 5 One of those who lost his life was conservative union leader Cyril
Daal, who had helped organize anti-government demonstrations earlier in the year and who
was said to have connections with the CIA through his Moederbond Union's association
with the CIA's ubiquitous American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD). 6
The following month, the two US diplomats were actually asked to leave because of
their "destabilizing activities". 7
In July 1983 the plot thickened. The New York Times reported that an invasion of
Suriname scheduled for the first of the month by Florida-based mercenaries was called off
after the plans for it were discovered by the internal security agency of the Netherlands, the
former colonial power in Suriname when it was known as Dutch Guiana. The invasion
force reportedly would have been composed of some 300 men — half of them US and South
American nationals, the others Surinamese — who were to be flown from Florida to the
Suriname capital of Paramaribo on the northern tip of South America. The invaders were
then to be augmented by Surinamese exiles from the Netherlands, It was this latter group
which the Dutch had infiltrated to learn of the plans. 8
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KILLING HOPE
As had become customary concerning American targets in Latin America, stories about
the presence of large numbers of Cuban soldiers in Suriname found their way into interna-
tional circulation. Like their counterparts in Jamaica and Grenada, these warriors remained
mythical figures.
In spring 1983, Suriname entered into agreements with the neighboring right-wing govern-
ment of Brazil which provided for economic and military aid and military training. By the rea-
soning of the Reagan administration, Suriname should then have been in "the Brazilian orbit".
The simple truth was that Suriname, like other developing nations, was willing to accept help
im wherever it could get it. And in fact, Brazil, which openly admitted that its purpose was
"saving Suriname from Cuba", had made the move at Washington's prodding. 9
As matters turned out, in October Bouterse expelled almost all Cuban advisers and
embassy personnel, including the ambassador, and suspended all agreements with Havana.
The expulsion was announced on the day the United States invaded Grenada and was influ-
enced by Bouterse's belief that Cuba had played a part in the overthrow of Maurice Bishop
and that he might suffer a similar fate, if not a similar invasion. 10 This belief about Cuba,
as we have seen, bore no relation to the truth, and may have been encouraged by the United
States. Newsweek magazine later reported that "U.S. diplomats in the capital of Paramaribo
made sure to keep Bouterse current on evidence that Cuba had aided the Grenadian coup,
and the rest was left to his well-prepped paranoia." 11
Desi Bouterse, by all accounts, left much to be desired as a leader and as a person.
Long before the events of October, Cuba and Grenada were reported to be privately "irri-
tated, even angry, at the harm done to the Left's image in the region by what they see as
immature revolutionaries leading a premature revolution." 12 Although Bouterse had
learned to parrot socialist and anti-imperialist caliche's, his principles appeared to lie else-
where. In the words of one diplomat in Suriname, "Bouterse is a chameleon. The first thing
for him is his own personal survival. The second thing is his survival as the man-in-
charge." 13 Bouterse was accused at times of claiming plots against him as a pretext to get
rid of some of those opposed to his rule. (Several other coup attempts were alleged in addi-
tion to the one of December 1982 mentioned above.)
During the period December 1983 to January 1984, Suriname was shaken by thousands
of striking workers protesting against tax increases and steep price rises, and calling for the dis-
missal of Prime Minister Errol Alibux; serious acts of sabotage to power and water supplies
were carried out as well. Bouterse gave in, removing Alibux and canceling the price rises, but he
did not accede to the demand that the military hand power back to civilians. 14 Although the
scenario was reminiscent of CIA activities in British Guiana, Jamaica, and elsewhere, as well as
what the Suriname government had accused the United States of in October 1982, there is no
report of the Agency's hand in the disturbances of this period. However, in 1985 it was
revealed that the National Endowment for Democracy, which is financed by Congress to sup-
port foreign organizations sympathetic to US foreign policy objectives, had been funding orga-
nizations in Suriname during the 1983-85 period. 1
The great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than
consciously and purposely evil ... therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds,
Ronald Reagan meets his match
280
Libya 1981-1989
they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little
things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big.
Adolf Hitler 1
"Our evidence is direct, it is precise, it is irrefutable," announced the President of the
United States. He was explaining that the American bombing attack upon Libya of 14 April
1986 was in retaliation for the Libyan bombing nine days earlier of a West Berlin nightclub
frequented by American servicemen which had killed two soldiers and one civilian and
injured many others. 2
In actuality, the evidence of Libyan culpability in the bombing was never directly or
precisely presented to the world, but little notice was taken of that. For over a decade the
American public had been told that Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi was behind one
terrorist act after another in every part of the world. A few days before the American
attack, President Reagan had referred to him as the "mad dog of the Middle East". This
was just one more example. It all fit.
The bombs dropped on Libya took the lives of a reported 40 to 100 people, all civil-
ians but one, and wounded another hundred or so. The French Embassy, located in a resi-
dential district, was destroyed. The dead included Qaddafi's young adopted daughter and a
teenage girl visiting from London; all of Qaddafi's other seven children as well as his wife
were hospitalized, suffering from shock and various injuries. 3
It was not claimed by the United States that any of the people killed or wounded had
any connection to the Berlin bombing. Like the mid-east terrorists who threw hand grenades
at an El Al ticket counter to kill Israelis simply because they were Israelis, and those who
planted a bomb on PanAm flight 103 in order to kill Americans simply because they were
Americans, the bombing of Libya was an attempt to kill Libyans simply because they were
Libyans. After the air attack, White House spokesman Larry Speakes announced that "It is
our hope this action will preempt and discourage Libyan attacks against innocent civilians
in the future." 4
The Libyan the United States most wanted to kill of course was Qaddafi. The bombing
had been an assassination attempt. Said a "well-informed Air Force intelligence officer" cited
by the New York Times, "There's no question they were looking for Qaddafi. It was briefed
that way. They were going to Mil him. " 5 Which is what you have to do with a mad dog.
Subsequently, two of Qaddafi's children filed suit in the United States to stop President
Reagan from launching more "assassination attempts" on their family. The suit, which was
rejected in court, alleged that Reagan and other top officials, in ordering the raids, had vio-
lated an executive order that bars attempted assassinations of foreign government leaders. 6
Another suit filed in Washington was in behalf of 65 people killed or injured by the bomb-
ing. 7 Meanwhile, the US Navy was awarding 158 medals to the pilots who dropped 500-
pound and 2,000-pound bombs in the dark of night upon sleeping people. 8
The notion of targeting Qaddafi's family originated with the CIA, which claimed that
in Bedouin culture Qaddafi would be diminished as a leader if he could not protect his
home: "If you really get at Qaddafi's house — and by extension his family — you've destroyed
an important connection for the people in terms of loyalty." 9
To make sure the Libyan people got the message, the Voice of America repeatedly told
them, following the bombing, things like "Colonel Qaddafi is your tragic burden" and that
as long you obey his orders you must "accept the consequences". 10
The president's claim of irrefutable evidence was based on alleged interceptions of commu-
nications between the Libyan capital of Tripoli and the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin. Reagan
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KILLING HOPE
declared that on 25 March, Libya had sent orders to the embassy "to conduct a terrorist attack
against Americans, to cause maximum and indiscriminate casualties"; then the embassy alerted
Tripoli on 4 April that the attack would be carried out the next day, that "Tripoli will be
happy when you see the headlines tomorrow", and that after the bombing the embassy report-
ed that the action had been successful and could not be traced to it."
These ate, at best, interpretations and paraphrases. The complete, unedited, unexpur-i
gated, literal texts of the relevant communications were not made public. They were inter-
cepted by the National Security Agency and decoded with the help of the German BND
(Federal Intelligence Service) which had broken the Libyan code years before. After the
decoding was completed, reported Der Spiegel, Germany's leading newsmagazine, it was
still not clear what the wires actually said, there being different versions. Moreover, the
NSA and BND came to different conclusions about the meaning of the messages, "but these
disagreements were quickly pushed aside for political reasons". German security officials,
who insisted that Libya should not be the only focus of investigation and who cautioned
against a "premature accusation", also looked into rival groups of disco competitors and
drug dealers. In January 1987, a senior official in Bonn told investigative reporter Seymour
Hersh that the German government continued to be "very critical and skeptical" of the
American position linking Libya to the bombing; and at the end of the following year,
Germany announced that the investigation was being ended, 12
"Some White House officials had immediate doubts that the case against Libya was
clear-cut," Hersh reported. "What is more, the discotheque was known as a hangout for
black soldiers, and the Libyans had never been known to target blacks or other
minorities." 13
As in many other instances that we have seen, however, official Washington's official
position, repeated often enough, became official truth. Three years after the incident, Time
magazine could state matter-of-fact that "Libyan-backed terrorists bombed a disco in
West Berlin", thereby provoking the American "retaliatory" bombing. 14
Much of Washington's secret planning for the Libyan operation took place at the same
time as the secret talks and arms dealing with Iran. Thus, the Reagan administration was
pursuing the elimination of one Middle East source of terrorism while it was arming anoth-
er. Moreover, the two missions involved some of the same national security people, notably
John Poindexter and Oliver North.
Although the Carter administration did not carry out any overt military attacks upon
Libya, it was possibly involved in a very serious covert action. On 27 June 1980, an Italian
passenger plane was destroyed by a missile over the Mediterranean, taking 81 lives. At the
same time, a Libyan plane which may have been carrying Qaddafi was flying in the vicinity.
Italian air controllers listed it as a "VIP 56" flight, denoting that top officials were aboard.
In 1988, Italian state television reported that the plane had been mistakenly shot down by a
missile belonging to a NATO country, possibly Italy. A year later, an Italian defense min-
istry report revealed that it was probably a Sidewinder air-to-air missile that was used, a
weapon employed by NATO. The Italian press began speculating that a plan to assassinate
the Libyan leader had gone awry, and instead the Italian plane had been shot down by a
NATO power. (At the time of the disaster, Qaddafi had hinted that the United States was
responsible.) The US and France — Libya's chief foes — issued denials, as well as NATO
itself, but the Italian military was taking great pains to conceal information about the case.
Nevertheless, an air force officer admitted to destroying the radar tape for that evening, and
a civilian investigation suggested that many air force personnel were persuaded to lie or
"forget" about the incident. 5
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Ronald Reagan and his ultra-ideological comrades took office in January 1981 com-
mitted to a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One of the pivotal ways in
which they so artfully reached this end was through huge increases in the militaty budget;
i.e., welfare for the rich, for defense industry friends and business associates, past, present,
and future. But in ordet for the military-industrial-intelligence complex to sell this to the
American public and Congress, there had to be a fresh supply of wars, armed conflict,
insurgencies, counter-insurgencies ... or rumors and "threats" of same ... and enemies, ideal-
ly of the monster type, to be defended against.
Qaddafi was a designer-monster: a quirky, unpredictable, super-uppity Third World
leader, sitting on the world's ninth largest oil reserve; a man with deep-seated pan-Islamic, pan-
Arabic, anti-imperialist, and anti-Zionist convictions; an artless braggart mouthing revolution-
ary rhetoric so juvenile he could serve equally well as bogeyman or buffoon; a man carrying out
or supporting enough teal terrorist acts so that any exaggeration would be believed.
There were elements of a bitter personal feud between the two men. Ronald Reagan — a
man who played with ait strikes as if he were directing movie scenes — had chosen to take
on a man who, like himself, was a prisoner of ideology and had left his mark on the world
media with a trail of dogmatic observations and actions, as well as plain stupid remarks,
(All of the great prophets of modern times, Qaddafi said, have come from the desert and
were uneducated: "Mohammed, Jesus and myself.") 16 The Libyan leader, however, did
have a social conscience, not a quality known to be part of Ronald Reagan's DNA. ("You
don't see poverty ot hunger here. Basic needs are met to a greater degree than in any other
Arab country," reported Newsweek in 1981 about Libya. 17 )
Qaddafi's principal crime in Reagan's eyes was not that he supported terrorist groups,
but that he supported the wrong terrorist groups; i.e., Qaddafi was not supporting the same
terrorists that Washington was, such as the Nicaraguan Contras, UNITA in Angola, Cuban
exiles in Miami, the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala, and the US military in
Grenada. The one band of terrorists the two men supported in common was the
Moujahedeen in Afghanistan.
Some of the belligerent American operations against Qaddafi, actual and threatened,
and charges of Libyan terrorism, actual and fabricated, were timed to stir up American jin— ■
goist juices when Congress was debating the military budget or aid to Reagan's favorite ter-
rorists, whom he called freedom fighters. The 14 April 1986 bombing of Libya, for exam-
ple, came one day before the House opened a new round of debate on aid to the Conttas.
Then, speaking on the 15th, Reagan said: "I would remind the House voting this week that
this arch-terrorist Qaddafi has sent $400 million [sic] and an arsenal of weapons and advis-
ers into Nicaragua." 18
Very shortly after taking office, Reagan announced the appointment of a special group
to study "the Libyan problem". The State Department appeared to have two schools of
thought: diplomatic pressure on Qaddafi or a more confrontational view. "Nobody," one
official pointed out, "advocates being nice to him." 19
Soon a master plan had been drawn up by the CIA, which Newsweek exposed in
August, 1981: "a large-scale, multiphase and costly scheme to overthrow the Libyan
regime" and obtain what the CIA called Qaddafi's "ultimate" removal from power. The
plan called for a "disinformation" program designed to embarrass Qaddafi and his govern-
ment; the creation of a "counter government" to challenge his claim to national leadership;
and an escalating paramilitary campaign of small-scale guerrilla operations. 20
The escalation was immediate. On 19 August, American planes crossed Qaddafi's "line
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of death", the 120-mile limit claimed by Libya in the Gulf of Sidra, and shot down two
Libyan jets. The United States, which considered it international waters, as did most of the
rest of the world — although this concept is more debatable when applied to aircraft than
when applied to ships 21 — purposely chose the area to conduct military exercises. As expect-
ed, Libya rose to the bait, at least according to Washington, which claimed that the Libyan
planes had fired first.
An enraged Qaddafi accused the US of "international terrorism" and, in a phone call
to the leader of Ethiopia, reportedly threatened to assassinate Reagan. 22 An official who
served in a national security position under Reagan responded that there was no question
that the "only thing to do with Qaddafi was kill him. He belonged dead." 23
Soon the US media were reporting a barrage of Qaddafi death threats against the life of
Reagan or other senior officials. In October, a story appeared that the American ambas-
sador to Italy was hastily flown out of the country after Italian authorities discovered a
Libyan plot to assassinate him, "that was aborted when Italian police deported ten suspect-
ed Libyan hit men". But some American officials in Washington and Rome disputed the
story, while another government source confirmed it. 24
A month later, there was a report of an attempt upon the life of an American diplomat
in Paris — seven shots were fired at Christian Chapman, but he escaped unharmed. That
same day Secretary of State Alexander Haig — who referred to Qaddafi as "the patron saint
of terror" — suggested that Libya was behind the attempt, although he admitted that he had
"no other information" directly implicating Libya. But Chapman had recently received
some threats, said the French government, some of which had been traced to Tripoli, 25 A
New York Times analysis of the incident, however, concluded that "something less than an
organized assassination attempt might have been involved." 26
In late November, the administration announced that a number of terrorists trained in
Libya had entered the United States with plans to assassinate President Reagan or other
officials. This prompted a huge nationwide search for "the Libyan hit squad" and for
Americans to whom they might turn for assistance, including the Weather Underground.
Then the infamous international terrorist "Carlos" was brought into the picture, and the
administration said that it had received first-hand descriptions from informers of the train-
ing and plans of the terrorists. Each day new and ominous details arose in the media, which
had already forgotten the exposure in August of the initiation of a government disinforma-
tion campaign against Libya. 27 "We have the evidence," Reagan told newsmen, "and he
[Qaddafi] knows it." Reporters pressed the White House to make the evidence public, but
were refused. Some officials, however, including some senior FBI officials, were said to be
skeptical about the reports. 28
Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson then described what a shadowy, unreliable group
the suppliers of the hit-squad information were, adding that several of them were known to
have connections with Israeli intelligence, "which would have its own reasons to encourage
a U.S. -Libyan rift," there being a deep and mutual animosity between Israel and Qaddafi, 9
In mid- 1981 a task force under William Clark, Deputy Secretary of State, had been set
up to look into the whole Qaddafi issue. Years later, Seymour Hersh was to report:
According to key sources, there was little doubt inside Clark's task force about who was respon-
sible for the spate of and-Qaddafi leaks — the CIA, wilh the support of the President, Haig and
Clark. "This item [the Libyan hit squad] stuck in my craw," one involved official recalls. "We
came out with this big terrorist threat to the U.S. Government. The whole thing was a complete
fabrication." ... One task force official eventually concluded that [OA Director William] Casey
was in effect running an operation inside the American Government: "He was feeding the disin-
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formation into the (intelligence) system so it would be seen as separate, independent reports" and
taken seriously by other Government agencies. 30
As matters turned out, most of the presumed assassins were Lebanese who had helped
Reagan negotiate the release of US hostages in Beirut and who hated Qaddafi. 31 When the
story's purpose had been served, it faded away.
However much some of Qaddafi's reported threats were disinformation, there were
real plans by the West to kill him. A February 1981 French plot, with US cooperation under
discussion, had to be canceled when French President Giscard was unexpectedly defeated at
the polls. 32 In 1984 it went further, with the CIA sharing highly sensitive intelligence,
including satellite photographs and communications intercepts, with the French secret ser-
vice to aid them in at least two major, but unsuccessful, operations to assassinate or over-
throw Qaddafi, who was perceived by the French as a threat to what they thought of as
their interests in Africa. One of the operations resulted in a pitched battle in Libya between
exiles and Qaddafi loyalists. 33
And in 1985, the State Department had to go to great lengths to head off a White
House-sponsored plan for a joint US-Egyptian land and air invasion of Libya. Secretary of
State George Shultz called the plan "crazy," while his department colleagues referred to the
free-wheeling staff of the National Security Council as "those madmen in the White
House". 34
At Christmas of that year, after bomb attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports killed
about 20 people, including five Americans, all the usual suspects were quickly accused, with
Iran and the Palestinian splinter group of the nefarious Abu Nidal heading the list. 35 The
Reagan administration soon added Qaddafi, announcing that the CIA had found a strong
Libyan connection, when all they had was that the Tunisian passports of three of the terror-
ists had purportedly been traced to Libya. Within days, Reagan declared that there was
"irrefutable" evidence of Qaddafi's role in the airport bombings, although he knew that this
was not true. At the same time, new economic sanctions against Libya were announced, "to
get economic sanctions out of the way so the next time [we] could do more". 36 The next
time was in March 1986. US Navy jets again crossed Qaddafi's "line of death", daring
retaliation. When there wasn't any, they returned the next day and the day after, twice
attacking a Libyan anti-aircraft site and destroying three or four ships. Washington asserted
that on the second day, Libya had first fired several missiles at the American planes.
Shortly afterward, one of a group of British electronics engineers working in Libya at the
time was interviewed by the Sunday Times of London, The engineer said that he had been
watching the radar screens during the two days of fighting and saw American war-planes cross
not only into the 12 miles of Libyan territorial waters, but over Libyan land as well.
"I watched the planes fry approximately eight miles into Libyan air space," said the
engineer. "I don't think the Libyans had any choice but to hit back. In my opinion they
were reluctant to do so." 37
Following the first American attack in March on Libya, Qaddafi spoke on the phone
with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who subsequently told US officials that the Libyan leader
appeared deeply affected by the violence unleashed against him. The king described Qaddafi
as "incomprehensible and disoriented", a description similar to other reports which
appeared during the 1980s which spoke of a very depressed Qaddafi who didn't seem to
understand what the United States had against him. Before and after the events of March,
he made half a dozen attempts through third parties to open a dialogue with Washington,
but Reagan administration officials rebuffed them ail. The would-be European and Arab
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mediators, including King Fahd, were firmly told that the United States was not interested
either in "a direct or indirect dialogue" with Qaddafi.
That at least was the official policy, the face turned to the public. There were, however,
reports that the White House was secretly dealing with the Libyan leader; to what extent is
not known. The only certain contact was a November 1985 visit with Qaddafi in Libya by
the US ambassador to the Vatican, William Wilson. The meeting was disavowed by official
Washington as being unauthorized and Wilson lost his post after it was disclosed. 39
Meanwhile, and throughout the term of the Reagan administration, the United States
was increasing military assistance to Libya's immediate neighbors and conducting military
exercises with Egypt designed to provoke Qaddafi; instituting diverse forms of economic
sanctions against Libya with varying degrees of ineffectiveness; trying to unify Libyan exile
opposition groups and giving them financial support and encouragement; the same to the
governments of Egypt and France for various anti-Qaddafi actions, not excluding assassina-
tion. It should be noted that France — the United States' chief "anti-terrorism" partner — in
1985 deliberately sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, killing a Greenpeace photog-
rapher. This, with the express approval of French President Francois Mitterrand.*
Disinformation was a regular part of the process: using the foreign and American press
to publicize fictitious new Libyan terrorist plans, and to announce — with each new terrorist
act that occurred in the Western world — that Libya "may" be responsible; to make Qaddafi
believe that key trusted aides were disloyal, that the Libyan military was plotting against
him, that his Russian military advisers were plotting against him, that his troops were
deserting en masse, or that a new US military attack was on the horizon; a process they
hoped would push the man into "irrational" acts. His imminent downfall was predicted as
regularly as that of Castro. 41 One operation involved Navy Seal commandos landing on
Libyan beaches and leaving tell-tale signs of the incursions — such as matchboxes and Israeli
cigarette butts — to make the Libyans nervous, ever more paranoid. 42
An August 1986 memo from John Poindexter, the president's national security adviser,
which spelled out some of the disinformation program, mentions itself that at the time Qaddafi
was "quiescent" on the terrorist front. 43 Shortly afterward, a key Reagan administration offi-
cial admitted to American reporters that if pressed for "hard evidence" of the charges against
Libya they wouldn't have any. "It will look like we're crying wolf once again. " 44 In response to
the Poindexter memo — the exposure of which had caused a mini-scandal — the senior
spokesman for the State Department, Bernard Kalb, resigned in protest, because he was "wor-
ried about faith in America ... American credibility" and "anything which hurts America". 45
The issue spilled over to the British, whose officials described US intelligence analyses
about Libya's intentions as "wildly inaccurate", which they said were passed to the British
in "a deliberate effort to deceive". 6
In this same period, in light of new US news reports (engendered by the Poindexter
memo), of possible further strikes against Libya in retaliation for terrorist actions allegedly
being planned by Qaddafi's regime, Libya's effective prime minister called upon the United
States to furnish details on the alleged actions so that Libya could "cooperate fully to avert
and abort such attacks and apprehend the individuals and put them on trial." He said that
his request, sent to Washington through diplomatic channels, had gone unanswered. 47 The
next day, Qaddafi, in a speech in Libya, challenged the United States to produce bank state-
ments showing that Libya financed terrorism. 48
"Half the lies they tell about the Irish aren't true," a son of Erin once observed. The
regular employment of disinformation about Qaddafi and Libya by the United States so
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clouded the historical picture that it is extremely difficult in most cases to separate fact from
fiction, to distinguish Libyan moral or token backing or simply promises to a revolutionary
movement from major, vital support. The fact that the Reagan administration felt the need
to undertake disinformation campaigns against Libya indicates a paucity of smoking guns.
On 1 September 1969, Captain Muammar el-Qaddafi had led a group of fellow offi-
cers in a bloodless overthrow of the monarchy and established the Libyan Arab Republic.
Despite his "troublemaking" abroad, he initially kept in the good graces of the West — the
US thwarting three serious plots against his rule during his first two years 49 — because of his
fierce anti-communism, which stemmed basically from his taking Marxism's implicit athe-
ism at face value and viewing it as irreconcilably at odds with his Islamic faith. But this did
not keep him from trying to institute revolutionary social and economic changes in Libyan
society which others called Marxist. This, plus entering into oil development and arms
agreements with the Soviet Union, may have spelled the beginning of the end for the West's
tolerance of his foreign adventures. 50
During the 1970s and '80s, Qaddafi was accused of using his large oil revenues to sup-
port — with funds, arms, training, offices, havens, diplomacy and/or general subversion — a wide
array of radical/insurgent/terrorist organizations, particularly certain Palestinian factions and
Muslim dissident and minority movements in various parts of the Mddle East, Africa, and
Asia; as well as the IRA and Basque and Corsican separatists in Europe; several groups engaged
in struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa; Noriega in Panama, opposition groups
and politicians in Costa Rica, St Lucia, Jamaica, Dominica, and France's Caribbean colonies of
Guadeloupe, French Guiana, and Martinique; the Japanese Red Army, the Italian Red
Brigades, Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang ... the list is without end.
It was claimed as well that Libya was behind, or at least somehow linked to, the
attempt on Pope John Paul's life, the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, min-
ing the Suez Canal, attempting to blow up the US Embassy in Cairo, various plane hijack-
ings, a bomb explosion on an American airliner over Greece, blowing up a synagogue in
Istanbul, and seeking to destabilize the governments of Chad, Liberia, the Sudan, and other
African countries ... and ... Qaddafi took drugs, was an extreme womanizer, was bisexual,
dressed in women's clothing, wore makeup, carried a teddy bear, had epileptic fits ... 5I
More established is the fact that for several years Qaddafi made use of former CIA
staffers, notably Edwin Wilson and Frank Terpil, to supply him with aircraft and pilots,
mechanics and Green Beret instructors, all manner of sophisticated weaponry, equipment
and explosives, and to help set up paramilitary training camps in Libya, 52
And Amnesty International, in 1987, concluded that Libya had carried out attacks on
at least 37 anti-Qaddafi dissidents abroad since 1980, with 25 being killed. 53
In January 1989, the State Department added to Qaddafi's credits by asserting that
Libya was funding and training "radical individuals and groups whose activities exacerbate
local problems" in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan and New Caledonia, A few
months earlier, the CIA had accused Libya of building the largest poison gas plant in the
world. 54 In March 1990, a fire broke out at the plant in question and burned it to the
ground. President Bush immediately and personally assured the world that the United States
"absolutely" had nothing to do with the fire, A week earlier, the White House spokesman
had been asked if the US might take military action to destroy the plant. "We don't rule out
anything," was the reply. 55
And in Chicago, members of a street gang ...
were convicted in late 1987 of planning terrorist activities. U.S. prosecutors charged that the
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gang expected to receive S2.5 million ftom Libya for assassination attempts on American politi-
cians and for attacks on U.S. aircraft and government facilities. 56
That, in its entirety, is how the Los Angeles Times reported it, and it sounded like the
bizarre Libyan strongman was at it again. In actuality, "assassination", planned or con-
crete, was not one of the charges, and no evidence at all was presented at the trial that
Libya had anything to do with originating or encouraging these acts, or had paid or
promised any money. The El Rukn gang members, a Moslem sect, and naive in the extreme,
had met with Libyan representatives in New York, Panama and Libya, and pathetically
tried to impress them with their prowess and loyalty to Qaddafi. They had been inspired by
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan purportedly receiving a Libyan promise of $5 mil-
lion. If El Rukn received a promise of $2.5 million — and we have only their word for it — it
would appear that both promises were no more than Qaddafi's revolutionary self-indul-
gence. (The IRA also claimed that they had not received any money from Libya, contrary to
Qaddafi's claim. 57 ) It is perhaps a measure of the hostility toward Libya that had been
inculcated in the American people for more than a decade, that the gang members — through
government use of a questionable informer and through entrapment — were found guilty by
a jury of federal conspiracy charges and sentenced to extraordinarily long sentences. It was
reportedly the first time ever that US citizens had been convicted on terrorism charges. 58
It is like a grade B horror movie. A dozen times it rises from the dead and lurches towards the
audience; a dozen times it is cut to ribbons, staggering back collapsing in a heap; and a dozen
times it rises again and clomps slowly forward But it is not the mummy's ghost, and it is not
haunting the upper Nile. It is the notion that the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar Qaddafi, is
responsible for every act of terrorism in the entire world, and it haunts the pages of the western
press and the screens of western television sets. 59
PanAm flight 103
On 21 December 1988, PanAm flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270
people, more than half of them Americans. Five months later, the State Department announced
that the CIA was "confident" that the villains who planted the bomb were members of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), led by Ahmed
Jibril, based in Syria, and hired by Iran to avenge the American shooting down of an Iranian
airliner. 60 Though little could be done to apprehend Jibril and his cohorts, this temained the US
government's official, certain, and oft-repeated judgment, even though Syria and Iran were
viewed as the keys to the release of Western hostages held in Lebanon. Then, in 1990, some-
thing strange happened. The United States was preparing to go to war against Iraq, when who
should pop up as one of its allies, sending troops to Saudi Arabia in the jihad against Saddam
Hussein? None other than the terrorist-haven land of Syria. And whose cooperation in the war
was Washington angling for? The wicked Iran. This would not do. In early October, American
officials declared that newly uncovered evidence indicated that Libyan intelligence agents may
have assembled and planted the bomb. Bur this, they were quick to point out, did not cleat
Iran, Syria or the PFLP-GC of complicity. 61
After the war, little by little, a putative case against Libya was leaked, until 14
November 1991 when two Libyan intelligence operatives were indicted in absentia as the
perpetrators. The head of the Justice Department's criminal division asserted the same day
that there was no evidence to link either Syria or Iran to the bombing "and he brushed aside
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suggestions that the conclusion had been influenced by the United States' desire for improved
relations with Syria". 62 Within the next 20 days, the remaining four American hostages held in
Lebanon were released along with the most prominent hostage, British Terry Waite.
And the evidence against the two Libyans? Two pieces of metal the size of fingernails,
allegedly from electronic timing devices. One has to read the detailed account of what the
case against Libya rests upon to appreciate its full shakiness. 63 Moreover, in December
1993, a BBC program, "Silence Over Lockerbie", presented new findings which cast signifi-
cant doubt about the case against Libya and indicated that Britain and the United States
may have fingered Libya to divert suspicion from Syria and Iran. The key new information
was that the Swiss manufacturer of the electronic timers changed his previous story which
had named Libya as the only purchaser of such devices. He now remembered that he had
sold some of the timers to East Germany as well. There were close links between the East
German secret police and the PFLP-GC and other Arab terrorist groups. Even more signifi-
cant, an engineer with the Swiss company declared that he had told the Lockerbie investiga-
tors about the East German connection in late 1990, which means that the international
investigators knew that their accusation against Libya had a large, if not fatal, hole in it
either before the accusation was made public in October, or shortly thereafter. 64 "No
German judge could, with the present evidence, put the two suspects into jail," declared
Volker Rath, German government prosecutor and specialist in Lockerbie, in 1994. 65
Postscript: In 2003, the Libyan government accepted "responsibility" for the 1988
bombing — without admitting to an actual role in the event — in the hope of ending US and
UN sanctions. Libya agreed to this because in 2001 a Libyan had been found guilty in a
trial in the Hague of having planted the bomb. This trial, however, was widely regarded as
a farce. 66
The new Qaddafi?
It may be that the oft-depressed Muammar el-Qaddafi finally began to understand —
finding his way past the verbiage and the disinformation — what the United States and other
governments had against him. In the latter half of 1988 he seemed to grow up, instituting a
host of progressive changes into Libyan society — Seeing up civil liberties, releasing hun-
dreds of political prisoners, removing restrictions on Savel abroad, loosening up the econo-
my ("All Libyans are called upon to become bourgeois."); at the same time, making peace
or improving relations with a number of African neighbors. 67
But as the year 1989 opened and Washington prepared to shift Som Ronald Reagan to
George Bush, the United States marked the occasion, by conducting some more "military
exercises" in Libya's back yard and shooting down two more Libyan planes. The State
Department then saw fit at this particular time to issue its most detailed account to date of
Libyan involvement in international terrorism — "an attempt to maintain international pres-
sure" on Libya, wrote the Los Angeles Tintes 61,
Nonetheless, Qaddafi continued to display his new persona. He announced that he had
decided to cut off or trim the Sow of funds to various foreign groups and he told several
Palestinian groups that they would no longer receive direct funding from his government and
would have to dose their offices in Libya. He also admitted that Libya had bankrolled terrorist
groups, but said that it no longer did so — "when we discovered that these groups were causing
more harm than benefit to the Arab cause, we halted our aid to them completely and withdrew
our support" — adding that he did not wish for any confrontation with Washington. 69
The United States was not impressed with any of this. It may have felt that it had noth-
ing to gain by relaxing its crusade against Qaddafi, but it did have an enemy to lose.
289
49. Nicaragua 1978-1990
De-stabilization in slow motion
I have the most conclusive evidence that arms and munitions in large quantities have been on
several occasions ... shipped to the revolutionists in Nicaragua ... I am sure it is not the desire of
the United States to intervene in the internal affairs of Nicaragua or of any other Central
American republic. Nevertheless, it must be said, that we have a very definite and special interest
in the maintenance of order and good Government in Nicaragua at the present time ... The
United States cannot, therefore, fail to view with deep concern any serious threat to stability and
constitutional government in Nicaragua tending toward anarchy and jeopardizing American
interests, especially if such state of affairs is contributed to or brought about by outside influence
or by any foreign power. 1
In this manner did President Calvin Coolidge address the Congress of the United States
in 1927. The revolutionaries he was voicing alarm about were those supporters of the
Liberal Party (one of whom was Augusto Cesar Sandino) who had taken up arms against
the Conservative Party government which they claimed was illegally in office. The foreign
power accused of arming the Liberals was the Mexican government, which the Coolidge
administration viewed as being "impregnated with Bolshevist ideas". The American inter-
ests thought to be in jeopardy were the usual business investments, flaunted more openly in
those days than later. Thus it came to pass that the Marines landed in Nicaragua for the
twelfth time in less than three-quarters of a century. (See Appendix n.)
In the 1980s, it was the revolutionary Nicaraguan government of the Sandinistas which
alarmed the administration of Ronald Reagan (who described Coolidge as his political patron
saint); the foreign power castigated for arming the Sandinistas was the Soviet Union, impreg-
nated with Bolshevist ideas to be sure; the counter-revolutionaries known as the "contras"
were Washington's Marines; as to American "interests" — to the "rationality" of economic
imperialism had been added a desire for political hegemony bordering on the pathological.
When the American military forces left Nicaragua for the last time, in 1933, they left
behind a souvenir by which the Nicaraguan people could remember them; the National
Guard, placed under the direction of one Anastasio Somoza (just as in 1924 the United
States had left Trujillo behind for the people of the Dominican Republic). Three years later,
Somoza took over the presidency and with the indispensable help of the National Guard
established a family dynasty which would rule over Nicaragua, much like a private estate,
for the next 43 years. While the Guardsmen, consistently maintained by the United States,
passed their time on martial law, rape, torture, murder of the opposition, and massacres of
peasants, as well as less violent pursuits such as robbery, extortion, contraband, running
brothels and other government functions, the Somoza clan laid claim to the lion's share of
Nicaragua's land and businesses. When Anastasio Somoza II was overthrown by the
Sandinistas in July 1979, he fled into exile leaving behind a country in which two-thirds of
the population earned less than $300 a year. Upon his arrival in Miami, Somoza admitted
to being worth $100 million. A US intelligence report, however, placed it at $900 million. 2
It was fortunate for the new Nicaraguan leaders that they came to power while Jimmy
Carter sat in the White House. It gave them a year and a half of relative breathing space to
take the first steps in their planned reconstruction of an impoverished society before the
relentless hostility of the Reagan administration descended upon them; which is not to say
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that Carter welcomed the Sandinista victory.
In 1978, with Somoza hearing collapse, Carter authorized covert CIA support for the
press and labor unions in Nicaragua in an attempt to create a "moderate" alternative to the
Sandinistas. 3 Towards the same end, American diplomats were conferring with non-leftist
Nicaraguan opponents of Somoza. Washington's idea of "moderate™, according to a group
of prominent Nicaraguans who walked out on the discussions, was the inclusion of
Somoza's political party In the future government and "leaving practically intact the corrupt
structure of the somocista apparatus", including the National Guard, albeit in some reorga-
nized form. 4 Indeed, at this same time, the head of the US Southern Command (Latin
America), Lt. General Dennis McAuliffe, was telling Somoza that, although he had to abdi-
cate, the United States had "no intention of permitting a settlement which would lead to the
destruction of the National Guard". 5 This was a notion remarkably insensitive to the deep
loathing for the Guard felt by the great majority of the Nicaraguan people.
The United States, moreover, tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the Organization of
American States to send in a "peace-keeping force", 6 a body which could only have stood
in the way of the insurgents' military progress; and in neighboring Costa Rica the American
ambassador saw fit to complain to the government that Cuba had set up a center to oversee
its military support of the Sandinistas, resulting in the Cubans being forced to move their
headquarters to their consulate. 7
After the Sandinistas took power, Carter authorized the CIA to provide financial and
other support to their opponents. 8 At the same time, Washington pressured the Sandinistas
to include certain men in the new government. 9 Although these tactics failed, the Carter
administration did not refuse to give aid to Nicaragua. Ronald Reagan was later to point to
this and ask: "Can anybody doubt the generosity and good faith of the American people?"
What the president failed to explain was:
a) Almost all of the aid had gone to non-governmental agencies and to the private sec-
tor, including the American Institute for Free Labor Development, the long-time CIA front.
(In 1981, the US Solicitor General, while arguing before the Supreme Court, inadvertently
touched upon the link between the AIFLD and the CIA. When this was picked up by the
press, he lamely said that he had been speaking hypothetically.) 10
b) The primary and expressed motivation for the aid was to strengthen the hands of the
so-called moderate opposition and undercut the influence of socialist countries in
Nicaragua.
c) All military aid was withheld despite repeated pleas from the Nicaraguan govern-
ment about its need and right to such help" — the defeated National Guardsmen and other
supporters of Somoza had not, after all, disappeared; they had regrouped as the "contras"
and maintained primacy in the leadership of this force from then on.
In January 1981, Ronald Reagan took office under a Republican platform which
asserted that it "deplores the Marxist Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua". The president
moved quickly to cut off virtually all forms of assistance to the Sandinistas, the opening
salvos of his war against their revolution. The American whale, yet again, felt threatened by
a minnow in the Caribbean.
Among the many measures undertaken: Nicaragua was excluded from US government
programs which promote American investment and trade; sugar imports from Nicaragua
were slashed by 90 percent; and, without excessive subtlety but with notable success,
Washington pressured the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Inter-American
Development Bank (TDB), the World Bank, and the European Common Market to withhold
loans to Nicaragua. 12 The director of the TDB, Mr, Kevin O'Sullivan, later revealed that in
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1983 the US had opposed a loan to aid Nicaraguan fishermen on the grounds that the
country did not have adequate fuel for their boats. A week later, O'Sullivan pointed out,
"saboteurs blew up a major Nicaraguan fuel depot in the port of Corinto", 3 an action
described by an American intelligence source as "totally a CIA operation". 14
Washington did, however, offer $5.1 million in aid to private organizations and to the
Roman Catholic Church in Nicaragua. This offer was rejected by the government because,
it said, "United States congressional hearings revealed that the [aid] agreements have politi-
cal motivations, designed to promote resistance and destabilize the Revolutionary
Government." 15 Nicaragua had already arrested members of several of the previous recipi-
ent organizations such as the Moravian Church and the Superior Council of Private
Enterprise (COSEP) for involvement in armed plots against the government. 16
The Reagan administration was not deterred. Cardinal Miguel Obando and the
Catholic Church in Nicaragua received hundreds of thousands of dollars in covert aid, from
the CIA until 1985, and then — after official US government aid was stopped by congres-
sional oversight committees — from Oliver North's off-the-books operation in the White
House basement. One end to which Obando reportedly put the money was "religious
instruction" to "thwart the Marxist-Leninist policies of the Sandinistas". 17
As part of a concerted effort to deprive the Nicaraguan economy of oil, several attacks
on fuel depots were carried out. Contra/CIA operations emanating in Honduras also blew
up oil pipelines, mined the waters of oil-unloading ports, and threatened to blow up any
approaching oil tankers; at least seven foreign ships were damaged by the mines, including a
Soviet tanker with five crewmen reported to be badly injured. Nicaragua's ports were under
siege: mortar shelling from high-speed motor launches, aerial bombing and rocket and
machine-gun attacks were designed to blockade Nicaragua's exports as well as to starve the
country of imports by frightening away foreign shipping. 8 In October 1983, Esso
announced that its tankers would no longer carry crude oil to Nicaragua from Mexico, the
country's leading supplier; at this point Nicaragua bad a 10-day supply of oil. 19
Agriculture was another prime target. Raids by contras caused extensive damage to
crops and demolished tobacco-drying barns, grain silos, irrigation projects, farm houses and
machinery; roads, bridges and trucks were destroyed to prevent produce from being moved;
numerous state farms and cooperatives were incapacitated and harvesting was prevented;
other farms still intact were abandoned because of the danger, 20
And in October 1982, the Standard Fruit Company announced that it was suspending
all its banana operations in Nicaragua and the marketing of the fruit in the United States.
The American multinational, after a century of enriching itself in the country, and in viola-
tion of a contract with the government which extended to 1985, left behind the uncertainty
of employment for some 4,000 workers and approximately six million cases of bananas to
harvest with neither transport nor market. 21
Nicaragua's fishing industry suffered not only from lack of fuel for its boats. The fishing
fleet was decimated by mines and attacks, its trawlers idled for want of spare parts due to the US
credit blockade. The country lost millions of dollars from reduced shrimp exports. 22
It was an American war against Nicaragua, The contras had their own various motiva-
tions for wanting to topple the Sandinista government. They did not need to be instigated
by the United States. But before the US military arrived in Honduras in the thousands and
set up Fortress America, the contras were engaged almost exclusively in hit-and-run forays
across the border, small-scale raids on Nicaraguan border patrols and farmers, attacks on
patrol boats, and the like; killing a few people here, burning a building down there, 23 there
was no future for the contras in a war such as this against a much larger force. Then the
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American big guns began to arrive in 1982, along with the air power, the landing strips, the
docks, the radar stations, the communications centers, built under the cover of repeated
joint US-Honduran military exercises, 24 while thousands of conrras were training in Florida
and California. 25
US and "Honduran" reconnaissance planes, usually piloted by Americans, began regu-
lar overflights into Nicaragua ro photograph bombing and sabotage targets, track
Sandinista military maneuvers and equipment, spot the planting of mines, eavesdrop on mil-
itary communications and map the terrain. Electronic surveillance ships off the coast of
Nicaragua partook in the bugging of a nation. 26 Said a former CIA analyst: "Our intelli-
gence from Nicaragua is so good ... we can hear the toilets flush in Managua." 27
Meanwhile, American pilots were flying diverse kinds of combat missions against
Nicaraguan troops and carrying supplies to conrras inside Nicaraguan territory. Several
were shot down and killed. 2 Some flew in civilian clothes, after having been told that they
would be disavowed by the Pentagon if captured. 29 Some conrras told American congress-
men that they were ordered to claim responsibility for a bombing raid organized by the CIA
and flown by Agency mercenaries. 30 Honduran troops as well were trained by the US for
bloody hit-and-run operations into Nicaragua 31 ... and so it went ... as in El Salvador, the
full extent of American involvement in the fighting will never be known.
The contras' brutality earned them a wide notoriety. They regularly destroyed health
centers, schools, agricultural cooperatives, and community centers — symbols of the
Sandinistas' social programs in rural areas. People caught in these assaults were often tor-
tured and killed in the most gruesome ways. One example, reported by The Guardian of
London, suffices. In the words of a survivor of a raid in Jinotega province, which borders
on Honduras:
Rosa had her breasts cut off Then they cut into her chest and took out her heart. The men had
their arms broken, their testicles cut off, and their eyes poked out. They were killed by slitting
their throats and pulling the tongue out through the slit.
Americas Watch, the human-rights organization, concluded that "the contras systemat-
ically engage in violent abuses ... so prevalent that these may be said to be their principal
means of waging war."
In November 1984, the Nicaraguan government announced that since 1981 the contras
had assassinated 910 state officials and killed 8,000 civilians. 33
The analogy is inescapable: if Nicaragua had been Israel, and the contras the PLO, the
Sandinistas would have long before made a lightning bombing raid on the bases in
Honduras and wiped them out completely. The United States would have tacitly approved
the action, the Soviet Union would have condemned it but done nothing, the rest of the
world would have raised their eyebrows, and that would have been the end of it.
After many contra atrocity stories had been reported in the world press, it was disclosed
in October 1984 that the CIA had prepared a manual of instruction for its clients which,
amongst other things, encouraged the use of violence against civilians. In the wake of the furor
in Congress caused by the expose, the State Department was obliged to publicly condemn the
contras' terrorist activities. Congressional intelligence committees were informed by the CIA,
by present and former contra leaders, and by other witnesses that the contras indeed "raped,
tortured and killed unarmed civilians, including children" and that "groups of civilians,
including women and children, were burned, dismembered, blinded and beheaded", 34 These
were the same rebels whom Ronald Reagan, with his strange mirror language, called "free-
dom fighters" and the "moral equal of our founding fathers". (The rebels in El Salvador, in
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the president's studied opinion, were "murderers and terrorists".)
The CIA manual, entitled Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, gave advice
on such niceties as political assassination, blackmailing ordinary citizens, mob violence, kid-
napping, and blowing up public buildings. Upon entering a town, it said, "establish a public
tribunal" where the guerrillas can "shame, ridicule and humiliate" Sandinistas and their
sympathizers by "shouting slogans and jeers". "If ... it should be necessary ... to fire on a
citizen who was trying to leave the town," guerrillas should explain that "he was an enemy
of the people" who would have alerted the Sandinistas who would then "carry out acts of
reprisals such as rapes, pillage, destruction, captures, etc."
The contras were advised to explain to the people that "our struggle is not against the
nationals hut rather against Russian imperialists'*. This "will foster the sympathy of the
peasants, and they will immediately become one of us." (Mao himself couldn't have put it
better.) Workers were to be told that "the state is putting an end to factories", and doctors
informed that "they are being replaced by Cuban paramedics".
When the population sees the light and begins to rise against the government, "profes-
sional criminals should be hired to carry out selective jobs" such as "taking the demonstra-
tors to a confrontation with the authorities to bring about uprisings and shootings that will
cause the death of one or more people to create a martyr for the cause." Other people will
be "armed with clubs, iron rods and placards and, if possible, small firearms, which they
will carry hidden." Still other "shock troops", equipped "with knives, razors, chains, clubs
and bludgeons", will "march slightly behind the innocent and gullible participants" as the
uprising progresses.
Finally, a section called "Selective Use of Violence for Propagandists Effects" informed
the contra student that "It is possible to neutralize carefully selected and planned targets,
such as court judges, police and state security officials," and others. 36
Throughout, the manual reads like what the Western world has always been taught is
the way communists scheme and indoctrinate. It proved intensely embarrassing to the
Reagan administration, not least because it unequivocally punctured the official balloon
which had been floating about bearing the message that the United States was not pursuing
the overthrow of the Sandinista government; although at that late date, anyone who still
believed that was far enough removed from reality to continue believing it.
White House officials and President Reagan twisted their tongues into knots trying to
explain away the manual: the manual made public was only a first draft which was not the
one distributed, they said falsely ... the word "neutralize" didn't mean to assassinate, only
to remove from office ... the author of the manual was some low-level, irresponsible "free-
lancer" J 7
Not long afterward, the manual, with minor changes, could be found in distribution
again in Honduras put out ostensibly by a private American organization, Soldier of
Fortune magazine. 3
The CIA may have tried to provide its students with some object lessons in neutraliza-
tion, of the Mafia kind. In June 1983, the Nkaraguan government expelled three US
Embassy officials — one of whom was reported to be the CIA's Chief of Station in
Managua — charging them with being part of an Agency destahilization network which,
amongst other things, was attempting to assassinate Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto. The
intended murder weapon was to be a bottle of Benedictine liqueur containing thalium, a
poison almost undetectable in the human body. At a press conference, the government pre-
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sented evidence which included photos and videotapes of American diplomats meeting with
the Nicaraguan officials who had pretended to go along with the plot, as well as copies of
intercepted CIA messages. 39
Two months later, another Agency plot to kilt d'Escoto (who is also a Roman Catholic
priest) as well as two other Sandinista officials was alleged by the Nicaraguan government.
A CIA agent named Mike Tock was charged with being behind this particular conspiracy. 40
The following June, according to one of the participants, the CIA sent a contra hit team
from Honduras to Managua to do away with all nine comandantes of the Sandinista National
Directorate in one fell swoop by blowing up the building they were meeting in. The team made
it to Managua, but the explosives failed to arrive and the plot was aborted. 41
The Lord and the fight for freedom have something in common: they both move in mys-
terious ways. If the CIAs guerrilla manual was not an odd enough tool of liberty, the
Agency's comic book surely was. Entitled Freedom Fighters 'Manual, the 16-page booklet was
supplied to contra forces presumably to distribute amongst the Nicaraguan population. Its 40
illustrations showed the reader how she could "liberate Nicaragua from oppression and mis-
ery" by "a series of useful sabotage techniques". Amongst these were: stop up toilets with
sponges ... pull down power cables ... put dirt into gas tanks ... put nails on roads and high-
ways ... cut and perforate the upholstery of vehicles ... cut down trees over highways ... tele-
phone to make false hotel reservations and false alarms of fires and crimes ... hoard and steal
food from the government... leave lights and water taps on ... steal mail from mailboxes ... go
to work late ... call in sick ... short circuit electricity ... break light bulbs ... rip up books ...
spread rumors ... threaten supervisors and officials over the phone ... 42
Until at least the mid-1980s, the primary official explanation for American belligerence
towards the Sandinista government, at least the explanation most frequently advanced, was
that a significant quantity of military supplies was being sent to the Salvadorean rebels from
Nicaragua. (The fact that the United States was at the same time heavily arming the
Salvadorean government and that the Salvadorean government was assisting the contras did
not enter into Washington's equation.) We shall see in the chapter on El Salvador how lack-
ing in evidence Washington was in support of this charge. Whatever organized supply oper-
ation of any significance that had existed appears to have ended in early 1981. In January
of that year a Salvadorean cabinet minister announced that Nicaragua was no longer allow-
ing its territory to be used for arms shipments. 43 A few weeks later, the Sandinista govern-
ment, alarmed by the suspension of US economic aid, pressed the Salvadorean guerrillas to
seek a political settlement. 44 (Similar requests were made by the Sandinistas during the fol-
lowing years.) 45 And in March, in a meeting at CIA headquarters of Director William
Casey and others, the cessation of the supply operation was confirmed. 46
David MacMkhael, who served with the CIA from 1981 to 1983 as an analyst of mili-
tary and political developments in Central America, attended an inter-agency meeting held
to discuss CIA plans to support the contras. Of this meeting he noted that "Although the
stated objective was to interdict arms going into El Salvador, there was hardly any discus-
sion of the arms traffic ... I couldn't understand this failure until months later when I real-
ized, like everyone else, that arms interdiction had never been a serious objective."
The former CIA man said that he had had access to the most sensitive intelligence on
Nicaragua, including arms shipments to El Salvador, based on which he concluded that
"the Administration and the CIA have systematically misrepresented Nicaraguan involve-
ment in the supply of arms to Salvadorean guerrillas to justify [their] efforts to overthrow
the Nicaraguan Government." 47 For a man who spent ten years as an officer in the US
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Marine Corps and four years as a counter-insurgency expert in southeast Asia, in addition
to his tour of service at the CIA, David MacMkhael's political thinking about US foreign
policy in Latin America landed in strange territory.
We have control and we don't want to lose it. The ideology of anti-communism then provides the
rationalization, although mis determination to hold on is actually pathology. Then you have an
entire generation of people raised in the foreign policy establishment and specializing in this region
who for 25 years have gotten up in the morning and said: "We'll get that bastard Castro today." 48
The failure of the United States to show large Nicaraguan tracks on the Salvadorean
landscape apparently led the ubiquitous Oliver North to try and place some artificial foot-
prints in the ground. In 1988, Jose Blandbn, a former close adviser to Panama's defense
chief and de facto ruler, General Manuel Noriega, stated that North had set up a secret
operation in 1986 that called for Panama to arrange a large shipment of Soviet-bloc arms
and vehicles that couid be captured in El Salvador and falsely linked to the Sandinistas. The
effort collapsed in June when the ship carrying the military goods was seized by
Panamanian officials, two days after the New York Times had published an article concern-
ing illegal activities of Noriega, 49
Washington's explanation Number Two put forth for its policy appeared to be that
Nicaragua was a military threat to other Central American countries — not simply to the
bases in Honduras, which were a daily, calculated provocation — but to Honduras itself and
the other nearby states. This was a weak reed to lean on, for Nicaragua had virtually no air
force {and it would have been suicidal to attack anyone without proper air cover), even less
of a navy, and its tanks were demonstrably unsuitable for the terrain of Honduras. 50 Still
less did the Sandinistas have a sane reason for invasion. It is questionable whether the men
of the State Department believed this story themselves, any more than did the supposed
neighboring targets. At a conference for journalists in Costa Rica in 1985, the Costa Rican
Minister of Information, Armando Vargas, said cheerfully: "No one here really expects
Nicaragua to invade us." ... "And nobody in Honduras does either," said Manuel Gamero,
the Editor-in-Chief of Tietnpo, one of that country's leading newspapers. 51
On other days we were told other reasons why the Sandinistas had to be restrained. It
may have been to protect the Panama Canal (sic) or "the free use of the sea lanes in the
Caribbean basin and the Gulf of Mexico". (The danget-to-the-sea-lanes bit has been trotted
out by Washington for every corner of the globe in the past 40 years; not once has it materi-
alized.) Or it may have been the threat of "another Cuba" or its corollary, "a Soviet beach-
head" in the region. These warnings came complete with pictures — an exhibition of aerial
photos of Nicaragua showing "Cuban-style military barracks", a "Soviet-style physical
training area with chin-bars and other types of equipment to exercise the forces, and a run-
ning track", and, most damning of all, a Sandinista garrison "having a standard rectangular
configuration like we have seen in Cuba". 52 Leave it to those cunning Castroites to devise a
rectangular building,
"The strategic issue is a simple one," asserted Patrick Buchanan, Reagan's Director of
Communications. "Who wants Central America more — the West or the Warsaw Pact?" 53
Fidel Castro was not in any doubt. On at least two occasions he expressed in no uncer-
tain terms his frustration and annoyance with the Soviet Union for not sufficiently aiding
Nicaragua and for what he saw as the Russians' weak and indecisive response to American
pressure against the Sandinista government, even in the face of a Russian ship being dam-
aged by CIA mines. The Cuban leader failed to attend the funeral of Soviet leaded
Chernenko in March 1985 and did not sign the book of condolences at the Soviet Embassy
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in Havana, apparently to register his displeasure with Soviet policy. Responded a Soviet
diplomat: "We obviously place a priority on improving relations with our adversary, We
have to seek a balance with the US, so naturally we will say [to the Cubans] calm down, we
are not interested in sharpening the situation in Angola and Nicaragua. " 54
"In the ... think-tanks and the academic institutes in Moscow where Soviet policy
towards Cental America is discussed and debated ,„", reported The Guardian of London,
"the emphasis is on dialogue and negotiation, and if the Soviet Union agrees on one thing
with the United States, it is that there should be 'no more Cubas'," a reference to the heavy
economic and political burden Cuba had placed upon Moscow over the years. 55
Oliver North was not in any doubt either as to who wanted Central America more.
Said the lieutenant colonel to one of the private American contributors to the contras:
"Russia would never go up against us to save Nicaragua." 56
Neither was Poland in doubt. The Warsaw Pact member sold arms to the contras, as
did the Communist Chinese. 57
In 1987, Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev offered to end Soviet military aid to
Nicaragua if the United States ended its military support of the contras. Reagan confirmed
that Gorbachev had raised this matter with him, but there is no indication that the president
followed up in any way. 58
In January 1983, the so-called Contadora group, composed of Mexico, Panama,
Colombia and Venezuela, began to meet periodically in an attempt to still the troubled
waters of Central America. Rejecting at the outset the idea that the conflicts of the region
could or should be seen as part of an East-West confrontation, they conferred with all the
nations involved, including the United States. The complex and lengthy discussions eventu-
ally gave birth to a 21 -point treaty which dealt with the most contentious issues: civil war,
foreign intervention, elections, and human rights. Washington, which was not itself to be a
signatory to the treaty, though obviously indispensable to its implementation, pressed
Managua to sign, partly for domestic consumption — congressional support of the adminis-
tration's Nicaragua policy and the 1984 presidential elections — and partly to be able to take
jabs at Nicaragua, saying that it would make the country a democracy and halt their
"export of revolution".
Then, much to Washington's surprise, on 7 September 1984 Nicatagua announced its
intention to sign the treaty. Until this moment, the United States had not publicly criticized
the treaty's provisions, but immediately Washington began to find things wrong with it and
called for changes. The State Department declared that the Contadora group "didn't intend
that this [treaty document] be the end of the process", but a high-ranking diplomat from
one of the Contadora countries insisted that "Everyone had treated it as a final document
from the beginning", as had the US representatives.- 9
What alarmed Washington about the treaty was its provisions for the removal from
each country of all foreign military bases; restrictions on foreign military personnel, arma-
ments, and military exercises; and a prohibition on aid to insurgent forces seeking to over-
throw a government. It was enough to put an interventionist power out of business.
The United States refused to give its blessings to the agreement. Commented Rep.
Michael Barnes, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western
Hemisphere: "The Administration's objections to the treaty reinforce my belief that it's
never had any real interest in a negotiated settlement." 60
After the Managua announcement, State Department officials admitted that they were
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concerned that it "might undermine the Administration's efforts to portray the Sandinistas
as the primary source of tension in Central America". Some officials argued that a trip
scheduled by Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega to Los Angeles "should not be approved, in
part, to punish Mr. Ortega and the Sandinistas for accepting the Contadora peace propos-
al. "61 Nicaragua's willingness to sign the treaty was labeled "a propaganda ploy". 62
One month later, an internal National Security Council paper was able to note that the
United States, through intensive lobbying efforts, had "effectively blocked" adoption of the
treaty as it was written. 63
During the following three years, the Reagan administration successfully sought to
thwart the peace talks among the Contadora group because the talks complicated adminis-
tration attempts to win funds for the contras in Congress, as well as working against their
primary goal of toppling the Nicaraguan government. 64
National Security adviser John Poindexter let Panama strongman General Manuel
Noriega understand that the United States did not appreciate Panama's role in the
Contadora process and suggested that Noriega step down from power. When Noriega
refused, the US cut off $40 million in economic assistance. Then, in June 1986, Washington
officials briefed American journalists about Noriega's involvement in drug trafficking and
money laundering. Thus was a CIA client in good standing suddenly transformed into
Public Enemy Number One in the United States. (Similady, in 1985, when Honduran
President Roberto Suazo impeded contra aid shipments, the US blocked an aid package to
Honduras and leaked some dirt about Suazo.)
In February 1986, the US threatened Mexico — which was, along with Panama, the
most active member of the Contadora group — that if it lobbied Congress on behalf of the
Contadora process, the administration would throw its support behind the opposition
National Action Party (PAN) in upcoming Mexican elections. Convicted Contragate player
Carl Channell later told representatives of PAN that Reagan would help them if they helped
the contras. In an extremely unusual move, administration officials went before Congress in
May to denounce the Mexican government for corruption, drug trafficking and economic
mismanagement. 65
In August 1987, a "Central American Peace Accord", generated by President Oscar
Arias of Costa Rica as a successor to the unsuccessful Contadora process, was signed by
Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Its key provisions concerning
foreign military intervention were similar to those in the various Contadora versions.
The Reagan administration, however, still had its heart set on a military victory.
According to former officials, some in the administration wanted to see the failure of peace
talks convened under the Arias plan. 66 The war in Nicaragua continued.
The argument most often advanced by the Reagan administration to explain its reluctance
to accept a Contadora agreement during 1983 and 1984 was that Nicaragua was not prepared
to hold a truly free election as called for by the treat)'. Washington labeled the election held in
November 1984, which the Sandinistas won by a two-to-one margin, a "sham".
On the face of it, by the (flawed) standards of Western elections, the Nicaraguan elec-
tion cannot be much faulted; by the standards of Latin America, it was a veritable paragon
of democracy; the fact that there were no deaths reported in connection with the election,
by itself, made it rather unique in Latin America; the appearance of minor parties on the
ballot in every department (state) of the nation distinguished it from the typical presidential
election in the United States.
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The election was open to all parties and candidates, no fraud in the polling was report-
ed, or even seriously charged; it was observed by a reported 400 foreigners from 40 differ-
ent countries, and on election day the Washington Post could report:
even U.S. diplomats here acknowledge that the Sandinistas have allowed expression of a wide
range of political views, including some that were harshly critical of the government. The
Sandinistas eased censorship of the sole opposition newspaper, La Prensa, at the start of the
campaign, and the state television and radio channels have given air time — although limited — fra-
me small but vocal opposition parties to make their case. 67
Washington's criticism of the election centered on the boycott of it by the Democratic
Coordinating Alliance (DCA), a significant coalition of opposition groups headed by Arturo
Jose' Cruz. On several occasions, Cruz and his followers were physically harassed by crowds
when they appeared in public and on at least one occasion it was reported that many of the
protestors had been brought to town in government vehicles. Whether the Sandinistas delib-
erately intended to harass Cruz or discourage him from running is not clear; what is clear is
that the government had much more to lose than do gain by keeping the DCA off the ballot.
In any event, harassment of a serious nature appears to have been short-lived and did not
remain as a stumbling block to Cruz running. The DCA's most persistent stated objection
was that not enough time had been allowed for campaigning.
The chronology of events is as follows: the 4 November election date was announced on
21 February; in May, registration of parties and candidates was set for 25 July, at which time
seven parties registered: the Sandinistas, three parties which could be considered to their left,
and three to their right. 68 The DCA declined to register and Cruz announced that he would not
run unless the government opened a dialogue with the contras, as if the contras had been fer-
vently demanding this for some time, only to be rebuffed by the government. The DCA
dropped this request three weeks later, stating that the contras had told them they would abide
by any accord reached between the party and the government. 69 The failure to register, it
should be noted, occurred before any special harassment had taken place.
Cruz also contended at this time that for five years the population had been too indoc-
trinated by the government for the opposition to stand a chance, 70 a charge which could be
made with considerable validity by any opposition party in any nation of the world.
The day of registration, several of Cruz's aides met with the government and asked that
the deadline for registration be extended, 71 a move indicating perhaps a split in the DCA
ranks. The Sandinistas at first refused, but on 22 September announced that registration
was being extended to 1 October. The DCA again failed to register, stating that the election
date had to be moved from November to January. 72 The Sandinistas suspected, and said so
openly, that the DCA knew it would lose anyway and was abstaining from the election at
the behest of the United States in order to throw a question mark over the whole process. In
August, some of Cruz's backers had in fact stated that they hoped to "discredit the election
and force the Sandinistas to grant political concessions". "What we really need," they
declared, "is Arturo in jail." 73
One unmistakable sign of the CIA's hand in the election was the full-page advertisements
which appeared in August in newspapers in Venezuela, Costa Rica and Panama, Signed by a fic-
titious organization called "Friends of Tomas Borge", the ads attempted to split the Sandinista
leadership by promoting Borge's candidacy over that of Daniel Ortega who had already been
chosen as the Sandinista candidate. "Neidier Ortega nor Cruz!" proclaimed the ads. 74
Throughout this period, the DCA made one demand after another concerning electoral
procedures as its price for taking part in the election. By any reasonable standard of power
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relationships, the government showed itself to be flexible. On 21 September, the New York
Times reported that the opposition had stated that the Sandinistas had made substantial
concessions and that the only major proposal left was postponing the election until January.
This was important, said the DCA, because the campaign could not have properly begun
before certain things had been agreed upon. The government's position was that it would
grant the postponement — a major concession and inconvenience — only if the DCA would
arrange a ceasefire with the contras. The party replied that it didn't have the power to do
so, and negotiations continued through all of October with many confusing and contradic-
tory reports coming out of the talks until, finally, time ran out.
The United States could certainly have arranged a ceasefire if it was interested in testing
the Sandinistas' commitment to what Washington would call a free election. That the US
had such an interest is questionable in Sight of what the New York Times revealed two
weeks before the election:
The Reagan Administration, while publicly criticizing the Nov. 4 elections in Nicaragua as "a
sham," has privately argued against the participation of the leading opposition candidate for fear
his involvement would legitimize the electoral process, according to some senior Administration
officials.
Since May, when American policy toward the election was formed, the Administration has
wanted the opposition candidate, Arturo Jose Cruz, either not to enter the race or, if he did, to
withdraw before the election, claiming the conditions were unfair, the officials said.
"The Administration never contemplated letting Cruz stay in the race," one official said,
"because then the Sandinistas could justifiably claim that the elections were legitimate, making it
much harder for the United States to oppose the Nicaraguan Government."
Several Administration officials who are familiar with the Administration's activities in
Nicaragua said the Central Intelligence Agency had worked with some of Mr. Cruz's supporters to
insure that they would object to any potential agreement for his participation in the election. 75
A few days before election day, some rightist parties on the ballot claimed that US
diplomats had been pressing them to drop out of the race. 76 One of these, the Independent
Liberal Party, had already announced that it was no longer in the running.
Having exposed the administration's plan to sabotage the election's credibility, a plan
centering around Arturo Cruz, and having reported the above about parties being pressured
to drop out, the New York Times, after the election, inexplicably published an editorial
which said in part:
Only the naive believe that Sunday's election in Nicaragua was democratic or legitimizing proof of
the Sandinista's popularity. ... The Sandinistas made it easy to dismiss their election as a sham. Their
decisive act was to break off negotiations with Arturo Cruz, an opposition democrat whose candida-
cy could have produced a more credible contest. ... The opposition ... was finally shrunk to four
small left-wing groups and factions of two traditional parties. Even so, and after five years of unchal-
lenged power, the Sandinistas appear to have won less than two-thirds of the vote. 77
The American ambassador to Costa Rica likened Nicaragua under the Sandinistas to
an "infected piece of meat" that attracts "insects". 78 President Reagan called the country a
"totalitarian dungeon", 79 and insisted that the people of Nicaragua were more oppressed
than blacks in South Africa. 80
Members of the Kissinger Commission on Central America indicated that Nicaragua
under the Sandinistas was as bad or worse than Nicaragua under Somoza. Henry Kissinger
believed it to be as bad as or worse than Nazi Germany. 81 Reagan was in accord — he com-
pared the plight of the contras to Britain's stand against Germany in World War II. 82
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"Central America," noted Wayne Smith, former head of the US Interests Section in
Havana, "now exercises the same influence on American foreign policy as the full moon
does on werewolves." 83
So all-consuming, so unrelenting, was the hatred, that Kissinger demanded that the
American ambassador to Nicaragua be removed simply because he reported that the Sandinista
government was "performing fairly well in such areas as education". 8 And in the wake of the
terrible devastation in Nicaragua wrought by Hurricane Joan in October 1988, the Reagan
administration refused to send any aid nor to help private American organizations do so.
So eager was the State Department to turn the Sandinistas into international pariahs, that
it told the world, without any evidence, that Nicaragua was exporting drugs, that it was anti-
Semitic, that it was training Brazilian guerrillas. 85 When the CIA was pressed about the alleged
Sandinista drug connection, it backed down from the administration's claim. 86
Secretary of State Alexander Haig referred to a photograph of blazing corpses and
declared it an example of the "atrocious genocidal actions that are being taken by the
Nicaraguan Government" against the Miskito Indians. We then learned that the photo was
from 1978, Somoza's time. 87
Loathing of this magnitude had to be institutionalized. Thus it was that an Office of
Public Diplomacy was set up in 1983, nominally in the State Department, but operating as
an arm of the National Security Council. The OPD was characterized by a US official as "a
huge psychological operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in
denied or enemy territory". 88 Only in this case the target population was the American peo-
ple. OPD Deputy Director Col. Daniel Jacobowitz, a military "psy-ops" specialist,
described the media campaign in a March 1985 "confidential-sensitive" strategy paper:
"Overall theme: the Nicaraguan Freedom Fighters (NFF) are fighters for freedom in the
American Tradition, FSLN [Sandinistas] are evil. ""
Rolling off the OPD disinformation assembly line, with the imagination of Oliver
North ever active, were stories about Nicaragua acquiring chemical weapons, an "Iran-
Nicaragua" link {not to be confused with the real US/Oliver North-Iran link we later
learned of), a "Soviet MIGs in Nicaragua" hoax, the Sandinista massacre of 50 political
prisoners ... as well as a number of other claims, misleading at best. 90
Opinion pieces and "news" stories prepared by OPD staffers or contractors were plant-
ed in major media outlets under the signatures of contra leaders or ostensibly independent
scholars, pretending to offer independent confirmation of White House claims, while other
materials were distributed to thousands of university libraries, faculties, editorial writers,
and religious organizations. Private sector public relations experts, lobbying groups, and
think tanks were also enlisted for the cause and paid large chunks of taxpayer money to
promote the OPD agenda. By OPD's own assessment, its work significantly changed public
and congressional opinion, including winning approval in the House of $100 million in
contra aid in June 1986. 91
Within a rational framework it would be proper to inquire what the Sandinistas had
done that made it impossible for the United States to share the same planet with them.
David MacMichael observed that there was no casus belli between the two countries:
There are no examples of US citizens being killed there. No US property has been expropriated
without due process or compensation. These people are so backward that they haven't even
bothered to kill any American priests or nuns.
Now any half-respectable country in the world can do that, but the Sandinistas don': seem to
get round to it, 92
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What the United States did to the Nicaraguan revolution is clearer.
To transform Nicaraguan society, even if left in peace, would have been uphill all the
way. The Sandinistas inherited a country of crushing poverty, backward in most respects
(there were, reportedly, but two elevators in Nicaragua), and with a foreign debt of $1.6
billion which they decided to honor (with the exception of money owed to Israel and
Argentina for arms shipments to Somoza). 93
Then came the American body-blows to foreign trade and credit, to industry and agri-
culture, and a war which forced the government to devote an increasing portion of its
national budget and an inordinate amount of its labor power to warfare and security. In
1980, half the national budget had been allocated to health and education, and military
spending accounted for about 18 percent. By 1987, the military effort consumed more than
half the budget, health and education less than 20 percent.
On top of this; the historically familiar post-revolutionary flight abroad of capital and
middle-class professionals; the equally familiar sabotage by those who remain 94 — facile in a
society where most of the businesses and farms were still in private hands — and the
Nicaraguan economy went onto a life-support machine: a trail of inefficiencies and shortages
of all kinds; taxis and buses and machines grinding to a halt for want of an American spare
part; a failure to meet the great expectations of the population, mitigated only partly by the
progress in agrarian reform, health care, literacy, and other social programs ... many who had
been sympathetic to the revolution drifted away, some into protest and opposition.
Individuals are turned away from, or attracted to, social revolutions for a multitude of
reasons, ideological and/or personal. All must be approached with caution. The most
prominent defector from the Sandinistas, Eden Pastora, in between (semi-coherent) political
statements, declared that "They [the Sandinistas] attack me for my success with women, out
of jealousy because they are all queer and I can make love to their women." 95
"Few US officials now believe the contras can drive out the Sandinistas soon," repotted
the Boston Globe in February 1986. "Administration officials said they are content to see
the contras debilitate the Sandinistas by forcing them to divert scarce resources toward the
war and away from social programs. " 9
Forty years of anti-communist indoctrination under Somoza and American cultural
influence had also left their marks. A government militant put it this way:
Tell a Nicaraguan factory worker ... that we are building a system in which workers will control the
means of production, in which income will be redistributed to benefit the proletariat, and he will say
"yes — that's what we want." Call it Socialism and he will tell you he doesn't want any part of it. Tell
a peasant — in whom the problem of political education is even more acute — that the revolution is all
about destroying the power of the big latifundistas, that the agrarian reform and the literacy cam-
paign will incorporate the peasantry into political decisions ... and lie will be enthusiastic, he will rec-
ognize that this is right and just. Mention the word Communism and he will run a mile. 97
In the face of dissension, the Sandinistas often showed themselves unable to distinguish
sincere and valid criticism from intentions to destabilize. Some opponents were harassed
and jailed, civil liberties were curtailed, although never in a draconian manner. And creden-
tials of loyalty to the revolution increasingly became a priority in filling positions high and
low. This, interestingly enough, was precisely what was taking place in Washington at the
same time, as the ultra-ideological Reagan administration was stuffing the bureaucracy with
confirmed conservative loyalists.
Subsequent disclosures, however, established that the Sandinistas were not simply para-
noid. In September 1988, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Jim Wright, cit-
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ing "clear testimony from CIA people", revealed that the Agency had employed people in
Nicaragua to organize and promote anti-government rallies and protests in hopes of pro-
voking a crackdown or some other over-reaction by the government, which, besides making
the Sandinistas look bad, "was calculated to be disruptive to the peace talks" that the
Reagan administration was publicly supporting. 98
The shutting down of the prominent opposition newspaper La Prensa on several occa-
sions was also judged harshly lay civil libertarians. But this policy raised an important his-
torical question: During World War II, did the US government allow the publication of pro-
German or pro-Japanese newspapers in the United States? Has any government at war, par-
ticularly a war for its very survival, fought on its own soil, permitted the enemy to freely
publish or broadcast at home, or allowed unrestricted dissent? During the American Civil
War, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and put enemy sympathizers in army
jails without trial.
La Prensa indeed represented the enemy. At various times in the 1980s, one of the
paper's chief editors was Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, Jr. During part of the same time, he was
a member of the directorate of a contra umbrella group, The Nicaraguan Resistance of
Washington, D.C." And Chamorro would go off on speaking tours in the United States to
enlist support for the contras.
The newspaper was financed by the enemy as well, covertly by the CIA since 1979, and
by millions of dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Washington
and various "private" American groups beginning in 1984. 100 NED receives its money from
Congress and was set up in 1983 in the wake of all the negative revelations about the CIA
in the 1970s. Its raison d'etre is to do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing
covertly for decades — manipulate the political process in a target country by financing polit-
ical parties, labor unions, book publishers, newspapers, etc. — and thus, hopefully, eliminate
the stigma associated with CIA covert activities. 1 Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the
legislation establishing NED, and also founded the Center for Democracy, one of NED's
funding middlemen, was candid about this when he said in 1991: "A lot of what we do
today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." 102 NED, like the CIA before it, calls
what it does supporting democracy. The governments against whom the financing is target-
ed call it de-stabilization.
In any event, covert funding did not pass away. Both the CIA and Oliver North's mul-
tifarious operation channeled large sums of money to anti-Sandinista politicians and other
elements of the internal opposition, including, as we have seen, the Catholic Church. 103
During a period in which military aid to die contras was prohibited by Congress, North's
network purchased large quantities of arms for the rebels from Manzer al-Kassar, a man whose
US criminal record labels him "TERRORIST!" at the top of the page. Kassar was a known
associate of those reputed to be responsible for the 1985 Christmas massacres in the Rome and
Vienna airports, the hijacking of the liner Achille Lauro, and other notorious attacks. 104
Another apostle of decency enlisted for the cause was the government of South Africa,
which sent 200,000 pounds of military equipment to contta leader Eden Pastora. 105
By the time the war in Nicaragua began to slowly atrophy to a tentative conclusion
during 1988-89, the Reagan administration's obsession with the Sandinistas had inspired
both the official and unofficial squads to embrace tactics such as the following in order to
maintain a steady flow of financing, weaponry and other aid to the contras: dealings with
other middle-eastern and Latin American terrorists, frequent drug smuggling in a variety of
imaginative ways, money laundering, embezzlement of US government funds, perjury,
obstruction of justice, burglary of the offices of American dissidents, covert propaganda to
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defeat domestic political foes, violation of the neutrality act, illegal shredding of govern-
ment documents, plans to suspend the Constitution in the event of widespread internal dis-
sent against government policy ... and much more, as revealed in the phenomenon known
as Iran/Contra ... all of it to support the band of rapists, torturers and killers known as the
106
contras.
This, then, was the level of charm reached by anti-communism after 70 years of refine-
ment. The imperial sensibility of America's leaders could be compared favorably with that
of Britain circa 1925.
But it worked.
On 25 February 1990, the Sandinistas were defeated in national elections by a coali-
tion of political parties running under the name National Opposition Union (UNO).
President George Bush called it "a victory for democracy"... Senator Robert Dole declared
that "The final outcome is a vindication of the Reagan policies." 107 ... Elliott Abrams, for-
mer State Department official and Iran/Contra leading light, said "When history is written,
the contras will be folk heroes." 108
The opposing analysis of the election was that ten years of all-encompassing war had worn
the Nicaraguan people down. They were afraid that as long as the Sandinistas remained in
power, the contras and the United States would never relent in their campaign to overthrow
them. The people voted for peace. (As the people of the Dominican Republic had voted in 1966
for the US-supported candidate to forestall further American military intervention.)
"We can't take any more war. All we have had is war, war, war, war," said Samuel
Reina, a driver for Jimmy Carter's election monitoring team in Juigalpa. In some families
"one son has been drafted by the Sandinistas and another has joined the contras. The war
has torn families apart." 109
The US invasion and bombing of Panama just two months earlier, with all its death
and destruction, could only have intensified the commitment of hardcore Sandinistas to
resist yanqui imperialismo, but it could not have failed to serve as a caution to the large
bloc of undecided voters.
The Nicaraguans were also voting, they hoped, for some relief from the grinding pover-
ty that five years of a full American economic embargo, as well as the war, had heaped
upon their heads. Commented Paul Reichler, a US lawyer who represented the Nicaraguan
government in Washington at the time: "Whatever revolutionary fervor the people once
might have had was beaten out of them by the war and the impossibility of putting food in
their children's stomachs." 110
Aqui no se rinde nadie. For ten years the people of Nicaragua had shouted that slo-
gan — Hete, no one gives up. But in February 1990, they did exactly that. (Just as the people
of Chile had chanted "The people united will never be defeated", before succumbing to
American power.)
The United States had more than war and embargo at its disposal to determine the
winner of the election. The National Endowment for Democracy spent more than $11 mil-
lion dollars, directly and indirectly, on the ejection campaign in Nicaragua. 1 1 1 This is com-
parable to a foreign government pouring more than $700 million dollars into an American
election, and is in addition to several million dollars more allocated by Congress to "sup-
porting the electoral infrastructure" and the unknown number of millions the CIA passed
around covertly.
As a result of a controversy in 1984 — when NED funds were used to aid a Panamanian
presidential candidate backed by Noriega and the CIA — Congress enacted a law prohibiting
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the use of NED funds "to finance the campaigns of candidates for public office." The ways
to circumvent the letter and/or spirit of such a prohibition were not difficult to conceive.
NED first allocated millions to help organize UNO, building up the parties and organiza-
tions that formed and supported the coalition. Then a variety of other organizations — civic,
labor, media, women's, etc. — run by UNO activists received grants for all kinds of "non-
partisan" and "pro-democracy" programs, for voter education, voter registration, job skills,
and so on. Large grants made to UNO itself were specified for items such as office equip-
ment and vehicles. (Rep. Silvio Conte of Massachusetts pointed out that the $1.3 million
requested for vehicles would pay for renting 2,241 cars for a month at $20 per day.) UNO
was the only political patty to receive US aid, even though eight other opposition parties
fielded candidates. Money received by UNO for any purpose of course freed up their own
money for use in the campaign and helped all of their candidates. Moreover, the US contin-
ued to fund the contras, some of whom campaigned for UNO in rural areas. 112
Afterwards, critics of the American policy in Nicaragua called it "a blueprint" for suc-
cessful US intervention in the Third World. A Pentagon analyst agreed: "It's going right into
the textbooks." 113
El Chorrillo, that's what they called the tenement barrio in Panama City ... 20,000 peo-
ple had been packed into it; the December 1989 invasion — 10 hours of heavy assault — left
15,000 homeless. ... Marcia McFarland was asleep with her daughters when the assault on
the nearby military building began; she was leading them out of her house when a shatd of
shrapnel took a pound of her thigh and all but tote off her two-year old daughter's foot. ...
Artillery shells and rockets; tanks, machine guns, and flame throwers; and then the ground
troops, "the Yanqui soldiers, with their faces painted, they were all screaming, they looked
like Indians"; people burning to death in the incinerated dwellings, leaping from windows,
running in panic through the streets, cut down in cross fire, crushed by tanks, human body
fragments everywhere. ... Heriberto Pitti worked for Eastern Airlines; when US troops
attacked the airport, Pitti, Pablo Diaz and another colleague jumped into an Eastern pickup
and raced out of the hanger; the truck took seven founds through the windshield, killing all
three men; Pitti left a widow and two daughters; Diaz left a widow and 12 children. 1
Five hundred-something Panamanian dead is the official body count, what the US and
Panamanian governments admit to; other sources, with no less evidence, insist that thou-
sands died, their numbers obscured in mass graves; 3,000-something wounded; 23
American dead, 324 wounded.
Question from reporter: "Was it really worth it to send people to their death for this?
To get Noriega?"
George Bush: "... every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has
been worth it. " 2
"Born to Inform" would be a suitable inscription on a T-shirt worn by Manuel
Antonio Noriega. In his younger days, in the 1950s and early '60s, he was already passing
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on information to one or another US intelligence agency, about colleagues in a socialist
party he belonged to, about leftist students at his Peruvian military academy. 3
Noriega followed a military career, falling under the right mentor, National Guard
General Omar Torrijos. On two occasions the general had to intervene to save the ruthless
Noriega from rape charges. In October 1968, Torrijos took power in Panama in a coup. He
was, by Latin American standards, a not-very-brutal dictator; he was as well a liberal
reformer, who was wary of the excesses of North American power in Central America.
In December 1969, conservative military officers tried, unsuccessfully, to overthrow
Torrijos, claiming the government was heading toward a pro-communist dictatorship. Only
hours before the coup attempt began, one of the principal plotters had met with a US offi-
cial. After the coup, the same plotter and others escaped from a high-security jail in a
sophisticated commando operation and turned up in the US-run Panama Canal Zone before
going into exile in Miami.
Noriega, who had proven his loyalty to Torrijos during the coup attempt, was soon
elevated to head the intelligence unit of the National Guard. He was now in the right place
to carry out all forms of mischief and enhance his reputation as a thug.
As early as J971, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (forerunner of the
Drug Enforcement Administration), had "hard evidence" about Noriega's heavy involve-
ment in drug trafficking, "sufficient for indictment". But the legal and diplomatic obstacles
involved were considerable, and Noriega was already too valuable to the CIA. President
Nixon, however, wanted him "removed". Among the options discussed to achieve this end
was assassination. It went as far as sending a member of the infamous "plumbers" unit to
Mexico to await further orders to go to Panama and carry out the execution. But the
would-be assassin got no further. 5
During the Watergate heatings in 1973, former White House counsel John Dean testi-
fied that the White House had contracted E. Howard Hunt, "former" CIA officer and
Watergate burglar, to assassinate Omar Torrijos because of his uncooperative stance on the
Panama Canal treaty negotiations and his government's role in drug trafficking. 6 (Inasmuch
as Hunt may have been the "plumber" referred to above, and since Dean stated that Hunt
had his team in Mexico before the mission was aborted, there is possibly some confusion
here.)
Meanwhile, US government cash (primarily that of the CIA and the Pentagon) was
making its way into Manuel Noriega's bank accounts. With the exception of President
Carter's term, 1977-81, 7 the payments to Noriega continued until 1986; this included the
period that George Bush was the Director of the CIA (1976), at which time the Panamanian
intelligence chief was reportedly receiving in excess of $100,000 per year. 8
And a lot of looking the other way. During the Panama Canal negotiations in October
1976, three bombs went off under cars parked in the Canal Zone. American officials
believed that the bombings were an expression of nationalism carried out by Noriega's
National Guard. 9 Yet, in December, Bush met with the Panamanian in Washington and
gave him a VIP tour of the CIA. Noriega spent his time in Washington as the house guest of
Bush's Deputy Director, the infamous Vernon Walters. 10
When Omar Torrijos died in an air crash in 1981, Noriega became part of a ruling mil-
itary junta. (In 1987, Colonel Robert Diaz Herrera, who was a cousin of Torrijos and had
been one of the members of the junta, declared that Torrijos had died because of a bomb
placed aboard his plane. Diaz named Noriega, the CIA, US General Wallace Nutting, head
of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama at the time of the air crash, and others as being
part of the conspiracy.) 11
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Panama 1969-1991
By August 1983, Noriega had maneuvered himself into the position of commander of
the National Guard (whose name he soon changed to Panama Defense Forces). He was the
effective chief of state, and his value to his American paymasters increased accordingly.
Six months earlier, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had teported
that "Witnesses in Panama consider it common knowledge that the [National] Guard has
links — and receives payments — from various traffickers in drugs, arms and other kinds of
contraband." 12
In November, however, Noriega received the red-carpet treatment in Washington,
marked by luxury and meetings with officials of the White House, State Department and
Pentagon, and enjoyed a four-hour lunch with CIA Director William Casey. Casey, proba-
bly Noriega's biggest supporter in Washington, met with the Panama strongman at least six
times in Washington and Panama during the 1980s. 13
Noriega earned Washington's money and tolerance over the years by providing numer-
ous services, such as information about a host of regional matters, including his meetings
with Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega; giving haven to the Shah of Iran in December 1979;
allowing the United States to set up listening posts in Panama, with which they monitored
sensitive communications in all of Central America and beyond; and aiding the American
warfare against the rebels in El Salvador and the government of Nicaragua; in the latter
conflict, Noriega facilitated the flow of money and arms to the contras, allowed the US to
base spy planes in Panama in clear violation of the canal treaties, gave the US permission to
train contras in Panama (it is not certain that this actually took place), and provided infor-
mation and direct action for the American campaign of sabotage inside of Nicaragua. 14
But what information, American officials wondered, was the same Manuel Antonio
Noriega giving Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega about the United States? Washington already
knew that he was helping Cuba circumvent the American economic embargo and that at vari-
ous times in his career he'd helped to get weapons for the Sandinistas and for the guerrillas in
El Salvador and Colombia, as well as transferring high technology to Eastern Europe.
On 12 June 1986, the New York Times carried a front-page story recounting many of
Noriega's questionable activities, including his drug-trafficking and money-laundering oper-
ations, and the murder of a political opponent. It was the most detailed and damning report
on Noriega to appear in the US media.
Noriega assumed, probably incorrectly, that the article had the blessings of the White
House. And though the Reagan administration reassured him that he need not be overly
concerned about the story, the Panamanian felt threatened. 15
In August, through a go-between, he proposed to Oliver North that in exchange for a
promise from Washington to help clean up his image and a commitment to lift the US gov-
ernment ban on military sales to the Panamanian Defense Forces (imposed because of the
Times article), Noriega would assassinate the Sandinista leadership. North evidently
declined the offer, noting in a written memo that an executive order barred American par-
ticipation in assassinations. 16 However, as we have seen, the CIA in Nicaragua, not long
before, had been engaged in precisely the same undertaking.
The following month North and Noriega met in London to discuss the latter' s contri-
bution to the Nicaraguan sabotage campaign. In return, North arranged for an American
public relations firm to work on improving Panama's and Noriega's image. 17
Noriega's principal periods of drug trafficking and money laundering appear to have been
the early 1970s and the early 1980s, the latter period involving the Medellin, Colombia cartel.
At other times, for reasons best known to his opportunistic self he generally enforced the law
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against such activities. On his orders, Panamanian-flagged ships were searched in interna-
tional waters, fugitive drug traffickers were sent to the United States for trial, and
Panamanian banking laws were breached — all at the behest of American authorities. 18
Noriega's American patrons were pleased. At various times, he received warm letters of
praise from the State Department, the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, US Attorney
General William French Smith, CIA Director William Webster, and more than one DEA
official. In 1987, more than a year after the New York Times had revealed his drug involve-
ments in a front-page story, the head of the DEA, John Lawn, praised Noriega's "personal
commitment" in helping to solve a major money-laundering case. 19 The same year found
high US law enforcement officials, including Lawn, working alongside Noriega at a meeting
of Interpol, even advising him on how to achieve a better public image. 20
Eventually, his luck ran out. A few enthusiastic DEA agents and US Attorneys, keeping
a low profile, set the ball roiling in 1985 that eventually led to an indictment of Noriega in
Florida on Federal drug charges in February 1988. In the interim, the Iran-Contra scandal
broke out, followed by congressional hearings, making it much more awkward for
Noriega's prominent administration defenders, such as Oliver North and William Casey, to
pull the strings of the law. Then, in November 1986, North was relieved of his duties. The
following May, Casey died. In June, the Senate passed a resolution calling for Noriega's
immediate removal. It passed over the objections of the administration.
Ironically, it appears that Noriega had really gone straight. With one exception — a
drugs-for-arms deal in March 1986 — all the crimes he was indicted for in 1988 occurred in
June 1984 or earlier. The DEA was deeply divided between those who investigated him as a
criminal and those who swore by the authenticity of his cooperation with their agency. 21
"The Yankees," Noriega said shortly before they invaded, "seem to adore the product
[drugs] and then become upset with Latin Americans, as if we somehow were seducing
them." 22
Thus it was that the Reagan administration found itself with an indictment on its
hands. The situation called for disassociation. George Bush, campaigning for the presidency
in 1988, said repeatedly that he knew of no clear evidence that the Panamanian leader was
involved in drugs until he was indicted. 23 (He also initially denied, but later acknowledged,
that he had met with Noriega when he was CIA Director in 1976. ) 24 It should be noted that
Bush was head of the Reagan administration's Task Force on Drugs.
It would clearly be better for all concerned if Noriega would step down. Consequently,
the Reagan administration offered to drop the indictment if he resigned and went into exile;
they isolated him diplomatically; and undertook a campaign of severe and multifaceted eco-
nomic sanctions against Panama; but Noriega held fast, although the sanctions eventually
led to what the New York Times described as "a festering economic depression and the col-
lapse of thousands of businesses." 25
In the summer of 1988, the United States drew up a covert plan for a group of dissi-
dent Panamanian officers to oust Noriega without violence. If this failed, the proposal
called for the support of military action of a rebel force composed of a Panamanian military
officer and his followers, who were in exile in Miami and on the CIA payroll.
The Senate Intelligence Committee turned down the plan on the ground that it might
result in the illegal assassination of Noriega. 26
A presidential election was scheduled in Panama for May 1989, and the United States
expected that it would be stolen for Noriega's candidate, as had been the case in the previ-
ous election of 1984. Accordingly, the CIA provided more than $10 million in aid to the
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opposition, as well as clandestine radio and television broadcasts. Noriega didn't disap-
point his critics. When the ballot counting indicated his man losing heavily, he simply put
an end to the whole process and allowed his goons to beat up opposition candidates and
their supporters.
Washington expressed its moral indignation about the fraudulent election, but this
should be viewed in light of what had transpired five years earlier. In that election,
Noriega's man, Nicola's Barletta, was declared the winner, the final count being announced
ten days after the election. The opposition cried "fraud" and demonstrated for weeks, but
the result stood. The CIA, it turned out, along with the Medellin cocaine cartel, had helped
finance Barietta's campaign. 2 " And after his victory, Barlerta was welcomed by President
Reagan to the Oval Office, Secretary of State George Shultz attended the inauguration, and
heaven was in its place. Meanwhile, a political officer at the American Embassy in Panama
was meticulously examining huge stacks of voting documents and reports he had managed
to collect. His conclusion was inescapable: there had been egregious fraud. Barletta had
been defeated by at least four thousand votes.
The US ambassador's main concern was that the report not reach the press. No
American official pressured Panama for a recount. The political officer's report lies some-
where in a file in the bowels of Foggy Bottom. 25
On 3 October 1989, elements of the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) attempted a
very short-lived military overthrow of Noriega. When they apprised US officials in Panama
of their plan beforehand, they were not discouraged from undertaking it. But during the
execution they received virtually no help at all, even though they had Noriega in custody for
at least two hours and were willing to turn him over to the US military.
The reasons which were later advanced by the Bush administration at different times to
explain the lack of American support included: we didn't know what was going on; we
didn't think the rebels had Noriega in custody; they may have had him in custody but they
didn't want to release him to us; the US military commander in Panama was not authorized
to seize Noriega {later we learned that he was); the rebels were not to our liking politically;
our hands were tied by congressional intelligence committees; and, we suspected the whole
thing was a ruse to provoke and embarrass the US government. 30
The US military in Panama failed to block the road loyalist forces used to rescue
Noriega. The administration said later that by the time it was certain of the troop move-
ments it was too late. However, a convoy of loyalist trucks rumbled by the American
Embassy itself; moreover, the United States had a number of helicopters in the air (reported-
ly as many as a dozen) observing developments. 31
Some reports have it that the rebels were willing to turn Noriega over to the US military
only if the Americans would come and grab him to make it appear that he was being seized
against the will of his Panamanian captors. But the administration has denied this as well. 32
At one point, the American Embassy reported to the State Department and the CIA in
Washington that the rebels wanted to turn Noriega over, and the CIA went to brief mem-
bers of the congressional intelligence committees. Administration officials later said that the
embassy had misunderstood what the US military had told it because telephone communi-
cations in Panama were poor at the time. 33
Did the Bush administration decline Noriega as a gift during the October coup attempt
because it was determined to have its invasion? One circumstance may indicate a negative
response to this question: On 12 October, US officials met at the State Department with
Noriega's attorney to negotiate, once again, the Panamanian peacefully stepping down from
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power. Nothing came of this meeting.
After the US invasion began at one a.m. on 20 December, another incident occurred
which further raises the question of whether the apprehension of Noriega was the White
House's sole, or even primary, concern.
A European diplomat in Panama City (representing a major US ally) claimed that less
than three hours after the invasion began he telephoned the US military to inform them that
Noriega was two houses away in the flat of his mistress's grandmother, but the military dis-
regarded the information. The diplomat said later that he was "100 percent certain" of
Noriega's location. "But when I called, SouthCom [the U.S. Southern Command] said it
had other priorities." The diplomat had met several times with Noriega and his mistress,
who had recently moved into the diplomat's own apartment building. Other residents of the
two apartment buildings confirmed the diplomat's assertion about Noriega's presence.
Neither Southern Command officials nor the American Embassy would respond to inquiries
about the matter. 35
Did the US decline to capture Noriega in the first few hours of the invasion because it
was determined to first cripple his base of power, the PDF, and score a grand military tri-
umph that would enable George Bush to shred the wimp image that plagued him? Did mili-
tary muscle have to be flexed to illustrate the need for a big combat-ready force even in the
absence of a "Soviet threat", just weeks after the fall of the Berlin wall? Or to send a clear
message to the people of Nicaragua who had an election scheduled in two months?
When George Bush and Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney were asked why they had
made 180-degree turns on previous explicit rejections of a war against Panama, they each
referred to the same incident of the night of 16-17 December. 36
According to the Defense Department, four American servicemen, unarmed and in
civilian clothes, got lost and inadvertently drove up to a PDF roadblock, where they were
manhandled. As they drove away, they were shot at, killing one and wounding another. At
the same time, an American Navy officer and his wife who witnessed this scene were
roughed up considerably by the PDF. 37
One year later, the Los Angeles Times reported that the incident was not the unpro-
voked act of aggression by the PDF portrayed by Washington. Instead, it was a step in a
pattern of aggressive behavior by a small group of US troops who frequently tested the
patience and reaction of Panamanian forces, particularly at roadblocks, which they would
"dare" by driving up and then refusing to stop or suddenly pulling away. The Americans in
this case were not lost; and they were armed. They drove up to a very sensitive roadblock
and when told to leave the car by the PDF, the Americans all gave them the finger, shouted
an obscenity, and drove off The Panamanians then opened fire, 38
Lending credence to this report is, oddly enough, a recorded phone conversation of a
young Marine guard at the American Embassy speaking to his mother in the United States
the next morning. The four Americans, he said, "were out of bounds, owing to the fact that
they had no reason to be there. The whole world knows that they shouldn't have gone
there. They messed up. If the United States set up a barricade anywhere and someone acted
in the same way we would also start firing." 39
There had been other provocation as well. For months prior to the incident, the United
States had been engaging in military posturing in Panama. US troops, bristling with assault
weapons, would travel in fast-moving convoys, escorted by armored vehicles, looking for all
the world as if they planned to attack someone. US Marines descended from helicoptets by
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Panama 1969-1991
rope to practice emergency evacuation of the embassy. Panamanian military camps were
surrounded and their gates rattled amid insults by US servicemen. In one episode, more than
1,000 US military personnel conducted an exercise that appeared to be a rehearsal of a kid-
nap raid, as helicopters and jet aircraft flew low over Noriega's house and American raiders
splashed ashore nearby. 40
In late September, Gen. Max Thurman had been appointed the new Commander-in-
Chief of the Southern Command. He was briefed by Adm. William Crowe, Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, who apprised him that there was a very high probability that Bush
would call for large-scale military action in Panama in the neat future. "We're going to go
[but] I can't tell you when." 41
After the invasion, the mother of one of the American soldiers killed said that her son
had called her on 14 December to say he was going on a dangerous mission. "He called to
say goodbye ... and that (he) might not be home again." This was before the roadblock inci-
dent. Another serviceman, speaking to reporters after the invasion, said that the soldiers
had found out about it "maybe four or five days before you did". When a reporter asked
when that was, an Army officer prevented the soldier from answering. 42
It would appear from this evidence that the war had been planned before the American
serviceman was shot. All that was needed was a pretext, an incident.
Two days after the incident, an off-duty American lieutenant was leaving a laundry when
he was approached by a Panamanian police (or army) officer. The American shot and wounded
the Panamanian twice. "The U.S. serviceman felt threatened," the Bush administration claimed,
admitting that its earlier story that die Panamanian had pulled a gun was false. 43 It was not
reported that Panama invaded die United States as a result of this incident.
Thus it came to be that a superpower crushed one of the smallest armies in the hemi-
sphere. {It was the seventh time the United States had invaded Panama since it had kid-
napped the province from Colombia in 1903 to build the canal — see Appendix n.) The new
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell, declared at the time of the inva-
sion: "We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, 'Superpower lives here'." 44
But the Superpower still had to show a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.
Accordingly, the leading legal minds of the Justice Department, the State Department, and
the Defense Department put their heads together and came to the unanimous conclusion
that the invasion of the sovereign nation of Panama, the abduction of its leader, and his
criminal trial in the United States were all legal and proper.
The invasion was called "Operation Just Cause", perhaps for acts like the following
carried out by the American military:
• searched out and arrested hundreds of civilian supporters of Noriega even though they did not
face American or Panamanian criminal charges; houses were broken into to apprehend some of
the individuals;
• forced ambulances — with emergency lights flashing and sirens sounding as they rushed patients
to hospitals — to halt, to be searched for Noriega loyalists disguised as patients;
• fired into the air without warning while walking through busy streets;
• imposed and enforced curfews;
• organized tours of Noriega's home and office for reporters to gawk at and pry into all of the
man's personal belongings, from his photos to his underwear, publicized and ridiculed everything
fkm his sexual practices to his religious beliefs;
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• invaded prisons and released prisoners; the commander of the new Panamanian Public Force,
appointed by the US, blamed the extraordinary wave of crime and violence that hit Panama after
the invasion on what he said were hundreds of dangerous criminals freed by the US; he declared
that the rate of assaults, murders, and other crimes was "much worse" than under the Noriega
regime;
• wearing painted faces and firing machine guns into the air, raided the Nicaraguan ambassador's
home; the ambassador was wrestled to the ground; he and seven other people were held at gun-
point while US soldiers ransacked the house and confiscated weapons, $3,000 in cash, and per-
sonal items; the money was never returned, the ambassador said;
• surrounded the Vatican Embassy, where Noriega had taken sanctuary, and for several days blast-
ed the ears of the entire neighborhood with ear-splitting rock and roll music over loudspeakers.
US soldiers near the Vatican Embassy sang a parody of Woody Guthrie's old song: "This land is
my land, that land is my land, there's no land here that isn't my land.'" 45
"Many Panamanians initially welcomed the U.S. intervention," reported the Los
Angeles Times. "But as fighting continued through a fourth day on Saturday, some reports
from Panama suggested that resentment of the U.S. presence was also widespread. ... The
Panamanian people feel more threatened since the Americans arrived than they did when
Noriega still held power, an [American] administration official said." 46
On the first anniversary of the invasion, Panamanians couldn't agree whether to mark
the day as a holiday or a day of mourning. So President Endara proclaimed a National Day
of Reflection. 47
"From Mexico to Argentina, Latin American governments today roundly condemned
the use of force by the United States against Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega of Panama."
News report, 20 December 1989 48
"I appreciate the support that we've received, strong support from the United States
Congress, and from our Latin American neighbors."
George Bush, 21 December 1989 49
The Organization of American States approved a resolution "to deeply regret the mili-
tary intervention in Panama" by a vote of 20 to 1 (the one being the United States).
"We are outraged," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. The OAS, he
declared, "missed an historic opportunity to get beyond its traditional narrow concern with
non-intervention. " 50
Afterword
During 1930, the United States was instrumental in setting up a highly secretive intelli-
gence office, with the all-encompassing name of the Council of Public Security and National
Defense. The new agency was headed by a man who twice served as a senior minister in
Noriega's puppet governments. A government official said that the CIA was assisting in per-
sonnel training for the new agency and that further assistance was being received from a US
Justice Department police training mission in Panama.
Reportedly, one of the agency's missions was to gather information on "troublemak-
ers", including opposition figures organizing mass demonstrations. Another target was the
newly organized National Police, formed from remnants of Noriega's old army. "We'll
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Panama 1969-1991
watch the police," said an official. "We can't let the monster arise again." This left open the
question of who would watch the new agency. 51 At the same time, the US Army's 4th
Psychological Operations Group established a hotline for the public to denounce Noriega
backers, criminals, subversives and anti-US fighters, who were then picked up by American
troops and consigned to detention camps.' 52
In December 1990, when President Guillelmo Endara was faced with a military rebellion
he was unable to put down, he called upon US troops to intervene and quell the uprising. 53
Endara had been sworn in as president on a US military base in Panama during the invasion a
year earlier. The official Pentagon study of the Panama occupation notes that the original post-
invasion plans called for outright US military government, with the head of the Southern
Command as Panama's de facto ruler. At the last minute a decision was made to install Endara
as president, but his government was, as the study put it, "merely a facade". 54
The United States confiscated thousands of boxes of Noriega government documents
and refused to hand over any of them to Panamanian investigators. "The United States is
protecting robbers and thieves and obstructing justice," complained the government's chief
prosecutor. "We are the owners of the documents. If I am to complete my work, 1 have to
see the documents." 55
Panamanian businessmen reported that they'd lost as much as $700 million because of
the looting and rioting that followed the invasion, very little of it covered by insurance. One
year after the invasion, unemployment was running at more than 25 percent, and invasion
damage, looting, and the US sanctions of 1988-89 had shrunk Panama's economy by 30
percent, 56
The new president, one of the two vice-presidents, and the attorney general, it turned
out, all had links to drug trafficking and money laundering. 57
By the spring of 1991 it could be reported that Colombian drug cartels and associates of
Noriega had once again turned Panama into a narcotics trans-shipment center; there were as
well far more cocaine production facilities than ever existed under Noriega, and drug use in
Panama was reportedly at a far higher level. The new drug trafficking and money laundering
activity centered on associates of cabinet officials, particularly in the president's and the attor-
ney general's offices. When American officials told the Panamanians that Foreign Ministry
legal adviser Julio Berrios was under US investigation for money laundering, the Panamanians
did nothing. Berrios was subsequently appointed to Panama's delegation for negotiations with
the United States on the treaty to end money laundering. 58
Washington insisted that Panama change its prized banking secrecy laws to facilitate
US efforts to pursue suspected lawbreakers, principally launderers of drug money. Panama's
Controller General pointed out that the United States wanted Panama to pursue acts which
were crimes in the US but not in Panama. "We can't change the whole legal system because
of one thing [drugs]," he argued.
Eventually, after many American threats to cut off aid, Panama signed a treaty in April
1991 giving US authorities partial access to Panamanian banking records and the right to
prosecute individuals depositing illegal drug profits. However, foreign banks, particularly
Colombian ones, found ways to circumvent the new requirements and were soon back in
the money-laundering business. 59
313
51. Bulgaria 1990/Albania 1991
Teaching communists what democracy is all about
For American anti-communist cold-warriors, for Bulgarian anti-communist cold-war-
riors, it couldn't have looked more promising.
The cold war was over. The forces of Western Civilization, Capitalism and Goodness
had won. The Soviet Union was on the verge of falling apart. The Communist Party of
Bulgaria was in disgrace. Its dictatorial leader of 35 years was being prosecuted for abuses
of power. The party had changed its name, but that wouldn't fool anybody. And the coun-
try was holding its first multiparty election in 45 years.
Then, the communists proceeded to win the election.
For the anti-communists the pain was unbearable. Surely some monstrous cosmic mis-
take had been made, a mistake which should not be allowed to stand. It should not, and it
would not.
Washington had expressed its interest early. In February, Secretary of State James
Baker became the most senior American official to visit Bulgaria since World War U. His
official schedule said be was in Bulgaria to "meet with opposition leaders as well as
Government officials". Usually, the New York Times noted, "it is listed the other way
around". Baker became deeply involved in his talks with the opposition about political
strategies and how to organize for an election. He also addressed a street rally organized by
opposition groups, praising and encouraging the crowd. On the State Department profile of
Bulgaria handed to reporters traveling with Baker, under the heading "Type of
Government", was written "In transition".
In May, three weeks before election day, a row broke out over assertions by the leader
of the main opposition group. Petal Beron, secretary of the Union of Democratic Forces, a
coalition of 16 parties and movements, said that during UDFs visits to Europe and the
United States, many politicians pledged that they would not provide financial assistance to a
socialist Bulgaria. This would apply even if the Bulgarian Socialist Party — the renamed
Communist Party — won the elections fairly. Beron stated that:
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Bulgaria 1990/Albania 1991
Western leaders want lasting contacts with governments which are building Western-style
democracy and economies. The British Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurci, was particularly cate-
gorical. He said he was drawing up a declaration to go before the European Community to
refuse help for the remaining socialist governments in Eastern Europe. 2
Meanwhile, the National Endowment for Democracy, Washington's specially created
stand-in for the CIA (see Nicaragua chapter), with funding in this case primarily from the
Agency for International Development, was pouring some $2 million into Bulgaria to influ-
ence the outcome of the election, a process the NED calls "promoting democracy". This
was equivalent to a foreign power injecting more than $50 million into an American elec-
toral campaign. One major recipient of this largesse was the newspaper of the opposition
Union of Democratic Forces, Demokrazia, which received $233,000 worth of newsprint,
"to allow it to increase its size and circulation for the period leading up to the national elec-
tions". The UDF itself received another $615,000 of American taxpayer money for "infra-
structure support and party training" ... "material and technical support" ... and "post-elec-
toral assistance for the UDF's parry building program". 3
The United States made little attempt to mask its partisanship. On June 9, the day
before election day, the US ambassador to Bulgaria, Sol Polansky, appeared on the platform
of a UDF rally. 4 Polansky, whose early government career involved intelligence research,
was a man who had had more than a passing acquaintance with the CIA. Moreover, several
days earlier, the State Department had taken the unusual step of publicly criticizing the
Bulgarian government for what it called the inequitable distribution of resources for news
outlets, especially newsprint for opposition newspapers, as if this was not a fact of life for
genuine opposition forces in the United States and every other country in the world. The
Bulgarian government responded that the opposition had received newsprint and access to
the broadcast outlets in accordance with an agreement between the parties, adding that
many of the Socialist Party's advantages, especially its financial reserves, resulted from the
party's membership of one million, about a ninth of Bulgaria's population. The government
had further provided the printing plant to publish the UDF newspaper and had given the
opposition coalition the building from which to run its operations.
The Socialists' lead in the polls in the face of a crumbling economy perplexed the UDF,
but the Bulgarian Socialist Party drew most of its support from among pensioners, farm-
workers and the industrial workforce, together representing well over half the voting popu-
lation. 6 These sectors tended to associate the BSP with stability, and the party capitalized on
this, pointing to the disastrous results — particularly the unemployment and inflation — of
"shock therapy" free enterprise in Russia. 7 Although the three main parties all proposed
moving toward a market economy, the Socialists insisted that the changes had to be careful-
ly controlled. How this would be manifested in practice if the BSP were in charge and had
to live in an extremely capitalist world, could not be predicted. What was certain, however,
was that there was no way a party named "Socialist", nee "Communist", recently married
to the Soviet Union, could win the trust and support of the West.
As it turned out after the second round of voting, the Socialists had won about 47 per-
cent of the vote and 211 seats in the 400-seat parliament (the Grand National Assembly), to
the UDF's 36 percent and 144 seats. Immediately following the first round, the opposition
took to the streets with accusations of fraud, chanting "Socialist Mafia!" and "We won't
work for the Reds!" However, the European election observers had contrary views. "The
results ... will reflect the will of the people," said the leader of a British observer delegation.
'Tf I wanted to fix an election, it would be easier to do it in England than in Bulgaria."
"If the opposition denounces the results as manipulated, it doesn't fit in with what
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KILLING HOPE
we've seen," a Council of Europe delegate declared.
Another West European observer rejected the opposition claims as "sour grapes". 8
"Utter rot" was the term chosen by a conservative English MP to describe allegations
of serious fraud. He asserted that "The conduct of the poll was scrupulously fair. There
were just minor 'incidents that were exaggerated."
"The opposition appear to be rather bad losers," concluded one Western diplomat. 9
These opinions were shared by the many hundreds of observers, diplomats and parlia-
mentarians from Western Europe. Nonetheless, most of the American observers were not
very happy, saying that fear and intimidation arising from "the legacy of 45 years of totali-
tarian rule" had produced "psychological" pressures on Bulgarian voters. "Off the record, I
have real problems with this," said one of the Americans. Asked if his team's report would
have been as critical had the opposition won, be replied: "That's a good question." 10
Members of the British parliamentary observer group dismissed reports that voting was
marred by intimidation and other malpractices. Most complaints were either "trivial" or
impossible to substantiate, they said. "When we asked where intimidation had taken place,
it was always in the next village," said Lord Tordoff 11
Before the election, Socialist Prime Minister Lukanov had called for a coalition with
opposition parties if his Bulgarian Socialist Patty won the election. "The new government,"
he said, "needs the broadest possible measure of public support if we are to carry through
the necessary changes." 12 Now victorious, he repeated the call for a coalition. But the UDF
rejected the offer. 1 There were, however, elements within the BSP which were equally
opposed to a coalition.
The opposition refused to accept the outcome of the voting. They were at war with the
government. Street demonstrations became a daily occurrence as UDF supporters, backed
by large numbers of students, built barricades and blocked traffic, and students launched a
wave of strikes and sit-ins. Many of the students were acting as part of the Federation of
Independent Student Societies (or Associations), which had been formed before the election.
The chairman of the student group, Aptanas Kirchev, asserted that the organization had
documentation on electoral abuses which would shortly be made public. But this does not
appear to have taken place. 14
The student movements were amongst the recipients of National Endowment for
Democracy grants, to the tune of $100,000 "to provide infrastructure support to the
Federation of Independent Student Associations of Bulgaria to improve its outreach capaci-
ty in preparation for the national elections". The students received "faxes, video and copy-
ing equipment, loudspeakers, printing equipment and low-cost printing techniques", as well
as the help of various Polish advisers, American legal advisers, and other experts — the best
that NED money could buy. 15
The first victory for the protest movement came on 6 July, less than a month after the
election, when President Mladenov was forced to resign after a week of protests — including
a hunger strike outside of Parliament — over his actions during an anti-governmental
demonstration the previous December. His resignation came after the UDF released a video-
tape showing Mladenov talking to his colleagues and appearing to say: "Shouldn't we bring
in the tanks?" Said a UDF official of the resignation, "We are rather happy about all this. It
has thrown the Socialists into chaos." 16
The demonstrations, the protests, the agitation continued on a daily basis during July.
A "City of Freedom" consisting of more than 60 tents was set up in the center of Sofia,
occupied by people who said they would stay there until all senior Bulgarian politicians
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Bulgaria 1990/Albania 1991
who served under the old communist regime were removed. When they were denied what
they considered adequate access to the media, the protesters added to their demands the res-
ignation of the head of Bulgarian television. 17 At one point, a huge ceremonial pyre was
built in the street in which text books from the communist era were burnt, as well as party
cards and flags. 18
The next head to fall was that of the interior minister, Atanas Smerdjiev, who resigned
in a dispute over the extent to which the questioning of former dictator Todor Zhivkov
should be public or behind closed doors. The Bulgarian people indeed had a lot to protest
about; primarily a rapidly declining standard of living and a government without a presi-
dent which seemed paralyzed and unable to enact desperately-needed reforms. But the ques-
tion posed by some MPs — as thousands of hostile demonstrators surrounded the Parliament
building during the Smerdjiev affair — was "Are we going to be dictated to by the street?"
"The problem," said Prime Minister Lukanov, "is whether Parliament is a sovereign body
or whether we ate going to be forced to make decisions under pressure." His car was
attacked as he left the building, 19 Finally, on 1 August the head of the UDF, Zhelyu Zhelev,
was elected unopposed by Parliament as the new president.
A few weeks later, another demand of the protesters was met. The government began
to remove communist symbols, such as red stars and hammer-and-sickles, from buildings in
Sofia Yet, two days later, the headquarters of the Socialist Party was set afire as 10,000
people swarmed around it. Many of them broke into the building and ransacked it before it
wound up a gutted and charred shell.
The protest movement in Bulgaria was beginning to feel and smell like the general
strike in British Guiana to topple Cheddi Jagan in 1962, and the campaign to undermine
Salvador Allende in Chile in the early 70s — both operations of the CIA — where as soon as
one demand was met, newer ones were raised, putting the government virtually under siege,
hoping it would over-react, and making normal governing impossible. In Bulgaria, women
demonstrated by banging pots and pans to signify the lack of food in the shops, 21 just as
women had dramatically done in Chile, and in Jamaica and Nicaragua as well, where the
CIA had also financed anti-government demonstrations. In British Guiana, the Christian
Anti-Communist Crusade had come down from the US to spread the gospel and money,
and similar groups had set up shop in Jamaica. In Bulgaria in August, representatives of the
Free Congress Foundation, an American right-wing organization with lots of money and
lots of anti-communist and religious ideology, met with about one-third of the opposition
members in Parliament and President Zhelev's chief political adviser. Zhelev himself visited
the FCF's Washington office the following month. The FCF — which has received money
from the National Endowment for Democracy at times — had visited the Soviet Union and
most of the Eastern European countries in 1989 and 1990, imparting good of American
know-how in electoral and political techniques and for shaping public policy, as well as
holding seminars on the multiple charms of fee enterprise. It is not known whether any of
the students were aware of the fact that one of the FCF's chief Eastern European program
directors, Laszlo Pasztot, was a man with genuine Nazi credentials. 22 By Octobet, a group
of American financial experts and economists, under the auspices of the US Chamber of
Commerce, had drawn up a detailed plan for transforming Bulgaria into a supply-side free-
market economy, complete with timetables for implementing the plan. President Zhelev said
he was confident the Bulgarian government would accept virtually all the recommendations,
even though the BSP held a majority in Parliament. "They will be eager to proceed," he
said, "because otherwise the government will fall." 25
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Witnesses and police claimed that Konstantin Ttenchev, a fierce anti-communist who
was a senior figure in the UDF and the leader of the Podkrepa independent trade union, had
called on a group of hardcore demonstrators to storm the BSP building during the fire. He
had also called for the dissolution of Parliament and presidential rule, "tantamount to a
coup d'etat" declared the Socialist Party. Ttenchev went into hiding. 24
Trenchev's Podkrepa union was also being financed by the NED — $327 thousand had -
been allocated "to provide material and technical support to Bulgaria's independent trade
union movement Podkrepa" and "to help Podkrepa organize a voter education campaign
for the local elections". There were computers and fax machines, and there were advisers to
help the union "get organized and gain strength", according to Podkrepa's vice president.
The assistance had teached Podkrepa via the Free Trade Union Institute, 25 set up by the
AFL-CIO in 1977 as the successor to the Free Trade Union Committee, which had been
formed in the 7940s to combat left-wing trade unionism in Europe. Both the FTUC and the
FTUI had long had an intimate relationship with the CIA. 26
In the first week of November, several hundred students occupied Sofia University once
again, demanding now the prosecution, not merely the removal, of leading figures in the
former communist regime, as well as the nationalization of the Socialist Party's assets. The
prime minister's rule was shaky. Lukanov had threatened to step down unless he gained
opposition support in Parliament for his program of economic reform. The UDF, on the
other hand, was now demanding that it be allowed to dominate a new coalition govern-
ment, taking the premiership and most key portfolios. Although open to a coalition, the
BSP would not agree to surrender the prime minister's position; the other cabinet posts,
ho we vet, were open to negotiation. 27
The movement to topple Lukanov was accelerating. Thousands marched and called for
his resignation. University students held rallies, sit-ins, strikes and protest fasts, now
demanding the publication of the names of all former secret police informers in the universi-
ty. They proclaimed their complete distrust in the ability of the government to cope with
Bulgaria's political and economic crisis, and called for "an end to one -party rule", a strange
request in light of the desire of Lukanov to form a coalition government. 28 In June The
Guardian of London had described Lukanov as "Bulgaria's impressive Prime minister ... a
skilled politician who impresses business executives, bankers and conservative Western
politicians, while maintaining popular support at home, even among the opposition," 29
On the 23rd of November, Lukanov (barely) survived a no-confidence motion, leading
the UDF to storm out of Parliament, announcing that they would not return for "an indefi-
nite period". Three days later, the Podkrepa labor organization instituted a "general
strike", albeit nor with a majority of the nation's workers. °
Meanwhile, the student protests continued, although some of their demands had
already been partly met. The Socialist Party had agreed to restore to the state 57 percent of
its assets, corresponding to subsidies received from the state budget under the previous
regime. And the former party leader, Todor Zhivkov, was already facing trial.
Some opposition leaders were not happy with the seemingly boundless student protest
movement. UDF leader Petar Beron urged that since Bulgaria had embarked on the road to
parliamentary democracy, the students should give democracy a chance and not resort to
sit-ins. And a UDF MP added that "The socialists should leave the political arena in a legal
manner. They should not be forced into doing it through revolution." Student leaders dis-
missed these remarks out of hand. 31
The end for Andrei Lukanov came on 29 November, as the strike spread to members
of the media, and thousands of doctors, nurses and teachers staged demonstrations. He
318
Bulgaria 1990/Albania 1991
announced that since his proposed economic program had nor received the broad support
he had asked for, he had decided that it was "useless to continue in office". A caretaker
coalition would be set up that would lead to new general elections. 32
Throughout the period of protest and turmoil, the United States continued to give financial
assistance to various opposition forces and "whispered advice on how to apply pressure to the
elected leaders". The vice president of the Podkrepa union, referring to American diplomats,
said: "They wanted to help us and have helped with advice and strategy." This solidarity gave
rise to hopes of future American aid. Konstantin Trenchev, the head of Podkrepa, apparently
out of hiding now, confirmed that opposition activists had been assured of more US assistance
if they managed to wrest power from the former communists. 33
These hopes may have had as much to do with naivet6 as with American support for
the UDF. The Bulgarians, like other Eastern Europeans and Soviet citizens, had led very
sheltered political and intellectual lives. In 1990, their ideological sophistication was scarce-
ly above the equation: if the communist government was bad, it must have been all bad; if it
was all bad, its principal enemy must have been all good. They believed such things as:
American government leaders could not stay in office if they lied to the people, and that
reports of homelessness and the absence of national health insurance in the United States
were just "communist propaganda".
However, the new American ambassador, H. Kenneth Hill, said that Washington offi-
cials had made it clear to Bulgarian politicians that furure aid depended on democratic
reform and development of an economic recovery plan acceptable to Western lenders, the
same terms laid down all over Eastern Europe.
The Bulgarian Socialists, while not doubting Washington's commitment to exporting
capitalism, did complain that the United States had at times violated democratic principles
in working against the leadership chosen by the Bulgarian people. One reform-minded
Socialist government official contended that Americans had reacted to his party's victory as
if it represented a failure of US policy. "The U.S. government people have not been the most
clean, moral defenders of democracy here," he said. "What cannot be done at home can be
gotten away with in this dark, backward Balkan state." 34
In the years since, the Bulgarian people, particularly the students, may have learned
something, as the country has gone through the now-familiar pattern of freely-rising prices,
the scrapping of subsidies on basic goods and utilities, shortages of all kinds, and IMF and
World Bank demands to tighten the belts even further. Politically, there's been chaos. The
UDF came to power in the next elections (with the BSP a very close second) but, due to the
failing economy, lost a confidence vote in Parliament, saw its entire cabinet resign, then the
vice president, who warned that the nation was heading for dictatorship. Finally, in July
1993, protesters prevented the president from entering his office for a month and demanded
his resignation.
By 1994, we could read in the Los Angeles Times, by their most anti-communist for-
eign correspondent:
Living conditions are so much worse in the reform era that Bulgarians look back fondly on com-
munism's "good old days," when the hand of the state crushed personal freedom but ensured
that people were housed, employed and had enough to eat. 35
But for Washington policy makers, the important thing, the ideological bottom line,
was that the Bulgarian Socialist Party could not, and would not, be given the chance to
prove that a democratic, socialist-oriented mixed economy could succeed in Eastern Europe
while the capitalist model was failing all around it.
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KILLING HOPE
Nor, apparently, would it be allowed in nearby Albania. On 31 March 1991, a
Communist government won overwhelming endorsement in elections there. This was fol-
lowed immediately by two months of widespread unrest, including street demonstrations
and a general strike lasting three weeks, which finally led to the collapse of the new regime
by June/ 6 The National Endowment for Democracy had been there also, providing
$80,000 to the labor movement and $23,000 "to support training and civic education pro-
grams". 37
"This is the one part I didn't want to see," said a 20-year-old private. "All the home-
less, all the hurting. When we came through the refugee camp, man, that's something I
didn't need."
"It's really sad," said the sergeant. "We've got little kids come up and see my gun, and
they start crying. That really tears me up."
"At night, you kill and you roll on by," said another GI. "You don't stop. You don't
have to see anything. It wasn't until the next morning the rear told us the devastation was
total. We'd killed the entire division." 1
While many nations have a terrible record in modern times of dealing out great suffer-
ing face-to-face with their victims, Americans have made it a point to keep at a distance
while inflicting some of the greatest horrors of the age: atomic bombs on the people of
Japan; carpet-bombing Korea back to the stone age; engulfing the Vietnamese in napalm
and pesticides; providing three decades of Latin Americans with the tools and methods of
torture, then turning their eyes away, closing their ears to the screams, and denying every-
thing ... and now, dropping 177 million pounds of bombs on the people of Iraq in the most
concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world.
What possessed the United States to carry out this relentless devastation for more than
40 days and nights against one of the most advanced and enlightened nations in the Middle
East and its ancient and modern capital city?
It's the first half of 1990. The dismantling of the Berlin wall is being carried out on a
daily basis. Euphoria about the end of the cold war and optimism about the beginning of a
new era of peace and prosperity are hard to contain. The Bush administration is under pres-
sure to cut the monster military budget and institute a "peace dividend". But George Bush,
Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, former Texas oil man, and former Director of
the CIA, is not about to turn his back on his many cronies in the military-industrial-intelli-
gence complex. He rails against those who would "naively cut the muscle out of our defense
posture", and insists that we must take a cautious attitude towards reform in the USSR. 2 In
February, it's reported that "the administration and Congress are expecting the most acri-
monious hard-fought defense budget battle in recent history"; and in June that "tensions
have escalated" between Congress and the Pentagon "as Congress prepares to draft one of
the most pivotal defense budgets in the past two decades." 3 A month later, a Senate Armed
Services subcommittee votes to cut military manpower by nearly three times more than rec-
ommended by the Bush administration ... "The size and direction of the cuts indicate that
Iraq 1990-1991
Desert holocaust
320
Iraq 1990-1991
President Bush is losing his battle on how to manage reductions in military spending." 4
During this same period Bush's popularity was plummeting: from an approval rating of
80 percent in January — as he rode the wave of public support for his invasion of Panama
the previous month — to 73 in February, down to the mid-60s in May and June, 63 on 1 1
July, 60 two weeks later. 5
George Herbert Walker Bush needed something dramatic to capture the headlines and
the public, and to convince Congress that a powerful military was needed as much as ever
because it was still a scary and dangerous world out there.
Although the official Washington version of events presented Iraq's occupation of
neighboring Kuwait as an arbitrary and unwarranted aggression, Kuwait had actually been
a district of Iraq, under Ottoman rule, up to the First World War. After the war, to exert
leverage against the abundantly oil-rich Iraq, the British Colonial Office established tiny
Kuwait as a separate territorial entity, in the process cutting off most of Iraq's access to the
Persian Gulf. In 1961, Kuwait became "independent," again because Britain declared it to
be so, and Iraq massed troops at the border, backing down when the British dispatched
their own forces. Subsequent Iraqi regimes never accepted the legitimacy of this state of
affairs, making similar threats in the 1970s, even crossing a half-mile into Kuwait in 1976,
but Baghdad was also open to a compromise with Kuwait under which Iraq would gain
access to its former islands in the Gulf.
The current conflict had its origins in the brutal 1980-88 war between Iraq and Iran.
Iraq charged that while it was locked in battle, Kuwait was engaged in stealing $2.4 billion
of oil from the Rumaila oil field that ran beneath the vaguely defined Iraq-Kuwait border
and was claimed in its entirety by Iraq; that Kuwait had built military and other structures
on Iraqi territory; and worst of all, that immediately after the war ended, Kuwait and the
United Arab Emirates began to exceed the production quotas established by the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), flooding the oil market, and dri-
ving prices down. Iraq was heavily strapped and deeply in debt because of the long war,
and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declared this policy was an increasing threat to his
country — "economic war", he called it, pointing out that Iraq lost a billion dollars a year
for each drop of one dollar in the oil price. 7 Besides compensation for these losses, Hussein
insisted on possession of the two Gulf islands which blocked Iraq's access to the Gulf as
well as undisputed ownership of the Rumaila oilfield.
In the latter part of July 1990, after Kuwait had continued to scorn Iraq's financial and
territorial demands, and to ignore OPEC's request to stick to its assigned quota, Iraq began
to mass large numbers of troops along the Kuwaiti border.
The reaction to all this by the world's only remaining superpower and self-appointed
global policeman became the subject of intense analysis and controversy after Iraq actually
invaded. Had Washington given Iraq a green light to invade? Was there, at a minimum, the
absence of a flashing red light? The controversy was fueled by incidents such as the following:
19 July: Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney stated that the American commitment made
during the Iran-Iraq war to come to Kuwait's defense if it were attacked was still valid. The
same point was made by Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, at a private
luncheon with Arab ambassadors. (Ironically, Kuwait had been allied with Iraq and feared
an attack from Iran.) Later, Cheney's remark was downplayed by bis own spokesman, Pete
Williams, who explained that the secretary had spoken with "some degree of liberty".
Cheney was then told by the White House; "You're committing us to war we might not
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KILLING HOPE
want to fight," and advised pointedly that from then on, statements on Iraq would be made
by the White House and State Department.
24 July: State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutweiler, in response to a ques-
tion, responded: "We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special
defense or security commitments to Kuwait." Asked whether the United States would help
Kuwait if it were attacked, she said: "We also remain strongly committed to supporting the
individual and collective self-defense of our friends in the gulf with whom we have deep and
longstanding ties" — a statement that some Kuwaiti officials said privately was too weak, 9
24 July: The US staged an unscheduled and rare military exercise with the United Arab
Emirates, and the same Pete Williams then announced: "We remain strongly committed to
supporting the individual and collective self-defense of our friends in the gulf with whom
we have deep and longstanding ties." And the White House declared: "We're concerned
about the troop buildup by the Iraqis, We ask that all parties strive to avoid violence." 10
25 July: Saddam Hussein was personally told by the US ambassador to Iraq, April
Glaspie, in a now-famous remark, that "We have no opinion on the Arab- Arab conflicts, like
your border disagreement with Kuwait." But she then went on to tell the Iraqi leader that she
was concerned about his massive troop deployment on the Kuwaiti border in the context of
his government's having branded Kuwait's actions as "parallel to military aggression". 11
25 July: John Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian
Affairs, killed a planned Voice of America broadcast that would have warned Iraq with the
identical party-line words used by Tutweiier and Williams. 12 Hussein may not have known
of this incident, although in April he had been personally assured by visiting Senate
Minority Leader Robert Dole, speaking in behalf of the president, that the Bush administra-
tion dissociated itself from a Voice of America broadcast critical of Iraq's human-rights
abuses and also opposed a congressional move for economic sanctions against Iraq. 13
27 July: The House and Senate each voted to impose economic sanctions against Iraq
because of its human-rights violations. However, the Bush administration immediately reit-
erated its opposition to the measure, 14
28 July: Bush sent a personal message to Hussein (apparently after receiving Glaspie's
report of her meeting with the Iraqi leader) cautioning him against the use of force, without
referring directly to Kuwait. 15
31 July: Kelly told Congress: "We have no defense treaty relationship with any Gulf
country. That is clear. ... We have historically avoided taking a position on border disputes
or on internal OPEC deliberations."
Rep. Lee Hamilton asked if it would be correct to say that if Iraq "charged across the
border into Kuwait" the United States did "not have a treaty commitment which would
obligate us to engage U.S. forces" there,
"That is correct," Kelly responded. 16
The next day (W ashington time), Iraqi troops led by tanks charged across the Kuwaiti
border, and the United States instantly threw itself into unmitigated opposition.
Official statements notwithstanding, it appears that the United States did indeed have
an official position on the Iraq-Kuwait border dispute. After the invasion, one of the docu-
ments the Iraqis found in a Kuwaiti intelligence file was a memorandum concerning a
November 1989 meeting between the head of Kuwaiti state security and CIA Director
William Webster, which included the following:
We agreed with the American side that it was important to take advantage of the deteriorating
economic situation in Iraq in order to put pressure on that country's government to delineate our
322
Iraq 1990-1991
common border. The Central Intelligence Agency gave us its view of appropriate means of pres-
sure, saying that broad cooperation should be initiated between us on condition that such activi-
ties be coordinated at a high level.
The CIA called the document a "total fabrication". However, as the Los Angeles Times
pointed out, "The memo is not an obvious forgery, particularly since if Iraqi officials had
written it themselves, they almost certainly would have made it far more damaging to U.S.
and Kuwaiti credibility." 17 It was apparently real enough and damaging enough to the
Kuwaiti foreign minister — he fainted when confronted with the document by his Iraqi coun-
terpart at an Arab summit meeting in mid-August. 18
When the Iraqi ambassador in Washington was asked why the document seemed to
contradict US Ambassador Glaspie's avowal of neutrality on the issue, he replied that her
remark was "part and parcel of the setup ".' 9
Was Iraq set up by the United States and Kuwait? Was Saddam provoked into his inva-
sion — with the conspirators' expectation perhaps that it would not extend beyond the bor-
der area — so he could be cut down to the size both countries wanted?
In February 1990, Hussein made a speech before an Arab summit which could certain-
ly have incited, or added impetus to, such a plot. In it he condemned the continuous
American military presence in the Persian Gulf waters and warned that "If the Gulf people
and the rest of the Arabs along with them fail to take heed, the Arab Gulf region will be
ruled by American will." Further, that the US would dictate the production, distribution
and price of oil, "all on the basis of a special outlook which has to do solely with U.S. inter-
ests and in which no consideration is given to the interests of others." 20
In examining whether there was a conspiracy against Iraq and Saddam Hussein, we
must consider, in addition to the indications mentioned above, the following:
Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat has asserted that
Washington thwarted the chance for a peaceful resolution of the differences between
Kuwait and Iraq at an Arab summit in May, after Saddam had offered to negotiate a mutu-
ally acceptable border with Kuwait. "The US was encouraging Kuwait not to offer any
compromise," said Arafat, "which meant there could be no negotiated solution to avoid the
Gulf crisis." Kuwait, he said, was led to believe it could rely on the force of US arms
instead. 21
Similarly, King Hussein of Jordan revealed that just before the Iraqi invasion the Kuwaiti
foreign minister stated: "We are not going to respond to [Iraq]... if they don't like it, let them
occupy our territory ... we are going to bring in the Americans." And that the Kuwaiti emir
told his military officers that in the event of an invasion, their duty was to hold off the Iraqis
for 24 hours; by then "American and foreign forces would land in Kuwait and expel them."
King Hussein expressed the opinion that Arab understanding was that Saddam had been
goaded into invading, thereby stepping into a noose prepared for him. 22
The emir refused to accede to Iraq's financial demands, instead offering an insulting
half-million dollars to Baghdad. A note from him to his prime minister before the invasion
speaks of support of this policy from Egypt, Washington and London. "Be unwavering in
your discussions," the emir writes. "We are stronger than they [the Iraqis] think." 23
After the war, the Kuwaiti Minister of Oil and Finance acknowledged:
But we knew that the United States would not let us be overrun. I spent too much time in
Washington to make that mistake, and received a constant stream of visitors here. The
American policy was clear. Only Saddam didn't understand it. 24
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KILLING HOPE
But we have seen perhaps ample reason why Saddam would fail to understand.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz declared that a sharp drop in the price of oil was
something the Kuwaitis, with their vast investment holdings in the West, could easily
afford, but which undercut the oil revenues essential to a cash-hungry Baghdad. "It was
inconceivable," said Aziz, that Kuwait "could risk engaging in a conspiracy of such magni-
tude against a large, strong country such as Iraq, if it were not being supported and protect-
ed by a great power; and that power was the United States of America." 5 There is, in fact,
no public indication that the United States, despite its very close financial ties, tried to per-
suade Kuwait to cease any of its provocative actions against Iraq.
And neither Washington nor Kuwait seemed terribly concerned about heading off an
invasion. In the week prior to the Iraqi attack, intelligence experts were telling the Bush
administration with increasing urgency that an invasion of at least a part of Kuwait was likely.
These forecasts "appear to have evoked little response from Government agencies." 26 During
this period Bush was personally briefed and told the same by CIA Director William Webster,
who showed the president satellite photos of the Iraqi troops massed near the Kuwaiti border.
Bush, reportedly, showed little interest. 27 On 1 August, the CIAs National Intelligence Officer
for Warning (sic) walked into the offices of the National Security Council's Middle East Staff
and announced: "This is your final warning." Iraq, he said, would invade Kuwait by day's
end, which they did. This, too, did not produce a rush to action. 28 Lastly, a Kuwaiti diplomat
stationed in Iraq before the invasion sent many reports back to his own government warning
of an Iraqi invasion; these were ignored as well. His last warning had specified the exact date
(Kuwaiti time) of 2 August. After the war, when the diplomat held a press conference in
Kuwait to discuss the government's ignoring of his warnings, it was broken up by a govern-
ment minister and several army officers. 29
In July, while all these warnings were ostensibly being ignored, the Pentagon was busy
running its computerized command post exercise (CPX), initiated in late 1989 specifically
to explore possible responses to "the Iraqi threat" — which, in the new war plan 1002-90,
had replaced "the Soviet threat" — the exercise dealing with an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait or
Saudi Arabia or both. 30 At a war-games exercise at the Naval War College in Newport,
R.I., participants were also being asked to determine the most effective American response
to a hypothetical invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. 31 While at Shaw Air Force Base in South
Carolina, another war "game" involved identifying bombing targets in Iraq. 32
And during May and June, the Pentagon, Congress and defense contractors had been
extensively briefed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies of Georgetown
University on a study of the future of conventional warfare, which concluded that the most
likely war to erupt requiring an American military response was between Iraq and Kuwait
or Saudi Arabia.
Another person who seems to have known something in advance was George Shultz,
who was Reagan's Secretary of State and then returned to the Bechtet Corp., the multinational
construction giant. In the spring of 1990, Shultz convinced the company to withdraw from a
petrochemicals project in Iraq. "I said something is going to go very wrong in Iraq and blow
up and if Bechtel were there it would get blown up too. So I told them to get out." 34
Finally, there was this disclosure in the Washington Post:
Since the invasion, highly classified U.S. intelligence assessments have determined that
Saddam took U.S. statements of neutrality ... as a green light firm the Bush administra-
tion for an invasion. One senior Iraqi military official ... has told the agency [OA] that
Saddam seemed to be sincerely surprised by the subsequent bellicose reaction. 35
324
Iraq 1990-1991
On the other hand we have the statement from Iraqi Foreign Minister Aziz, who was
present at the Glaspie-Hussein meeting.
She didn't give a green light, and she didn't mention a red light because the question of
our presence in Kuwait was not raised ... And we didn't take it as a green light ... that if
we intervened militarily in Kuwait, the Americans would not react. That was not true. We
were expecting an American attack on the morning of the second of August. 36
But one must be skeptical about so casual an attitude toward an American attack. And
these remarks, in effect denying that Iraq was played for a sucker, must be considered in
light of the Iraqi government's stubborn refusal for some time to admit the harm done to
the country by US bombing, and to downplay the number of their casualties.
The Bush administration's position was that Iraq's Arab neighbors, particularly Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, had urged the United States all along not to say or do anything
that might provoke Saddam. Moreover, as Ambassador Giaspie emphasized, no one expect-
ed Hussein to take "all" of Kuwait, at most the parts he already claimed: the islands and
the oilfield.
But, of course, Iraq had claimed "all" of Kuwait for a century.
The Invasion
When Iraq invaded, the time for mixed signals was over. Whatever devious plan, if
any, George Bush may have been operating under, he now took full advantage of this win-
dow of opportunity. Within hours, if not minutes, of the border crossing, the United States
began mobilizing, the White House condemned Iraq's action as a "blatant use of military
aggression", demanded "the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all Iraqi forces",
and announced that it was "considering all options"; while George Bush was declaring that
the invasion "underscores the need to go slowly in restructuring U.S. defense forces". 37
Before 24 hours had passed, an American naval task force loaded with fighter planes
and bombers was on its way to the Persian Gulf, Bush was seeking to enlist world leaders
for collective action against Iraq, all trade with Iraq had been embargoed, all Iraqi and
Kuwaiti assets in the United States had been frozen; and the Senate had "decisively defeated
efforts to end or freeze production of the B-2 Stealth bomber after proponents seized on
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to bolster their case for the radar-eluding weapon"; the attack,
they said, "demonstrates the continuing risk of war and the need for advanced weapons" ...
Said Senator Dole: "If we needed Saddam Hussein to give us a wake-up call at least we can
thank him for that." 38
"One day after using Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to help save the high-tech B-2 bomber,
senators invoked the crisis again Friday to stave off the moth-balling of two World War II-
vintage battleships." 39
Within days, thousands of American troops and an armored brigade were stationed in
Saudi Arabia. It was given the grand name of Operation Desert Shield, and a heightened
appreciation for America's military needs was the prevailing order of the day ...
Less than a year after political changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union sent the
defense industry reeling under the threat of dramatic cutbacks, executives and analysts
say the crisis in the Persian Gulf has provided military companies with a tiny glimmer of
hope.
325
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KILLING HOPE
"If Iraq does not withdraw and things get messy, it will be good for the industry. You
will hear less rhetoric from Washington about the peace dividend," said Michael Lauer,
an analyst with Kidder, Peabody & Co. in New York.
"The possible beneficiaries" of the crisis added the Washington Post, "cover the spec-
trum of companies in the defense industry." 4
By September, James Webb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the
Navy in the Reagan administration, felt moved to speak out:
The President should be aware that, while most Americans are laboring very hard to sup-
port him, a mood of cynicism is just beneath their veneer of respect. Many are claiming
that the buildup is little more than a "Pentagon budget drill," designed to preclude cut-
backs of an Army searching for a mission as bases in NATO begin to disappear. 41
Remarkably, yet another cynical former Assistant Secretary of Defense was heard from.
Lawrence Korb wrote that the deployment of troops to Saudi Arabia "seems driven more
by upcoming budget battles on Capitol Hill than a potential battle against Saddam
Hussein." 42
But can anything be too cynical for a congressman stalking re-election? By the begin-
ning of October we could read:
The political backdrop of the U.S. military deployment in Saudi Arabia played a signifi-
cant role in limiting defense cuts in Sunday's budget agreement, halting the military
spending "fiee fall" that some analysts had predicted two months ago, budget aides said.
Capitol Hill strategists said that Operation Desert Shield forged a major change in the
political climate of the negotiations, forcing lawmakers who had been advocating deep
cuts on the defensive.
The defense budget compromise ... would leave not only funding for Operation
Desert Shield intact but would spare much of the funding that has been spent each year to
prepare for a major Soviet onslaught on Western Europe 43
Meanwhile, George Bush's approval rating had recovered. The first poll taken in
August after the US engagement in the Gulf showed a jump to 74 percent, up from 60 per-
cent in late July. However, it seems that the American public needs the rush of a regular
patriotic-fix to maintain enthusiasm for the man occupying the White House, for by mid-
October, due to Bush's extreme obfuscation of why the US was in the Persian Gulf, the rat-
ing they granted him was down to S6 — since Bush's first month in office, it had never been
lower; and it stayed close to that level until the citizenry's next patriotic-invasion-fix in
January, as we shall see. 44
Prelude to War
As Iraq went about plundering Kuwait and turning it into Iraqi Province 19, the United
States was building up its military presence in Saudi Arabia and the surrounding waters,
and — employing a little coercion and history's most spectacular bribes — creating a "coali-
tion" to support US-fostered United Nations resolutions and the coming war effort in a
multitude of ways: a fig-leaf of "multinational" respectability, as Washington had created in
Korea, Grenada and Afghanistan, for what was essentially an American mission, an
American war. Egypt was forgiven many billions of dollars in debt, while Syria, China,
Turkey, the Soviet Union, and other countries received military or economic aid and World
326
Iraq 1990-1991
Bank and IMF loans, had sanctions lifted, or were given other perks, not only from the US
but, under Washington's pressure, from Germany, Japan and Saudi Arabia. As an added
touch, the Bush administration stopped criticizing the human rights record of any coalition
member. 5
But Washington and the media were unhappy with Germany for not enthusiastically
jumping on the war bandwagon. The Germans who only yesterday were condemned as
jack-booted fascists marching through Poland, were now called "cowards" for marching for
peace in large demonstrations.
Washington pushed a dozen resolutions through the Security Council condemning Iraq,
imposing severe economic sanctions, and getting "authorization" to wage war. Only Cuba
and Yemen voted against any of them. When Yemen's delegate received some applause for his
negative vote on the key use-of-force resolution of 29 November, US Secretary of State Baker,
who was presiding, said to his delegation: " I hope he enjoyed that applause, because this will
turn out to be the most expensive vote he ever cast." The message was delayed to the Yemenis,
and within days, the tiny Middle-East nation suffered a sharp reduction in US aid. 4 *
UN Secretary Genera! Javier Perez de Cuellar acknowledged that "It was not a United
Nations War. General Schwarzkopf [commander of the coalition forces] was not wearing a
blue helmet." 47 The American control of the United Nations prompted British political
commentator Edward Pearce to write that the UN "functions like an English medieval par-
liament: consulted, shown ceremonial courtesy, but mindful of divine prerogative, it mutters
and gives assent." 48
The paramount issue in the United States soon became: how long should we wait for
the sanctions to work before resorting to direct military force? The administration and its
supporters insisted that they were giving Hussein every chance to find a peaceful, face-sav-
ing way out of the hole he had dug himself into. But the fact remained that each time
President Bush made the Iraqi leader any kind of offer, it was laced with a deep insult, and
never offered the slightest recognition that there might be any validity to Iraq's stated griev-
ances. 49 Indeed, Bush had characterized the Iraqi invasion as being "without
provocation". 50 The president's rhetoric became increasingly caustic and exaggerated; he
was putting it on a personal level, demonizing Saddam, as he had done with Notiega, as
Reagan had done with Qaddafi, as if these foreigners did not have pride or reason like
Americans have. Here's how the Los Angeles Times viewed it:
Shortly after Iraq's invasion ... Bush carefully compared Iraq's aggression with the
German aggression against Poland that launched World War II. But he stopped short of a
personal comparison of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with Adolf Hitler. That caution
went out the window last month, when Bush not only compared Hussein to Hitler but
also threatened Nuremberg-style war crime trials. Then, last week, Bush went further,
briefly maintaining that the Iraqi leader is worse than Hitler because the Germans never
held U.S. citizens as "human shields" at military sites.
After this trivializing of the Holocaust, Bush went on to warn that any acceptance of
uncontrolled aggression "could be world war tomorrow". Said one of his own officials:
"Got to get his rhetoric under control." 51
Saddam Hussein could not help but soon realize that by seizing all of Kuwait — not to
mention sacking and pillaging it — he had bitten off substantially more than he could chew.
In early August and again in October, he signaled his willingness to pull Iraqi forces out of
the country in return for sole control of the Rumania oil field, guaranteed access to the
Persian Gulf, the lifting of sanctions, and resolution of the oil price/production problem. 52
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He also began to release some of the many foreigners who had had the misfortune of being
in Iraq or Kuwait at the wrong time. In mid-December the last of them was freed. Earlier
that month, Iraq began laying out a new Iraqi-Kuwait border, which might have meant a
renunciation of its claim of Kuwait being a part of Iraq, though its meaning was not clear. 53
And in early January, as we shall see, his strongest peace signal was reported.
The Bush administration chose to not respond in a positive manner to any of these
moves. After Saddam's August offer, the State Department "categorically" denied it had
even been made; then the White House confirmed it. 54 A later congressional summary of
the matter stated:
The Iraqis apparently believed that having invaded Kuwait, they would get everyone's attention,
negotiate improvements to their economic situation, and pull out. ... a diplomatic solution saris-
factory to the interests of the United States may well have been possible since the earliest days of
the invasion.
The Bush administration, said the congressional paper, wanted to avoid seeming in any
way to reward the invasion. But a retired Army officer, who was acting as a middle man in
the August discussions, concluded afterward that the peace offer "was already moving
against policy". 55
After a certain point in the American military buildup, could the United States have
given peace a chance even if it wanted to? Former Assistant Defense Secretary Lawrence
Korb observed in late November that all the components of the defense establishment were
pushing to get in on the action, to prove their worth, to prove that there was still a need for
them, to assure their continued funding ...
By mid- January ... the United States will have over 400,000 troops in the Gulf [it turned out to
be over 500,000] from all five armed services (yes, even the Coast Guard is there). This is about
100,000 more troops than we had in Europe at any time during the Cold War. The Army will
eventually have eight divisions on the ground in Saudi Arabia, twice as many as it had in Europe.
... two-thirds of the entire Marine Corps' combat power [will be there] ... The Navy will deploy
six of its 14 aircraft carrier battle groups, two of its four battleships and one of its two amphibi-
ous groups ... The Air Force already has fighters from nine of its 24 active tactical wings ... as
well as bombers ... Even the combat reserves are scheduled to be sent ... The reserve lobby recog-
nized that their future funding may be jeopardized if their units do not get involved. ... just as
every service wants to be involved in the deployment, will not each want a piece of the real
action?
And would the military high-command be able to resist the pressures from each service,
Korb wondered. The Navy, which had moved some its carriers into the narrow and danger-
ous waters of the Gulf just to be closer to the action? The Marines, who might want to
demonstrate the continuing viability of amphibious warfare by staging an assault on the
coast? And could the Army lay back while air power carried the day? 56 [They couldn't, and
it prolonged the war.
The US military and President Bush would have their massive show of power, their
super-hi-tech real war games, and no signals from Iraq or any peacenik would be allowed to
spoil it. Fortune magazine, in an ingenuous paean to Bush's fortitude, later summed up the
period before the war began thusly:
The President and his men worked overtime to quash freelance peacemakers in the Arab world,
France, and the Soviet Union who threatened to give Saddam a face-saving way out of the box
Bush was building. Over and over, Bush repeated the mantra: no negotiations, no deals, no face-
saving, no rewards, and specifically, no linkage to a Palestinian peace conference [a point raised
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by Iraq on several occasions].
On 29 November, the UN Security Council authorized the use of "all necessary
means" to compel Iraq to vacate Kuwait if it didn't do so by 15 January. Over Christmas,
we have learned, George Bush pored over every one of the 82 pages of Amnesty
International's agonizing report of Iraqi arrests, rape, and torture in Kuwait. After the holi-
day, he told his staff that his conscience was clear: "It's black and white, good vs. evil. The
man has to be stopped." 58
It's not reported whether Bush ever read any of Amnesty's many reports of the period
on the equally repulsive violations of human rights and the human spirit perpetrated by
Washington's allies in Guatemala, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Angola and Nicaragua. If he
did, the literature apparently had little effect, for he continued to support these forces.
Amnesty had also been reporting about Iraq's extreme brutality for more than a decade,
and only a few months before the August invasion had testified about these abuses before
the Senate, but none of this had filled George Bush with righteous indignation.
As the 15 January deadline neared, the world held its breath. Was it possible that in
five and a half months no way could have been found to avoid inflicting another ghastly
war upon this sad planet? On the 11th, Arab diplomats at the UN said that they had
received reports from Algeria, Jordan and Yemen, all on close terms with Iraq, that Saddam
planned an initiative soon after the 15th that would express his willingness "in principle" to
pull out of Kuwait in return for international guarantees that Iraq would not be attacked,
an international conference to address Palestinian grievances, and negotiations on disputes
between Iraq and Kuwait. The Iraqi leader, the diplomats said, wanted to wait a day or two
after the deadline had passed to demonstrate that he had not been intimidated.
For the United States, with half-a-million troops poised for battle in Saudi Arabia, this
was unacceptable. Saddam Hussein will "pass the brink at midnight, January 15", said
Secretary of State Baker, and could not expect to save himself by offering to pull out of
Kuwait after that time. 55
The multiple explanations of George Bush
Our jobs, our way of life, our own freedom, and the feedom of friendly countries around
the world will suffer if control of the world's great oil reserves fell in the hands of that one
man, Saddam Hussein. 60
Thus spaketh George Herbert Walker Bush to the people of America. As Theodore
Draper observed:
These reasons were both mundane and implausible. That "jobs" should have been mentioned
first suggested that Bush, as in a domestic political campaign, sought primarily to appeal to the
voters' pocketbook. It was, however, a peculiarly crass reason to go to war, if it came to that,
halfway around the world. 61
During the entire lengthy buildup to the war, during the war, after the war, no one was
sure they understood why Bush had intervened in the Persian GuTf, and then taken the
United States into war. Congressmen, journalists, editors, plain citizens kept asking, almost
pleading at times, for the president to clearly and unambiguously explain his motivations,
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and without contradicting what he had said the previous week. (Economists and think-tank
intellectuals found it professionally awkward to admit their uncertainty, and thus wound up
writing lots of authoritative- sounding mumbo-jumbo.)
The prevailing bewilderment prompted the Wall Street Journal to assemble a group of
"voters" to discuss the issues, "They are confused about what's happening and are crying
out for more information," reported the newspaper about the participants. "And they are
unsettled by the perception that Mr. Bush seems to be switching his reasoning day to day."
Said one participant: "So far it's been like David Letterman's Top 10 Reasons for Being
There. There's a different story every week or so." 62
Taking place in the Persian Gulf, as it all did, of course lent itself to the belief that the
liquid gold had a lot, if not everything, to do with the conflict. This, however, is a thesis
which cannot be supported by the immediate circumstances. Supply was not a problem —
the Energy Department acknowledged that there was not an oil shortage, and Saudi Arabia
and other countries increased their production to more than make up for the oil lost from
Iraq and Kuwait, which, in any event, together accounted for only about five percent of
American consumption. There was a whole world ready to supply more oil, from Mexico to
Russia, as well as large untapped American sources. This indicates the difficulties faced by
any single producer — Hussein or anyone else — who might try to control or dominate the
market; which in turn raises the question: what would such a country do with all the oil,
drink it? By December it was reported that "OPEC is pumping oil at the highest levels since
early summer, and unless a war in the Middle East disrupts supplies, there's a prospect
again of an oil glut and sharply lower prices." 63
As to the price of oil: Did oilmen George Bush and James Baker and the depressed
American oil states want it to go up or down? A case could be made for either hypothesis.
(In January 1990 the US had secretly urged Saddam to try to raise the OPEC oil price to
$25 a barrel.) 64 And how easily could Washington control it either way in a chaotic situa-
tion? As it is, oil prices fluctuate on a regular basis, often sharply — between 1984 and 1986,
for example, the price of a barrel of oil fell from around $30 to less than $10, despite the
ongoing Iraq-Iran war which cut into the production of both countries.
However, this analysis of the immediate circumstances does not take into consideration
the formidable and continual influence of the "mystique of oil" upon the thinking of American
policy makers. If Bush was looking for a "crisis" to impress upon the congressional mind the
enduring danger of the world we live in, then getting involved in a conflict between two major
oil producing countries would certainly generate the desired effect much more readily than if he
had seized upon Bolivia attacking Paraguay, or Ghana occupying Ivory Coast.
The president's remark about the American way of life and everyone's freedom reflects
the life-and-death seriousness that he and other policy makers publicly ascribe to oil. (What
these men really believe and feel in each instance is something we are not privy to.) Earlier
in the year, CIA Director William Webster had told Congress that oil "will continue to have
a major impact on U.S. interests" because "Western dependence on Persian Gulf oil will rise
dramatically" in the next decade; while General Schwarzkopf, who had lifelong ties to the
Mddle East, testified:
Mideast oil is the West's life-blood. It fuels us today, and being 77 percent of the Free
World's proven oil reserves, is going to fuel us when the rest of the world has run dry. ...
It is estimated that within 20 to 40 years the U.S. will have virtually depleted its economi-
cally available oil reserves, while the Persian Gulf region will still have at least 100 years
of proven oil reserves, 65
It was actually 69 percent at the time, and since the Soviet Union has joined the "Free
World", it's even less. 6 It should also be noted that the good general's prediction for the
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US is rather speculative, and that the term "economically available" is a reference to the
fact that US domestic oil reserves are more costly to exploit than those in the Gulf. But this
only makes it a profit problem, not an oil-supply problem. Moreover, the vast potential
residing in alternative energy sources must be included in the equation.
At this time, the United States — seemingly in a panic about danger to the Gulf oil sup-
ply — was receiving about 1 1 percent of its oil from the region, while Japan, which got 62
percent of its oil, and Europe which got 27 percent from there, were hardly stirred up at all,
except for Margaret Thatcher who foamed at the mouth when it came to Saddam and for-
mer colony Iraq. 67 Germany's figure was about 35 percent, yet both Bonn and Tokyo had
to have their arms twisted by Washington to support the war effort. The two countries
may, in fact, have been leery about helping the United States acquire greater influence and
control over the region's oil.
Official Washington's embrace of the oil mystique has given rise to a long-standing
policy, expressed as follows by political analyst Noam Chomsky:
It's been a leading, driving doctrine of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and
unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United
States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent, indigenous force will be permitted
to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price.
This has not always meant the use of force. In 1973, when OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia,
used substantial price increases and an oil boycott in an attempt to force Washington to
influence Israel into withdrawing from its recently occupied territories, the United States did
not launch, or even threaten, an invasion. The matter was resolved through extensive diplo-
macy without a shot being fired. What saved the OPEC states from a violent fate may have
been the combination of the Vietnam war still hanging heavy in the air in Washington, and
the Nixon administration on the verge of being swallowed up by Watergate.
In addition to issuing several dire warnings early on about the invasion's severe eco-
nomic consequences for the United States, which never came to pass, Bush warned of an
even worse fate if Iraq took over Saudi Arabia. The danger-to-Saudi Arabia explanation
was a non-starter. Iraq never had any designs on Saudi Arabia, as a simple look at a map
makes clear. The Iraqis have a long border with that country; they didn't have to go
through Kuwait to invade the Saudis; and even if they did, they could have moved into
Saudi Arabia virtually unopposed during the three weeks following their takeover of
Kuwait, as General Colin Powell later conceded. 6 ? Bush administration officials in fact
admitted that neither the CIA nor the Defense Intelligence Agency thought it probable that
Iraq would invade Saudi Arabia. 70 The Saudis didn't think so either, until Defense Secretary
Cheney flew to Riyadh on 5 August and personally told King Fahd that his country stood in
great potential danger and desperately needed a very large infusion of American military
forces to defend it.
Bush backed away from the oil rationale when critics charged that he was only trying
to protect the interests of the oil industry. In October, he was interrupted while making a
speech by some people calling out: "Mr. President, bring our troops home from Saudi
Arabia! No blood for oil!" To which George Bush replied — as the hecklers were hustled out
— "You know, some people never get the word. The fight isn't about oil. The fight is about
naked aggression that [we] will not stand." A month later, if not sooner, the president again
began to play the oil card, tying America's economic security to that of Saudi Arabia.
Shortly afterward, he returned to "the devastating damage being done every day" to the US
and international economies by the disruption of oil markets. 72
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As to Iraq's naked aggression — a remark requiring selective-memory skills of a high
order coming from a government that held all modem records for international aggression,
naked or otherwise, and from a man who, less than a year before, had nakedly invaded
Panama — both Syria and Israel had invaded Lebanon and still occupied large portions of
that country, Israel bombarding Beirut mercilessly in the process, without a threat of war
emanating from Washington. Saddam Hussein, perhaps wondering when they had changed
the rules, said to the United States: "You are talking about an aggressive Iraq ... if Iraq was
aggressive during the Iran war, why then did you speak with [us] then?" 73
During Iraq's epic struggle against the AyatoUah Khomeini, the United States of course
had more than spoken to Baghdad. Washington — choosing Iraq as the lesser evil against
Shiite extremism — was responsible for huge amounts of weaponry, military training, sophis-
ticated technology, satellite-photo intelligence, and billions of dollars reaching a needy
Hussein, who was also lavishly supported by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, they being con-
cerned that Iran's anti-monarchist sentiments might spread to their own realms. Indeed,
there is evidence that Washington encouraged Iraq to attack Iran and ignite the war in the
first place. 74 And during this period of American support of Hussein, he was certainly the
same odious, repressive, beastly thug as when he later came under American moralistic
rhetorical fire. Similarly, absent Washington's prodding, the UN did not condemn Iraq's
invasion, nor did it impose any sanctions or lay down any demands.
Even as it officially banned arms sales to either combatant, the US secretly provided
weapons to both. The other bete noire of the region, the AyatoUah, received American arms
and military intelligence on Iraq during the war, so as to enhance the ability of the two
countries to inflict maximum devastation upon each other and stunt their growth as strong
Middle-East nations.
In contrast to Iraq-the-enemy now were the two "allies" most involved, Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait. Although Washington did not make a big thing about the "virtue" of either
country, official policy was always that the United States had a principled commitment to
defending the former and liberating the latter. And they were not a pretty pair. Saudi
Arabia regularly featured extreme religious intolerance, extrajudicial arrest, torture, and
flogging. 7 It also practiced gender apartheid and systematic repression of women, virtual
slavery for its foreign workers, stoning of adulterers, and amputation of the hands of
thieves. US chaplains stationed in the country were asked to remove crosses and Stars of
David from their uniforms and call themselves "morale officers". 76
Kuwait, oddly enough, was virulently anti- American in its foreign policy. 77 Though more
socially enlightened than Saudi Arabia (but less than Iraq), it was nonetheless run by one fami-
ly as an elitist oligarchy, which closed down the parliament in 1986, had no political parties,
and forbade criticism of the ruling emir; no more than 20 percent of the population possessed
any political rights at all. After the country had been returned to its rightful dictators, it
behaved very brutally toward its large foreign-worker population, holding them without
charge or trial for several months; death squads executed scores of people. "Torture of politi-
cal detainees was routine and widespread," said Amnesty International, and at least 80 "dis-
appeared" in custody. The targets of the campaign, which took place in the presence of thou-
sands of US troops, were primarily those who were accused of collaboration with the Iraqis,
although this was something most of them had no choice in, and those who were involved in a
nascent pro-democracy movement. Additionally, some 400 Iraqis were forced to return to
Iraq despite fears that they would be harmed or executed there. 78
The elite of the region did not display much gratitude for all that George Bush said
America was doing for them. Said one Gulf official: "You think I want to send my teen-
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aged son to die for Kuwait?" He chuckled and added, "We have our white slaves from
America to do that," A Saudi teacher saw it this way: "The American soldiers are a new
kind of foreign worker here. We have Pakistanis driving taxis and now we have Americans
defending us." Explaining the absence of expressed gratitude on the part of Gulf leaders, a
Yemeni diplomat said: "A lot of the Gulf rulers simply do not feel that they have to thank
the people they've hired to do their fighting for them." 73 Apart from anything else, people
in the Arab world were very sensitive about the killing of Muslims and Arabs by foreigners,
as well as foreign military presence on Arab soil, a reminder of a century of Western, white
colonialism.
Bush also warned that Iraq posed a nuclear threat. True enough. But so did the United
States, France, Israel, and every other country that already had nuclear weapons. Iraq, on
the other hand, according to American, British and Israeli experts, was five to ten years
away from being able to build and use nuclear weapons. 80 It's unlikely that the president
himself believed there was any such danger. His warning came only after a poll showed that
a plurality of Americans felt that preventing Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons was the
most persuasive argument for going to war. 1
One factor not mentioned by Bush as a reason for the intervention, but which, in fact,
probably played an important role, was the Pentagon's desire to make or strengthen agree-
ments with Gulf-region countries for an ongoing US military presence; and considerable
progress along these lines appears to have been made. 82 General Schwarzkopf had earlier
told Congress that "U.S. presence" in the Gulf is one of the three pillars of overall military
strategy, along with security assistance and combined exercises, all of which lead to all-
important "access", which one can take as a euphemism for influence and control. 83 After
the war, the existence of a network of military-communication-systems "superbases" in
Saudi Arabia was revealed. Ten years in the building by the United States, in maximum
secrecy, its cost of almost $200 billion paid for by the Saudis, its use during the Gulf War
indispensable, it may explain why Bush moved so quickly to defend Saudi Arabia, albeit
against a non-existent threat. 84
"Stop me before I kill again!"
Josef Stalin studied for the priesthood ... Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and anti-smok-
ing ... Herman Goering, while his Luftwaffe rained death upon Europe, kept a sign in his
office that read: "He who tortures animals wounds the feelings of the German people." ...
this fact Elie Wiesel called the greatest discovery of the war: that Adolf Eichmann was cul-
tured, read deeply, played the violin ... Charles Manson was a staunch anti-vivisectionist...
About Panama, as we have seen, after he ordered the bombing, George Bush said that
his "heart goes out to the families who have died in Panama." And when he was asked,
"Was it really worth it to send people to their death for this? To get Noriega?", he replied,
"... every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it."
About Iraq, Bush said: "People say to me: 'How many lives? How many lives can you
expend?' Each one is precious." 85
Just before ordering the start of the war against Iraq in January, Bush prayed, as tears
ran down his cheeks. "I think," he later said, "that, like a lot of others who had positions
of responsibility in sending someone else's kids to war, we realize that in prayer what mat-
tered is how it might have seemed to God. " 86
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God, one surmises, might have asked George Bush about the kids of Iraq. And the
adults. And, in a testy, rather un-godlike manner, might have cracked: "So stop wasting all
the precious lives already!"
Tanks pulling plows moved alongside trenches, firing into the Iraqi soldiers inside the
trenches as the plows covered them with great mounds of sand. Thousands were buried,
dead, wounded, or alive. 7
US forces fired on Iraqi soldiers after the Iraqis had raised white flags of surrender. The
navy commander who gave the order to fire was not punished. 88
The bombing destroyed two operational nuclear reactors in Iraq. It was the first time ever
that live reactors had been bombed, and may well have set a dangerous precedent. Hardly
more than a month had passed since the United Nations, under whose mandate the United
States was supposedly operating, had passed a resolution reaffirming its "prohibition of mili-
tary attacks on nuclear facilities" in the Middle East. 89 Sundry chemical, including chemical-
warfare, facilities and alleged biological-warfare plants, were also targets of American bombs.
General Schwarzkopf then announced that they had been very careful in selecting the means
of destruction of these as well as the nuclear facilities, and only "after a lot of advice from a
lot of very, very prominent scientists," and were "99,9 percent" certain that there was "no
contamination", ° However, European scientists and environmentalists detected traces of
chemical-weapons agents that the bombings had released; as well as chemical fallout and toxic
vapors, also released by the air attacks, that were killing quotes of civilians, 91
The American government and media had a lot of fun with an obvious piece of Iraqi
propaganda — the claim that a bombed biological warfare facility had actually been a baby
food factory. But it turned out that the government of New Zealand and various business
people from there had had intimate contact with the factory and categorically confirmed
that it had indeed been a baby food factory. 92
The United States also made wide use of advanced depleted uranium (DU) shells, rock-
ets and missiles, leaving tons of radioactive and toxic rubble in Kuwait and Iraq. The
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, in an April 1991 secret report, warned that "if
DU gets in the food chain or water this will create potential health problems." The urani-
um-238 used to make the weapons can cause cancer and genetic defects if inhaled. Uranium
is also chemically toxic, like lead. Inhalation causes heavy metal poisoning or kidney or
lung damage. Iraqi soldiers, pinned down in their bunkers during assaults, were almost cer-
tainly poisoned by radioactive dust clouds, 93
The civilian population suffered in the extreme from the relentless bombing. Middle
East Watch, the human-rights organization, has documented numerous instances of the
bombing of apartment houses, crowded markets, bridges filled with pedestrians and civilian
vehicles, and a busy central bus station, usually in broad daylight, without a government
building or military target of any kind in sight, not even an anti-aircraft gun. 94
On 12 February, the Pentagon announced that "Virtually everything militarily ... is
either destroyed or combat ineffective." 95 Yet the next day there was a deliberate bombard-
ment of a civilian air raid shelter that took the lives of as many as 1,500 civilians, a great
number of them women and children; this was followed by significant bombardment of var-
ious parts of Iraq on a daily basis for the remaining two weeks of the war, including what
was reported for the 18th in The Guardian of London as "one of [the coalition's] most
ferocious attacks on the centre of Baghdad." 96 What was the purpose of the bombing cam-
paign after the 12th?
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The United States said it thought that the shelter was for VIPs, which it had been at
one time, and claimed that it was also being used as a military communications center, but
neighborhood residents insisted that the constant aerial surveillance overhead had to
observe the daily flow of women and children into the shelter. 97 Western reporters said they
could find no signs of military use, 98
An American journalist in Jordan who viewed unedited videotape footage of the disas-
ter, which the American public never saw, wrote:
They showed scenes of incredible carnage. Nearly all the bodies were charred into black-
ness; in some cases the heat had been so great that entire limbs were burned off ... Rescue
workers collapsed in grief, dropping corpses; some rescuers vomited from the stench of
the still-smoldering bodies."
Said White House spokesman Marlin Firzwater after the bombing of die shelter: It was
"a military target... We don't know why civilians were at this location, but we do know that
Saddam Hussein does not share our value in the sanctity of life," 100 Said George Bush, when
criticized for the bombing campaign: " 1 am concerned about the suffering of innocents." 101
The crippling of the electrical system multiplied geometrically the daily living horror of
the people of Iraq. As a modem country, Iraq was reliant on electrical power for essential
services such as water purification and distribution, sewage treatment, the operation of hos-
pitals and medical laboratories, and agricultural production. Bomb damage, exacerbated by
shortages attributable to the UN/US embargo, dropped electricity to three or four percent of
its pre-war level; the water supply fell to five percent, oil production was negligible, the
food distribution system was devastated, the sewage system collapsed, flooding houses with
taw sewage, and gastroenteritis and extreme malnutrition were prevalent. 102
Two months after the war ended, a public health team from Harvard University visited
health facilities in several Iraqi cities. Based on their research, the group projected, conserv-
atively, that "at least 170,000 children under five years of age will die in the coming year
from the delayed effects" of the destruction of electrical power, fuel and transportation; "a
large increase in deaths among the rest of the population is also likely. The immediate cause
of death in most cases will be water-borne infectious disease in combination with severe
malnutrition." 103 One member of both the Harvard group and a later research group which
visited Iraq testified before Congress that "Children play in the raw sewage which is backed
up in the streets ... Two world renowned child psychologists stated that the children in Iraq
were 'the most traumatized children of war ever described'." 104
Despite repeated statements by American authorities about taking the greatest of care
to hit only military targets, using "smart bombs" and laser-guided bombs, and "surgical
strikes", we now know that this was little more than an exercise in propaganda, just as
referring to this suffering as "collateral damage" was. After the war, the Pentagon admitted
that non-military facilities had been extensively targeted for political reasons. 105
Comprehensive post- World War II government studies had concluded that "the dread of
disease and the hardships imposed by the lack of sanitary facilities were bound to have a
demoralizing effect upon the civilian population", and that there was a "reliable and strik-
ing" correlation between the disruption of public utilities and the willingness of the German
population to accept unconditional surrender. 106
In the Iraqi case there was a further motivation: to encourage desperate citizens to rise
up and overthrow Saddam Hussein, Said a US Air Force planner:
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Big picture, we wanted to let people know, "Get rid of this guy and well be more than
happy to assist in rebuilding. We're not going to tolerate Saddam Hussein or his regime.
Rx that, and wel fix your electricity." 1
Those who tried to escape the bombing horror in Iraq by fleeing to Jordan were sub-
jected to air attacks on the highway between Baghdad and the Jordanian border — buses,
taxis, and private cars were repeatedly assaulted, literally without mercy, by rockets, cluster
bombs and machine guns; usually in broad daylight, the targets clearly civilian, with lug-
gage piled on top, with no military vehicles or structures anywhere to be seen, surrounded
by open desert, the attacking planes flying extremely close to the ground ... busloads of pas-
sengers incinerated, and when people left the vehicles and fled for their lives, planes often
swooped down upon them firing away. ... "You're killing us!" cried a Jordanian taxi driver
to an American reporter. "You're shooting us everywhere we move! Whenever they see a
car or truck, the planes dive out of the sky and chase us. They don't care who we are or
what we are. They just shoot." His cry was repeated by hundreds of others. ... The US mili-
tary, it appears, felt that any vehicle, including those filled with families, might be a cover
for carrying military fuel or other war materiel, some perhaps related to Scud missiles; and
even carrying civilian fuel was a violation of the embargo.
At the very end, when the hungry, wounded, sick, exhausted, disoriented, demoralized,
ragged, sometimes barefoot Iraqi army, which had scarcely shown any desire to fight, left
Kuwait and headed toward Basra in southern Iraq, Saddam tried to salvage a pathetic scrap
of dignity by announcing that his army was withdrawing because of "special circum-
stances". But even this was too much for George Bush to grant. "Saddam's most recent
speech is an outrage," declared the president, forcefully. "He is not withdrawing. His
defeated forces are retreating. He is trying to claim victory in the midst of a rout."
This could not be permitted. Thus it was that American air power in all its majesty swept
down upon the road to Basra, bombing, rocketing, strafing everything that moved in the long
column of Iraqi military and civilian vehicles, troops and refugees. The nice, god-fearing,
wholesome American GIs, soon to be welcomed as heroes at home, had a ball... "we toasted
him" ... "we hit the jackpot" ... "a turkey shoot" ... "This morning was bumper-to-bumper. It
was the road to Daytona Beach at spring break ... and spring break's over."
Again and again, as loudspeakers on the carrier Ranger blared Rossini's "William Tell
Overture", the rousing theme song of the Lone Ranger, one strike force after another took off
with their load of missiles and anti-tank and anti-personnel Rockeye cluster bombs, which
explode into a deadly rain of armor-piercing bomblets; land-based B-52s joined in with 1000-
pound bombs. ... "It's not going to take too many more days until there's nothing left of
them." ... "shooting fish in a barrel" ... "basically just sitting ducks" ... "There's just nothing
like it. It's the biggest Fourth of July show you've ever seen, and to see those tanks just 'boom,'
and more stuff just keeps spewing out of them ... they just become white hot. It's wonderful."
The British daily, The Independent, although it supported the war, denounced the glee
with which the Americans carried out the barrage, saying it "turned the stomachs" and was
"sickening to witness a routed army being shot in the back". 109
A BBC Radio reporter summed up the attack by asking: "What threat could these
pathetic remnants of Saddam Hussein's beaten army have posed? Wasn't it obvious that the
people of the convoy would have given themselves up willingly without the application of
such ferocious weaponry?" 110
And all this against a foe that had for five days been calling for a cease-fire.
But heaven forbid that the Americans should offend any of the people of the Gulf Thus it
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Iraq 1990-1991
was that GIs were taught things like never to use their left hand when offering food or drink,
for that hand is traditionally reserved for sanitary functions; and the proper way to beckon an
Arab with one's hand and fingers, so as not to confuse it with beckoning a dog. 111
We also have the story of the American pilot who, during an earlier bombing opera-
tion, stuffed into his identification packet a $20 bill and a note written in Arabic, Farsi,
Turkish and English. It said: "I am an American and do not speak your language. I bear no
malice toward your people." Then he was off, roaring through the skies toward Iraq with
his payload of bombs. 112
Did the GIs bear any malice toward their female soldiers-in-arms? One post-war study
found that more than half the women who served in the Gulf War felt that they had been
sexually harassed verbally, while eight percent (almost 3,000) had been the objects of
attempted or completed sexual assaults. 113
And immediately after George Bush ordered the bombing to begin, his rating with the
American people jumped for joy; an 82 percent approval rating, the highest ever in his two
years in office, higher even than after his invasion of Panama. 114 One journalist later noted:
One minute of nightly truth on this "popular" war would have changed American public
opinion. ... if for just 60 seconds the 6 o'clock Monday news had shown 5,000 Iraqi sol-
diers with hideous phosphorous burns that alter human anatomy followed by 60 seconds
Tuesday night of the slaughter at the Baghdad bomb shelter ... What if on Wednesday
Americans had seen 10,000 Iraqi soldiers incinerated by American high-tech weapons? 1 5
Ever since the Iraqi invasion in August, and despite the many confusing soundbites and
heavy rhetoric emanating from the White House, one thing seemed clear enough: if Iraq
agreed to withdraw from Kuwait, military attacks against it would not take place, or would
cease, whatever other punishment or sanctions might continue. Thus, it seemed like a ray of
hope, however late, when the Soviet Union succeeded on 21-22 February 1991 in getting
Iraq to agree to withdraw completely the day after a cease-fire of all military operations
went into effect The agreement came with specified timetables and monitoring. 1 16
George Bush refused to offer a cease-fire, per se. He could not even bring himself to
mention the word in his replies. All he would say was that the retreating Iraqi forces would
not be attacked (which turned out to be untrue), and that the coalition "will exercise
restraint." Saddam could have chosen to take this as the cease-fire, but he was as proud and
stubborn as George.
The point Bush emphasized the most during these two crucial days, as well as earlier,
was that Iraq must comply with all 12 UN resolutions. In evaluating Bush's legalistic
demands, it should be kept in mind that the policy and practice of the American war had
repeatedly violated the letter and the spirit of the United Nations Charter, the Hague
Conventions, the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg Tribunal, the protocols of the
International Committee of the Red Cross, and the US Constitution, amongst other cher-
ished documents. 117
In the end, Bush gave Saddam 24 hours to begin withdrawing from Kuwait, period.
When the time came and went, the United States launched the long-expected ground war,
while the aerial attacks — including the carnage on the road to Basra — continued until the
end of the month.
Said Vitaly Ignatenko, a spokesman for Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev: "It seems
that President Gorbachev cares more about saving the lives of American soldiers than
George Bush does." 118
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KILLING HOPE
In a postwar survey, a United Nations inspection team declared that the allied bom-
bardment had had a "near apocalyptic impact" on Iraq and had transformed the country
into a "pre-industrial age nation" which "had been until January a rather highly urbanized
and mechanized society." 119
It will never be known how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died from the direct
and indirect effects of the war; the count is added to every day. With the United States
refusing to end the embargo against Iraq, everything has continued: malnutrition, starva-
tion, lack of medicines and vaccines, contaminated drinking water, human excrement piling
up, typhoid, a near-epidemic of measles, several other diseases ... Iraq's food supply had
been 70 percent dependent on imports, now billions of dollars were frozen in overseas
accounts, and with prohibitive restrictions on selling its oil ... an inability to rebuild because
vital parts could not be imported, industry closing its doors, mass unemployment, trans-
portation and communications broken down 120 ... By September 1994, with the US govern-
ment still refusing to release its death grip on the embargo, still hoping that the suffering
would reach critical mass and the Iraqi people would overthrow Saddam, the Iraqi govern-
ment announced that since the sanctions had begun in August 1990 about 400,000 children
had died of malnutrition and disease. 121
After the war, when the Iraqi government was repressing a Kurdish revolt — which the
US had encouraged, then failed to support — Bush said: "I feel frustrated any time innocent
civilians are being slaughtered." 122
This was the second time the United States had led the Kurdish lambs to slaughter with
a broken commitment. (See Iraq 1972-75 chapter.}
Washington had also encouraged the Shiite Muslims in Iraq to rebel, then did not back
them. The US was not looking to foster a Kurdish government that would upset Turkey, nor a
Shiite government that might well become an ally of Iran or inspire Muslim fundamentalists else-
where in the Middle East.
American mental hospitals and prisons are home to many people who claim to have
heard a voice telling them to kill certain people, people they'd never met before, people
who'd never done them any harm, or threatened any harm.
American soldiers went to the Persian Gulf to kill the same kind of people after hearing
a voice command them: the voice of George Herbert Walker Bush.
His followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of women who refused
to wear the veil. OA and State Department officials I have spoken with call him "scary,"
"vicious," "a fascist," "definite dictatorship material". 1
This did not prevent the United States government from showering the man with large
amounts of aid to fight against the Soviet-supported government of Afghanistan. His name
was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He was the head of the Islamic Party and he hated the United
Afghanistan 1979-1992
America's Jihad
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Afghanistan 1979-1992
States almost as much as he hated the Russians. His followers screamed "Death to
America" along with "Death to the Soviet Union", only the Russians were not showering
him with large amounts of aid. 2
The United States began supporting Afghan Islamic fundamentalists in 1979 despite the
fact that in February of that year some of them had kidnapped the American ambassador in
the capital city of Kabul, leading to his death in the rescue attempt. The support continued
even after their brother Islamic fundamentalists in next-door Iran seized the US Embassy in
Teheran in November and held 55 Americans hostage for over 5 year. Hekraatyar and his
colleagues were, after all, in battle against the Soviet Evil Empire; he was thus an important
member of those forces Ronald Reagan called "freedom fighters".
On 27 April 1978, a coup staged by the People's Democratic Party (PDP) overthrew
the government of Mohammad Daoud. Daoud, five years earlier, had overthrown the
monarchy and established a republic, although he himself was a member of the royal fami-
ly. He had been supported by the left in this endeavor, but it turned out that Daoud's royal
blood was thicker than his progressive water. When the Daoud regime had a PDP leader
killed, arrested the rest of the leadership, and purged hundreds of suspected party sympa-
thizers from government posts, the PDP, aided by its supporters in the army, revolted and
took power.
Afghanistan was a backward nation: a life expectancy of about 40, infant mortality of at
least 25 percent, absolutely primitive sanitation, widespread malnutrition, illiteracy of more
than 90 percent, very few highways, not one mile of railway, most people living in nomadic
tribes or as impoverished farmers in mud villages, identifying more with ethnic groups than
with a larger political concept, a life scarcely different from many centuries earlier.
Reform with a socialist bent was the new government's ambition: land reform (while
still retaining private property), controls on prices and profits, and strengthening of the
public sector, as well as separation of church and state, eradication of illiteracy, legalization
of trade unions, and the emancipation of women in a land almost entirely Muslim.
Afghanistan's thousand-mile border with the Soviet Union had always produced a special
relationship. Even while it was a monarchy, die country had been under the strong influence
of its powerful northern neighbor which had long been its largest trading partner, aid donor,
and military supplier. But die country had never been gobbled up by the Soviets, a fact that
perhaps lends credence to the oft-repeated Soviet claim that their hegemony over Eastern
Europe was only to create a buffer between themselves and the frequently-invading West.
Nevertheless, for decades Washington and the Shah of Iran tried to pressure and bribe
Afghanistan in older to roll back Russian influence in the country. During the Daoud
regime, Iran, encouraged by the United States, sought to replace the Soviet Union as Kabul's
biggest donor with a $2 billion economic aid agreement, and urged Afghanistan to join the
Regional Cooperation for Development, which consisted of Iran, Pakistan and Turkey.
(This organization was attacked by the Soviet Union and its friends in Afghanistan as being
a "branch of CENTO" the 1950s regional security pact that was part of the US policy of
"containment" of the Soviet Union.) At the same time, Iran's infamous secret police,
SAVAK was busy fingering suspected Communist sympathizers in the Afghan government
and military. In September 1975, prodded by Iran which was conditioning its aid on such
policies, Daoud dismissed 40 Soviet-trained military officers and moved to reduce future
Afghan dependence on officer training in the USSR by initiating training arrangements with
India and Egypt. Most important, in Soviet eyes, Daoud gradually broke off his alliance
with the PDP, announcing that he would start his own party and ban all other political
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activity under a projected new constitution. 3
Selig Harrison, the Washington Post's South Asia specialist, wrote an article in 1979
entitled "The Shah, Not the Kremlin, Touched off Afghan Coup", concluding:
The Communist takeover in Kabul [April 1978] came about when it did, and in the way that it
did, because the Shah disturbed the tenuous equilibrium that had existed in Afghanistan between
the Soviet Union and the West for nearly three decades. In Iranian and American eyes, Teheran's
offensive was merely designed to make Kabul more truly non-aligned, hut it went far beyond that.
Given the unusually long frontier with Afghanistan, the Soviet Union would clearly go to great
lengths to prevent Kabul from moving once again toward a pro-western stance. 4
When the Shah was overthrown in January 1979, the United States lost its chief ally
and outpost in the Soviet-border region, as well as its military installations and electronic
monitoring stations aimed at the Soviet Union. Washington's cold warriors could only eye
Afghanistan even more covetously than before.
After the April revolution, the new government under President Noor Mohammed
Taraki declared a commitment to Islam within a secular state, and to non-alignment in for-
eign affairs. It maintained that the coup had not been foreign inspired, that it was not a
"Communist takeover", and that they were not "Communists" but rather nationalists and
revolutionaries. (No official or traditional Communist Party had ever existed in
Afghanistan.) 5 But because of its radical reform program, its class-struggle and anti-imperi-
alist-type rhetoric, its support of all the usual suspects (Cuba, North Korea, etc.), its signing
of a friendship treaty and other cooperative agreements with the Soviet Union, and an
increased presence in the country of Soviet civilian and military advisers (though probably
less than the US had in Iran at the time), it was labeled "communist" by the world's media
and by its domestic opponents.
Whether or not the new government in Afghanistan should properly have been called
communist, whether or not it made any difference what it was called, the lines were now
drawn for political, military, and propaganda battle: a jihad (holy war) between fundamen-
talist Muslims and "godless atheistic communists"; Afghan nationalism vs. a "Soviet-run"
government; large landowners, tribal chiefs, businessmen, the extended royal family, and
others vs. the government's economic reforms. Said the new prime minister about this elite,
who were needed to keep the country running, "every effort will be made to attract them.
But we want to re-educate them in such a manner that they should think about the people,
and not, as previously, just about themselves — to have a good house and a nice car while
other people die of hunger." 6
The Afghan government was trying to drag the country into the 20th century. In May
1979, British political scientist Fred Halliday observed that "probably more has changed in
the countryside over the last year than in the two centuries since, the state was established."
Peasant debts to landlords had been canceled, the system of usury (by which peasants, who
were forced to borrow money against future crops, were left in perpetual debt to money-
lenders) was abolished, and hundreds of schools and medical clinics were being built in the
countryside. Halliday also reported that a substantial land-redistribution program was
underway, with many of the 200,000 rural families scheduled to receive land under this
reform already having done so. But this last claim must be approached with caution.
Revolutionary land reform is always an extremely complex and precarious undertaking
even under the best of conditions, and ultra-backward, tradition-bound Afghanistan in the
midst of nascent civil war hardly offered the best of conditions for social experiments.
The reforms also encroached into the sensitive area of Islamic subjugation of women by
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outlawing child marriage and the giving of a woman in marriage in exchange for money or
commodities, and teaching women to read, at a time when certain Islamic sectors were openly
calling for the reinforcement of purdah, the seclusion of women from public observation.
Halliday noted that the People's Democratic Party saw the Soviet Union as the only
realistic source of support for the long-overdue modernization. 7 The illiterate Afghan peas-
ant's ethnic cousins across the border in the Soviet Union were, after all, often university
graduates and professionals.
The argument of the Moujahedeen ("holy warriors") rebels that the "communist" gov-
ernment would curtail their religious freedom was never borne out in practice. A year and a
half after the change in government, the conservative British magazine The Economist
reported that "no restrictions had been imposed on religious practice". 8 Earlier, the New
York Times stated that the religious issue "is being used by some Afghans who actually
object more to President Taraki's plans for land reforms and other changes in this feudal
society." 9 Many of the Muslim clergy were in fact rich landowners. 10 The rebels, concluded
a BBC reporter who spent four months with them, are "fighting to retain their feudal sys-
tem and stop the Kabul government's left-wing reforms which [are] considered anti-
Islamic". 11
The two other nations which shared a long border with Afghanistan, and were closely
allied to the United States, expressed their fears of the new government. To the west, Iran, still
under the Shah, worried about "threats to oil-passage routes in the Persian Gulf. Pakistan, to
the south, spoke of "threats from a hostile and expansionist Afghanistan". 12 A former US
ambassador to Afghanistan saw it as part of a "gradually closing pincer movement aimed at
Iran and the oil regions of the Middle East." 13 None of these alleged fears turned out to have
any substance or evidence to back them up, but to the anti-communist mind this might prove
only that the Russians and their Afghan puppets had been stopped in rime.
Two months after the April 1978 coup, an alliance formed by a number of conserva-
tive Islamic factions was waging guerrilla war against the government. 14 By spring 1979,
fighting was taking place on many fronts, and the State Department was cautioning the
Soviet Union that its advisers in Afghanistan should not interfere militarily in the civil strife.
One such warning in the summer by State Department spokesman Hodding Carter was
another of those Washington monuments to chutzpah: "We expect the principle of nonin-
tervention to be respected by all parties in the area, including the Soviet Union." 15 This
while the Soviets were charging the CIA with arming Afghan exiles in Pakistan; and the
Afghanistan government was accusing Pakistan and Iran of also aiding the guerrillas and
even of crossing the border to take part in the fighting. Pakistan had recently taken its own
sharp turn toward strict Muslim orthodoxy, which the Afghan government deplored as
"fanatic"; 16 while in January, Iran had established a Muslim state after overthrowing the
Shah. (As opposed to the Afghan fundamentalist freedom fighters, the Iranian Islamic fun-
damentalists were regularly described in the West as terrorists, ultra-conservatives, and anti-
democratic.)
A "favorite tactic" of the Afghan freedom fighters was "to torture victims [often
Russians] by first cutting off their noses, ears, and genitals, then removing one slice of skin
after another", producing "a slow, very painful death". 17 The Moujahedeen also killed a
Canadian tourist and six West Germans, including two children, and a U.S. military attache
was dragged from his car and beaten; all due to the rebels' apparent inability to distinguish
Russians from other Europeans. 18
In March 1979, Taraki went to Moscow to press the Soviets to send ground troops to help
the Afghan army put down the Moujahedeen. He was promised military assistance, but ground
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KILLING HOPE
troops could not be committed. Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin told the Afghan leader:
The entry of our troops into Afghanistan would outrage the international community, triggering
a string of extremely negative consequences in many different areas. Our common enemies arc
just waiting for the moment when Soviet troops appear in Afghanistan This will give them the
excuse they need to send armed bands into the country.* 9
In September, the question became completely academic for Noor Mohammed Taraki,
for he was ousted (and his death soon announced) in an intra-party struggle and replaced
by his own deputy prime minister, Hafizullah Amin. Although Taraki had sometimes been
heavy-handed in implementing the reform program, and had created opposition even
amongst the intended beneficiaries, he turned out to be a moderate compared to Amin who
tried to institute social change by riding roughshod over tradition and tribal and ethnic
autonomy.
The Kremlin was unhappy with Amin. The fact that he had been involved in the over-
throw and death of the much-favored Taraki was bad enough. But the Soviets also regarded
him as thoroughly unsuitable for the task that was Moscow's sine qua nom preventing an
anti-communist Islamic state from arising in Afghanistan. Amin gave reform an exceedingly
bad name. The KGB station in Kabul, in pressing for Amin's removal, stated that his
usurpation of power would lead to "harsh repressions and, as a reaction, the activation and
consolidation of the opposition". 20 Moreover, as we shall see, the Soviets were highly suspi-
cious about Amin's ideological convictions.
Thus it was, that what in March had been unthinkable, in December became a reality.
Soviet troops began to arrive in Afghanistan around the 8th of the month — to what extent
at Amin's request or with his approval, and, consequently, whether to call the action an
"invasion" or not, has been the subject of much discussion and controversy.
On the 23rd the Washington Post commented "There was no charge [by the State
Department] that the Soviets have invaded Afghanistan, since the troops apparently were
invited." 21
However, at a meeting with Soviet-bloc ambassadors in October, Amin's foreign minis-
ter had openly criticized the Soviet Union for interfering in Afghan affairs. Amin himself
insisted that Moscow replace its ambassador. 22 Yet, on 26 December, while the main body
of Soviet troops was arriving in Afghanistan, Amin gave "a relaxed interview" to an Arab
journalist. "The Soviets," he said, "supply my country with economic and military aid, but
at the same time they respect our independence and our sovereignty. They do not interfere
in our domestic affairs." He also spoke approvingly of the USSR's willingness to accept his
veto on military bases. 23
The very next day, a Soviet military force stormed the presidential palace and shot
Amin dead.
He was replaced by Babrak Karmal, who had been vice president and deputy prime
minister in the 1978 revolutionary government.
Moscow denied any part in Amin's death, though they didn't pretend to be sorry about
it, as Brezhnev made clear:
The actions of the aggressors against Afghanistan were facilitated by Amin who, on seizing
power, started cruelly repressing broad sections of Afghan society, parry and military cadres,
members of the intelligentsia and of the Moslem clergy, that is, the very sections on which the
April revolution relied And the people under the leadership of the People's Democratic Party,
headed by Babrak Karmal, rose against Amin's tyranny and put an end to it. Now in
Washington and some other capitals they are mourning Amin. This exposes their hypocrisy with
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Afghanistan 1979-1992
particular clarity. Where were these mourners when Amin was conducting mass repressions,
when he forcibly removed and unlawfully killed Taraki, the founder of the new Afghan state? 25
After Amin's ouster and execution, the public thronged the streets in "a holiday spirit".
"If Karmal could have overthrown Amin without the Russians," observed a Western diplo-
mat, "he would have been seen as a hero of the people." 26
The Soviet government and press repeatedly referred to Amin as a "CIA agent", a
charge which was greeted with great skepticism in the United States and elsewhere. 27
However, enough circumstantial evidence supporting the charge exists so that it perhaps
should not be dismissed entirely out of hand.
During the late 1950s and early '60s, Amin had attended Columbia University
Teachers College and the University of Wisconsin. 28 This was a heyday period for the
CIA — using impressive bribes and threats — to regularly try to recruit foreign students in the
United States to act as agents for them when they returned home. During this period, at
least one president of the Afghanistan Students Association (ASA), Zia H. Noorzay, was
working with the CIA in the United States and later became president of the Afghanistan
state treasury. One of the Afghan students whom Noorzay and the CIA tried in vain to
recruit, Abdul Latif Hotaki, declared in 1967 that a good number of the key officials in the
Afghanistan government who studied in the United States "ate either CIA trained or indoc-
trinated. Some are cabinet level people." 29 It has been reported that in 1963 Amin became
head of the ASA, but this has not been corroborated. 30 Howevet, it is known that the ASA
received part of its funding from the Asia Foundation, the CIA's principal front in Asia for
many years, and that at one time Amin was associated with this organization. 31
In September 1979, the month that Amin took power, the American charge d'affaires
in Kabul, Bruce Amstutz, began to hold friendly meetings with him to reassure him that he
need not worry about his unhappy Soviet allies as long as the US maintained a strong pres-
ence in Afghanistan, The strategy may have worked, for later in the month, Amin made a
special appeal to Amstutz for improved relations with the United States. Two days later in
New York, the Afghan Foreign Minister quietly expressed the same sentiments to State
Department officials. And at the end of October, the US Embassy in Kabul reported that
Amin was "painfully aware of the exiled leadership the Soviets [were] keeping on the shelf
(a reference to Karmal who was living in Czechoslovakia}. 12 Under normal circumstances,
the Amin-US meetings might be regarded as routine and innocent diplomatic contact, but
these were hardly normal circumstances — the Afghan government was engaged in a civil
war, and the United States was supporting the other side.
Moreover, it can be said that Amin, by his ruthlessness, was doing just what an
American agent would be expected to do: discrediting the People's Democratic Party, the
patty's reforms, the idea of socialism or communism, and the Soviet Union, all associated in
one package. Amin also conducted purges in the army officer corps which seriously under-
mined the army's combat capabilities.
But why would Amin, if he were actually plotting with the Americans, request Soviet
military forces on several occasions? The main reason appears to be that he was being
pressed to do so by high levels of the PDP and he had to comply for the sake of appear-
ances. Babrak Karmal has suggested other, more Machiavellian, scenarios. 33
The Carter administration jumped on the issue of the Soviet "invasion" and soon
launched a campaign of righteous indignation, imposing what President Carter called
"penalties" — from halting the delivery of grain to the Soviet Union to keeping the US team
343
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KILLING HOPE
out of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
The Russians countered that the US was enraged by the intervention because
Washington had been plotting to turn the country into an American base to replace the loss
of Iran. 34
Unsurprisingly, on this seemingly clear-cut anti-communist issue, the American pub-
lic and media easily fell in line with the president. The Wall Street Journal called for a
"military" reaction, the establishment of US bases in the Middle East, "reinstatement of
draft registration", development of a new missile, and giving the CIA more leeway,
adding: "Clearly we ought to keep open the chance of covert aid to Afghan rebels." 5
The last, whether the newspaper knew it or not, had actually been going on for some
time. For some period prior to the Soviet invasion, the CIA had been beaming radio pro-
paganda into Afghanistan and cultivating alliances with exiled Afghan guerrilla leaders
by donating medicine and communications equipment. 36 US foreign service officers had
been meeting with Moujahedeen leaders to determine their needs at least as early as April
1979. 37 And in July, President Carter had signed a "finding" to aid the rebels covertly,
which led to the United States providing them with cash, weapons, equipment and sup-
plies, and engaging in propaganda and other psychological operations in Afghanistan on
their behalf 38
Intervention in the Afghan civil war by the United States, Iran, Pakistan, China and
others gave the Russians grave concern about who was going to wield power next door.
They consistently cited these "aggressive imperialist forces" to rationalize their own inter-
vention into Afghanistan, which was the first time Soviet ground troops had engaged in mil-
itary action anywhere in the world outside its post- World War II Eastern European borders.
The potential establishment of an anti-communist Islamic state on the borders of the Soviet
Union's own republics in Soviet Central Asia that were home to some 40 million Muslims
could not be regarded with equanimity by the Kremlin any more than Washington could be
unruffled about a communist takeover in Mexico.
As we have seen repeatedly, the United States did not limit its defense perimeter to its
immediate neighbors, or even to Western Europe, but to the entire globe. President Carter
declared that the Persian Gulf area was "now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan",
that this area was synonymous with US interests, and that the United States would
"defend" it against any threat by all means necessary. He called the Soviet action "the
greatest threat to peace since the Second World War", a statement that required overlook-
ing a great deal of post-war history. But 1980 was an election year.
Brezhnev, on the other hand, declared that "the national interests or security of the
United States of America and other states are in no way affected by the events in
Afghanistan. All attempts to portray matters otherwise are sheer nonsense." 33
The Carter administration was equally dismissive of Soviet concerns. National Security
Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski later stated that "the issue was not what might have been
Brezhnev's subjective motives in going into Afghanistan but the objective consequences of a
Soviet military presence so much closer to the Persian Gulf' 40
The stage was now set for 12 long years of the most horrific kind of warfare, a daily
atrocity for the vast majority of the Afghan people who never asked for or wanted this
war. But the Soviet Union was determined that its borders must be un-threatening. The
Afghan government was committed to its goal of a secular, reformed Afghanistan. And
the United States was intent upon making this the Soviets' Vietnam, slowly bleeding as
the Americans had. At the same time, American policymakers could not fail to under-
stand — though they dared not say it publicly and explicitly — that support of the
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Moujahedeen (many of whom carried pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini with them)
could lead to a fundamentalist Islamic state being established in Afghanistan every bit as
repressive as in next-door Iran, which in the 1980s was Public Enemy Number One in
America. Neither could the word "terrorist" cross the lips of Washington officials in
speaking of their new allies/clients, though these same people shot down civilian airlin-
ers and planted bombs at the airport. In 1986, British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher, whose emotional invectives against "terrorists" were second to none, wel-
comed Abdul Haq, an Afghan rebel leader who admitted that he had ordered the
planting of a bomb at Kabul airport in 1984 which killed at least 28 people. 41 Such,
then, were the scruples of cold-war anti-communists in late 20th century. As Anastasio
Somoza had been "our son of a bitch", the Moujahedeen were now "our fanatic terror-
ists".
At the beginning there had been some thought given to the morality of the policy. "The
question here," a senior official in the Carter administration said, "was whether it was
morally acceptable that, in order to keep the Soviets off balance, which was the reason for
the operation, it was permissible to use other lives for our geopolitical interests." 42
But such sentiments could not survive. Afghanistan was a cold-warrior's dream: The
CIA and the Pentagon, finally, had one of thert proxy armies in direct confrontation with
the forces of the Evil Empire. There was no price too high to pay for this Super Nintendo
game, neither the hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives, nor the destruction of Afghan
society, nor three billion (sic) dollars of American taxpayer money poured into a bottomless
hole, much of it going only to make a few Afghans and Pakistanis rich. Congress was equal-
ly enthused — without even the moral uncertainty that made them cautious about arming the
Nicaraguan contras — and became a veritable bipartisan horn of plenty as it allocated mote
and more money for the effort each year. Rep. Charles Wilson of Texas expressed a not-
atypical sentiment of official Washington when he declared:
There were 58,000 dead in Vietnam and we owe the Russians one ... I have a slight obsession
with it, because of Vietnam I thought the Soviets ought to get a dose of it ... I've been of the
opinion that this money was better spent ro hurt our adversaries than other money in the Defense
Department budget. 43
The CIA became the grand coordinator: purchasing or arranging the manufacture of
Soviet-style weapons from Egypt, China, Poland, Israel and elsewhere, or supplying their
own; arranging for military training by Americans, Egyptians, Chinese and Iranians; hit-
ting up Middle-Eastern countries for donations, notably Saudi Arabia which gave many
hundreds of millions of dollars in aid each year, totaling probably more than a billion;
pressuring and bribing Pakistan — with whom recent American relations had been very
poor — to rent out its country as a military staging area and sanctuary; putting the
Pakistani Director of Military Operations, Brigadier Mian Mohammad Afzal, onto the
CIA payroll to ensure Pakistani cooperation. 44 Mlitary and economic aid which had been
cut off would be restored, Pakistan was told by the United States, if they would join the
great crusade. Only a month before the Soviet intervention, anti-American mobs had
burned and ransacked the US embassy in Islamabad and American cultural centers in two
other Pakistani cities. 45
The American ambassador in Libya reported that Muammar Qaddafi was sending the
rebels $250,000 as well, but this, presumably, was not at the request of the CIA. 46
Washington left it to the Pakistanis to decide which of the various Afghan guerrilla
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groups should be the beneficiaries of much of this largesse. As one observer put it:
"According to conventional wisdom at the time, the United States would not repeat the mis-
take of Vietnam — micro-managing a war in a culture it did not understand." 47
Not everyone in Pakistan was bought out. The independent Islamabad daily newspa-
per, the Muslim, more than once accused the United States of being ready to "fight to the
last Afghan" ... "We are not flattered to be termed a 'frontline state' by Washington," ...
"Washington does not seem to be in any mood to seek an early settlement of a war whose
benefits it is reaping at no cost of American manpower." 48
It's not actually clear whether there was any loss of American lives in the war. On sev-
eral occasions in the late '80s, the Kabul government announced that Americans had been
killed in the fighting, 49 and in 1985 a London newspaper reported that some two dozen
American Black Muslims were in Afghanistan, fighting alongside the Moujahedeen in a
jihad that a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran says all believers in Islam must do at
least once in their lives. 50 Several of the Black Muslims returned to the United States after
being wounded,
Soviet aggression ... Soviet invasion ... Soviet swallowing up another innocent state as
pan of their plan to conquer the world, or at least the Middle East... this was the predomi-
nant and lasting lesson taught by Washington official pronouncements and the mainstream
US media about the war, and the sum total of knowledge for the average American,
although Afghanistan had retained its independence during 60 years of living in peace next
door to the Soviet Union. Zbigniew Brzezinski, albeit unrelentingly anti-Soviet, repeatedly
speaks of the fact of Afghanistan's "neutrality" in his memoirs. 51 The country had been
neutral even during the Second World War.
One would have to look long and hard at the information and rhetoric offered to the
American public following the Soviet intervention to derive even a hint that the civil war
was essentially a struggle over deep-seated social reform; while an actual discussion of the
issue was virtually non-existent. Prior to the intervention, one could get a taste of this, such
as the following from the New York Times:
Land reform attempts undermined their village chiefs. Portraits of Lenin threatened their religious
leaders. But it was the Kabul revolutionary Government's granting of new rights to women that
pushed orthodox Moslem men in the Pashtoon villages of eastern Afghanistan into picking up their
guns. ... "The government said our women had to attend meetings and our children had to go to
schools. This threatens our religion. We had to fight," ... "The government imposed various ordi-
nances allowing women freedom to many anyone they chose without their parents'consent." 52
Throughout the 1980s, the Karmal, and then the Najibullah regimes, despite the exi-
gencies of the war, pursued a program of modernization and broadening of their base:
bringing electricity to villages, along with health clinics, a measure of land reform, and liter-
acy; releasing numerous prisoners unlawfully incarcerated by Amin; bringing mullahs and
other non-party people into the government; trying to carry it all out with moderation and
sensitivity instead of confronting the traditional structures head-on; reiterating its commit-
ment to Islam, rebuilding and constructing mosques, exempting land owned by religious
dignitaries and their institutions from land reform; trying, in short, to avoid the gross mis-
takes of the Amin government with its rush to force changes down people's throats. 53
Selig Harrison, writing in 1988, stated:
The Afghan Communists see themselves as nationalists and modernizers ... They rationalize their col-
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laboration with the Russians as the only way available to consolidate their revolution in the face of
foreign "interference". ... The commitment of the Communists to rapid modernization enables them
to win a grudging tolerance from many members of the modern-minded middle class, who fee)
trapped between two fires: the Russians and fanatic Muslims opposed to social reforms. 54
The program of the Kabul government eventually encouraged many volunteers to take
up arms in its name. But it was a decidedly uphill fight, for it was relatively easy for the
native anti-reformists and their foreign backers to convince large numbers of ordinary peas-
ants that the government had ill intentions by blurring the distinction between the present
government and its detested and dogmatic predecessor, particularly since the government
was fond of stressing the continuity of the April 1978 revolution. 55 One thing the peasants,
as well as the anti-reformists, were undoubtedly not told of was the US connection to the
selfsame detested predecessor, Hafizullah Amin,
Another problem faced by the Kabul government in winning the hearts and minds of
the people was of course the continuing Soviet armed presence, although it must be remem-
bered that Islamic opposition to the leftist government began well before the Soviet forces
arrived; indeed, the most militant of the Moujahedeen leaders, Hekmatyar, had led a seri-
ous uprising against the previous (non-leftist) government as well, in 1975, declaring that a
"godless, communist-dominated regime" ruled in Kabul. 56
As long as Soviet troops remained, the conflict in Afghanistan could be presented to the
American mind as little more than a battle between Russian invaders and Afghanistan resis-
tance/freedom fighters; as if the Afghanistan army and government didn't exist, or certainly
not with a large following of people who favored reforms and didn't want to live under a
fundamentalist Islamic government, probably a majority of the population.
"Maybe the people really don't like us, either," said Mohammed Hakim, Mayor of
Kabul, a general in the Afghan army who was trained in the 1970s at military bases in the
United States, and who thought that America was "the best country", "but they like us bet-
ter than the extremists. This is what the Western countries do not understand. We only
hope that Mr. Bush and the people of the United States take a good look at us. They think
we are very fanatic Communists, that we are not human beings. We are not fanatics. We
are not even Communists." 57
They were in the American media. Any official of the Afghan government, or the gov-
ernment as a whole, was typically referred to, a priori, as "Communist", or "Marxist", or
"pro-Communist", or "pro-Marxist", etc., without explanation or definition. Najibullah,
who took over when Karmal stepped down in 1986, was confirmed in his position in 1987
under a new Islamized constitution that was stripped of all socialist rhetoric and brimming
with references to Islam and the holy Koran. "This is not a socialist revolutionary country,"
he said in his acceptance speech. "We do not want to build a Communist society." 58
Could the United States see beyond cold war ideology and consider the needs of the
Afghan people? In August 1979, three months before the Soviet intervention, a classified
State Department Report stated:
the United States's larger interests ... would be served by the demise of the Taraki-Amin regime,
despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reforms in
Afghanistan. ... the overthrow of the D.RA. [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] would show
the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that the Soviets' view of the socialist course
of history as being inevitable is not accurate. 53
Repeatedly, in the 1980s, as earlier, the Soviet Union contended that no solution to the
conflict could be found until the United States and other nations ceased their support of the
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Moujahedeen. The United States, in turn, insisted that the Soviets must first withdraw their
troops from Afghanistan.
Finally, after several years of UN-supported negotiations, an accord was signed in
Geneva on 14 April 1988, under which the Kremlin committed itself to begin pulling out its
estimated 115,000 troops on 15 May, and to complete the process by 15 February of the
next year. Afghanistan, said Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, had become "a bleeding 1
wound".
In February, after the last Soviet forces had left Afghanistan, Gorbachev urged the
United States to support an embargo on arms shipments into Afghanistan and a cease-fire
between the two warring sides. Both proposals were turned down by the new Bush adminis-
tration, which claimed that the Afghan government had been left with a massive stockpile
of military equipment. It is unclear why Washington felt that the rebels who had fought the
government to a standstill despite the powerful presence of the Soviet armed forces with all
their equipment, would now be at a dangerous disadvantage with the Russians gone. The
key to the American response may lie in the State Department statement of the prior week
that the United States believed that the Kabul government on its own would not last more
than six months. 60
By raising the question of an arms gap (whether it was for real or not), Washington
was assuring the continuation of the arms race in Afghanistan — a microcosm of the cold
war. At the same time, the Bush administration called upon the Soviets to support "an inde-
pendent, non-aligned Afghanistan", although this was precisely what the United States had
worked for decades to thwart.
Two days later, President Najibullah criticized the American rejection of Gorbachev's
proposal, offering to return the Soviet weapons if the rebels agreed to lay down their
weapons and negotiate. There was no reported response to this offer from the US, or from
the rebels, who in the past had refused such offers.
It would appear that Washington was thinking longer term than cease-fires and negoti-
ations. On the same day as Najibullah's offer, the United States announced that it had deliv-
eted 500,000 made-in-America textbooks to Afghanistan which were being used to teach
Grades one through four. The books, which "critics say bordered on propaganda", told of
the rebels' fight against the Soviet Union and contained drawings of guerrillas killing
Russian soldiers. 61 Since the beginning of the war, the Moujahedeen had reserved its worst
treatment for Russians. Washington possessed confirmed reports that the rebels had
drugged and tortured 50 to 200 Soviet prisoners and imprisoned them like animals in cages,
"living lives of indescribable horror". 6 Another account, by a reporter from the conserva-
tive Far Eastern Economic Review, relates that:
One [Soviet] group was killed, skinned and hung up in a butcher's shop. One captive found him-
self the centre of attraction in a game of buzkashi, that rough and tumble form of Afghan polo in
which a headless goat is usually the ball. The captive was used instead. Alive. He was literally
torn to pieces. 63
Meanwhile, much to the surprise of the United States and everyone else, the Kabul gov-
ernment showed no sign of collapsing. The good news for Washington was that since the
Soviet troops were gone {though some military advisers remained), the "cost-benefit ratio"
had improved," 64 the cost being measured entirely in non- American deaths and suffering, as
the rebels regularly exploded car bombs and sent rockets smashing into residential areas of
Kabul, and destroyed government-built schools and clinics and murdered literacy teachers
(just as the US-backed Nicaraguan contras had been doing on the other side of the world,
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Afghanistan 1979-1992
and for the same reason: these were symbols of governmental benevolence).
The death and destruction caused by the Soviets and their Afghan allies was also exten-
sive, such as the many bombings of villages. But individual atrocity stories must be
approached with caution, for, as we have seen repeatedly, the propensity and the ability of
the CIA to disseminate anti-communist disinformation — often of the most far-fetched vari-
ety — was virtually unlimited. With the Soviet Union the direct adversary, the creativity lamp
must have burning all night at Langley.
Amnesty International, with its usual careful collection methods, reported in the mid-
'80s on the frequent use of torture and arbitrary detention by the authorities in Kabul. 65
But what are we to make, for example, of the report, without attribution, by syndicated
columnist Jack Anderson — who had ties to the American Afghan lobby — that Soviet troops
often marched into unfriendly villages in Afghanistan and "massacred every man, woman
and child"? 66 Or the New York Times recounting a story told them by an Afghan citizen of
how Afghan soldiers had intentionally blinded five children with pieces of metal and then
strangled them, as a government supporter he was with just laughed. To the newspaper's
credit, it added that "There is no way of confirming this story. It is possible that the man
who toid it was acting and trying to discredit the regime here. His eyes, however, looked
like they had seen horror." 67 Or a US congressman's charge in 1985 that the Soviets had
used booby-trapped toys to maim Afghan children, 68 the identical story told before about
leftists elsewhere in the world during the cold war, and repeated again in 1987 by CBS
News, with pictures. The New York Post later reported the claim of a BBC producer that
the bomb-toy had been created for the CBS cameraman. 69
Then there was the Afghan Mercy Fund, ostensibly a relief agency, but primarily in the
propaganda business, which reported that the Soviets had burned a baby alive, that they
were disguising mines as candy bars and leaving other mines disguised as butterflies to also
attract children. The butterfly mines, it turned out, were copies of a US-designed mine used
in the Vietnam war. 70
There was also the shooting down of a Pakistan fighter plane over Afghanistan in May
1987 that was reported by Pakistan and Washington — knowing with certainty that their
claim was untrue — to be the result of a Soviet-made missile. It turned out that the plane had
been shot down by a companion Pakistani plane in error. 71
Throughout the early and mid-'80s, the Reagan administration declared that the
Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan — the so-
called "yellow rain" — and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone,
(including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the
summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information). Secretary of
State Alexander Haig was a prime dispenser of such stories, and President Reagan himself
denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches. 72 The
"yellow rain", it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees
flying far overhead. Then, in 1987, it was disclosed that the Reagan administration had
made its accusations even though government scientists at the time had been unable to con-
firm any of them, and considered the evidence to be flimsy and misleading. 73 Even more
suspicious: the major scientific studies that later examined Washington's claims spoke only
of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand; no mention at all was made of Afghanistan. It was as if
the administration — perhaps honestly mistaken at first about Indochina — had added
Afghanistan to the list with full knowledge of the falsity of its allegation.
Such disinformation campaigns are often designed to serve a domestic political need.
Consider Senator Robert Dole's contribution to the discussion when he spoke in 1980 on
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the floor of Congress of "convincing evidence" he had been provided "that the Soviets had
developed a chemical capability that extends far beyond our greatest fears ... fa gas that] is
unaffected by ... our gas masks and leaves our military defenseless.™ He then added: "To
even suggest a leveling off of defense spending for our nation by the Carter administration
at such a critical time in our history is unfathomable." 74 And in March 1982, when the
Reagan administration made its claim about the 3,042 Afghan deaths, the New York Times
noted that: "President Reagan has just decided that the United States will resume produc-
tion of chemical weapons and has asked for a substantial increase in the military budget for
such weapons." 75
The money needed to extend American propaganda campaigns internationally flowed
from the congressional horn of plenty as smoothly as for military desires — $500,000 in one
moment's flow to train Afghan journalists to use television, radio, and newspapers to
advance their cause. 76
It should be noted that in June 1980, before any of the "yellow rain" charges had been
made against the Soviet Union, the Kabul government had accused the rebels and their foreign
backers of employing poison gas, citing an incident in which 500 pupils and teachers at several
secondary schools had been poisoned with noxious gases; none were reported to have died. 77
One reason victory continued to elude the Moujahedeen was that they were terribly
split by centuries-old ethnic and tribal divisions, as well as the relatively recent rise of
Islamic fundamentalism in conflict with more traditional, but still orthodox, Islam. The dif-
ferences often led to violence. In one incident, in 1989, seven top Moujahedeen comman-
ders and more than 20 other rebels were murdered by a rival guerrilla group. This was nei-
ther the first nor the last of such occurrences. 78 By April 1990, 14 months after the Soviet
withdrawal, the Los Angeles Times described the state of the rebels thusly:
they have in recent weeks killed more of their own than the enemy. ... Rival resistance comman-
ders have been gunned down gangland-style here in the border town of Peshawar [Pakistan], the
staging area for the war. There are persistent reports of large-scale political killings in the refugee
camps ... A recent execution ... had as much to do with drugs as with politics. ... Other comman-
ders, in Afghanistan and in the border camps, are simply refusing to fight. They say privately that
they prefer [Afghan President] Najibullah to the hard-line Moujahedeen fundamentalists led by
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. 79
The rebel cause was also corrupted by the huge amounts of arms flooding in.
Investigative reporter Tim Weiner reported the following:
The CIA's pipeline leaked. It leaked badly. It spilled huge quantities of weapons all over one of
the world's most anarchic areas. First the Pakistani armed forces took what they wanted from
the weapons shipments. Then corrupt Afghan guerrilla leaders stole and sold hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars' worth of anti-aircraft guns, missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 automat-
ic rifles, ammunition and mines from the CIA's arsenal. Some of the weapons fell into the hands
of criminal gangs, heroin kingpins and the most radical faction of the Iranian military. ... While
their troops eked out hard lives in Afghanistan's mountains and deserts, the guerrillas' political
leaders maintained fine villas in Peshawar and fleets of vehicles at their command. The CIA kept
silent as the Afghan politics converted the Agency's weapons into cash. 80
Amongst the weapons the Moujahedeen sold to the Iranians were highly sophisticated
Stinger heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles, with which the rebels bad shot down many hun-
dreds of Soviet military aircraft, as well as at least eight passenger planes. On 8 October
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Afghanistan 1979-1992
1987, Revolutionary Guards on an Iranian gunboat fired one of the Stingers at American
helicopters patrolling the Persian Gulf, but missed their target. 81
Earlier the same year, the CIA told Congress that at least 20 percent of its military aid
to the Moujahedeen had been skimmed off by the rebels and Pakistani officials. Columnist
Jack Anderson stated at the same time that his conservative estimate was that the diversion
was around 60 percent, while one rebel leader told Anderson's assistant on his visit to the
border that he doubted that even 25 percent of the arms got through. By other accounts, as
little as 20 percent was making it the intended recipients. If indeed there was a deficiency of
arms available to the Moujahedeen compared to the government forces, as George Bush
implied, this was clearly a major reason for it. Yet the CIA and other administration offi-
cials simply looked upon it as part of doing business in that part of the world. 82
Like many other CIA clients, the rebels were financed as well through drug trafficking,
and the Agency was apparently as little concerned about it as ever as long as it kept their
boys happy. Moujahedeen commanders inside Afghanistan personally controlled huge fields
of opium poppies, the raw material from which heroin is refined. CIA-supplied trucks and
mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport some of the opium
to the numerous laboratories along the Afghan-Pakistan border, whence many tons of hero-
in were processed with the cooperation of the Pakistani military. The output provided an
estimated one-third to one-half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-
quarters of that used in Western Europe. US officials admitted in 1990 that they had failed
to investigate or take action against the drug operation because of a desire not to offend
their Pakistani and Afghan allies. 83 In 1993, an official of the US Drug Enforcement
Administration called Afghanistan the new Colombia of the drug world. 84
The war, with all its torment, continued until the spring of 1992, three years after the
last Soviet troops had gone. An agreement on ending the arms supply, which had been
reached between the United States and the Soviet Union, was now in effect. The two super-
powers had abandoned the war. The Soviet Union no longer existed. And the Afghan peo-
ple could count more than a million dead, three million disabled, and five million made
refugees, in total about half the population.
At the same time, a UN-brokered truce was to transfer power to a transitional coalition
government pending elections. But this was not to be. The Kabul government, amidst food
riots and army revolts, virtually disintegrated, and the guerrillas stormed into the capital
and established the first Islamic regime in Afghanistan since it had become a separate and
independent country in the mid- 18th century.
A key event in the downfall of the government was the eleventh-hour defection to the
guerrillas of General Abdul Rashtd Dostum. Dostum, who previously had been referred to
in the US media as a "Communist general", now metamorphosed into an "ex-Communist
general".
The Moujahedeen had won. Now they turned against each other with all their fury.
Rockets and artillery shells wiped out entire neighborhoods in Kabul. By August at least
1,500 people had been killed or wounded, mostly civilians. (By 1994, the body count in this
second civil war would reach 10,000.) Of all the rebel leaders, none was less compromising
or more insistent upon a military solution than Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
Robert Neumann, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan, observed at this time:
Hekmatyar is a nut, an extremist and a very violent man. He was built up by the Pakistanis.
Unfortunately, our government went along with the Pakistanis. We were supplying the money
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and the weapons but they [Pakistani officials] were making the policy.
Washington was now very concerned that Hekmatyar would take power. Ironically,
they were afraid that if he did, his brand of extremism would spread to and destabilize the
former Soviet republics of large Moslem populations, the same feat which had been one of
the motivations behind the Soviets intervening in the civil war in the first place. 85
It was to the forces of Hekmatyar that the "Communist general" Dostum eventually
aligned himself.
Suleiman Layeq, a leftist and a poet, and the fallen regime's "ideologue", watched from
his window as the Moujahedeen swarmed through the city, claiming building after building.
"Without exception," he said of them, "they follow the way of the fundamentalist aims and
goals of Islam. And it is not Islam. It is a kind of theory against civilization — against mod-
ern civilization." 86
Even before taking power, the Moujahedeen had banned all non-Muslim groups. Now
more of the new law was laid down: All alcohol was banned in the Islamic republic; women
could not venture out in the streets without veils, and violations would be punished by Hog-
gings, amputations and public executions. And this from the more "moderate" Islamics, not
Hekmatyar. By September, the first public hangings were carried out. Before a cheering
crowd of 10,000 people, three men were hung. They had been tried behind closed doors,
and no one would say what crimes they had committed, 87
In February 1993, a group of Middle Easterners blew up the World Trade Center in
New York City. Most of them were veterans of the Moujahedeen. Other veterans were car-
rying out assassinations in Cairo, bombings in Bombay, bloody uprisings in the mountains
of Kashmir, and guerilla warfare in the Philippines.
This, then, was the power and the glory of President Reagan's "freedom fighters", who
had become yet more anti-American in recent years, many of them backing Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf conflict of 1990-91. Surely even Ronald Reagan and
George Bush would have preferred the company of "communist" reformers like President
Noor Mohammed Taraki, Mayor Mohammed Hakim or poet Suleiman Layeq.
But the Soviet Union had bled. It had bled profusely. For the United States it had also
been a holy war.
54. El Salvador 1980-1994
Human rights, Washington style
The United States was supporting the government of El Salvador, said President
Ronald Reagan, because it was trying "to halt the infiltration into the Americas, by terror-
ists and by outside interference, and those who aren't just aiming at El Salvador but, I
think, are aiming at the whole of Central and possibly later South America and, I'm sure,
eventually North America." 1
Psychiatrists have a term for such perceptions of reality. They call it paranoid schizo-
phrenia.
If the insurgents in El Salvador, the smallest country by far in all of Central and South
352
El Salvador 1980-1994
America, were engaged in what Ronald Reagan perceived as a plot to capture the Western
Hemisphere, others saw it as the quintessential revolution.
Viewed in the latter context, it cannot be asserted that the Salvadorean people rushed
precipitously into revolution at the first painful sting of repression, or turned to the gun
because of a proclivity towards violent solutions, or a refusal to "work within the system",
or because of "outside agitators", or any of the other explanations of why people revolt so
dear to the hearts of Washington opinion makers. For as long as anyone could remember,
the reins of El Salvador's government had resided in the hands of one military dictatorship
or another, while the economy had been controlled by the celebrated 14 coffee and industri-
al families, with only the occasional, short-lived bursting of accumulated discontent to dis-
turb the neat arrangement.
In December 1980, New York Times, reporter Raymond Bonner asked Jose Napoleon
Duarte "why the guerrillas were in the hills". Duarte, who had just become president of the
ruling junta, responded with an answer that surprised Bonner: "Fifty years of lies, fifty
years of injustice, fifty years of frustration. This is a history of people starving to death, liv-
ing in misery. For fifty years the same people had all the power, all the money, all the jobs,
all the education, all the opportunities." 2
In the decades following the famed peasant rebellion in 1932, which was crushed by an
unholy massacre, a reform government had occupied the political stage only twice: for nine
months in 1944, then again in 1960. The latter instance was precipitated by several thou-
sand students of the National University who staged a protest against the curtailment of
civil liberties. The government responded by sending in the police, who systematically
smashed offices, classrooms, and laboratories, beat up the school's president, killed a librar-
ian, bayoneted students, and taped dozens of young women. Finally, when the students
amassed anew, troops opened fire upon them point-blank.
The bloody incident was one of the turning points for a group of junior military offi-
cers. They staged a coup in October aimed at major social and political reforms, but the
new government lasted only three months before being overthrown in a counter-coup which
the United States was reportedly involved in. 3 Dr. Fabio Castillo, a former president of the
National University and a member of the ousted government, testified years later before the
US Congress that in the process of overthrowing the reform government, the American
Embassy immediately began to "intervene directly", and "members of the U.S. Military
Mission openly intensified their invitation to conspiracy and rebellion". 4
Throughout the 1960s, multifarious American experts occupied themselves in El
Salvador by enlarging and refining the state's security and counter-insurgency apparatus:
the police, the National Guard, the military, the communications and intelligence networks,
the co-ordination with their counterparts in other Central American countries ... as matters
turned out, these were the forces and resources which were brought into action to impose
widespread repression and wage war. Years later, the New York Times noted:
In El Salvador, American aid was used for police training in the 1950's and l%0s and many
officers in the three branches of the police later became leaders of the right-wing death squads
that killed tens of thousands of people in the late 1970's and early 1980's.
If during the 1960s, the apparatus could not be charged with the level of murder or
torture or disappearance of political opponents reached in Guatemala and elsewhere in
Latin America, it had more to do with the modest degree of outspoken dissent and violent
unrest it faced than with greater respect for human rights; those opposition groups which
were not outlawed were those regarded as un-threatening; the bloated stomachs of malnour-
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ished peasant children were not regarded as threatening at all.
For apparently no better reason than the fact that even militarists cherish a veneer of
legitimacy, during the 1960s certain political organizations of generally urban middle-dass
membership were allowed to run candidates for municipal and legislative office. They did
well, though the government-calculated returns consistently left the opposition as a minori-
ty in the legislature; i.e., without real power. In 1967, the government went through the
motions of the first contested election for the presidency since 1931, After declaring its
party, PCN, the winner, the government promptly banned one of the major contending par-
ties, PAR, on the grounds that it supported principles "contrary to the Constitution".
According to a PAR spokesperson, the "principle" involved was support for agrarian
reform. Another source reports that the party was declared illegal "allegedly for dispensing
Communist ideologies", which, within the government's frame of reference, may well have
been one and the same. 6
- Undeterred, a center-left coalition, UNO by acronym, was formed and put forth
Christian Democrat Jose Napoleon Duarte as its presidential candidate in 1972, Though
UNO was confronted by violence against its candidates and campaigners, including the mur-
der of an aide of Dutarte, and the sabotaging of the coalition's radio broadcasts, it arrived at
election day with high expectations. Two days after the polling, the Centra! Election Board,
after first announcing a victory for PCN, shocked everyone by declaring that a recount had
shown UNO to be the winner instead. The government quickly imposed a news blackout and
for the next two days nothing was heard concerning the election results. On the third day, the
Election Board announced that PCN was indeed the winner after all.
In the 1974 and 1976 legislative elections, and again in the 1977 presidential election,
the government employed similar creative counting along with gross physical intimidation
of candidates, voters, and poll watchers, to assure its continuance in office. 7
A mass demonstration following the 1977 polling, protesting against electoral fraud,
was surrounded by government security forces who opened fire. The result was nothing less
than a bloodbath, the death toll measurable in the hundreds. In the immediate aftermath,
top leaders of UNO were exiled and the party's followers became liable to arrest, torture
and murder. 8 The country's president, Col. Arturo Molina, blamed the protests on "foreign
Communists". His response to charges of electoral fraud was: "Only God is perfect." 9
Government political violence of this sort had been sporadic in the 1960s, but became
commonplace in the 1970s as more and more Salvadoreans, frustrated by the futility of
achieving social change through elections, resorted to other means. While some limited them-
selves to more militant demonstrations, strikes, and occupations of sites, an increasing number
turned to acts of urban guerrilla warfare such as assassination of individuals seen as part of
the repressive machinery, bombings, and kidnappings for ransom. The government and its
paramilitary right-wing vigilante groups — "death squads" is the self-named modem genre —
countered with a campaign centered upon leaders of labor unions, peasant organizations and
political parties, as well as priests and lay religious workers. "Be Patriotic — Kill a Priest" was
the slogan of one death squad. Church people were accused of teaching subversion to the
peasants, what the church people themselves would call the word of God, in this the only
country in the world named after Christ. The CIA and the US military played an essential role
in the conception and organization of the security agencies from which the death squads
emanated. CIA surveillance programs routinely supplied these agencies with information on,
and the whereabouts of, various individuals who wound up as death squad victims. 10
In October 1979, a cabal of younger military officers, repelled by the frequent govern-
ment massacres of groups of protesters and strikers, and wishing to restore the military's
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"good name", ousted General Carlos Romero from the presidency and took power in a
bloodless coup. A number of prominent civilian political figures were given positions in the
new administration, which proclaimed an impressive program of reforms. But it was not to
be. The young and politically inexperienced officers were easily co-opted by older, conserva-
tive officers, and by pressure exerted by the United States, to install certain military men into
key positions." The civilian members of the government found themselves unable to exercise
any control over the armed forces and were left to function only as reformist camouflage.
Washington had supported the removal of the brutal Romero because only three
months earlier the Sandinistas had overthrown the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, and
the Carter administration did not wish to risk the loss of a second client state in Central
America in so short a space of time, but brakes had to be applied to keep the process within
manageable bounds.
Meanwhile, the security forces did not miss a beat as they continued to fire into
crowds: the body count in the first month of the "reformist" government was greater than
in the first nine months of the year. By January 1980, almost all the civilian members had
resigned in disgust over government-as-usual. 1 The experience was the straw which broke
the backs of many moderates and liberals, as well as members of the Salvadorean
Communist Party, who still clung to hopes of peaceful reforms. The Communist Party had
supported the new government, even contributed the Minister of Labor, "because we
believe it is going to comply with its promises and open the possibility of democratizing the
country." The party was the last group on the left to join the guerrilla forces. 13
One of the civilians, Minister of Education Salvador Samayoa, in front of the TV cam-
eras, simultaneously announced his resignation and his enlistment with a guerrilla group. 14
For those who continued to harbor illusions, a steady drumbeat of terrorism soon brought
them into the fold. A demonstration march by a coalition of popular organizations on 22
January was first sprayed with DDT by crop-duster planes along the route of the march; then,
when the demonstrators reached San Salvador's central plaza, snipers fired at them from sur-
rounding government buildings; at least 21 dead and 120 seriously wounded was the toll,
some of which reportedly resulted from the demonstrators' undisciplined return of fire.
On 17 March, a general strike was met by retaliatory violence: — 54 people killed in the
capital alone.
A week later, the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, an outspoken critic of
the government's human-rights violations, who had called upon President Carter,
"Christian to Christian", to cease providing military aid, was assassinated. In his last ser-
mon, he had addressed the security forces with these words: "I beseech you, I beg you, I
order you, in the name of God: stop the repression. " The next day he became the eleventh
priest murdered in El Salvador in three years.
At the funeral of the martyred Archbishop — who had been a nominee for the Nobel
Peace Prize the year before, 23 members of the US House of Representatives being among
his nominators — a bomb was thrown amongst the mourners in the plaza, followed by rifle
and automatic fire, all emanating from the National Palace and some of the office buildings
flanking the plaza, just as in January. At least 40 people were reported killed and hundreds
injured. 15
Junta president Duarte tried to put the blame for the funeral carnage on the left. His
case rested apparently on bald statement and nothing else, for all eyewitness reports stated
that the bomb and gunfire came from the National Palace and the other government build-
ings. A statement issued by eight bishops and 16 other foreign church visitors who had been
present denied the government's version. 16
KILLING HOPE
Seven years were to pass before Duarte, elected to the presidency in 1984, accused former
army Major Roberto d'Aubuisson, the prominent leader of the country's right wing, with hav-
ing ordered Romero's murder. Though this was a belief already widely held, the public accu-
sation created a stir in El Salvador and the United States. The CIA, it turned out, knew the
facts no later than one year after the assassination. (D'Aubuisson, it should be noted, was a
man who once told three European reporters: "You Germans are very intelligent. You realized
that the Jews were responsible for the spread of communism, and you began to kill them.")
The American-trained former intelligence officer was never arrested because of immunity aris-
ing from his being a deputy in the National Assembly. He died in 1992. 17
During the early months of 1980, the government, with direct American influence and
input, enacted a program of agrarian reform, the sine qua non of social change in El
Salvador. Its key provision — tenant farmers gaining title to the plots they worked — was sim-
ilar to programs the US had advocated in a number of other Third World hot spots since
the 1950s, and for the same reasons: as a counter-insurgency tactic — stealing the guerrillas'
thunder; and to make the government receiving US military aid appear more deserving, in
the eyes of Congress and the world. A memorandum from the Agency for International
Development (AID) in mid- 1980, commenting on reaction in El Salvador to the program of
"Land to the Tiller", says in part:
Many believe it is a "symbolic" and "cosmetic" measure which was proposed because it would
look good to certain American politicians and not necessarily because it would be beneficial or
significant in the Salvadorean context. 18
The reaction of the Salvadorean agrarian elite could have been predicted. They expelled
many thousands of peasants from their meager plots to preclude land being turned over to
them. This was not the worst...
The testimony of a technician of the Institute Salvadoreno de Transformation Agraria,
established to oversee the program:
The troops came and told the workers the land was theirs now. They could elect their own lead-
ers and run it themselves. The peasants couldn't believe their ears, but they held elections that
very night. The next morning the troops came back and I watched as they shot every one of the
elected leaders.
This was not an isolated case. The Assistant Minister of Agriculture, Jorge Alberto
Villacorta, in his resignation letter in March 1980, stated that "During the first days of the
reform — to cite one case — 5 directors and 2 presidents of new campesino organizations
were assassinated and I am informed that this repressive practice continues to increase." 20
"Force," wrote Karl Marx, "is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new
one." Revolution was now the only item of importance on the political agenda of the oppo-
sition, united as never before — united more by a common enemy than by a common ideolo-
gy, but many saw this pluralism as strength rather than weakness. Leftists would now be
fighting alongside (former) Christian Democrats whom, only shortly before, they had
accused of serving US imperialism.
If Jimmy Carter's trumpeted devotion to human rights was to be taken seriously, his
administration clearly had no alternative but to side with the Salvadorean opposition, or at
least keep its hands stricdy out of the fighting. The Carter administration, however, with only
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an occasional backward glance at its professed principles, continued its military support of the
government. Within days before his term ended in January 1981, Carter ordered a total of
$10 million in military aid along with additional American advisers to be sent to El Salvador,
an action characterized by one observer as "President Carter's foreign policy establishment's
last convulsive effort to evade responsibility for having been 'too soft' in dealing with the
Salvadorean rebels." (Two years later, private citizen Carter stated: "I think the government in
El Salvador is one of the blood-thirstiest in [the] hemisphere now.") 21
The Reagan administration, to whom "human rights" was a suspect term invented by
leftists, had little fear of the too-soft label. Its approach to the conflict was threefold: (a) a
sharp escalation, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in the American military involve-
ment in El Salvador; (b) a public relations campaign to put a human face on the military
junta; (c) a concurrent exercise in news management to convince the American public and
the world that the Salvadorean opposition had no legitimate cause for revolution; which
was to say that what the Salvadoreans had experienced during the previous two decades,
indeed for half a century, had little or nothing to do with their uprising — this, it turned out,
was the inspiration of (unprovoked, mindless) "left-wing terrorists" abetted by the Soviet
Union, by Nicaragua, by Cuba. The Red Devils were at it again.
Military Escalation
El Salvador did not turn into another Vietnam quicksand for the United States as many
critics of the left and center warned. But for the Salvadorean people the war and its horror
dragged on as interminably as it did for the Vietnamese, and for the same reason: American
support of a regime — one even more loathsome than in Vietnam — which would have crum-
bled dismally if left to its own resources. Despite overwhelmingly superior military might,
the government could hold the insurgents to no more than a stalemate.
The amount of American military aid to El Salvador from 1980 to the early 1990s, for
the hardware alone, ran into the billions of dollars. Six billion is the figure commonly used
in the press, but the true figure will never be known. The Arms Control and Foreign Policy
Caucus, a bipartisan congressional group, accused the Reagan administration in the mid-
1980s of supplying "insufficient, misleading and in some cases false information" concern-
ing aid to El Salvador. The administration, concluded the Caucus study, categorized most
military aid as "development" aid, and undervalued the real cost of the hardware even
when it was properly categorized as military aid. 22
To this must be added the cost of training Salvadorean military personnel by the thou-
sands in the United States, and the Panama Canal Zone, as well as in El Salvador; the fur-
ther training which was provided in the earlier years by Argentina, Chile and Uruguay at US
behest; and the substantial military aid routed through Israel, a maneuver employed by the
United States elsewhere in Central America as well. 23
One telling result of this massive provision of weapons and training, as well as the
money to pay higher salaries, was the sizeable expansion of the Salvadorean armed forces
and other security services. From an estimated seven to twelve thousand men in 1979, the
army alone jumped to more than 22,000 by 1983, with an additional 11,000 civilian securi-
ty forces; three years later, the total of these two forces had spiraled to 53, 000. 24 The
equipment available to them flowed endlessly; when, for example, in January 1982, the
rebels destroyed 16 to 18 aircraft in a raid upon an airport, the United States replaced them
357
KILLING HOPE
in a matter of weeks with 28 new aircraft. Part of the air power available to the govern-
ment were US reconnaissance planes fitted with sophisticated surveillance equipment which
could provide almost instant intelligence on guerrilla movements before and after combat
operations, and designate bombing targets. 2 The guerrillas had neither air power nor a
practical anti-aircraft capability until November 1990 when they used a Soviet-made sur-
face-to-air missile for the first time.
Predictably, the bombing, as well as the strafing and napalming, took the lives of many
more civilians than guerrillas who had better learned how to avoid the attacks; countless
dwellings were leveled in the process, villages destroyed, a nation of refugees created.
Civilian deaths, whether from air or ground raids, were not necessarily accidental, as the
many massacre stories make evident. It is a basic tenet of counter-insurgency: kill the sym-
pathizers and you win the war.
Officially, the US military presence in El Salvador was limited to an advisory capacity.
In actuality, military and CIA personnel played a more active role on a continuous basis
from as early as 1980. About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in helicopter and plane
crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat areas. 27 Moreover, the
American program for training Salvadorean pilots, bombardiers and gunners could easily
serve to conceal the advisers' direct participation in these operations while accompanying
their trainees.
Considerable evidence surfaced of a US role in the ground fighting as well. There were
numerous reports of armed Americans spotted in combat areas, 28 a report by CBS News of
US advisers "fighting side by side" with government troops, 29 and reports of other Americans,
some ostensibly mercenaries, killed in action, 30 The extent of American mercenary involve-
ment in El Salvador is not known, but Lawrence Bailey, a former US Marine, has stated that
he was part of a team of 40 American soldiers of fortune paid by wealthy Salvadorean fami-
lies living in Mami to protect their plantations from takeover by the rebels. 31
During the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, it was disclosed that at least until 1985, CIA
paramilitary personnel had been organizing and leading special Salvadorean army units into
combat areas to track down guerrillas and call in air strikes. 32
These bit-by-bit disclosures pointed to a frequent, if not routine, American involvement
in the ongoing combat. In September 1988 another news item related that US military
advisers were caught in a gun battle between Salvadorean army forces and guerrillas and
that, in "self-defense™, they opened fire on the rebels. 33
The degree of overall control of the military operation by the United States is perhaps
best captured by an excerpt from an interview given to Playboy magazine in 1984 by
President Duarte, one of the few Christian Democrat leaders of the earlier days still working
within the government.
Playboy: Do the American military advisers also tell you how to run the war?
Duarte: This is the problem, no? The root of this problem is that the aid is given under such
conditions that its use is really decided by the Americans and not by us. Decisions like how many
planes or helicopters we buy, how we spend our money, how many trucks we need, how many
bullets and of what caliber, how many pairs of boots and where our priorities should be — aU of
that... And all the money is spent over there. We never even see a penny of it, because everything
arrives here already paid for. '*
In Duarte' s previous incarnation as a government opponent, his view of the Yanquis
was even harsher. US policy in Latin America, he said in 7969, was designed to "maintain
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the Iberoamerican countries in a condition of direct dependence upon the international
political decisions most beneficial to the United States, both at the hemisphere and world
levels. Thus [the Notth Americans] preach to us of democracy while everywhere they sup-
port dictatorships." 35
Duarte's ideology, however, appears to have been a flexible and marketable commodi-
ty. At some point in the 1970s, if not earlier, he began to covertly supply the CIA with intel-
ligence. 36
A Human Face
On 28 January 1982, President Reagan certified to Congress that the El Salvador gov-
ernment was "making a concerted and significant effort to comply with internationally rec-
ognized human rights" and that it was "achieving substantial control over all elements of its
own armed forces, so as to bring to an end the indiscriminate torture and murder of
Salvadorean citizens by these forces." The language was that imposed by Congress upon the
administration if the flow of arms and American military personnel was to continue.
Two days earlier, the American and foreign press had carried the story of how govern-
ment troops had engaged in a massacre of the people of the village of El Mozote in
December. From 700 to 1,000 persons were reported killed, mostly the elderly, women and
children. When a very long, detailed account of this incident appeared eventually, in 1993,
it became more apparent than ever that this was one of the most repulsive and crudest mas-
sacres of the 20th century carried out by ground troops face-to-face with their victims —
people hacked to death by machetes, many beheaded, a child thrown in the air and caught
on a bayonet, an orgy of rapes of very young girls before they were killed ... "If we don't
kill them [the children] now, they'll just grow up to be guerrillas," barked an army officer
to a reluctant soldier... anti-communism at its zenith.
Both immediately and thereafter, the massacre was attended by denials and a cover-up
by the State Department, with abundant media complicity. 37 The State Department's
defense of its position before a congressional committee left the committee members con-
spicuously underwhelmed, even though the congressmen did not yet know the full story. 38
Two days after the president's certification, the world could read how Salvadorean sol-
diers had pulled about 20 people out of their beds in the middle of the night, tortured them,
and then killed them, meanwhile finding the time to rape several teenage girls.
Earlier the same month, the New York Times had published an interview with a desert-
er from the Salvadorean Army who described a class where severe methods of torture were
demonstrated on teenage prisoners. He stated that eight US military advisers, apparently
Green Berets, were present. Watching "will make you feel more like a man," a Salvadorean
officer apprised the recruits, adding that they should "not feel pity of anyone" but only
"hate for those who are enemies of our country." 40
Another Salvadorean, a former member of the National Guard, later testified: "I
belonged to a squad of twelve. We devoted ourselves to torture, and to finding people
whom we were told were guerrillas. I was trained in Panama for nine months by the [unin-
telligible] of the United States for anti-guerrilla warfare. Part of the time we were instructed
about torture." 41
Officers of the National Guard were also trained in the United States. In August 1986,
CBS Television reported that three senior Guard officers who had been Jinked to right-wing
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death squads received training at a police academy in Phoenix.
In 1984, Amnesty International reported that it had received:
regular, often daily, reports identifying El Salvador's regular security and military units as
responsible for the torture, "disappearance" and killing of non-combatant civilians from all sec-
tors of Salvadorean society ... A number of patients have allegedly been removed from their beds
or operating theaters and tortured and murdered ... Types of torture reported ... by those who
have survived arrest and interrogation included beatings, sexual abuse, use of chemicals to disori-
ent, mock executions, and the burning of flesh with sulphuric acid. 43
In light of the above, and many other reports of a similar nature, 44 it can be appreciat-
ed that the Reagan administration had to exercise some creativity in getting around con-
gressional hesitation about continued military aid to the government of El Salvador. Thus it
was that in March 1984 the administration tacked on a request for additional military aid
to legislation to send US food supplies to starving Africans. 4 (A few days later, it tacked on
a request for support of the Nicaraguan contras to a bill to provide emergency fuel spending
for the poor in parts of the United States which were suffering a severe winter,) 45
Death squad executions ... military massacres ... the legion of the disappeared ... the
numbers reached well into the tens of thousands. And the death squads may have reached
their arm into the United States. A number of Americans and Salvadoreans living in Los
Angeles and working with refugees or actively opposing US military aid to El Salvador
received death threats in 1987. Rev. Luis Olivates, a Catholic priest whose church is part of
the "sanctuary" movement, was sent an anonymous letter bearing the letters "EM", which
were often found on the doors or buildings of people who were targeted in El Salvador. The
letters stand for EscuadrdnMuerto [death squad]. 47
In July 1987, a Salvadorean woman named Yanira Corea who had received threatening
phone calls and letters was kidnapped outside the Los Angeles office of the Committee in
Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). Two men, speaking with what she
described as Salvadorean accents, forced her at knifepoint into a van, interrogated her
about her political activities and colleagues, cut her hands with a knife, burnt her fingers
with cigarettes, sexually assaulted her with a stick, then raped her, A month earlier, she had
narrowly escaped being abducted, along with her three-year-old son. Other activists had
their cars smashed or vandalized. 48
For several years under the Reagan administration, the FBI conducted a nationwide
investigation of CISPES. During this period, some of the organization's offices were broken
into with nothing of value taken except files. "It is imperative at this time to formulate
some plan of attack against CISPES ... ", reads one FBI teletype later made public. 49
On some days during the 1980s, Washington officials issued warnings to the
Salvadorean government to improve its human rights record, or told Congress that the
record was improving, or told the world how much worse that record would be if not for
American influence. On most other days, the United States continued to build up each and
every component of the military and paramilitary forces engaged in the atrocities. In 1984,
in an interview with the New York Titties, Col. Roberto Eulalio Santibanez, a former
Salvadorean military official who had served at the highest level of the security police, con-
firmed — for those who may still have entertained doubts — that the network of death squads
had been shaped by leading Salvadorean officials and was still directed by them. He also
revealed that one of these officials, Col. Nicolas Carranza, the head of the Treasury Police,
which "have long been considered the least disciplined and most brutal of the Salvadorean
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El Salvador 1980-1994
security forces", had been receiving more than $90,000 a year during the previous five or
six years from the CIA. Although some members of the Treasury Police were linked by the
Reagan administration itself to death-squad activities, the United States continued to train
and equip them. 50
In a visit to San Salvador in February 1989, Vice President Dan Quayle told army lead-
ers that death squad killings and other human rights violations attributed to the military
had to be ended. Ten days later, the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion — which was believed to
have a US trainer assigned to it at all times — attacked a guerrilla field hospital, killing at
least ten people, including five patients, a doctor and a nurse, and raping at least two of the
female victims before shooting them. Sources close to the El Salvador military said after-
ward that Quayle's warning was not taken seriously, but as rhetoric aimed at the US
Congress and the American public. 51
In October 1989, former Salvadorean Army commando Cesar Vielman Joy a Martinez,
in an interview on the CBS Evening News, related that he and others in his unit — the intelli-
gence section of the army's First Brigade — had acted as a clandestine death squad, that the
two US military advisers attached to the unit were aware of the assassinations, although
they refused to hear the details, and that the advisers supplied money to his unit that helped
maintain two civilian vehicles used for death-squad operations and a safehouse that served
as a secret base of operations and storage of weapons. In subsequent interviews with the
American press, Joya Martinez stated that the advisers had used the names Mauricio Torres
and Raul Antonio Lazo, that his unit had carried out 74 assassinations of Salvadorean dissi-
dents between April and July of 1989, and that he himself had been personally involved in
eight torture murders. Apropos of deadly bombings in El Salvador in November of dissident
organizations (a union hall and an organization of mothers of the disappeared), he added
that his unit had received explosives training from US advisers. The Salvadorean Embassy in
Washington, while denying any government involvement in death-squad activities, did con-
firm that "Joya Martinez was a member of the intelligence unit of the First Brigade". 52
In July 1990, an aide to Rep. Joseph Moakley (D-Mass.), chairman of the Speaker's
Task Force on El Salvador, declared: "The fact that Joya Martinez has been in the U.S.
since last August, given all kinds of interviews, been arrested, and no one from the govern-
ment has bothered to question him, seems pretty strange, unless people don't want to find
the answers." 53
On the twelfth of that month Joya Martinez had been arrested for having illegally entered
the United States after being deported six years earlier. After a lengthy legal battle, he was
ordered deported back to El Salvador in October 1992. His supporters in the United States
expressed their concern about his safety in El Salvadot, to which a State Department official
responded, presumably with a straight face, that Joya Martinez "has admitted to killings and
torture and it would be callous to the victims to prevent him from standing trial." 54
A few weeks after Joya Martinez went public in the United States, one of the most
shocking atrocities in this war of shocking atrocities occurred. Six Jesuit priests at the
University of Central America in San Salvador were shot to death in cold blood at their
campus residence, along with their housekeeper and her young daughter. A witness, whom
the killers failed to observe, Lucia Barrera de Cerna, said she saw five armed men in uni-
form carry out the murders. The Salvadorean military — whom the Roman Catholic order
had often criticized for human rights violations — were the immediate and logical suspects.
Because of an extraordinary outcry against the crime, in the United States and international-
ly, including the creation of the special congressional task force referred to above, two
months later nine officers and enlisted men were arrested — a platoon from the Atlacatl
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Battalion, seven of whom, it turned out, had only two days before the murders participated
in combat training exercises supervised by the U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets) in El
Salvador.
Almost two years passed before any of those arrested were convicted of the crime — two
relatively low-level officers; their higher-ups who gave the order were not touched. Yet, this
was an achievement in a country where thousands of people had been killed by military death
squads, and no officer had ever before been tried, let alone convicted, for murder or other
human-rights abuse. The Salvadorean military tolerated the trial of the officers because
Congress had made prosecution of the killers a condition for continuing military aid.
During the two-year period, as well as after the convictions, officials of the Bush
administration appeared to be trying to thwart the investigation and aid in a cover-up, by
such tactics as the following:
a) grossly intimidating Cetna and labeling her a liar;
b) refusing on grounds of national security to provide a Salvadorean court with classi-
fied documents that dealt with the case; withholding, on the same grounds, substantive
material from journalists making Freedom of Information Act requests;
c) refusing for a long time to allow questioning, by the investigating judge, of US Army
Major Eric Buckland, stationed in El Salvador, who had learned of the Salvadorean mili-
tary's culpability shortly after the murders from Salvadorean Col. Carlos Aviks; then
imposing a series of conditions on Buckland's questioning that served to conceal much of
his story;
d) putting Buckland through such horrendous interrogation that he underwent an
apparent nervous breakdown;
e) immediately informing the Salvadorean high command about what Aviles had
revealed to Buckland (which caused Aviles much grief).
Father Charles Beirne, vice rector of the Jesuit university, declared in 1991 that "the
Americans were helping to protect the [Salvadorean army] high command all along. They
were afraid the whole house of cards would fall if the investigation went any further." A
year later, United Nations investigators were still complaining that the United States was
slow in turning over vital information about the case. 55
The cruelty level of the guerrillas' military and political campaign generally stood in
sharp contrast to that of the government. Newsweek reported in 1983 that when the rebels
"capture a town, they treat the civilians well, paying for food and holding destruction to a
minimum. And they have begun to free most of the government troops they capture, which
helps to persuade other soldiers to surrender rather than fight to the death." 56 Eventually,
however, the guerrillas began to treat civilians mote harshly, in particular those suspected
of informing or of other collaboration with the government, or those refusing to collaborate
with rebel forces; some peasants reportedly were forced to leave their villages and farms as
punishment; several village mayors were killed; young men were forcibly recruited to join
the rebels.
However, given the numerous instances of disinformation disseminated by the
Salvadorean government about the rebels, reports of guerrilla ruthlessness must be
approached with caution. The following case is instructive (see the notes for reference to
other examples):
In February 1988, the New York Times, reported that:
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El Salvador 1980-1994
Villagers say guerrillas publicly executed two peasants ... because they had applied for and
received new voter registration cards. According to the villagers, the guerrillas placed the voting
cards of the two men in their mouths after executing them as a warning to others not to take
part in the elections, 57
The story was included in a State Department booklet to highlight the guerrillas' "cam-
paign of intimidation and terrorism". The booklet was mailed to Congress, newspaper edi-
tors, and other opinion makers. But the story, it turned out, was the invention of a
Salvadorean Army propaganda specialist who had placed it in the San Salvador newspaper
El Mundo. From there it was picked up by the New York Times reporter who gave the
impression that he had interviewed villagers with firsthand knowledge of the incident,
instead of attributing the story to the military as had El Mundo, The Times later recanted
the story. 58
Outside Agitators
"Sometimes I feel like Sisyphus," said a senior Reagan administration official involved
in developing US Latin America policy in March 1982. "Every time we head up the hill to
explain or justify our policy, the stone comes crashing down on top of us." 53
Two weeks earlier, Secretary of State Alexander Haig had asserted that the United
States had "overwhelming and irrefutable" evidence that the insurgents were controlled
from outside by non-Salvadoreans. Haig, however, declined to provide any details of the
evidence, saying it would jeopardize intelligence sources. Challenged to prove his charges
two days later, the good general insisted that the United States had "unchallengeable" evi-
dence of Nicaraguan and Cuban involvement in the command and control of the operation
in El Salvador and, oddly enough, only the day before a Nicaraguan military man had been
captured there. As it turned out, according to the Mexican Embassy in San Salvador, the
man was a student on his way back to school in Mexico from Nicaragua, traveling overland
because he couldn't afford to fly. 60
The following week, a Nicaraguan was captured fighting with the guerrillas. He told
US Embassy and Salvadorean Army officials that he had been trained in Cuba and Ethiopia,
then sent to El Salvador by the Nicaraguan government. The State Department was under-
standably excited. It presented the young man at a press conference in Washington, at
which time he declared that he had never been to Cuba or Ethiopia, had joined the guerril-
las on his own, and had made his previous statements under torture by his Salvadorean cap-
tors. He added that he had never seen another Nicaraguan or Cuban in El Salvador and
denied that Nicaragua had provided aid to the guerrillas. 61
"Then there were two Nicaraguan air force defectors," reported Time magazine during
the same period, "who were scheduled to bear witness to their country's involvement in El
Salvador but by week's end were judged 'not ready' to face the press." Time entitled its
story: "A Lot of Show, but No Tell: The U.S. bungles its evidence of foreign subversion in
El Salvador. "62
In January 1981, US diplomats disclosed that five boats had landed in El Salvadot con-
taining 100 "well-armed, well-trained guerrillas", allegedly from Nicaragua. They knew the
boats had come from Nicaragua because "they were made from wood of trees not native to
El Salvador." 63 No sign, dead or alive, of any of the hundred invaders was ever found,
however.
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KILLING HOPE
One hundred seemed to be the number of choice for the Reagan administration. That
was the count of Cuban combat troops, said a senior State Department policy maker, who
were sent to El Salvador in the fall of 1981 by way of Nicaragua. "They were brought in
clandestinely and given operational responsibilities in El Salvador," he asserted. 64 The later
whereabouts and actions of the Cubans likewise remained a mystery.
The world was also informed that Soviet and Chinese weapons had been seized from
rebels and this was cited as further proof of outside Communist aid. 65 The weapons capture
may have been real — although the CIA has long had warehouses full of Communist
weapons of all kinds, suitable for all occasions — but then what were we to make of the US,
Israeli, Belgian and German weapons which, by Washington's admission a month later,
were also to be found amongst the rebels? 66 The world arms traffic is indeed wide open and
fluid. (In neighboring Honduras, the US-supported contras were using Soviet-made missiles
to shoot down Soviet-made helicopters of Nicaragua.) 67 Moreover, the Salvadorean rebels
captured weapons from government forces and they claimed that they also purchased arms
from corrupt Salvadorean Army officers, a practice common to other Latin American guer-
rilla wars. A source cited by the New York Times corroborated the rebels' claim. 68
The centerpiece of the Reagan administration's campaign to prove the international-
conspiracy nature of the revolution in El Salvador was its White Paper issued a month after
taking office and based largely on purported "captured guerrilla documents", some of
which were included in the report. Amongst the various analyses of the White Paper which
cast grave doubts upon its claims was the one in the Wall Street Journal by Jonathan
Kwitny. This included an interview with a State Department official, Jon D. Glassman, who
was given the major credit for the White Paper. Admitted Mr Glassman: parts of the paper
were possibly "misleading" and "over-embellished" ... it contained "mistakes" and "guess-
ing". Said the Wall Street Journal: "A close examination ... indicates that, if anything, Mt.
Glassman may be understating the case in his concession that the White Paper contains mis-
takes and guessing."
Amongst the many specific shortcomings of the paper pointed out in the article was
that:
Statistics of armament shipments into El Salvador, supposedly drawn directly from the docu-
ments, were extrapolated, Mr. Glassman concedes. And in questionable ways, it seems. Much
information in the White Paper can't be found in the documents at all. 69
It was not merely the accuracy of the White Paper that was questioned, but the authen-
ticity of the documents themselves. Apropos of this, former US Ambassador to El Salvador,
Robert White (sacked by Reagan because of excessive commitment to human rights and
reforms), commented: "The only thing that even makes me think that these documents were
genuine was that they proved so little." 70
When pressed to state what proof his government had of Nicaraguan intervention,
President Duarte declined to answer on the grounds that the world would not believe him
anyway. 71 But President Reagan had some evidence to offer. He saw the hand of foreign
masters pulling strings in the fact that demonstrators in Canada carried "the same signs" as
demonstrators in the United States: "U. S. Out of El Salvador." 72
But all of this was essentially besides the point. Revolutions are not exported like so
many cartons of soap. We have seen what the circumstances were in El Salvador for
decades which finally provoked people to take up the gun. Ambassador White, no champi-
on of the rebels' cause, observed that "The revolution situation came about in El Salvador
because you had what was one of the most selfish oligarchies the world has ever seen, corn-
364
El Salvador 1980-1994
bined with a corrupt security force ... Whether Cuba existed or not, you would still have a
revolutionary situation in El Salvador" 73
Education-minister-turned-guerrilla, Salvador Samayoa, speaking in 1981, asserted that
US charges that the Soviet bloc was directing the guerrilla movement "reveals Washington's
deep ignorance of our movement". He pointed out that three of the five guerrilla groups
that made up the Farabundo Matti National Liberation Front (FMLN) were "strongly anti-
Soviet". Samayoa added: "To say we are run by Cuba because we have a relationship with
Cuba is like saying we're a Christian movement because we have received, enormous help
from the church, ... Instead of seeing us as Communist subversives, the U.S. should see us as
a people struggling to survive." 74
Despite American patrol boats in the Gulf of Fonseca (which separates El Salvador
from Nicaragua), AWAC surveillance planes in the skies over the Caribbean, and an abun-
dance of aerial photographs, despite a large US radar installation in Hondutas manned by
50 American military technicians, the finest electronic monitoring equipment modern tech-
nology had to offer, and ail the informers that CIA money could buy 5 ... despite it all, the
Reagan administration singularly failed to support its case that the fires of the Salvadorean
revolution were stoked by Nicaraguan and Cuban coals; nor by the Soviet Union, Vietnam,
the PLO, Ethiopia, or any of the other countries indicted at one time or another as impor-
tant suppliers of military aid.
In any case, whatever military support the Salvadorean insurgents actually received
from abroad — necessarily limited to what could be carried by the occasional clandestine
small truck or boat — plainly did not belong in the same league, nor on the same planet, as
the huge transport-planefuls and shipfuls of American aid, in all its forms, to the
Salvadorean government. The United States had waged ruthless war against the
Salvadorean revolution, and threatened worse — in April 1991, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, General Colin Powell, announced that "if necessary, [the civil war in Ei Salvador]
can be resolved the way it was in the Persian Gulf." 76
In early 1992, the war came to an official end when a United Nations commission,
after a year-and-a-half effort, finally got the warring sides to agree to a cease fire and a
peace agreement. A major offensive launched by the guerrillas in late 1989 — in which they
"brought the war home" to wealthy neighborhoods and Americans in the capital — had
made clear to Washington and its Salvadorean allies, once again, finally, that the war was
unwinnable. In February 1990, Gen. Maxwell Thurman, the head of the US Southern
Command, told Congress that the El Salvador government was not able to defeat the rebels
and that the only way to end the fighting was through negotiation. 77 Moreover, the ostensi-
ble end of the cold war had undermined the United States' professed rationale for — and
may have relaxed its obsession with — defeating "communism" in El Salvador. At the same
time, Congress was balking more and more about continuing military aid to the
Salvadorean government, an attitude that had been growing ever since the November 1989
murder of the Jesuit priests.
One of the many provisions of the complex peace agreement was the establishment of a
UN Commission of the Truth "to investigate the worst acts of violence since 1980". In
March of 1993 the Commission presented its report. Among its findings and conclusions
were the following:
The military forces, supported by the government and the civilian establishment, were
plainly the main perpetrators of massacres, executions, torture and kidnappings during the
civil war. These acts could not be blamed on the excesses of war but on premeditated and
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KILLING HOPE
ideologically inspired decisions to kill.
The commission called for the dismissal of more than 40 high-ranking military person-
nel — including Defense Minister Gen. Rene Emflio Ponce, a long-time favorite of US offi-
cials — whom it found had given the orders that led to the murders of the priests, and stipu-
lated that none should ever be allowed to return to military or security duty and should he
banned from other public and political life for 10 years.
Dismissal and a 10-year ban was also specified for government officials and bureau-
crats who abused human rights or took part in a cover-up of the abuses, including the
President of the Supreme Court. (Right-wing parties in the Salvadorean National Assembly
quickly pushed through an amnesty law barring prosecution for any crimes committed dur-
ing the war.)
Several leaders of the left were singled out for the assassinations of 1 1 mayors during
the war.
A special investigation of death squads was called for. These squads, said the report,
were "often operated by the military and supported by powerful businessmen, landowners
and some leading politicians." (The peace accords did not put an end to this: dozens of
leaders and members of the FMLN were assassinated during 1992 and 1993, as well as a
few from the right.)
Cited as the most notorious of the death squad leaders by the report was Roberto
dAubuisson, the principal founder of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) party,
the party of the country's current president, Alfredo Cristiani. DAubuisson, the report con-
firmed, hired the sharpshooter who killed Archbishop Romero.
Other sins laid at the doorstep of the government were the rapes and killings of three
American nuns and a female religious worker in 1980, the murder of two American labor
advisers in 1981, and the assassination, in 1982, of four Dutch journalists, whose reports
were evidently considered favorable to the guerrillas.
The Commission did not focus on any American role in the abuses and cover-up, "The
role of the United States in El Salvador is a role more effectively studied by the U.S.
Congress," said Commission member Thomas Buergenthal, an American jurist, at a news
conference. However, the Commission did chastise the United States for failing to rein in
Salvadorean exiles in Miami who "helped administer death squad activities between 1980
and 1983, with apparently little attention from the U.S. government. Such use of American
territory for acts of terrorism abroad should be investigated and never allowed to be repeat-
ed." 78 (Cuban exiles, of course, have been using Miami as a base for terrorism abroad, as
well as in the US, for 30 years.)
Members of Congress, outraged by the findings of the Commission of the Truth, called
for the declassification of State Department, Defense Department, and CIA files on El
Salvador to help determine whether the Reagan and Bush administrations had concealed
evidence from Congress about widespread human rights abuses by their Salvadorean allies.
"It [the Commission's report] simply verifies what a number of us knew all through the
'80s," said Rep. David Obey, "that our own government was lying like hell to us." The
report proves that the Reagan administration was willing to "he ... and ... certify to any-
thing ,„ to get the money it wanted." 79
Various of the more than 12,000 once-secret documents released by the Clinton admin-
istration unequivocally confirmed Obey's charge. Other papers revealed that „.
The current Vice President, Francisco Merino, had organized death squads.
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El Salvador 1980-1994
The CIA referred to Roberto d'Aubuisson as "egocentric, reckless and perhaps mental-
ly unstable"; he trafficked in drugs and smuggled arms; his paramilitary unit was responsi-
ble for thousands of murders; and in 1983 he and his advisers were invited by American
Ambassador Deane Hinton to have lunch with the visiting US representative to the United
Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick. Six years later, shortly before the CIA reported that
dAubuisson's inner circle had plotted to assassinate President Cristiani, Ambassador
William G. Walker invited him to the embassy's Fourth of July party. 80
American military advisers trained a militia of some 50 wealthy Salvadoreans, ostensibly
for them to be able to defend their own lavish homes against a rebel attack, but the group was
actually linked to dAubuisson and their militia was a "cover for the recruitment, training and
possible dispatch of paramilitary civilian death squads". Ambassador Walker halted the train-
ing as soon as he learned of it, despite protests from the chief of the US military advisory mis-
sion. (Another memo, written by a Defense Department official, argued that the wealthy
Salvadoreans might fund death squads, but would not get blood on their own hands.) 81
On 20 March 1994, the ruling party Arena and its main ally scored a victory in elec-
tions held to choose a new president, National Assembly, and hundreds of municipal gov-
ernments. With the exception of a few reforms touching upon civil liberties, whose signifi-
cance remains to be seen, the outcome left the society at essentially the same place it was in
1980 when the war had just begun and Jose Napoleon Duarte had said: "For fifty years the
same people had all the power, all the money, ail the jobs, all the education ..." One could
now say: "For more than sixty years ..."
Why had more than half the people of El Salvador, most of them very poor, voted for
parties intimately connected with not only the wealthy, but with death squads? The new
president, Armando Calderon Sol, had long and close ties to death-squad godfather
Roberto dAubuisson, a large portrait of whom hung in his office. The declassified docu-
ments referred to above raised questions about Calderon Sol himself — connections to a kid-
napping and to a group of young Arena militants who bombed the Ministry of Agriculture
and wreaked other havoc in the early 1980s in an attempt to destabilize the government
whose new agrarian reform was supposed to take land from the wealthy.
Arena's sophisticated multimillion-dollar campaign relied heavily on nurturing two
kinds of fears: the traditional fear of "communism", inculcated by decades of authoritarian
rule; and the supposed economic incompetence of the left, as typified by the Sandinista rule
in Nicaragua. Further, ignoring their own violent history, Arena portrayed the left as terror-
ists who were exclusively responsible for the war's death and destruction.
How honest and fair had the actual voting been? Was the right willing to end a half-
century of political exclusion of the left? Besides having a great deal more money at its dis-
posal than its opponents, the Arena party in power had controlled the press in El Salvador
for many years — the one daily paper, Diario Latino, which had dared to show a brief inde-
pendence, was destroyed by bombs. 82 Moreover, the makeup of the Supreme Electoral
Tribunal (TSE), which supervised the election, was based on the election of 1991. which the
FMLN had boycotted; it was thus dominated by Arena, with no one from the FMLN.
Many points of contention were raised about the voting, such as the following:
A large number of people who registered to vote were unable to do so because they
didn't receive their voting card. According to United Nations monitors, as of 1 February
these cases came to more than half a million, equal to 20 percent of the electorate. After the
election, the FMLN estimated the number of such non-voters at 340,000,
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KILLING HOPE
74,000 other applicants were rejected because they couldn't produce a birth certificate;
often this was because the local office of records had been destroyed in the war.
Another large block of people held valid voting cards but couldn't vote because they
had no transportation to a distant polling station. This was exacerbated, reportedly, by a
slowdown in bus service by bus companies owned by Arena supporters and the Arena-con-
trolled bus drivers' union.
Many made it to the polling stations with their voting cards only to be kept from vot-
ing because their names did not appear on the voter-registration lists, or were spelled incor-
rectly (at least 25,000 such cases according to the UN; several times that, said the FMLN).
Other potential voters left the stations without casting their ballots because very long
lines and an extremely cumbersome and snail-paced processing system left them still waiting
when the polls closed.
These problems of course affected the poor, the rural, the less educated, and the first-
time voters the most, the base of the FMLNs support.
The TSE refused international advice, declined to spend money to transport voters to the
polls, and made voting unnecessarily complicated, UN observers said. "There was frightening
mismanagement of the election beyond our worst expectations," said a senior UN official.
"There was widespread lack of trust by the electorate before the voting, [and] now it's much
worse. The [TSE] is completely discredited and has therefore tarnished the election."
The FMLN claimed the irregularities cheated the party out of several municipal and
legislative seats, a contention lent credence by the UN observers who stated that thousands
of people were denied voting cards in 30 towns where the FMLN was strong. The party
challenged the results in 37 cities and towns, but the TSE rejected all the claims — a decision
that Rafael Lopez Pintor, who headed the UN electoral division, called "shocking".
A team of observers representing the US government also said it was "troubled" that
"many of the procedures cited as administrative defects" in previous elections continued to
be practiced.
In the days immediately following the vote, election authorities delayed the release of
official results. Then on the third day, they abruptly cut off access to party monitors to
computerized tabulations. The FMLN said that initial tabulations showed that many ballot
boxes contained more votes than the legal maximum of 400, some of them two to three
times as many. They also claimed that in San Mguel, one of the country's largest cities, a
group of Arena militants had absconded with 15 ballot boxes.
As it turned out, in the announced result for the presidency, Arena got 641,000 votes,
49 percent of the total, while the Democratic Coalition, which included the FMLN, was
credited with 326,000 votes, or 25 percent. Failure of any party to win a majority necessi-
tated a tun-off election a month later, at which time Arena won 68 percent of the vote to
the Coalition's 32 percent. Because the winner of the run-off was a completely foregone
conclusion, there were undoubtedly many poor people who didn't vote because they were
unwilling to go through the great inconvenience and uncertainty a second time.
There was also the matter of intimidation. According to observers from the Committee
in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES):
Meanwhile, army helicopters buzzed cities where the opposition was strong. Soldiers set up
checkpoints and machine-gun nests in towns traumatized by army massacres during the war. The
government did its best to instill fear in the electorate, and must have scared many voters into
staying home.
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El Salvador 1980-1994
Before the election, some workers were warned that if the FMLN won, heads would
roll, or they would be fired. Inasmuch as a polling official tote off the comer of each ballot,
containing the same numbet as on the ballot, a voter could see that someone could save his
number and check how he voted later.
The Los Angeles Times reported the story of the master of ceremonies at a rally staged
by Arena, attended by a number of peasants, farmers and market vendors.
"All those who support Arena, raise your hats!" the emcee implored the crowd.
A few people lifted their hats.
"All those who support Arena, raise your hats ! " he tried again. "And those who don't raise
their hats are terengos!" he added, invoking a slang word for "terrorists" used by the army
throughout this country's brutal civil war.
A lot of people took their hats off. 18
For the benefit of which Salvadoreans did Arena remain in power? For which of them
had 75,000 civilians been killed? For whom was the US Treasury reduced by $6 billion?
Two reports from the New York Times ...
Over canapes served by hovering waiters at a party, a guest said she was convinced that God had
created two distinct classes of people: the rich and people to serve them. She described herself as
charitable for allowing the poor to work as her servants. "It's the best you can do," she said.
The woman's outspokenness was unusual, but her attitude is shared by a large segment of
the Salvadoran upper class.
The separation between classes is so rigid that even small expressions of kindness across the
divide are viewed with suspicion. When an American, visiting an ice cream store, remarked that
he was shopping for a birthday party for his maid's child, other store patrons immediately
stopped talking and began staring at the American. Finally, an astonished woman in the check-
out line spoke out. "You must be kidding," she said.
One of their class, who had had enough and was leaving, commented to the Times: "I
can't accept the fact that if you're born a peasant here, you die a peasant and your children
are going to be peasants. There's no vision that kids of farmhands should be going to
Harvard and running this country one day. There's no vision of a modern society." 84
After taking part in Washington's decade-long effort to train and reform the Salvadorean Army,
many American military advisers have left here angry over the Salvadoreans' resistance to change
... [they] say they feel manipulated and betrayed by the Salvadorean officers. ... the advisers
described Salvadorean officers as being mainly interested in amassing wealth and power, as will-
ing to deprive troops of equipment to further the officers' own ends and as allowing the regular
killing or mistreatment of prisoners. ... None went so far as to say the effort to help the
Salvadorean armed forces in their war against a leftist insurgency had been futile. They thought
human rights abuses would have been worse or that the guerrillas might have won the war with-
out their presence. 85
The Times apparently did not ask the advisers whether they believed that the United
States government had in some way been forced to take sides in the civil war. And if not,
what had their government's ultimate motive been? And if so, why had they not taken the
side of the insurgents? And how bad would the human rights abuses have been if the armed
forces had not been provided by Washington with a never-ending supply of every weapon
and implement and training known to man to bring destruction, pain and suffering to the
greatest number of people?
369
55. Haiti 1986-1994
Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?
When I give food to the poor,
they call me a saint.
When 1 ask why the poor have no food,
they call me a communist.
Dom Helder Camara
What does the government of the United States do when faced with a choice between
supporting: (a) a group of totalitarian military thugs guilty of murdering thousands, system-
atic torture, widespread rape, and leaving severely mutilated corpses in the streets ... or (b) a
non-violent priest, legally elected to the presidency by a landslide, whom the thugs have
overthrown in a coup? ...
But what if the priest is a "leftist" ?
During the Duvalier family dictatorship — Francois "Papa Doc", 1957-71, followed by
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc", 1971-86, both anointed President for Life by papa — the United
States trained and armed Haiti's counter-insurgency forces, although most American military
aid to the country was covertly channeled through Israel, thus sparing Washington embarrass-
ing questions about supporting brutal governments. After Jean-Claude was forced into exile in
February 1986, fleeing to France aboard a US Air Force jet, Washington resumed open assis-
tance. And while Haiti's wretched rabble were celebrating the end of three decades of
Duvalierism, the United States was occupied in preserving it under new names.
Within three weeks of Jean-Claude's departure, the US announced that it was provid-
ing Haiti with $26.6 million in economic and military aid, and in April it was reported that
"Another $4 million is being sought to provide the Haitian Army with trucks, training and
communications gear to allow it to move around the country and maintain order." 1
Maintaining order in Haiti translates to domestic repression and control; and in the 21
months between Duvalier's abdication and the scheduled elections of November 1987, the
successor Haitian governments were responsible for more civilian deaths than Baby Doc
had managed in 15 years. 2
The CIA was meanwhile arranging for the release from prison, and safe exile abroad,
of two of its Duvalier-era contacts, both notorious police chiefs, thus saving them from pos-
sible death sentences for murder and torture, and acting contrary to the public's passionate
wish for retribution against its former tormenters. 3 In September, Haiti's main trade union
leader, Yves Richard, declared that Washington was working to undermine the left before
the coming elections. US aid organizations, he said, were encouraging people in the country-
side to identify and reject the entire left as "communist", 4 though the country clearly had a
fundamental need for reformers and sweeping changes. Haiti was, and is, the Western
Hemisphere's best known economic, medical, political, judicial, educational, and ecological
basket case.
At this time Jean-Bemand Aristide was a charismatic priest with a broad following in
the poorest slums of Haiti, the only church figure to speak out against repression during the
370
Haiti 1986-1994
Duvalier years. He now denounced the military -dominated elections and called upon
Haitians to reject the entire process. His activities figured prominently enough in the elec-
toral campaign to evoke a strong antipathy from US officials. Ronald Reagan, Aristide later
wrote, considered him to be a communist. 5 And Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-
American Affairs, Elliott Abrams, saw fit to attack Aristide while praising the Haitian gov-
ernment in a letter to Time magazine during the election campaign, 6
The Catholic priest first came to prominence in Haiti as a proponent of liberation the-
ology, which seeks to blend the teachings of Christ with inspiring the poor to organize and
resist their oppression. When asked why the CIA might have sought to oppose Aristide, a
senior official with the Senate Intelligence Committee stated that "Liberation theology pro-
ponents are not too popular at the agency. Maybe second only to the Vatican for not liking
liberation theology are the people at Langley [CIA headquarters]."
Aristide urged a boycott of the elections, saying "The army is our first enemy." The
CIA, on the other hand, funded some of the candidates. The Agency later insisted that the
purpose of the funding program had not been to oppose Aristide but to provide a "free and
open election", by which was meant helping some candidates who didn't have enough
money and diminishing Aristide's attempt to have a low turnout, which would have
"reduced the election's validity". It is not known which candidates the CIA funded or why
the Agency or the State Department, which reportedly chose the candidates to support,
were concerned about such goals in Haiti, when underfunded candidates and low turnouts
exist permanently in the United States.
The CIA was "involved in a range of support for a range of candidates", said an intelli-
gence official directly active in the operation. Countering Aristide's impressive political
strength appears to be the only logical explanation for the CIA's involvement, which was
authorized by President Reagan and the National Security Council.
When the Senate Intelligence Committee demanded to know exactly what the CIA was
doing in Haiti and which candidates it was supporting, the Agency balked. Eventually, the
committee ordered the covert electoral action to cease. A high-ranking source working for
the committee said the reason the program was killed was that "there are some of us who
believe in the neutrality of elections." Nevertheless, it cannot be stated with any certainty
that the program was actually halted.
The elections scheduled for 29 November 1987 were postponed because of violence. In
the rescheduled elections held in January, the candidate favored by the military government
was declared the winner in balloting widely perceived as rigged, and in the course of which
the CIA was involved in an aborted attempt of unknown nature to influence the elections. 8
There followed more than two years of regular political violence, coup attempts, and
repression, casting off the vestiges of the Duvalier dictatorship and establishing a new one,
until, in March 1990, the current military dictator, General Prosper Avril, was forced by
widespread protests to abdicate and was replaced by a civilian government of sorts, but
with the military still calling important shots.
The United States is not happy with "chaos" in its client states. It's bad for control, it's
bad for business, it's unpredictable who will come out on top, perhaps another Fidel
Castro. It was the danger of "massive internal uprisings" that induced the United States to
inform Jean-Claude Duvalier that it was time for him to venture a life of struggle on the
French Riviera, 9 and a similar chaotic situation that led the US Ambassador to suggest to
Avril that it was an apt moment to retire; transportation into exile for the good general was
once again courtesy of Uncle Sam. 10
Thus it was that the American Embassy in Port-au-Prince pressured the Haitian officer
371
KILLING HOPE
corps to allow a new election. Neither the embassy nor Aristide himself at this time had rea-
son to expect that he would be a candidate in the election scheduled for December,
although he had already been expelled from his religious order, with the blessings of the
Vatican, because, amongst other things, of "incitement to hatred and violence, and a glori-
fying of class struggle". Aristide's many followers and friends had often tried in vain to per-
suade him to run for office. Now they finally succeeded, and in October he became the can-
didate of a loose coalition of reformist parties and organizations. 11
On the eve of the election, former US Ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, visited
Aristide and asked him to sign a letter accepting Marc Bazin, the US-backed and funded
candidate, as president should Bazin win. Young reportedly said there was fear that if
Aristide lost, his followers would take to the streets and reject the results. 12 Young was said
to be acting on behalf of his mentor, former president Jimmy Carter, but presumably the
White House also had their finger in the pie, evidencing their concern about Aristide's
charisma and potential as a leader outside their control.
Despite a campaign maned by terror and intimidation, nearly a thousand UN and
Organization of American States (OAS) observers and an unusually scrupulous Haitian gen-
etal insured that a relatively honest balloting took place, in which Aristide was victorious
with 67.5 percent of the vote. "People chose him over 10 comparatively bourgeois candi-
dates," wrote an American Haiti scholar who was an international election observer,
"because of his outspoken and uncompromising opposition to the old ways. 13 Aristide's
support actually included a progressive bourgeois element as well as his larger popular base.
The president-priest took office in February 1991 after a coup attempt against him in
January failed. By June, one could read in the Washington Post:
Pixx;laiming a "political revolution," Aristide, 37, has injected a spirit of hope and honesty into
the affairs of government, a radical departure after decades of official venality under the Duvalier
family dictatorship and a series of military strongmen. Declaring that his $10,000 monthly salary
is "not just a scandal, but a crime™, Aristide announced on television that he would donate his
paychecks to charity. 14
The Catholic priest had long been an incisive critic of US foreign policy because of
Washington's support of the Duvalier dynasty and the Haitian military, and he was suspi-
cious of foreign "aid", commenting that it all wound up in the pockets of the wealthy.
"Since 1980, this amounted to two hundred million dollars a year, and these were the same
ten years during which the per capita wealth of the country was reduced by 40 percent!" 15
Aristide did not spell out a specific economic program, but was clear about the necessi-
ty of a redistribution of wealth, and spoke more of economic justice than of the virtues of
the market system. He later wrote:
I have often been criticized for lacking a program, or at least for imprecision in that
regard. Was it for lack of time? — a poor excuse, ... In fact, the people had their own pro-
gram ... dignity, transparent simplicity, participation. These three ideas could be equally
well applied in the political and economic sphere and in the moral realm ... Tne bour-
geoisie should have been able to understand that its own interest demanded some conces-
sions. We had recreated 1789. Did they want, by their passive resistance, to push the hun-
gry to demand more radical measures? 16
Seriously hampered by the absence in Haiti of a strong traditional left, and confronted
by a gridlocked parliament that constitutionally had more power than the president,
Aristide didn't succeed in getting any legislation enacted. He did, however, initiate pro-
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grams in literacy, public health and agrarian reform, and pressed for an increase in the daily
wage, which was often less than three dollars, a freeze on prices of bask necessities, and a
public-works program to create jobs. He also increased the feeling of security amongst the
population by arresting a number of key paramilitary thugs, and setting in motion a process
to eliminate the institution of rural section chiefs (sheriffs), the military's primary instru-
ment of unfettered authority over the lives of the peasants.
In office, though not the uncompromising revolutionary firebrand many anticipated,
Atistide frequently angered his opponents in the wealthy business class, the parliament, and
the army by criticizing their corruptness. The military was particularly vexed by his policies
against smuggling and drug trafficking, as well as his attempt to de-politicize them. As for the
wealthy civilians — or as they ate fondly known, the morally repugnant elite — they did not
much care for Aristide's agenda whereby they would pay taxes and share their bounty by cre-
ating jobs and reinvesting profits locally rather than abroad. They were, as they remain, posi-
tively apoplectic about this little saintly-talking priest and his love for the (ugh) poor.
However, Aristide's administration was not, in practice, actually anti-business, and he
made it a point to warm up to American officials, foreign capitalists and some elements of
the Haitian military. He also discharged some 2,000 government workers, which pleased
the International Monetary Fund and other foreign donors, but Atistide himself regarded
these positions as largely useless and corrupt bureaucratic padding. 17
Jean-Bertrand Aristide served less than eight months as Haiti's president before being
deposed, on 29 September 1991, by a military coup in which many hundreds of his sup-
porters were massacred, and thousands more fled to the Dominican Republic or by sea. The.
slightly-built Haitian president who, in the previous few years, had survived several serious
assassination attempts and the burning down of his church white he was inside preaching,
was saved now largely through the intervention of the French ambassador.
Only the Vatican recognized the new military government, although the coup of course
was backed by the rich elite. They "helped us a lot," said the country's new police chief and
key coup plotter, Joseph Michel Francois, "because we saved them." 18
No evidence of direct US complicity in the coup has arisen, though, as we shall see, the
CIA was financing and training all the important elements of the new military regime, and a
Haitian official who supported the coup has reported that US intelligence officers were pre-
sent at military headquarters as the coup was taking place; this was "normal", he added,
for the CIA and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) were always there. 13
We have seen in Nicaragua how the National Endowment for Democracy — which was
set up to do overtly, and thus more "respectably", some of what the CIA used to do covert-
ly — interfered in the 1990 election process. At the same time, the NED, in conjunction with
the Agency for International Development (AID), was busy in Haiti. It gave $189,000 to sev-
eral civic groups that included the Haitian Center for the Defense of Rights and Freedom,
headed by Jean-Jacques Honorat. Shortly after Aristide's ouster, Honorat became the prime
minister in the coup government. In a 1993 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, he declared, "The coup was justified by the human rights record of Aristide."
Asked what he himself had done as prime minister to halt the massive human rights violations
that followed the overthrow, Honorat responded: "I don't have my files here."
In the years prior to the coup, the NED also gave mote than $500,000 to the Haitian
Institute for Research and Development (IHRED). This organization played a very partisan
role in the 1990 elections when it was allied with US-favorite Marc Bazin, former World
Bank executive, and helped him create his coalition (just as NED was instrumental in
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KILLING HOPE
ing the coalition in Nicaragua which defeated the Sandinistas earlier in the year). IHRED
was. led by Leopold Berlanger who, in 1993, supported the junta's sham election aimed at
ratifying the prime ministership of Bazin, Honorat's successor and a political associate of
Beri anger.
Another recipient of NED largesse was Radio Soldi, run by the Catholic Church in a
manner calculated to not displease the dictatorship of the day. During the 1991 coup —
according to the Rev. Hugo Triest, a former station director — the station refused to air a
message from Aristide,
The NED has further reduced the US Treasury by grants to the union association
Federation des Ouvriers Syndiques, founded in 1984 with Duvalier's approval, so that
Haiti, which previously had crushed union-organizing efforts, would qualify for the US
Caribbean Basin Initiative economic package, 20
But despite its name and unceasing rhetoric, the National Endowment for Democracy
did not give a dollar to any of the grassroots organizations that eventually merged to form
Arisfide's coalition.
Within a week of Aristide's overthrow; the Bush administration began to distance itself
from the man, reported the New York Times, "by refusing to say that his return to power
was a necessary pre-condition for Washington to feel that democracy has been restored in
Haiti," The public rationale given for this attitude was that Aristide's human rights record
was questionable, since some business executives, legislators and other opponents of his had
accused him of using mobs to intimidate them and tacitly condoning their violence. 21 Some
of Haiti's destitute did carry out acts of violence and arson against the rich, but it's a stretch
to blame Aristide, whatever his attitude, given that these were enraged people seeking
revenge for a lifetime of extreme oppression against their perceived oppressors, revenge they
had long been waiting for.
A year later, the Boston Globe could editorialize that the Bush administration's "con-
tempt for Haitian democracy has been scandalous ... By refusing to acknowledge the car-
nage taking place in Haiti, the administration has all but bestowed its blessing on the
putschists.
Two months earlier, in testimony before Congress, the CIA's leading analyst of Latin
American affairs, Brian Latell, had described coup leader Lieut. Gen. Raoul Cedras as one
of "the most promising group of Haitian leaders to emerge since the Duvalier family dicta-
torship was overthrown in 1986". He also reported that he "saw no evidence of oppressive
rule" in Haiti. 22
Yet the State Department annual human-rights report for the same year stated:
Haitians suffered frequent human rights abuses throughout 1 992, including extra-judicial killings
by security forces, disappearances, beatings and other mistreatment of detainees and prisoners,
arbitrary arrests and detention and executive interference with the judicial process. 23
The New York Times ' one-year-post-coup status report was remarkably blunt:
Since shortly after the overthrow — when Secretary of State James Baker echoed President Bush's
famous "this aggression will not stand" statement about Irac| — little consideration has been given
to backing up American principles in Haiti with American muscle. ... Recently, an adviser of the
[coup government] repeated Father Aristide's longtime complaint when he said that "all it would
take is one phone call" firm Washington to send the army's leadership packing. ... supporters
and opponents of Father Aristide agree, nothing more threatening than a leaky and ineffective
374
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embargo, quickly imposed ... has ever been seriously contemplated, which reflects Washington's
deep-seated ambivalence about a leftward-tilting nationalist [who] often depicted the United
States as a citadel of evil and the root of many of his country's problems. ... Despite much blood
on the army's hands, United States diplomats consider it a vital counterweight to Father Aristide,
whose class-struggle rhetoric ... threatened or antagonized traditional power centers at home and
abroad, 25
During this period, numerous nocturnal arrivals of US Air Force planes in Port-au-
Prince were reported in Haitian clandestine newspapers. Whether this had any connection
to the leaking embargo may never be known. When asked, a US embassy official said the
flights were "routine", 26
The CIA's Clients
I. From the mid-1980s until at least the 1991 coup, key members of Haiti's military
and political leadership were on the Agency's payroll. These payments were defended by
Washington officials and a congressman on the House Intelligence Committee as being a
normal and necessary part of gathering intelligence in a foreign country. 27 This argument,
which has often been used to defend CIA bribery, ignores the simple reality (illustrated
repeatedly in this book) that payments bring more than information, they bring influence
and control; and when one looks at the anti-democratic and cruelty levels of the Haitian
military during its period of being bribees, one has to wonder what the CIA's influence was.
Moreover, one has to wonder what the defenders of the payments would have thought
upon learning during the cold war that congressmen and high officials in the White House
were on the KGB payroll. Even after the supposed end of the cold war, we must consider
the shocked reaction to the case of CIA officer Aldrich Ames. He was, after all, only accept-
ing money from the KGB for information. In any event, money paid by the CIA to these
men, as well as to the groups mentioned below, was obviously available to finance their
murderous purposes. When Qaddafi of Libya did this, it was called "supporting terrorism".
Did the information provided the CIA by the Haitian leaders include advance notice of
the coup? No evidence of this has emerged, but four decades of known CIA behavior would
make it eminently likely. And if so, did the Agency do anything to stop it? What did the
CIA do with its knowledge of the drug trafficking which the Haitian powers-that-be,
including Baby Doc, were long involved in? 28
II. In 1986 the CIA created a new organization, the National Intelligence Service (SIN).
The unit was staffed solely by officers of the Haitian army, widely perceived as an unprofes-
sional force with a marked tendency toward corruption. SIN was purportedly created to
fight the cocaine trade, though SIN officers themselves engaged in the trafficking, and the
trade was aided and abetted by some of the Haitian officials also on the Agency payroll.
SIN functioned as an instrument of political terror, persecuting and torturing Father
Aristide's supportets and other "subversives", and using its CIA training and devices to spy
on them; in short, much like the intelligence services created by the CIA elsewhere in the
world during the previous several decades, including Greece, South Korea, Iran, and
Uruguay; and created in Haiti presumably for the same reason: to give the Agency a proper-
ly trained and equipped, and loyal, instrument of control. At the same time that SIX was
receiving between half and one million dollars a year in equipment, training and financial
375
KILLING HOPE
support, Congress was withholding about $1.5 million in aid for the Haitian military
because of its abuses of human rights.
Aristide had tried, without success, to shut SIN down. The CIA told his people that the
United States would see to it, that the organization was reformed, but that its continued
operation was beyond question. Then came the coup. Afterwards, American officials say,
the CIA cut its ties to SIN, but in 1992 a US Drug Enforcement Administration document
described SIN in the present tense as "a covert counternarcotics intelligence unit which
often works in unison with the C.I.A." In September of the same year, work by the DEA in
Haiti led to the arrest of a SIN officer on cocaine charges by the Haitian authorities. 29
III. Amongst the worst violators of human rights in Haiti was the Front for the
Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), actually a front for the army. The paramili-
tary group spread deep fear amongst the Haitian people with its regular murders, public
beatings, arson raids on poor neighborhoods, and mutilation by machete. FRAPHs leader,
Emannuel Constant, went onto the CIA payroll in early 1992 and, according to the Agency,
this relation ended in mid- 1994. Whatever truth lies in that claim, the fact is that by
October the American Embassy in Haiti was openly acknowledging that Constant — now a
born-again democrat — was on its payroll
The FRAPH leader says that soon after Aristide's ouster an officer of the US Defense
Intelligence Agency, Col. Patrick Collins, pushed him to organize a front that could balance
the Aristide movement and do intelligence work against it. This resulted in Constant form-
ing what later evolved into FRAPH in August 1993. Members of FRAPH were working,
and perhaps still are, for two social service agencies funded by the Agency for International
Development, one of which maintains sensitive files on the movements of the Haitian poor.
Constant — who has told in detail of having attended, on invitation, the Clinton inau-
guration balls — was the organizer of the dockside mob that, on 1 1 October 1 993, chased
off a ship carrying US military personnel arriving to retrain the Haitian military under the
UN agreement (see below). This was while Constant was on the CIA payroll. But that inci-
dent may have been something out of the Agency's false-bottom world. Did Washington
really want to challenge the military government? Or only appear to do so? Constant actu-
ally informed the United States beforehand of what was going to happen, then went on the
radio to urge all "patriotic Haitians" to join the massive demonstrations at the dock. The
United States did nothing before or after but allow its ship to turn tail and run. 30
In the summer of 1993, United Nations-mediated talks on Governors Island in New
York between Aristide, living in exile in Washington, and the Haitian military government,
resulted in an accord whereby the leader of the junta, Gen. Cedras, would step down on 15
October and allow Aristide to return to Haiti as president on 30 October. But the dates
came and went without the military fulfilling their promise, meanwhile not pausing in their
assaults upon Aristide supporters, including the September murder of a prominent Aristide
confidant who was dragged out of church and shot in full view of UN officials, and the
assassination a month later of Aristide's justice minister, Guy Malary.
Pleased with its "foreign-policy-success" in securing the agreement in New York the
Clinton administration seemingly was willing to tolerate any and all outrages.
But an adviser to Cedras declared afterward that when the military had agreed to nego-
tiate, "the whole thing was a smokescreen. We wanted to get the sanctions lifted. ... But we
never had any intention of really agreeing to Governors Island, as I'm sure everyone can
376
Haiti 1986-1994
now figure out for themselves. We were playing for time. "
Aristide himself never liked the UN plan, which granted amnesty to those who mount-
ed the coup against him. He declared that the United States had pressured him to sign. 31
Speaking to congressmen in early October, CIA official Brian Latell — who had previ-
ously praised Cedras and his rule — now characterized Aristide as mentally unbalanced. Was
this perhaps amongst the information provided the CIA by their agents in the Haitian mili-
tary? (During the election campaign, Aristide's detractors in Haiti had in fact spread the
rumor that he was mentally ill.) Latell also testified that Aristide "paid little mind to democ-
ratic principles", and had urged supporters to murder their opponents with a technique called
"necking", in which gasoline-soaked tires are placed around victims' necks and set afire.
Neither Latell nor anyone else has provided any evidence of Aristide engaging in an explicit
provocation, although this is not to say that necklacing was not carried out as an act of
revenge by Haiti's masses, as it was in 1986 following the ouster of Duvalier.
At the same time, congressman were exposed to a document purporting to describe
Aristide's medical history, claiming that he had been treated in a mental hospital in Canada
in 1980, diagnosed as manic depressive and prescribed large quantities of drugs. This claim
was described in the media as emanating from the CIA, but the Agency denied this, saying it
had seen the document before and had judged it to be a partial or complete fake, but adding
that it still stood by its 1992 psychological profile of Aristide which concluded that the
deposed president was possibly unstable.
The claims were denied by Aristide and his spokesman and independent checks with
the hospital in Canada showed no record of his being a patient there. Nonetheless, congres-
sional opponents of Aristide now had a rationale for trying to limit the extent of US support
to him, and some of them argued that the United States should not embroil itself in Haiti on
behalf of such a leader. 13
"He [Latell] made it the most simplistic, one-dimensional message he could — murderer,
psychopath," said an administration official familiar with Latell's briefing. 34 (In 1960, the
Eisenhower administration had regarded another black foreign leader who didn't buy into
Pax Americana, Patrice Lumumba, as "unstable", "irrational, almost psychotic". 35 Nelson
Mandela was often described in a similar fashion by his opponents. Some of those who
make such charges may indeed believe that conspicuously rejecting the established order is a
sign of insanity.)
The junta, which was concerned that President Clinton might order military action
against Haiti, was pleased. A spokesman observed that "after the information about
Aristide got out from our friends in the CIA, and Congress started talking about how bad
he is, we figured the chances of an invasion were gone." 36
Though the Clinton administration publicly repudiated the claims about Aristide's
mental health in no uncertain terms, it nonetheless continued to negotiate with Haiti's mili-
tary leaders, a policy which stunned supporters of the Catholic priest. "Apparently," mar-
veled Robert White, a former US ambassador to El Salvador and an unpaid adviser to
Aristide, "nothing will shake the touching faith the Clinton administration has in the
Haitian military's bona fides."
Aristide supporters asserted that such faith reflected long and continuing relations
between American military officers and Haiti's top commanders, Cedras and Francois, the
police chief, both of whom had received military training in the United States. Time maga-
zine suggested that "the U.S. attitude toward some of Haiti's henchmen is not as hostile as
American rhetoric would indicate." 37
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KILLING HOPE
This attitude was commented upon by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights:
Faced with [Aristide's] talk of radical reform, an old and deep-rooted American instinct has
taken hold. Repeated in countless countries, both during and after the Cold War, it is this: When
in doubt, look to the military as the only institutional guarantee of stability and order. 58
It had indeed been to the military that the Reagan and Bush administrations had
looked to provide these qualities, praising the sincerity of the Haitian army's commitment
to democracy on several occasions. 9
The Clinton administration was as hypocritical on the Haiti question as were its prede-
cessors, exemplified by its choice for Secretary of Commerce — Ron Brown had been a well-
paid and highly-active lobbyist for Baby-Doc Duvalier. 40 Cedras's spit-in-the-face deceit on
the Governors Island accord appeared to bother Washington officials much less than the
fact that Aristide would not agree to form a government with the military. 41 By February
1994, it was an open secret that Washington would as soon be rid of the Haitian priest as it
would the Haitian strongmen. The Los Angeles Times reported: "Officially it [the US] sup-
ports the restoration of Aristide. In private, however, many officials say that Aristide ... is
so politically radical that the military and the island's affluent elite will never allow him to
return to power." 42
Ideologically, if not emotionally, the antipathy of the administration's senior officials
to Aristide's politics was hardly less than that of his country's ruling class. Moreover, the
predominant reason the strongmen were in disfavor in Washington's eyes had little to do
with their dreadful human-rights record per se, but rather that the repression in Haiti was
provoking people to flee by the tens of thousands, causing the United States an enormous
logistical headache and image problem in the Caribbean and Florida, as well as costing hun-
dreds of millions of dollars.
The gulf between the administration and Aristide widened yet further when Secretary
of State Warren Christopher announced that a group of Haitian parliamentarians, whom he
characterized as "centrists", had put forth a plan which would pardon the army officers
who engineered the coup, and which called for Aristide to name a prime minister, who in
turn would create a cabinet acceptable to Aristide's domestic foes. These steps, the plan
anticipated, would establish a coalition government and clear the way for Aristide's eventu-
al return to office.
Aristide, who had not been consulted at all, flatly rejected the proposal that would
have allowed some awful villains to escape punishment, made no mention of a date or
timetable for his restoration, contained no guarantee that he would ever be able to return to
power at all, and would require him to share power with a politically incompatible prime
minister and some cabinet members of similar ilk.
Christopher added that any strengthening of the embargo against Haiti would depend
on Aristide's acceptance of the plan. The United States, he said, was wary of tougher sanc-
tions because they would increase the suffering in Haiti. 43 At the same time, the State
Department's chief Haiti expert, Michael Kozak, blamed "extremists on both sides" for
scuttling the plan. This, said a Haitian supporter of Aristide, "created a moral equivalency
between Aristide and the military. That put Aristide on the same level as the killers." 44
The Bush administration, employing the UN and the OAS as well, had pressed similar
proposals and ultimatums upon the beleaguered Aristide on several occasions. His failure to
embrace them had stamped him as "intransigent™ amongst some officials and media. 45
Aristide's rejection of the plan can perhaps be better understood if one considers
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Haiti 1986-1994
whether Washington would ever insist to the Cuban exiles in Miami that if they wanted US
support for their return to Cuba, they would have to agree to a coalition government with
Castrates, or that Iraqian exiles would have to learn to live with Saddam Hussein. The
repeated insistence that Aristide accept a "broad-based" government, or a government of
"national consensus" is ironic coming from the Bush and Clinton administrations, in which
one cannot find an open left-liberal, much less a leftist or socialist, scarcely even a plain
genuine liberal, in any high-level position. Nor has the severe suffering of the Cuban people
from the American embargo had any noticeable effect upon the policy of either administra-
tion.
It soon developed that the plan, which had been labeled "a bipartisan Haitian legisla-
tive initiative" had actually originated with a State Department memo; worse, the Haitian
input had come from supporters of Aristide's overthrow, including Police Chief Francois
himself. 46
A further symptom of the administration's estrangement from Aristide was a report
from the US Embassy in Haiti to the State Department in April. While conceding wide-
spread and grave violations of human rights by the military regime, the report claimed that
Aristide "and his followers consistently manipulate and even fabricate human-rights abuses
as a propaganda tool." The Aristide camp was described as "hardline ideological". 47
Congressional liberals, particularly the Congressional Black Caucus, were becoming
disturbed. In the midst of their growing criticism and pressure, State Department Special
Envoy to Haiti Lawrence Pezzullo, by this time openly described as the author of the "leg-
islative" plan, resigned. A week later several congressmen, attended by wide media cover-
age, were arrested in a protest outside the White House.
By early May, given the congressional pressure, the Grand Haitian Plan discredited and
abandoned, the sanctions an international joke, the refugees still washing up on Florida
shores, while many thousands of others were filling up Guantanamo base in Cuba, the
Clinton administration was forced to the conclusion that — though they still didn't like this
man Jean-Bertrand Aristide with his non-centrist thoughts — they were unable to create any-
thing that smelled even faintly like a rose without restoring him to the presidency. Bill
Clinton had painted himself into a corner. During the campaign in 1992, he had denounced
Bush's policy of returning refugees to Haiti as "cruel". "My Administration," he declared,
"will stand up for democracy". 48 Since that time the word "Haiti" could not cross his lips
without being accompanied by at least three platitudes about "democracy".
Something had to be done or another "foreign-policy failure" would be added to the
list the Republicans were drooling over in this election year ... but what? Over the next four
months, the world was treated to a continuous flip-flop — numerous permutations concern-
ing sanctions, handling of the refugees, how much time the junta had to pack up and leave
(as much as six months), what kind of punishment or amnesty for the murderous military
and police, whether the US would invade ... this time we mean it... now we really mean it
... "out patience has run out", for the third time ... "we will not rule out military force", for
the fifth time .„ the junta was not terribly intimidated.
Meanwhile, an OAS human-rights team was accusing the Haiti regime of "murder,
rape, kidnaping, detention and torture in a systematic campaign to terrorize Haitians who
want the return of democracy and President jean-Bertrand Aristide", and Amnesty
International was reporting the same. 49
Time was passing, and each day meant less time for Aristide to govern Haiti. He had
already lost almost three of the five years of his term, plus the eight months he had served.
By the summer, what Bill Clinton wanted desperately was to get the junta out of power
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KILLING HOPE
without having to deal with the thorny question of congressional approval, without a US
invasion, without any American casualties, without going to war on behalf of a socialist
priest. If Washington's heart had really been set on the return to power of Father Jean-
Bertrand Aristide, the CIA could have been directed to destabilize the Haitian government
any time during the previous three years, using its tried and trusted bribery, blackmail, and
forged documents, its disinformation, rumors, and paranoia, its weapons, mercenaries, and
assassinations, its multinational economic strangleholds, its instant little armies, its selective
little air assaults imbuing the right amount of terror in the right people at the right time ...
the Agency had done so with much stronger and more stable governments; governments
with much more public support, from Iran and Guatemala, to Ecuador and Brazil, to
Ghana and Chile.
Much of what was needed in Haiti was already in place, beginning with the CIA's own
creation, the National Intelligence Service, as well as a large network of informants and paid
assets within other security forces such as FRAPH, and knowledge of who the reliable military
officers were. 50 US intelligence even had a complete inventory of Haitian weaponry. 51
The failure of Clinton to make use of this option is particularly curious in light of the
fact that many members of Congress and some of the administration's own foreign policy
specialists were urging him to do so for months. 52 Finally, in September 1994, officials
revealed that the CIA had "launched a major covert operation this month to try to topple
Haiti's military regime ... but so far the attempt has failed". One official said the effort
"was too late to make a difference". The administration, we were told, had spent months
debating what kind of actions to undertake, and whether they would be legal or not. 53
Or they could have made the famous "one phone call". Like they meant it.
Betrayal
"The most violent regime in our hemisphere" ... "campaign of rape, torture and muti-
lation, people starved" ... "executing children, raping women, killing priests" ... "skying of
Haitian orphans" suspected of "harboring sympathy toward President Aristide, for no other
reason than he ran an orphanage in his days as a parish priest" ... "soldiers and policemen
raping the wives and daughters of suspected political dissidents — young girls, 13, 16 years
old — people slain and mutilated with body parts left as warnings to terrify others; children
forced to watch as their mothers' faces are slashed with machetes"... 54
Thus spaketh William Jefferson Clinton to the American people to explain why he was
seeking to restore democratic government in Haiti".
The next thing we knew, the Haitian leaders were told that they could take four weeks
to resign, they would not be charged with any crimes, they could remain in the country if
they wished, they could run for the presidency if they wished, they could retain all their
assets no matter how acquired. Those who chose exile were paid large amounts of money
by the United States to lease their Haitian properties, any improvements made to remain
free of charge; two jets were chartered to fly them with all their furniture to the country of
their choice, transportation free, housing and living expenses paid for the next year for all
family members and dozens of relatives and friends, totaling millions of dollars. 55
The reason Bill Clinton the president {as opposed, perhaps, to Bill Clinton the human
being) could behave like this is that he — as would be the case with any other man sitting in
the White House, like Jimmy Carter who told Cedras that he was a man of honor and that
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Haiti 1986-1994
he had great respect for him — was not actually repulsed by Cfedras and company, for they
posed no ideological barrier to the United States continuing the economic and strategic con-
trol of Haiti it's maintained for most of the century. Unlike Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a man
who only a year earlier had declared: "I still think capitalism is a mortal sin." 56 Or Fidel
Castro in Cuba. Lest there be doubt here, it should be noted that shortly before Clinton
made the remarks cited above, Vice President Gore declared on television that Castro has a
worse record on human rights than the military leaders of Haiti. 57
The atrocities of the Haitian government were simply trotted out by President Clinton
to build support for military intervention, just as he cited the junta's drug trafficking; after
all these years, this was now discovered, as Noriega's long-time dealings were finally con-
demned when it was time for a military intervention into Panama.
But the worst of the betrayal was yet to come.
Per the above agreement with Raoul Cedras, US armed forces began arriving in Haiti
19 September to clear the way for Aristide's arrival in mid-October. The Americans were
welcomed with elation by the Haitian people, and the GIs soon disarmed, arrested, or shot
dead some of the worst dangers to life and limb and instigators of chaos in Haitian society.
But first they set up tanks and vehicles mounted with machine guns to block oflF the streets
leading to the residential neighborhoods of the morally repugnant elite, the rich being
Washington's natural allies. 58
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's reception was a joyous celebration filled with optimism.
However, unbeknownst to his adoring followers, while they were regaining Aristide, they
may have lost Aristidism. The Los Angeles Times reported:
In a series of private meetings, Administration officials admonished Aristide to put aside the
rhetoric of class warfare ... and seek instead to reconcile Haiti's rich and poor. The
Administration also urged Aristide to stick closely to fee-market economics and to abide by the
Caribbean nation's constitution^ — which gives substantial political power to the Parliament while
imposing tight limits on the presidency. ... Administration officials have urged Aristide to reach
out to some of his political opponents in setting up his new government ... to set up a broad-
based coalition regime. ... the Administration has made it clear to Aristide that if he fails to reach
a consensus with Parliament, the United States will not try to prop up his regime. 59
Almost every aspect of Aristide's plans for resuming power-^km taxing the rich to disarm-
ing the military — has been examined by the U.S. officials with whom the Haitian president meets
dally and by officials from the World Bank the International Monetary Fund and other aid orga-
nizations. The finished package clearly reflects their priorities. ... Aristide obviously has toned
down the liberation theology and class-struggle rhetoric that was his signature before he was
exiled to Washington. 60
Tutored by leading Clinton administration officials, "Aristide has embraced the princi-
ples of democracy [sic], national reconciliation and market economics with a zeal that
Washington would like to see in all leaders of developing nations." 61
Aristide returned to Haiti 15 October 1994, three years and two weeks after being
deposed. The United States might well have engineered his return under the same terms — or
much better of course — two to three years earlier, but Washington officials kept believing
that the policy of returning refugees to Haiti, and when that was unfeasible, lodging them at
Guantanamo, would make the problems go away — the refugee problem, and the Jean-
Bertrand Aristide problem. Faced ultimately with an Aristide returning to power, Clinton
demanded and received — and then made sure to publicly announce — the Haitian president's
guarantee that he would not try to remain in office to make up for the time lost in exile.
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Clinton of course called this "democracy", although it represented a partial legitimization
of the coup. 62 As can be deduced from the above compilation of news reports, this was by
no means the only option Aristide effectively surrendered.
His preference for the all-importanr position of prime minister — who appoints the cabi-
net — was Claudette Werleigh, a woman very much in harmony with his thinking, but he
was forced to rule her out because of strong opposition to her "leftist bent" from political
opponents who argued that she would seriously hurt efforts to obtain foreign aid and
investment. Instead, Aristide wound up appointing Smarck Michel, one of Washington's
leading choices.* 3 At the same rime, the Clinton administration and the international finan-
cial institutions (Ms) were carefully watching the Haitian president's appointments for
finance minister, planning minister, and head of the Central Bank, 64
Two of the men favored by Washington to fill these positions had met in Paris on 22
August with the Ms to arrange the terms of an agreement under which Haiti would receive
about $700 million of investment and credit. Typical of such agreements for the Third World,
it calls for a drastic reduction of state involvement in the economy and an enlarged role for the
private sector through privatization of public services. Haiti's international function will be to
serve the transnational corporations by opening itself up further to foreign investment and
commerce, with a bare minimum of tariffs or other import restrictions, and offering itself, pri-
marily in the assembly industries, as a source of cheap export labor — extremely cheap labor, lit-
tle if any increase in the current 10 to 25 cents per hour wages, distressingly inadequate for
keeping body and soul together and hunger at bay; a way of life promoted for years to
investors by the US Agency for International Development and other US government agen-
cies. 5 (The assembly industries are regarded by Washington as important enough to American
firms that in the midst of the sanctions against Haiti, the US announced that it was "fine-tun-
ing" the embargo to permit these firms to import and export so they could resume work.) 66
The agreement further emphasizes that the power of the Parliament is to be strength-
ened. The office of the president is not even mentioned, Neither is the word "justice", 67
As of this writing (late October 1994), Aristide's dreams of a living wage and civilized
working conditions for the Haitian masses, a social security pension system, decent educa-
tion, housing, health care, public transportation, etc. appear to be little more than that —
dreams. What appears to be certain is that the rich will grow richer, and the poor will
remain at the very bottom of Latin America's heap. Under Aristide's successor — whomever
the United States is already grooming — it can only get worse.
Aristide the radical reformer knew all this, and at certain points during September and
October he may have had the option to get a much better deal, for Clinton needed him almost
as much as he needed Clinton, If Aristide had threatened to go public, and noisily so, about
the betrayal in process, spelling out all the sleazy details so that the whole world could get
beyond the headlined platitudes and understand what a sham Bill Clinton's expressed con-
cerns about "democracy" and the welfare of the Haitian people were, the American president
would have been faced with an embarrassment of scandalous proportion.
But Aristide the priest saw the world in a different light:
Let us compare political power with theological power. On the one hand, we see those in control
using the traditional tools of politics: weapons, money, dictatorship, coups d'etat, repression. On
the other hand, we see tools that were used 2,000 years ago: solidarity, resistance, courage,
determination, and the fight for dignity and might, respect and power. We see transcendence. We
see faith in God, who is justice. The question we now ask is this: which is stronger, political
power or theological power? I am confident that the latter is stronger. I am also confident that
the two forces can converge, and that their convergence will make the critical difference. 68
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56. The American Empire
1992 to present
We assert that no nation can long endure half
republic and half empire, and we warn the
American people that imperialism abroad
will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism
at home.
— Democratic Party (U.S.)
National Platform, 1900
Following its bombing of Iraq in 1991, the United States wound up with military bases
in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Following its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the United States wound up with mili-
tary bases in Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia.
Following its bombing of Afghanistan in 2001-2, the United States wound up with mil-
itary bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan,
Georgia, Yemen and Djibouti.
Following its bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States wound up with
Iraq,
This is not very subtle foreign policy. Certainly not covert. The men who run the
American Empire are not easily embarrassed.
And that is the way the empire grows — a base in every neighborhood, ready to be
mobilized to put down any threat to imperial rule, real or imagined. Fifty-eight years after
World War II ended, the United States still has major bases in Germany and Japan; fifty
years after the end of the Korean War, tens of thousands of American armed forces contin-
ue to be stationed in South Korea.
"America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind that we
could not have dreamed of before," US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared in February
2002. : Later that year, the US Defense Department announced: "The United States Military
is currently deployed to mote locations then it has been throughout history." 2
Equally unsubtle are the announcements beginning in the early 1990s — coinciding with
the pivotal demise of the Soviet Union — and continuing to the present, trumpeting
Washington's desire, means, and intention for world domination, while assuring the world
of the noble purposes behind this crusade. These declarations have been regularly put forth
in policy papers emanating from the White House and the Pentagon, as well as from gov-
ernment-appointed commissions and think tanks closely associated with the national securi-
ty establishment.
Here is the voice of the empire in 1992:
Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on
the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat
on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. ... we must
account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to
discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn
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KILLING HOPE
the established political and economic order, ... we must maintain the
mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a
larger regional or global role. 3
1996: "We will engage terrestrial targets someday — ships, airplanes, land targets — from
space. ... We're going to fight in space. We're going to fight from space and we're
going to fight into space. 4
1997: "With regard to space dominance, we have it, we like it, and we're going to keep
it. 5
2000: "The new [military preparedness] standard is to maintain military superiority over all
potential rivals and to prepare now for future military rivalries even if they can not
yet be identified and their eventual arrival is only speculative. ... Military require-
ments have become detached from net assessments of actual security threats. Generic
wars and generic capabilities are proffered as the basis for planning. ... Particularities
of real threat scenarios have become secondary to the generalized need to show raw
U.S. power across the globe.
200 1 : "The presence of American forces in critical regions around the world is the visible
expression of the extent of America's status as a superpower and as the guarantor of
liberty, peace and stability." 7
2001: "If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and
we don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing,
but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our
children will sing great songs about us years from now." 8
2001: The Bush administration's "Nuclear Posture Review", directing the military to pre-
pare contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries —
China, Russia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and Syria — and to build smaller
nuclear weapons for use in certain battlefield situations. 9
2002: In September, the White House issued its "National Security Strategy", which
declared:
Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from
pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the
power of the United States. ... America will act against such emerging
threats before they are fully formed. ... We must deter and defend
against the threat before it is unleashed. ... We cannot let our enemies
strike first. ... To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries,
the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.
Preemptiveness is essentially the rationale imperial Japan, without being overly para-
noid, used to justify its attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and which Nazi Germany, as a
sham pretext, used to justify its invasion of Poland in 1939.
To one observer, the meaning of the "National Security Strategy" was this:
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The American Empire: 1992 to present
It dashes the aspirations of those who had hoped that the world was mov-
ing toward a system of international law that would allow for the peaceful
resolution of conflicts, through covenants and courts. In place of this, a
single power that shuns covenants and. courts has proclaimed that it
intends to dominate the world militarily, intervening preemptively where
necessary to exorcise threats. ... Those who want a world in which no
power is supreme and in which laws and covenants are used to settle con-
flicts will begin a new debate — about how to contend with imperial
America. 10
So intoxicated with the idea of dominance is the US national security state that when it
announced, in November 2002, the formation of a public affairs group that would travel to
battlefields "to interact with journalists, assist U.S. commanders and send news and pictures
back to headquarters for dissemination," it described the operation as an attempt at "infor-
mation dominance". 11
The Cold War is Over. Long live the Cold War.
It is remarkable indeed that in the 21st century the government of the United States is
still going around dropping huge amounts of exceedingly powerful explosives upon the
heads of innocent and defenseless people. It wasn't supposed to be this way.
In the mid 1980s, Michael Gorbachev's reforms instituted the beginning of the end for
the Soviet police state. In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down, and people all over Eastern
Europe were joyfully celebrating "a new day". The United States then joined this celebra-
tion by invading and bombing Panama, only weeks after the Wall fell. At the same time, the
US was shamelessly intervening in the election in Nicaragua to defeat a leftist government.
Soon thereafter, South Africa feed Nelson Mandela and apartheid began to crumble,
and before the year 1990 was over Haiti held its first fee election ever and chose a genuine
progressive as president. It seemed like anything was possible, optimism was as widespread
as pessimism is today.
However, when Bulgaria and Albania, "newly freed from the grip of communism", as
the American media would put it, dared to elect governments not acceptable to
Washington, Washington just stepped in and overthrew those governments.
The same period found the US bombing Iraq and its people, 40 days and nights with-
out mercy, for no good or honest reason.
And that was that for our hope for a different and better world.
But the American leaders were not through. In 1993 they were off attacking Somalia,
trying to rearrange the country's political map, more bombing and killing.
They intervened to put down dissident movements in Peru, Mexico, Colombia and
Ecuador, just as if it were the Cold War in the 1950s in Latin America, and the 1960s, the
1970s, the 1980s, still doing it in the 1990s, and into the new century.
In the latter part of the 1990s, Washington could be found engaged in serious meddling
in the elections in territories which had once been part of the Soviet sphere: Russia,
Mongolia, and Bosnia.
In 1999, they bombed the people of Serbia and Kosovo for 78 seemingly endless days,
the culmination of Washington's master plan of breaking up the Socialist Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia, demonized as "the last of the Communists". 2
And once again, in the fall of 2001, grossly and openly intervened in an election in
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Nicaragua to prevent the left from winning.
At the same time, bombarding Afghanistan, and in all likelihood killing more innocent
civilians than were killed in the United States on 1 1 September 200 1 , 1 3 as well as taking the
lives of countless "combatants" (i.e., anyone who defended against the invasion of the land
they were living in). Most of the so-called "terrorists" of foreign nationality residing in
Afghanistan at the time, including those training at al Qaeda camps, had come there to fight
against the Soviet forces or to help the Taliban in their later civil war; for them these were
religious missions, nothing to do with terrorism or the United States. Amongst the thou-
sands of victims of the American invasion, not one has been identified as having a connec-
tion to the events of that tragic day. The 1 1 September terrorists had chosen symbolic build-
ings to attack and the United States then chose a symbolic country to retaliate against. 14
While continuing to savage Afghanistan in 2002, Washington found time to lend its
indispensable support to a plot to overthrow Hugo Chavez and his populist government in
Venezuela, Chavez having made it abundantly clear that Venezuela was not prepared to
become a foreign outpost of the empire. 15
And all these years, stilt keeping a choke hold on Cuba; still, after a century of imperi-
alist occupation, refusing to vacate Guantanamo Base in Cuba, converting it in 2002 to a
modern Devil's Island for the illegal and grim imprisonment of men, as well as several chil-
dren, kidnapped in various localities of the world in the so-called War on Terrorism.
There was none of the "peace dividend" that had been promised for the end of the
Cold War, not for Americans nor for the rest of the world.
What do we have here? The American people had been taught for nearly half a century
that the Cold War, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the huge military budgets,
all the US invasions and overthrows of governments — the ones they knew about — they were
taught that this was all to fight the same menace: The International Communist Conspiracy,
headquarters in Moscow.
But then the Soviet Union was dissolved. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved as well. The
East European satellites became independent. The former communists even became capital-
ists.
And nothing changed in American foreign policy.
Even NATO remained, NATO which had been created — so we were told — to protect
Western Europe against a Soviet invasion, even NATO remained, ever increasing in size and
military power, a treaty on wheels which could be rolled in any direction to suit
Washington's current policy — acting as a US surrogate ruling over the Balkans as a protec-
torate, invoking its charter to justify its members joining the US in the Afghanistan inva-
sion.
And as Russia closed down its Cold War bases in Eastern Europe, Vietnam and Cuba,
the United States was opening military bases in the territories of the former Soviet Union
and in other regions of the world. While Russia closed down its radio intelligence station at
Lourdes, Cuba, the United States was building a powerful communications listening station
in Latvia, on the Russian border, as part of Washington's worldwide eavesdropping system.
The whole thing had been a con game. The Soviet Union and something called commu-
nism perse had not been the object of Washington's global attacks. There had never been
an International Communist Conspiracy. The enemy was, and remains, any government or
movement, or even individual, that stands in the way of the expansion of the American
Empire; by whatever name the US gives to the enemy — communist, rogue state, drug traf-
ficker, terrorist ...
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The American Empire: 1992 to present
Is the United States Against Terrorism?
Are we now to believe that the American Empire is against terrorism? What does one
call a man who blows up an airplane killing 73 civilians for political reasons; who attempts
assassinations against several diplomats; who fires cannons at ships docked in American
ports; who places bombs in numerous commercial and diplomatic buildings in the US and
abroad? Dozens of such acts. His name is Orlando Bosch, he's Cuban and he lives in
Miami, unmolested by the authorities. The city of Miami once declared a day in his
honor — Dr. Orlando Bosch Day, 16 He was freed from prison in Venezuela in 1988, where
he had been held for the airplane bombing, partly because of pressure from the American
ambassador at the time, Otto Reich, who in 2002 was appointed to a high position in the
State Department by President Bush.
After Bosch returned to the US in 1988, the Justice Department condemned him as a
totally violent terrorist and was all set to deport him, but that was blocked by President
Bush the first, with the help of son Jeb Bush in Florida. 17 So is President Bush, the second,
and his family against terrorism? Well, yes, they're against those terrorists who are not
allies of the empire.
The plane that Bosch bombed, in 1976, was a Cuban plane. He's wanted in Cuba for
that and a host of other serious crimes, and the Cubans have asked Washington to extradite
him. To Cuba he's like Osama bin Laden is to the United States. But the US has refused.
Imagine the reaction in the United States if bin Laden showed up in Havana and the Cubans
refused to turn him over. Imagine the reaction in the United States if Havana proclaimed
Osama bin Laden Day?
Washington's commitment to fighting terrorism can be further questioned in light of its
support of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo who comprised the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The KLA in furtherance of its political-ethnic agenda, have carried out numerous terrorist
attacks for years in various parts of the Balkans, but they've been US allies because they've
attacked people out of favor with Washington. This despite the fact that the KLA has had
ideological and personal ties to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, and despite being catego-
rized as a terrorist organization by the US State Department. 18
Moreover, in the 1980s and 90s, anti-communist Vietnamese, Cambodians, and
Laotians resident in the United States financed and instigated their countrymen abroad in
bombings and other attacks on their governments and citizens, hoping to destabilize those
governments; at times they traveled from the US to those countries to carry out attacks
themselves; these actions — terrorism by definition — were carried out with the tacit approval
of the American government, which turned a blind eye to the Neutrality Act, which pro-
hibits American citizens or residents from using force to overthrow a foreign government. 19
George W. Bush has also spoken out vehemently against harboring terrorists — "those
who harbor terrorists threaten the national security of the United States". 20 Does he really
mean that}
We must ask: Which country harbors more terrorists than the United States? Orlando
Bosch is only one of the numerous anti-Castro Cubans in Miami who have carried out
many hundreds of terrorist acts, in the US, in Cuba, and elsewhere; all kinds of arson
attacks, assassination attempts and bombings. They have been harbored in the US in safety
for decades; as have numerous other friendly terrorists, torturers and human rights violators
from Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, Indonesia and elsewhere, all allies of the empire. 21
The CIA was busy looking for terrorists in caves in the mountains of Afghanistan at
the same time as the Agency sat in bars in Miami having drinks with terrorists.
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KILLING HOPE
The Imperial Mafia
What are we to make of all this? How are we to understand United States foreign poli-
cy? Well, if one were to write a book called "The American Empire for Dummies", page
one should say: Don't ever look for the moral factor, US foreign policy has no moral factor
built into its DNA. One must clear one's mind of that baggage which only gets in the way
of seeing beyond the cliches and the platitudes.
It's rather difficult for most Americans and Americophiles throughout the world to
accept such a notion. They see American leaders on television smiling and laughing, telling
jokes; they see them with their families, hear them speak of God and love, of peace and law,
of democracy and freedom, of human tights and justice, and even baseball. These leaders
know how to condemn the world's atrocities in no uncertain terms, with just the right
words that decent people love to hear, just the tight catch in their throat to show how
moved they are. How can such people be monsters, how can they be called immoral?
They have names like George and Dick and Donald, not a single Mohammed or
Abdullah in the bunch. And they all speak English. People named Mohammed or Abdullah
cut off people's hands as punishment for theft. Americans know that that's horrible.
Americans are too civilized for that. But people named George and Dick and Donald drop
cluster bombs on cities and villages, and the many unexploded ones become land mines,
and before very long a child picks one up or steps on one of them and loses an arm or a leg,
or both arms or both legs, and sometimes their eyesight; while the cluster bombs which
actually explode create their own kind of high-velocity, jagged steel horror.
But these men are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they
take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care ... the
same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the
agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and
power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to
them or people close to them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other peo-
ple, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home — the
ones who make it back alive — with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at
their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered
by such things.
When I was writing my book Rogue State during 1999-2000 I used the term
"American Empire" with some caution because it was not in common usage and I wasn't
sure the American public was quite ready for the idea. But I needn't have been so cautious.
The idea of United States world hegemony has come to be discussed not only openly, but
proudly, by supporters of the empire — prominent American intellectuals such as Dinesh
D'Souza of the Hoover Institution, who wrote an article entitled "In praise of American
empire", in which he argued that "America is the most magnanimous imperial power ever."
Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer has spoken of America's "uniquely benign
impenum."
Michael Hirscb, editor of Newsweek magazine, added to the chorus of self-love songs
with this: "U.S. allies must accept that some U.S. unilateralism is inevitable, even desirable.
This mainly involves accepting the reality of America's supreme might — and truthfully,
appreciating how historically lucky they are to be protected by such a relatively benign
power." 24
Robert Kagan, a leading light of the American foreign policy establishment, had writ-
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The American Empire: 1992 to present
ten earlier: "And the truth is that the benevolent hegemony exercised by the United States is
good for a vast portion of the world's population. It is certainly a better international
arrangement than all realistic alternatives." 2
In this way are people who are wedded to American foreign policy able to live with
it — they conclude, and proclaim, and may even believe, that such policies produce a
humane force, an enlightened empire, bringing order, prosperity and civilized behavior
everywhere, and if the US is forced to go to war it conducts it in a humanitarian manner.
As the reader will have noted, the present book documents in minute detail the exact
opposite, showing the remarkable violence and cruelty, the suppression of social change,
and the many other abhorrent consequences of US interventions for people in every corner
of the globe for half a century.
The empire's scribes appear to be as amoral as the officials in the White House and the
Pentagon. After all, the particles of depleted uranium are not lodging inside their lungs to
radiate for the rest of their lives; the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are not
bankrupting their economy and slashing their basic services; it's not their families wander-
ing as refugees in the desert.
The leaders of the empire, the imperial mafia — George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld,
Richard Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, et al. —
and their scribes as well, ate as fanatic and as fundamentalist as Osama bin Laden. Allah
Akhbar! God is great! ... USA! USA! USA!
Kagan, an intellectual architect of an interventionism that seeks to impose a neo-con-
servative agenda upon the world, by any means necessary, has declared that the United
States must refuse to abide by certain international conventions, like the international crimi-
nal court and the Kyoto accord on global warming. The US, he says, "must support arms
control, but not always for itself. It must live by a double standard." 26
There is also Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat and advisor to Prime Minister
Tony Blair. Cooper writes:
The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of dou-
ble standards. When dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states out-
side the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the
rougher methods of an earlier era — force, pre-emptive attack, deception,
whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth
century world of every state for itself 27
His expression, "every state for itself, can be better understood as any state not will-
ing to accede to the agenda of the American Empire and the school bully's best friend in
London.
So there we have it. The double standard is in. The golden rule of do unto others as
you would have others do unto you is out.
The imperial mafia, and their court intellectuals like Kagan and Cooper, have a diffi-
cult time selling or defending their world vision on the basis of legal, moral, ethical or fair-
ness standards. Thus it is that they decide they're not bound by such standards.
The Liquid Gold, Again
The American occupation of Afghanistan served the purpose of setting up a new gov-
ernment that would be sufficiently amenable to Washington's international objectives,
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KILLING HOPE
including the installation of military bases and listening stations and the tunning of secure
oil and gas pipelines through Afghanistan from the Caspian Sea region once the country
had been pacified.
For years, the American oil barons had had their eyes on the vast oil and gas reserves
around the Caspian Sea, envisioning an Afghanistan-Pakistan route to the Indian Ocean.
The oilmen had been quite open about this, giving frank testimony before Congress on the
matter. 28
After Afghanistan, they turned their lust to the even greater oil reserves of Iraq. Once
again, the American public had to be primed. Renowned espionage novelist John le Carre
has observed: "How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin
Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history."
As this is written in April 2003, the United States has just completed the bombing,
invasion and takeover of the beleaguered Iraqi society, causing great destruction, killing
thousands of innocent people — civilians and soldiers — in the process, leaving countless oth-
ers maimed and otherwise ruined. "It looks like it's a bombing of a city, but it isn't,"
declared US Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld, in defense of American "precision bomb-
ing". 30
Washington looked at the results of its military actions, which others would call horrif-
ic, and labeled it "liberation", because the Saddam Hussein regime had been overthrown.
Prior to this, the imperial mafia had staged a year-long propaganda show to convince
Americans and the world that the world's only superpower had no choice but to attack a
sovereign and crippled country that had not attacked the United States, that had not threat-
ened to attack the United States, that knew it would mean instant mass suicide for them if
they attacked the United States. The imperial mafia's thesis was odd not simply because
Iraq was not a threat — as the war's easy military victory demonstrated — but because the
imperial mafia knew that Iraq was not a threat, at all. They'd been telling the world one
story after another about why Iraq was a threat, an imminent threat, a threat increasing in
danger with each passing day, a nuclear threat, a chemical threat, a biological threat, that
Iraq was a terrorist state, that Iraq was tied to al Qaeda ... only to have each story amount
to nothing. They insisted repeatedly that Iraq must agree to having the UN weapons inspect
tors back in, and when Iraq agreed to this the imperial mafia declared that it wasn't good
enough and proceeded to disparage the effort.
For it was war that the White House yearned for, and it was war that they got, as they
thumbed their nose at the greatest anti-war protests the world has ever seen as well as the
sweeping opposition of the United Nations and humanity's hard-won concepts of interna-
tional law and collaboration for a more peaceful planet. It remains to be seen whether and
how the world body will survive being relegated to humiliating irrelevance on the most
important question that it can face, the UN being an institution which declared in the very
first sentence of its Charter the determination "to save succeeding generations from the
scourge of war, which twice in our life-time has brought untold sorrow to mankind."
Did any of Washington's policy make sense? This sudden urgency of fighting a war in
the absence of a fight? It did if one understood that the invasion was not about Saddam
Hussein's evenness or his alleged weapons of mass destruction. When weeks of US military
occupation of Iraq failed to uncover any such weapons, the White House declared that
WMD were not, after all, the real reason for the invasion. What they were really doing,
they assured the world, was delivering various blows to terrorism. "We were not lying
said one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis.'" 31
Amongst other reasons, the war was about the US replacing Hussein and installing a
puppet government, as it did in Afghanistan; in this case an American occupation govern-
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The American Empire: 1992 to present
ment, enabling American oil companies to move into Iraq to enjoy a laissez-faire feast; at
the same time opening the country to all manner of transnational corporations as Iraq takes
its place in the new world order of globalized economies, and the American Empire adds
another country and a few more bases from which to further control and remake the
Middle East in the imperial mafia's endearing amoral style, for which, presumably, the chil-
dren of the region will sing great songs in years to come. 3
US agreement to allow the UN weapons inspectors to return to Iraq in December 2002
had been no more than a bluff to cater to unexpectedly strong world opposition to
Washington's planned invasion. Three months of inspections before the invasion began
turned up nothing in the way of unambiguously prohibited weapons. Over the course of
about seven years in the 1990s the UN inspectors had found and destroyed huge amounts
of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq. Scott Ritter, chief UN weapons inspec-
tor in Iraq, stated in 2002 that:
Since 1998 Iraq has been fundamentally disarmed; 90-95% of Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction have been verifiable eliminated. This
includes all of the factories used to produce chemical, biological and
nuclear weapons, and long-range ballistic missiles; the associated equip-
ment of these factories; and the vast majority of the products coming out
of these factories. 33
In the same period, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
Mohamed El Baradei, reported that his agency had:
dismantled extensive nuclear weapons-related facilities. We neutralized
Iraq's nuclear program. We confiscated its weapon-usable material. We
destroyed, removed or rendered harmless all its facilities and equipment
relevant to nuclear weapons production. 34
This, then, was the alarming threat of Iraq which had to be wiped out, a society already
terribly enfeebled by 12 years of sanctions, which US National Security Advisor Samuel Berger
called "the most pervasive sanctions every imposed on a nation in the history of mankind". 35
US Foreign Policy: A Laboratory for Growing
the Anti- American Terrorism Virus
"We leveled it. There was nobody left, just
dirt and dust. "
— US Army Major Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck,
speaking of the destruction of three villages
in the Shahikot Valley in Afghanistan. 36
The American bombing of Afghanistan, begun on 7 October 2001 and followed by a
military occupation of much of the country, gave rise to dozens of terrorist actions against
American individuals and institutions, as well as Christian and other Western targets, in
South Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere; a dozen or so attacks in Pakistan alone (includ-
ing the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl 37 ) and
391
KILLING HOPE
the most disastrous one in Bali, Indonesia, on 12 October, which killed more than 180 peo-
ple, almost all Australians, Americans, or British; the two leading suspects arrested in that
case each stated that he had acted in retaliation for the US attack on Afghanistan and
Muslims. 38
The subsequent attack on Iraq — a war nobody wanted except the imperial mafia — may
have recruited thousands more throughout the Muslim world as the next generation of ter-
rorists to carry out the jihad against The Great Satan.
Has the American power elite learned anything from being the frequent target of ter-
rorism over the years? Here's James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA and member of
the Defense Department's Policy Board, speaking two months after the beginning of the US
bombing of Afghanistan, advocating an invasion of Iraq and unconcerned about the
response of the Arab world: The silence of the Arab public in the wake of America's victo-
ries in Afghanistan, Woolsey said, proves that "only fear will re-establish respect for the
U.S." 39
In a similar light, a phrase attributed to various leaders of the Roman Empire has been
used by Bush administration officials: oderint dum metuant — "Let them hate so long as
they fear." 40
The State Department may have learned something. At the time of the first anniversary
of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack and subsequently as well, the Department held
conferences on how to improve America's image abroad in order to reduce the level of
hatred. But it's image they were working on, not change of policies. And the policies score-
card reads as follows: From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more
than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements
fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries,
caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a
life of agony and despair.
"The idea is to build an antiterrorist global environment," a senior Defense
Department official told the New York Times in 2003, "so that in 20 to 30 years, terrorism
will be like slave-trading, completely discredited." 41
The world can only wonder this: When will American wars of aggression, firing missies
into the heart of a city, and using depleted uranium and cluster bombs against the popula-
tion become completely discredited?
They already have become such, but the United States, which wages war on the same
scale other nations apply to mere survival, does not yet know it. Instead, It practices perpet-
ual war for perpetual peace.
392
Notes
Introduction
1 Michael Parenti, The Anti-Communist Impulse (Random House, NY, 1969) p.4
2 Washington Post, 24 October 1965, article by Stanley Kamow.
3 Winston Churchill, Tfoe Second World War, Vol. IV, The Hinge of Fate (London, 1951), p. 428.
4 Winston Churchill, The World Crisis: The Aftermath (London, 1929), p. 235.
5 D,F. Fleming, "The Western Intervention in the Soviet Union, 1918-1920", New World Review (New York), Fall
1967; see also Fleming, The Cold War and iti Origins, 1917-1960 (New York, 1961), pp. 16-35.
6 Los Angeles Times, 2 September 1991, p. 1.
7 Frederick L. Schvmw, American Policy Toward Russia Since 1917 (New York, 1928), p. 125.
8 Ibid., p. 154.
9 Han Francisco Chronicle, 4 October 1978, p, 4.
10 New Republic, 4 August 1920, a 42-page analysis by Walter Lippmann and Charles Men.
11 Life, 29 March 1943, p. 29.
12 New Yort Times, 24 June 1941; for an interesting account of how US officials laid the groundwork for the Cold
War during and immediately after World War 2, see the first chapter of Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified
Eisenhower (New York, 1981), a study of previously classified papers at the Eisenhower Library,
13 This has been well documented and would be "common knowledge" if not for its shameful implications. See,
e.g., the British Cabinet papers for 1939, summarized in the Manchester Guardian, 1 January 1970; also
Fleming, The Cold War, pp. 48-97.
14 Related by former French Foreign Minister Christian Pineau in a recorded interview for the Dulles Oral History
Project, Princeton University Library; cited in Roger Morgan, The United States and West Germany, 194S-1973:
A Study in Alliance Politics (Oxford University Press, London, 1974), p. 54, my translation from the French.
15 Michael ?$Kmi, The Antt-Communistlmpulse (Random House, NY, 1969) p. 35.
16 John Srockwell, In Search ofEnemies (New York, 1978), p. 101. The expressions "CIA olficer" or "case officer"
are used throughout the present book to denote regular, full-time, career employees of the Agency, as opposed ro
"agent", someone working for the CIA on an ad hoc basis. Other sources which are quoted, ir will be seen, tend
to incorrectly use the word "agent" to cover both categories.
17 Ibid., p. 238.
18 Kwame Nkrumah, Dark Days in Ghana (London, 1968), pp. 71-2.
19 The full quotation is from the Net* York Times, 11 January 1969, p. 1; the inside quotation is that of rhe
National Commission.
20 Mother Jones magazine (San Francisco), April 1981, p. 5.
21 San Francisco Chronicle, 14 January ] 982, p. 2.
22 Richard F. Grimmert, Reported Foreign and Domestic Covert Activities of the United States Central Intelligence
Agency: 1950-1974, (Library of Congress) 18 February 1975,
23 The Pentagon Papers (NY. Times edition, 1971), p. xiii.
24 Speech before the World Affairs Council ar the University of Pennsylvania, 13 January 1950, cited in the
Republican Congressional Committee Newsletter, 20 September 1965.
25 Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times Book Review, 27 September 1992, review of Georgi Arbatov, The System: An
Insider's Life in Soviet Politics (Times Books, New York, 1992)
26 International Herald Tribune, 29 October 1992, p. 4.
27 The New Yorker, 2 November 1992, p. 6.
28 Los Angeles Times, 2 December 1988: emigration of Sovier Jews peaked at 51,330 in 1979 and fell to about
1,000 a year in the mid-1980s during the Reagan administration (1981-89); in 1988 it was at 16,572.
29 a) Frank Kofsky, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of!94S: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation {St.
Martin's Press, New York, 1993), passim, particularly Appendix A; the book is replete with portions of such
documents written by diplomatic, intelligence and military analysts in the 1940s; rhe war scare was undertaken
to push through the administration's foreign policy program, inaugurate a huge military buildup, and bail out the
near-bankrupt aircraft industry.
b) Declassified Documents Reference System: indexes, abstracts, and documents on microfiche, annual series,
arranged by particular government agencies and year of declassifkarion.
c) Foreign Relations of the United States (Department of State), annual series, internal documents published
about 25 to 35 years after the fact.
30 Los Angeles Times, 29 December 1991, p. Ml.
31 The Guardian (London), 10 October 1983, p. 9.
32 a) Anne H. Calm, "How We Got Oversold on Overkill", Los Angeles Times, 23 July 1993, based on testimony
before Congress, 10 June 1993, of Eleanor Chelimsky, Assistant Comptroller-General of the General Accounting
Office, about a GAO study; see related story in New York Times, 28 June 1993, p, 10
b) Los Angeles Times, 15 September 1991, p. 1; 26 October 1991.
c) The Guardian [London), 4 March 1983; 20 January 1984; 3 April 1986.
393
KILLING HOPE
d} Arthur Macy Cox, "Why the U.S., Since 1977, Has Been Misperceiving Soviet Military Strength", New Yrjrk
Times, 20 October 1980, p. 19; Cox was formerly an official with the State Department and the CIA.
33 For further discussion of these points, see:
a) Walden Bello, Dark Victory: The United States, Structural Adjustment and Global Poverty (Institute for Food
and Development Policy, Oakland, CA, 1994}, passim.
b) Multinational Monitor (Washington), July/August 1994, special issue on The World Bank,
c) Doug Henwood, "The U.S. Economy; The Enemy Within", Covert Action Quarterly (Washington, DC),
Summer 1992, No. 41, pp. 45-9.
d) Joel Bleifuss, "The Death of Nations", In These Times (Chicago) 27 June -10 July 1994, p. 12 [UN Code).
1. CHINA 1945 to 1960s
1. David Barrett, Dixie Mission: The United States Army Observer Group in Yenan, 1944 (Center for Chinese
Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1970), passim; R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's
First CIA (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1972), pp. 262-3; New York Times, 9 December 1345, p. 24.
2. Chiang's policies during and after war: Smith, pp. 259-82; New York Times, 19 December 1945, p. 2.
3. Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, Vol. Two: Years of Trial and Hope, 1946-1953 (Great Britain, 1956), p. 66.
4. Smith, p. 282.
5. D.F. Fleming, The Cold War and its Origins, 1917-1960 (New York, 1961), p. 570.
6. New York Times, September-December 1945, passim; Barbara W.Tuchman, Stilwell and the American
Experience in China 1911-45 (New York, 1972), pp. 666-77.
7. Congressional Record, Appendix, Vol. 92, part 9, 24 January 1946, p. A225, letter to Congressman Hugh de
Lacy of State of Washington.
8. New York Times, 6 November 1945, p. 1; 19 December 1945, p. 2
9. Ibid., 9 December 1945, p. 24; 26 December 1945, p. 5.
10. Ibid., 26 December 1945, p. 5.
11. Fleming, p. 587.
12. Christopher Robbins, Ah America (U.S., 1979), pp, 46-57; Victor Marcherti and John Marks, The CIA and the
Cult oflntelligence (New York, 1975), p. 149.
33. Hearings held in executive session before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee during 1949-50: Economic
Assistance to China and Korea 1949-50, testimony ofDean Acheson, p. 23; made public January 1974 as part of
the Historical Series.
14. Tuchman, p. 676.
15. For some detail of the oppression and atrocities carried out by the Chiang regime against the Taiwanese, see Scott
Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League (New York, 1986), pp. 47-9, citing prominent American
Generals and a State Department official who was in Taiwan at the time. Also see Fleming, p. 578-9. In 1992, the
Taiwan government admitted that its army had killed an estimated 18,000 to 28,000 native-born Taiwanese in
the 1947 massacre, (Los Angeles Times, 24 February 1992).
16. Felix Greene, A Curtain oflgnorance (New York, 1964)
17. Tuchman, p. 676; Fleming, pp. 572-4, 577, 584-5; Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (London, 1962), p,
164; New York Times, 1 November 1945, p. 12; 14 November, p. 1; 21 November, p.2; 28 November, p. 1; 30
November, p. 3; 2 December, p. 34.
18. New York Times, 12 January 1947, p. 44.
19. William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas Mac Arthur 1880-1964 (London, 1979), p. 535,
20. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Vol. V1U, The Far East: China (U.S. Government Printing Office,
Washington, 1978), passim between pp, 357 and 399; 768, 779-80; publication of this volume in the State
Department's series was held up precisely because it contained the reports about Chou En-Lai's request (San
Francisco Chronicle, 27 September 1978, p. F-l).
21. See Indonesia 1957-1958 chapter and The Guardian (London), 24 August 1985.
22. New YorkTimes,25 April 1966, p, 20.
23. Burma: David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government (New York, 1965, paperback edition), pp. 138-
44; Joseph Burkholder Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (New York, 1976), pp. 77-8; New York Times, 28 July
1951; 28 December 1951; 22February 1952; 8 April 1952; 30 December 19J2; opium: Robbins, pp. 84-7.
24. Washington Post, 20 August 1958, Joseph A!sop, a columnist who had been a staff officer under General
Chennault and was well connected with Taiwan. Over the years he performed a variety of undercover tasks for
the CIA, as did his brother Stewart Alsop. (see Carl Bernstein, "The CIA and the Media", Rolling Stone maga-
zine, 20 October 1977.)
25. Quemoy and Matsu: Stewart Alsop (formerly with the OSS; also see note 24), The Story Behind Quemoy: How
We Drifted Close to War', Saturday Evening Post, 13 December 1958, p. 26; Andrew Tulley, CM: The Inside
Story (New York, 1962), pp. 162-5; Fleming, pp. 930-1; Wise and Ross, p. 116; New York Times, 27 April
1966, p. 28.
16. Wise andRoss,p. 114.
27. Air drops: Wise and Ross, pp. 112-5; Thomas Powers, TheMan Who Kept the Secrets (New York, 1979), pp, 43-
4i Newsweek, 26 Hatch 1973.
394
Notes
28. Overflights: Marchetti and Marks, pp. 150, 287; Washington Post, 27 May 1966; New York Times, 28 March
1969, p. 40.
29. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1943, China (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1957), p.
630.
30. Tibet: David Wise, The Politics ofLying (New York, 1973, paperback edition), pp. 239-54; Robbins, pp. 94-101;
Marchetti and Marks, pp. 12S-31 and p. 97 of the 1983 edition.
3 1. People's China, English-language magazine, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 17 September 1952, p. 28.
32. Callum A. MacDonald, Korea: The War Before Vietnam (New York, 1986), pp. 161-2, cites several sources for
this well known occurrence.
33. Germ Warfare: People's China, 1952, passim, beginning 16 March.
34. New Yort Times, 9 August 1970, IV, p. 3.
35. Washington Post, 17 December 1979, p. A18, "whooping cough cases recorded in Florida jumped from 339 and
one death in 1954 to 1,080 and 12 deaths in 1955." The CIA received the bacteria from the Army's biological
research center at Fort Detrick, Md,
36. San Francisco Chronicle, 4 December 1979, p. 12. For a detailed account of US Government experiments with
biological agents within the United States, see: Leonard A. Cole, Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare
Tests over Populated Areas (Maryland, 1990), passim.
37. Department of Stole Bulletin, 2 May 1966-
2. ITALY 1947- 194S
1. Addressing the Cathedral Club of Brooklyn, 15 January 1948; cited in David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-
Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1979), p. 15.
2. Robert T. Holt and Robert W. van de Velde, Strategic Psychological Operations and American Foreign Policy
(University of Chicago Press, 1960) p. 169.
3. Dissolving the cabinet: New York Times, 21 January 1947, p. 5; 26 January, p. 31; 3 February, p. 1; 5 May, p.
13; 13 May; 14 May; 29 May, p.3;2June, p. 24.
4. New York Times, 5 May 1947, p. 1; 11 May, IV, p. 5; 14 May, pp. 14 and 24; 17 May, p. 8; 18 May, )V, p. 4;
20 May, p. 2; Howard K. Smith, The State ofEurope (London, 1950), p. 151 (includes Ramadier quote; similar
quote in New York Times, 20 May),
5. Time, 22 March 1948, p. 35.
6. William Colby, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York, 197S), p. 109.
7. Except where otherwise indicated, the items in the succeeding list are derived from the following:
a) New York Times, 16 March to 18 April 1948, passim;
b) Howard K. Smith, pp. 198-219;
c) William E. Daugherry and Morris Janowitz, A Psychological Warfare Casebook (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore,
19JS), pp. 319-26;
d) Holt and van dc Velde, pp. 159-205;
e) E. Edda Martinez and Edward A. Suchman, "Letters from America and the 1948 Elections in Italy", The Public
Opinion Quarterly [Princeton University), Spring 1950, pp. 111-25.
8. Cited in Smith, p. 202, no date of issue given.
9. Tom Braden, "I'm Glad the CIA is 'Immoral'", Saturday Evening Post, 20 May 1967; Braden had been a high-
ranking CIA officer.
10. Miles Copeland, Without Cloak and Dagger (New York, 1974), pp. 235-6; also published as The Real Spy
World.
11. CIA memorandum to the Forty Committee (National Security Council), presented to the Select Committee on
Intelligence, US House of Representatives (The Pike Committee) during dosed hearings held in 1975. The bulk of
the committee's report which contained this memorandum was leaked to the press in February 1976 and first
appeared in book form as CIA — The Pike Report (Nottingham, England, 1977). The memorandum appears on
pp. 204-5 of this book. (See also: Notes: Iraq.)
12. Stephen Goode, The CIA (Franklin Watts, Inc., New York, 1982], p. 45; William R Corson, The Armies of
Ignorance: The Rise of the American Intelligence Empire (The Dial Press, New York, 1977) pp. 29S-9. Corson
had an extensive career in military intelligence and was Staff Secretary of the President's Special Group Joint
DOD-CIA Committee on Counterinsurgency R&D.
13. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United Stales: Harry S, Truman, 1947 (U.S. Government Printing Office,
Washington, 1963) pp. 178-9.
14. New York Times, 8 April 1948.
15. Ibid., 12 April 1948.
16. Smith, p. 200.
17. Ibid., p. 202.
18. New York Times, 15 April 1948,
3. GREECE 1947 to early 1950s
1. Jorge Semprun, What a Beautiful Sunday! (English translation, London, 1983), pp. 26-7; Semprun wrote the
screenplays for '7.' and "La Guerre est finie'.
395
KILLING HOPE
2. For a summary of some of the literature about ELAS and EAM, see Todd Gitlin, "Counter-Ins urgency: Myth and
Reality in Greece" in David Horowitz, ed., Containment and Revolution (Boston, 1967) pp. 142-7, See also D,F,
Fleming, The Cold War and its Origins, 1911-1960 (New York, 1961) pp. 183-5; Howard K. Smith, The Slate of
Europe (London, 1930} pp. 225-30; William Hardy McNeil!, The Greek Dilemma: War and Aftermath (US,
1947) passim.
3. For accounts of the thoroughly unprincipled British policy in Greece and its dealings with collaborators during
1944-46, sec Fleming, pp. 174-87; Smith, pp. 227-31, 234; Lawrence S. Wittner, American Intervention in
Greece, 1943-1949 (Columbia University Press, NY, 1982) passim.
4. Churchill quote: Kati Marron, The Polk Conspiracy: Murder and Cover-Up in the Case of CBS News
Correspondent George Polk (New York, 1990), p. 23. EAM sign: Hearst Metrotone News, N.Y., film shot 3
November 1944, copy in author's possession.
5. Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 16 October 346, column 887 [reference is made here to Bevin's
statement of 10 August). Set also Christopher Simpson, Blau/hack: America's Recruitment of Nazis and its
Effects on the Cold War (New York, 1988), p. 8 1.
6. Gitlin, p. 157; Winner, p. 25.
7. Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. VI, Triumph and Tragedy (London, 1954), pp. 198, 255. For
further evidence of Soviet non-intervention, see Wittner, pp. 26-7.
8. Fleming, p. 182; see also Smith, p. 228.
9. See sources listed in notes 2 and 3 above; see also James Becket, Barbarism in Greece (New York, 1970) p. 6;
Richard Barnet, Intervention and Revolution (London, 1970) pp. 99-101; Edgar O'Ballance, The Greek Civil
War, 1944-1949 (London, 1966) pp. 155, 167.
10. Smith, p. 232. To capture the full flavor of how dreadful the Greek government of that time was, see Marton, op.
cit., passim. This book recounts the story of how the Greek authorities, with US approval, fabricated a case ro
prove that CBS news correspondent George Polk had been murdered by communists, and not by the government,
because he was about to reveal serious corruption by the prime minister.
11. Stephen G. Xydis, Greece and the Great Powers, 1944-1947 (Institute for Balkan Studies, Thessaloniki, Greece,
1963) p. 479, information from the archives of the Greek Embassy in Washington.
12. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Vol. V [U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1971) p.
222.
13. New York Times Magazine, 12 October 1947, p. 10.
14. Foreign Relations, op. cit., pp. 222-3.
15. Cited in Heming, p. 444.
16. Barnet, p. 109.
17. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1947 (U.S. Government Printing Office,
Washington, 1963) p. 177.
18. Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (London, 1962) p. 164. Djilas was imprisoned in 1962 for divulging
state secrets in this book.
19. For details of the American military effort:
a) O'Ballance, passim
b) Winner, p. 242
c) CIA Report to the President, March 1948, appendices D and F, Declassified Documents Reference System
(Arlington, Va.) 1977, document 168A
d) Department of the Army internal memorandum, 15 June 1954, DDRS 1980, document 253C
e) Simpson, pp. 81-2 (Secret Army Reserve)
20. O'Ballance, p. 156.
21. Ibid., p. 173
22. Christopher M. Woodhouse, 17>eSf™£gfe/or Greece, 1941-1949 (London, 1976) pp. 260-1,
23. New York Times, 28 August 1947, p. 1; 5 September 1947, p. 1.
24. Foreign Relations, op. cit., p. 327.
25. John 0. latrides, "American Attitudes Toward the Political System of Postwar Greece" in Theodore A.
Couloumbis and John 0. latrides, eds., Greek-American Relations: A Critical Review (New York, 1980) pp. 64-
65; Lawrence Stern, The Wrong Horse: The Politics of Intervention and the Failure of American Diplomacy
(N.Y. Times Books, 1977) pp. 16-17,
26. Philip Deane, / Should Have Died (Atheneum, New York, 1977) pp. 102, 103; Andreas Papandreou, Democracy
at Gunpoint (Doubleday, New York, 1970) pp. 84-5.
27. Papandreou, p. 80.
28. New York Times, 13 July 1947, p. 11.
29. Ibid., 11 September 1947, p. 19; 17 October 1947, p. 11.
30. Papandieou, p. 5.
3 1. Sent by Horace Smith of AMAG; U.S. National Archives, Record Group 59, cited in Michael M. Amen, American
Foreign Policy in Greece 1944/1949: Economic, Military and Institutional Aspects (Peter Lang Ltd., Frankfurt,
W. Germany, 1978), pp. 114-5.
396
Notes
4. THE PHILIPPINES 1940s and 1950s
1. Charles S. Olcott, The Life of William McKiniey (Boston, 1916) vol. 2, pp. 110-11; from a talk given to a visiting
group from the Methodist Episcopal Church.
2. US actions against Huks during Second World War:
a) D.M. Condit, Bert H. Cooper, Jr., et al.. Challenge and Response in Internal Conflict, Volume 1, The Experience in
Asia (Center for Research in Social Systems, The American University, Washington, D.C., 1968), p. 48 1, research
performed for the Department of the Army.
b) Luis Taruc, Born of the People (New York, 1953, although completed in June 1949) pp. 147-62, 186-211, the
autobiography of the Huks' commander-in-chief who surrendered to the government in 1954.
c) William J. Pomeroy, An American Made Tragedy (New York, 1974) pp. 74-7; Pomeroy is an American who served
in the Philippines during the war where he encountered the Huks. After the war, he returned to fight with them
he until he was captured in 1952,
d) George E. Taylor, The Philippines and the United States: Problems of Partnership (New York, 1964) p. 122 (see
note 13 below).
e) Eduardo Lachica, Hut Philippine Agrarian Society in Revolt (Manila, 197]) pp. 112-3, 116-7.
f) Philippines: A Country Study (Foreign Area Studies, The American University, Washingron, D.C., 1983-84) p. 43,
prepared for the Department of the Army.
3. Taruc, chaprer 22; Pomeroy, pp. 77-8; Taylor, pp. 116-20,
4. New York Times, 19 December 7952, p. 13
5. Philippines: A Country Study, p. 44
6. New York Times, 5 January 1946, p. 26
7. Hearings before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in executive session, 7 June 1946, released in 1977, p.
3 1. Arnold was the Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff, Operations Division, War Department General Staff.
8. American servicemen's protests: New York Times, 8 January 1946, p. 3; 11 January, p. 4; for more information
see Mary-Alice Waters, GJ. 's and the Fight Against War (New York, 1967), pamphlet published by Young
Socialist magazine.
9. New York Times, 20 May 1946, p. 8; 2 June, p. 26; 4 June, p. 22 (letter from Tomas Confessor, prominent
Filipino political figure, detailing the illegality of not seating the men); 18 September, p. 4; 19 September, p, 18;
Pomeroy, p. 20; Taruc, pp. 214-27; Lachica, pp. 120-1.
10. New York Times, 12 March 1947, p. 15; the words are those of ihe Times: Lachica, p. 121.
11. Pomeroy, p. 28, explains how this came about.
12. Taruc, chapters 23 and 24; Pomeroy, p. 78; the Philippine Army reported that 600 deaths had occurred from their
incursions into Huk areas in the monrh following the election (New York Times, 20 May 1946, p. 8) but no
breakdown between military and non-military casualties was given in the press account; see also Lachica, p, 121.
13. Taylor, pp. 114, 115. The book was published by Frederick A. Praeger, Inc. for the Council.on Foreign Relations,
the ultra high-level think-tank whose officers and directors at the time included Allen Dulles, David Rockefeller,
and John J. McCloy. Praeger, it was later disclosed, published a number of books in the 1960s under CIA spon-
sorship. This book, though generally reasonable on most matters, descends to the puerile and semi-hysterical
when discussing the Huks or 'communism'.
14. Department of State, Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America, 1776-1949
(Washington, 1974) pp. 84-9; Pomeroy, pp. 21-3; Taylor, p. 129,
15. New York Times, 1 July 1946, $50 million furnished; 11 February 1950, p. 6, 5163.5 million furnished under rhc
1947 agreement.
16. Edward G. Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars (New York, 1972) passim; Stephen Shalom, "Counter-Insurgency in
the Philippines" in Daniel Schirmerand Stephen Shalom, eds,. The Philippine Reader (Boston, 1987) pp. 112-3.
17. William Worden, 'Robin Hood of the Islands', Saturday Evening Post, 12 January 1952, p. 76.
18. Lansdale, pp. 24-30, 47.
19. Joseph Rurkhoider Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (New York, 1976) p. 95 (see note 30 for Smith's back-
ground).
20. Lansdale, pp. 72-3.
21. Ibid., pp. 47-59.
22. [bid., pp. 70-1, 81-3, 92-3; Smith, p, 106; Taruc, pp. 68-9; for further description of this propaganda campaign,
see Shalom, pp. 115-6.
23. Col. L. Flercher Prouty, US Air Force, Ret., The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the World
(Baliantine Books, New York, 1974, paperback) pp. 38-9.
24. Ibid., pp. 102-3.
25. Smith, p. 95, quoting CIA officer Paul Lineberger.
26. New York Times, 16 October 1953, p. 26
27. Interviews by author Thomas Buell of Ralph Lovert, CIA Chief of Station in the Philippines in the early 1950s,
and of Lansdale; cited in Raymond Bonner, Waltzing With a Dicatator: The Marcoses and the Making of
American Policy (New York, 1987) pp. 39-40. See also New York Times, 31 March 1997, p.l
28. Bonner, p. 41
29. Sherman Adams, Firsthand Report (New York, 1961) p. 123.
30. For an overall derailed description of CIA manipulation of Philippine political life, and of Magsaysay in particu-
397
KILLING HOPE
lar, see Smith, chapters 7, 15, 16, 17. Smith was a CIA officer who, in the early 1950s, worked in the Far East
Division, which includes the Philippines, concerned with political and psychological-warfare matters.
31. Smith, p. 280
32. Buell interview of Lovett (see note 27), cited in Bonner, p. 42.
33 . Reader's Digest, April 1963, article entitled "Democracy Triumphs in rhe Philippines".
34. Smith, p. 290
35. House Bill No. 6584, Republic Act No. 1700, approved 20 June 1957.
36. Huks' condition: New York Times, 3 April 1949, p. 20; 30 June 1950, p. 4.
37. Lachica, p. 131
38. Taylor, p. 192
5. KOREA 1945-1953
1. New York Times, 1 October 1950, p. 3.
2. The U.S. Imperialists Started the Korean War is the subtle title of rhe book published in Pyongyang, North
Korea, 1977, pp. 109-10.
3. Radio address of 13 April 1950, reprinted in The DepartmentofState Bulletin, 24 April 1950, p. 627.
4. For a discussion of the war's immediate origin, see:
a) Karunakar Gupta, "How Did the Korean "War Begin?", The China Quarterly (London) October /December 1972,
No. 52, pp. 699-716.
b) "Comment: The Korean War", The China Quarterly, April/June 1973, No. 54, pp. 354-68. This consists of.
responses to Gupta's article in issue No. 52 and Gupta's counter-response.
c) New York Times, 26 June 1950. Page 1 — South Korea's announcement about Haeju. Page 3 — North Korea's
announcement about Haeju.
d) Glenn D. Paige, The Korean Decision (June 24-30, 19S0) (New York, 1968) passim, particularly p. 130.
e) I.F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War (New York, 1952) chapter 7 and elsewhere.
5. John Gunther, The Riddle ofMacAnbur (London, 1951), pp. 151-2.
6. New York Times, 25 July 1950, p, 4; 30 July, p. 2.
7. Khrushchev Remembers (London, 1971) chapter 11. Study of transcription vs. book: John Merrill, Book
Reviews,/owrw a/ ofKorean Studies (University of Washington, Seattle) Vol. 3, 1981, pp. IS 1-91.
8. Joseph C, Goulden, Korea: The Untold Story of the War (New York, 19S2), p. 64,
9. New York Times, 26 June 1950.
10. Ibid., 1 October 1950, p. 4.
11. Goulden, pp. 87-8; Stone, pp. 75,77.
12. For further discussion of the UN's bias at this time see Jon Halliday, "The United Nations and Korea", in Frank
Baldwin, ed., Without Parallel: The American-Korean Relationship Since 1945 (New York, 1974), pp. 109 A 2.
13. Trygve Lie, In the Cause of Peace [New York, 1954) chapters IS and 19.
14. Shirley Hazzard, Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case (New York, 1990), pp. 13-
22. In his book, p. 389, Lie states that it was he who initiated this practice.
15. CIA memorandum, 28 June 1950, Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington, Virginia) Retrospective
Volume, Document 33C,
16. Stone, pp. 77-8.
17. The full text of the Security Council Resolution of 7 July 1950 can be found in rhe New York Times, 8 July 1950,
p. 4.
18. Dwight Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (New York, 1963) p. 340,
19. For a discussion of post-war politics in South Korea see:
a) Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945-1947
(Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1981) passim.
b) E. Grant Meacte, American Military Government in Korea (King's Crown Press, Columbia University, New York,
1951) chapters 3-5.
c) George M. McCunc, Korea Today (Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, 1950) passim, pp. 46-50 (KPR).
Professor McCune worked with the US Government on Korean ptoblems during World War II.
d) D, F, Fleming, The Cold War and' its Origins, 1917-1960 (Doubleday & Co., New York, 1961) pp. 589-97.
e) Alfred Crofts, "The Case of Korea: Our Falling Ramparts", The Nation (New York) 25 June 1960, pp. 544-8.
Crofts was a member of the US Military Government in Korea beginning in 1945.
20. Crofts, p. 545,
21. Gunther, p, 165.
22. Crofts, p. 545.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., p. 546.
25. Collaborators: Cumings, pp. 152-6; Meade, p, 6 1 ; McCune, p. 51; plus elsewhere in these sources, as well as in
Fleming and Crofts, Japanese and collaborators retaining positions to thwart the KPR; Cumings, pp. 138-9.
26. McCune, pp. 83-4,129-39,201-9.
27. 1946 election: Mark Gayn, Japan Diary (New York 1948) p, 398; 1948 election: Crofts, p. 546; Halliday, pp.
117-22; 1950 election and US warning: Fleming, p. 594. Fora discussion ofRhee's thwarting of honest elections
398
Notes
in 1952 and later, and his consistently tyiannieal rule, sec William J. Lederer, A Nation of Sheep (W.W. Norton
& Co., New York, 1961), chapter 4,
28. Gunther, pp. 166-7.
29. Gayn,p. 388.
30. Ibid., p. 352.
3 1. John Kie-Chiang Oh, Korea: Democracy on Trial (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1968) p. 15.
32. The Nation (New York), 13 August 1949, p, 152.
33. Gunther, p. 171.
34. Oh, p. 206; see also New York Times, 11 April 1951, p. 4 for an account of a massacre of some 500 to 1,000
people in March in the same place, which appears to refer to the same incident.
35. Jon Halliday, "The Political Background", in Gavan McCormack and Mark Selden, eds., Korea, North and
South: The Deepening Crisis [New York, 1978) p. 56.
36. New York Times, 11 April 19J1, p.4.
37. Rene Cutforth, "On the Korean War", The Listener (BBC publication, London) 11 September 1969, p. 343.
38. Gregory Henderson, Korea: The Politics ofthe Vortex (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1968) p.
167.
39. New York Times, 9 February 1951, George Barrett,
40. Goulden, pp. 471-2, This information derives from Goulden's interview of Tofte.
41. New York Times, 27 November 1951, p, 4.
42. Eugene Kinkead, Why They Collaborated (I A ndon, 1960) p. 17; published in the US in 1959 in slightly different
form as In Every War But One, The Army study was not contained in any one volume, but was spread out over
a number of separate reports. Kinkead's book, written with the full co-operation ofthe Army, is composed of a
summary of some of these reports, and interviews with many government and military officials who were directly
involved in or knowledgeable about the study or the subject. For the sake of simplicity, I have referred to the
book as if it were the actual study.
It is to the Army's credit that much ofthe results ofthe study were not kept secret; the study, nonetheless, con-
tains some anti-communist statements ofthe most bizarre sort: lying is often punished in China by death ... com-
munists live like animals all their lives ... [pp. 190, 193]
43. Keesings Contemporary Archives, 5-12 January 1952, p. 11931, an announcement on 31 December 1951 from
General Ridgeway's headquarters,
44. Kinkead, p. 34.
45. Robert J. Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology ofTatnlism: A Study of Brainwashing' in China (London,
1961), p, 4
46. John Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control (New York, paperback edi-
tion, 1988), p. 25, based on CIA documents.
47. Sunday Times (London), 6 July 1975, p. 1. Narut at the time was working at a OS naval hospital in Naples, Italy,
and made his remarks at a NATO-sponsored conference held in Oslo, Norway the week before.
48. Kinkead, p. 31.
49. Ibid., pp. 17,34.
50. ibid., pp. 105-6.
51. Ibid., p. 197.
52. For 3 concise description of the "terror bombing" of 1952-53, see John Gittings, "Talks, Bombs and Germs:
Another Look at the Korean War\journal of Contemporary Asia (London) Vol. 5, No. 2, 1975, pp. 212-6.
53. Air Force Communique, 2 February 1951, cited by Stone, p. 259
54. Military Situation in the Far East, Hearings Before the Senate Committees on Armed Services and Foreign
Relations, 25 June 1951, p. 3075.
55. Louis Heren, "The Korean Scene", in Rear-Admiral H.G. Thursfield, ed., Br assey's Annual: The Armed Forces
Year-Book 1951 (London, 1951) p. 110.
56. San Francisco Chronicle, 15 December 1977, p. 11, based on documents released under the Freedom of
Information Act,
57. New York Times, 12 November 195 1, p. 3.
58. Ibid., 14 November 1951, p. 1.
6. ALBANIA 1949-1953
1. Douglas Sutherland, The Fourth Man [London, 1980) p. 88.
2. Thomas Powers, TheMan Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York, 1979), p. 54.
3. Nicholas Bethell, The Great Betrayal: The Untold Story ofKhn Phithy's Biggest Coup (London, 1984) passim,
for the most detailed discussion of the recruitment, training and fate of the emigres (published in New York,
1984 as Betrayed). See also Bruce Page, David Leitch, and Philip Knightly, The Philhy Conspiracy (New York,
1968) pp. 196-203.
4. Kim Philby, My Silent War (Great Britain, 1968), p. 117.
5. E, Howard Hunt, Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent (London, 1975) p. 93.
6. See note 3 above.
7. Political background of the emigres: New York Times, 20 June 1982, p, 22; Bethell, passim; Christopher
399
KILLING HOPE
Simpson, Blowhack: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York, 1988), p. 123
(Xhafer Deva).
8. Radio station, unrest: New York Times, 31 March 1951, p. 5; 9 April 19:51, p. 1;26 September 1951.
9. Philby.p. 118,
10. New York 11 A , 2 7 March 1950; 9 April 1951, p. 1.
11. Bethell, p. 183.
12. New York Times, 9 April 1951, p. 1.
13. Betheli, p. 200,
7. EASTERN EUROPE 1948-1956
1. New York Times, 29 September 1954.
2. The story of Operation Splinter Factor comes from the book of the same name by Stewart Steven published in
London in 1974. Steven, a veteran British journalist and Editor of The Mail OH Sunday' (London), provides much
greater derail than the short summary appearing here. He presents a strong case, and one has to read the entire
book to appreciate this. Nonetheless, his central thesis remains undocumented. Steven states that this thesis —
Allen Dulles instigating jo2ef Swiatlo to use Noel Field in the manner described — comes from personal inter-
views with former members of the CIA, the SIS (the British Secret Intelligence Service) and other people involved
in the conspiracy who insisted on remaining anonymous.
Flora Lewis, the Washington Post correspondent who wrote Red Pawn: The Story of Noel Field {New York,
1965; published in London the same year as The Man Who Disappeared: The Strange History of Noel Field),
stated in that book that she ran into an "official barrier of silence" when she requested information from
American, Swiss, French, British and German intelligence centers on even "plain questions of dates and places".
And she was not inquiring about Operation Splinter Factor per se, which she knew nothing about, only about
Noel Field a decade after he had been released. Similarly, the US government, without explanation, flatly refused
her access to jozef Swiatlo.
Richard Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (University of
California Press, paperback edition, 1972), p. 238 note, writes that "It was later suggested that Field's attest was
actually part of a British plot to split the East European Communists, as outlined in John le Carre's The Spy
Who Came in From the Cold."
Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (Pocket Books, New York, 1979,
paperback) pp. 405-6, suggests [hat Stewart Steven's "central premise apparently came from someone in the
British SIS who did not like Dulles."
3. New York Times, 25 October 1954, p. I.
4. Ibid., 19 February 1955, p. 1.
5. Ibid., 17 November 1954, p. 1.
6. Blanche W. Cook, The Dec las sifted Eisenhower {New York, 1981) p. 129.
7. Ibid.
8. Cord Meyer, Pacing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA {New York, 1980) p. 120; Steven, pp. 208-9;
Lewis, p, 238 (torture).
9. New York Times, 23 July 1948, p, 5; Robert Bishop and E. S. Crayfield, Russia Astride the Balkans (New York,
1948), pp. 264-71,
10. New York Times, 9 April 1951 (column by C. Subberger).
11. Cook, pp. 130-1; George Clay, "Balloons for a Captive Audience", The Reporter {New York) IS November
1954; Robert T. Holt and Robert W. van de Velde, Strategic Psychological Operations and American Foreign
Policy (University of Chicago Press, I960) ch, VC.
12. New York Times, 24 January 1952, p. 4.
13. Ibid., 30 August 1955, p. 1.
14. Ibid., 30 November 1976,
15. Stephen Ambrose, [ke's Spies (Doubleday & Co., New York, 1981) pp. 235, 238.
8. GERMANY 1950s
1. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New Vork, 1969) p. 260.
2. Ibid.
3. Failure of deindustrializatioru for further discussion, see Richard J. Barnet, Allies: America, Europe and Japan
since the War (London, 1984) pp. 33-9.
4. Dwight Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (New York, 1963) pp. 79-80.
5. Mew York Times, 6 November 1952, p, 3
6. Democratic German Report, 13 February 1953; see description of this publication below.
7. Victor Marchetri and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, (New York, 1975) p. 147.
%, Sabotage and subversion campaign:
a) Democratic German Report, various issues from 1952 to 1957 (consult its annual indexes under Sabotage',
"Espionage 1 , etc.). This was a small English-language news magazine published fortnightly in East Berlin by
Britisher John Peet, former chief correspondent for Reuters News Agency in West Berlin.
b) Nation's Business (published by the United States Chamber of Commerce) April 1952, pp. 25-7, 68-9, discusses
400
Notes
many of the tactics employed.
c) Sanche de Gramont, The Secret War (New York, 1963) pp. 479-80.
d) The New Yorker, 8 September 1951, article on the Investigating Committee of Freedom-minded Jurists of the
Soviet Zone.
e) The Nation, [New York) 24 June 1961, pp. 551-2.
f) Andrew lull), CIA: The Inside Story (Fawcerr, New York, 1962) pp, 133-4, CIA activity in June 1953 East
(ierman uprising.
g) Saturday Evening Post, 6 November 1954, p. 64, refers to CIA-promoted train derailments in East Germany, and
blowing up a railway bridge and promoting factory work slowdowns in unspecified East European countries.
This was part of a series on the CIA prepared in collaboration with the Agency. [See Jonathan Kwitrty, Endless
Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World (New York, 1984) p. 165.]
9, Secret army, hit-list, etc.:
a) Newsweek, 20 October 1952, p. 42.
b) New York Times, 9 October 1952, p. 8; 10 October, p, 3 (under the remarkable headline: "German Saboteurs
Betray U.S. Trust"); 12 October, p. 14.
c) Der Spiegel (West German weekly news magazine), 15 October 1952, pp. 6-8.
d) Democratic German Report, 15 and 24 October 1952; 21 November 1952.
10. New York Times, 14 October 1952, p. 13.
9. IRAN 1953
A general account and overview of the events in this chapter can be obtained from the following:
a) Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran (New York, 1979) passim.
b) Bahman Nirumand, Iran: The New Imperialism in Action (New York, 1969), chapters 2 to 4, particularly the
Iranian case for nationalization, British and American reaction, and post-coup developments.
c) Stephen Ambrose, Ike's Spies (Doubleday & Co., New York, 1981) chapters 14 and 15.
d) Barry Rubin, Paved With Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran (New York, 1980) chapter 3.
e) David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, The Invisible Government (New York, 1965, paperback edition), pp. 116-21.
f) Andrew Tully, CIA: The Inside Story /New York, 1962), pp. 76-84.
g) Fred J. Cook in The Nation (New York) 24 June 1961, pp. 547-51, particularly conditions in Iran after the coup.
1. Roosevelt, p. 8.
2. Ibid., pp, 18-13.
3. Anthony Eden, The Memoirs of Hhe Right Honourable Sir Anthony Eden: Full Circle (London, 1960) p. 194.
4. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York, 1969) pp. 679-85; Eden,
pp. 201-2: Nirumand, pp. 73-4.
5. Roosevelt, p. 107.
6. Ibid., pp. R, 2, 3, 91-2,126, 134,164, 119.
7. Acheson, p. 504.
8. Relations between Mossadegh, Tudeh, and the Soviet Union:
a) Manfred Halpern, "Middle East and North Africa", in C.E. Black and T.P. Thornton, eds., Communism and
Revolution (U.S., 1964) pp. 316-19
b) Donald N, Wilber, Iran: Past and Present (Princeton University Press, Third Edition, 1955), p. 115. Wilber is an
historian who, by his own admission, was also a CIA operative. He claims, in a later book, to have been the prin-
cipal planner for the operation to overthrow Mossadegh {known as Operation AJAX), although he offers no evi-
dence to support this assertion. He also states that Roosevelt's book is full of factual errors. See Adventures in the
Middle East (1986), pp. 187-8.
c) Nirumand, op. cit.
d) Rubin, op. cit.
9. The Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington, Va.) 1979 volume, document 79E.
10. Ibid.
11. Roosevelt interview by Robert Scheer in the Los Angeles Times, 29 March 1979, p. 1.
12. New York Times, 10 July 1953, p. 4.
13. Roosevelt, p. 168.
14. Fitzroy Maclean, Eastern Approaches (London, 1949) pp. 266, 274; Maclean was a British officer in World War
H who kidnapped Zahedi (or Zahidi) to keep him from further aiding the Nazis.
15. The details of the last days of the Mossadegh regime can be found in Roosevelt, chapters 11 and 12; Wilber pp.
124-7 (purposely makes no mention of the CIA — see Note 8); Ambrose, chapter 15, as well as in other books
mentioned in this section.
16. Demonstration: Wilber, p. 125; Roosevelt, p. 179; New York Times, 19 August 1953.
17. Brian Lapping, EndofFjnpire (Great Britain/US 1985) p. 220, based on the Granada Television series ofthe same
name broadcast in Britain in 1985.
IS. Halpern, p. 318; Wilber, p. 125.
19, Henderson meeting with Mossadegh: Ambrose, pp. 208-9, interview with Henderson by the author; Roosevelt,
pp. 183-5.
20, New York Times, 19 August 1953.
401
KILLING HOPE
21. Roosevelt, p. 191-2.
22. New York Times, 20 August 1953, p. 1: The Times (London), 20 August 1953.
23. David Leigh, The Wilson Plot: How the Spycatcbers and Their American Allies Tried to Overthrow the British
Government (New York, 1988) pp. 14-15.
24. Hearings in 1954 before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on "The Mutual Security Act of 1954", pp. 503,
569-70. Stewartwas the Director of the Office of Military Assistance, Department of Defense.
25. Kennetr Love, The American Role in the Pahlevi Restoration on 19 August 1953 {Pahlevi was the Shah's name),
unpublished manuscript residing amongst the Allen Dulles papers, Princeton University; excerpted in Jonathan
Kwitny, Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World (New York, 1984) pp. 164-177.
26. New York Times, 18 January 1953, IV, p. 8.
27. Arthur L. Richards, Director, Office of Greek, Turkish and Iranian Affairs, testimony 17 July 1953, before House
Committee on foreign Affairs in executive session, released in 1981, p. 148.
28. Mew York Times, 21 July 1953.
29. Ibid., 23 August 1953, IV, p. 1.
30. Scheer interview.
3 1. The Guardian (London) 2 January 1984, British Government papers of 1953, released 1 January 1984.
32. Testimony at "Hearings on the Situation in the Middle East", Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 24
February 1956, p. 23.
33. Nirumand, pp. 100-108 explains the contract in derail.
34. Roosevelt's post-CLA career: Scheer interview; Wise and Ross, pp. 116-7; Kwitny, p. 183.
35. Robert Engler, The Politics of Oil: A Study of Private Pou/er and Democratic Directions (N.Y., 19*1) p. 310.
36. San Francisco Chronicle, 26 December 1979.
37. Roosevelt, p. 145.
38. New York Times, 6 August 1954.
39. Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence (New York, 1965) p.216.
40. Fortune (New York) June 1975, p. 90.
41. Love, op. cit., cited in Kwitny, p, 175.
42. Roosevelt, p. 9.
43. Jesse J. Leaf, Chief CIA analyst on Iran for five years before resigning in 1973, interviewed by Seymour Hersh in
the New York Times, 7January 1979.
44. Martin Ennals, Secretary-General of Amnesty International, cited in an article by Reza Baraheni in Matchbox
(Amnesty publication in New York) Fall, 1976.
4J. Tully, p. 76.
46. See, e.g. Michael Klare, War Without End (New York, 1972) pp. 375, 379, 382, based on official US Government
tables covering the 1950s and 1960s.
47. Cook, p. 550.
48. San Francisco Chronicle, 3 March 1980, p. 15.
10. GUATEMALA 1953-1954
The details of the events described in this chapter were derived principally from the following sources:
a) Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala
(Doubleday & Co., New York, 1982) passim, based partly on documents obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act from the State Department, the Defense Department, the CIA, the National Archives, the Navy
Department, and the FBI, as well as documents at the Eisenhower Library and amongst the John Foster Dulles
and Allen Dulles papers at Princeton University, and interviews with individuals who played a role in the events.
This is the primary source where another source is not indicated.
b) Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower (Doubleday & Co., New York, 1981) pp. 222-92, based partly
on documents at the Eisenhower Library and the Guatemala archives at the Library of Congress. The latter is
composed of papers confiscated by the US after the coup.
c) Richard H. Immennan, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (University of Texas Press,
Austin, 1982) pp. 118-22, ch. 6 and 7, based partly on papers at the Truman and Eisenhower Libraries and inter-
views.
d) David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government (New York, 1965, paperback edition) chapter 11.
e) Thomas and Marjorie Melville, The Politics ofLand Ownership (New York, 1971), ch. 4 to 6; published in Great
Britain the same year in slightly different form as Guatemala — Another Vietnam?
1. Schlesinger and Kinzer, pp, 143-4.
2. New York Times, \<5June 19J4.
3. Ibid., 20 May 1954, p. 18.
4. Time magazine, 11 January 1954.
5. Congressional Record, 8 February 1954, p. 1475.
6. T7»M!,19July 1954, p. 34.
7. Cook, p, 274; Schlesinger and Kinzer, p. 148.
8. Cook, p. 234.
9. Ibid., pp. 240-41.
402
Notes
10. Schlesinger and Kinzer, p. 12.
11. Cook, pp. 242-3, quoting former Guatemalan Foreign Minister Raul Oesegueda.
12. Schlesinger and Kinzer, p. 61.
13. Washington Post, 15 November 1953, p. 3B.
14. Schlesinger and Kinzer, pp. 58-9,
15. CIA National Intelligence Estimate, 11 March 1952, pp, 1-3, Declassified Documents Reference System
(Woodbridge, Connecticut) 1982 Volume, Document no. 6.
16. Immerman, pp. 118-22.
17. Thomas P. McCann, An American Company: The Tragedy of 'United Fruit (New York, 1976) p. 49. McCann had
been an official with United Fruit. Almost all sources differ as to the amount offered by the Guatemalan
Government, ranging from McCann's figure to almost $1,200,000.
18. Schlesinger and Kinzer, pp. 106-7 and passim; McCann, chapter 4.
19. Schlesinger and Kinder, p. 52,
20. Ibid., pp. 102-3,
21. Derived primarily from Schlesinger and Kinzer, to a lesser extent from the other sources listed at the beginning of
this section, as well as those specified below.
22. Dwight Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandatefor Change, 1953-1956 (New York, 1963) p. 424.
23. Cook, pp. 270-71.
24. Ibid., pp. 249-52.
25. Time, 8 February 1954, p. 36.
16. New York Times, 30 January 1954, pp. 1, 6.
27. McCann, p. 60.
28. David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watcht Twenty five Years of Peculiar Service (Atheneum, New York, 1977) pp:
34-5.
29. Life magazine, 5 July 1954, p. 8.
30. Newsweek, 5 July 1954, p. 46.
3 1. State Department memo, 23 June 1954, cited in Schlesinger and Kinzer, p. 189,
32. James Hagerty, White House Press Secretary, Diaries 1954 (Eisenhower Library), 24 June 1954, cited in
Schlesinger and Kinaer, p. 181.
33. Brian Urquhart, Hamntarskjold (Knopf, New York, 1972), pp, 91-4.
34. New York Times, 24 June 1954; Schlesinger and Kinzer, p. 175.
35. Guillermo Toriello, La Batalla de Guatemala (Mexico City, 1955) p. 189; the Guatemalan Foreign Minister relat-
ed what he was told by Col. Diaz; cited in Schlesinger and Kinzer, p. 207.
id. Cook, p. 285; Wise and Ross, p. 192-3.
37. Paul Kennedy, The Middle Beat (Teachers College Press, Columbia University, New York, 1971) p. 142;
Schlesinger and Kinzer, pp. 219-20.
38. Time, 12 July 1954, p. 3 1.
39. Wise and Ross, pp, 194-5; John Gerassi, The Great Fear in Latin America (New York, 1965, revised edition) p.
183.
40. Melville, p. 93.
41. Schlesinger and Kinzer, pp. 218-9.
42. Ibid., pp. 60, 221-2; Cook, p. 231; Gerassi, p. 183.
43. Wise and Ross, p. 187.
44. Schlesinger and Kinzer, 222-3.
45. Hilda Gadea, Ernesto: A Memoir of Che Guevara (London, 1973, translated from the Spanish) p. 54.
46. New York Times, 1 July 1954.
47. CIA memo, 16 August 1954, Declassified Documents Reference System (Woodbridge, Connecticut) 1983
Volume, Document No. 32,
48. Statement before the Subcommittee on Latin America, House Select Committee on Communist Aggression, 8
October 1954, as reprinted in Department of State Bulletin, 8 November 1954, p. 690.
49. Eisenhower, pp, 421-7,
50. New York Times, 28 October 1955.
11. COSTARICA Mid-1950s
1. F's Angeles Times, 10 March 1975.
2. MiamiHerald, 10 March 1975.
3. Christian Science Monitor (Boston), 11 March 1975. Notes one to three all refer to the same television interview
of Figueres in Mexico City, 9 March 1975. Figueres may have admitted to his CIA connections at this time
because shortly before, Philip Agee's book had come out identifying Figueres as "a long-time Agency collabora-
tor". (Inside the Company: CIA Diary, New York, 1975, p. 244; published in Great Britain in 1974.)
4 David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government (New Yotk, 1965, paperback edition) p. 127.
5' Ibid., pp. 127-8.
(L Charles D. Ameringer, Democracy in Costa Rica (Praeger, New York and Hoover Institution Press, Stanford
University, California, 1982) pp. 83-5.
403
KILLING HOPE
7. John Gerassi, The Great Fear in Latin America (New York, 1965, revised edition) p. 208.
8. Miami Herald, 13 February 1971.
9. Wise and Ross, p. 128.
10. Charles D. Ameringer, Don Pepe, A Political Biography of Jose Figueres of Costa Rica (University of New Mexico
Press, 1978] pp. 124-5.
11. Washington Post, 9fatiuziy 19S3; Wise and Ross, p. 127.
12. SYRIA 1956-1957
1. Department ofSlate B»//e«n ("Washington J, IS June 1956, pp. 999-1000.
2. U.S. Mutual Security Act of 1955, Sections M2(a)(4) and 413.
3. Declassified Documents Reference System:
1992 volume: document no. 2326, 10 May 1955; no. 2663, 21 September 1955; no. 2973, 9 January 1956; no. 2974,
16 January 1956.
1993 volume: documentno. 2953,14 December 1955; no. 2954, 26 January 1956; no. 2955,27 January 1956.
With the exception of no. 2663, all the documents bear the heading ofthe Operations Coordinating Board, a subcom-
mittee of the NSC which coordinated covert activities.
4. Ibid., 1993 volume, no. 2953,14 December 1955, p. 4.
5. Wilbur Crane Eveland, Ropes of Sand: America's Failure in the Middle East (W. W. Norton & Co., New York,
1980) p. 122.
6. Patrick Seale, The Struggle for Swia: A Study of Post-War Arab Politics, 1945-1958 (London, 1965) pp. 283-
306: Eveland, pp. 135,169-73.
7. Eveland, p. 182.
8. 1956 plot and background: Eveland, chapters 11-20; New York Times, 10 April 1956; 17 October 1956.
P. DwightD. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956-1961 (New York, 1965) p. 196,
10. Declassified Documents Reference System, 1981 volume, document no. 26E, 22 March 1957.
11. Ibid., 1985 volume, document no. 283, March 1957.
12. Ibid., 1981 volume, documentno. 471B, 17June 1957.
13. 1957 plot: Eveland, pp. 253-4; New York Times, 14 August 1957, pp. 1, 6; 15 August, pp. 1,4.
14. New York Times, 17 August 1957, p. 3,
15. Ibid., p. 14.
16. Eisenhower, p. 196.
17. CIA internal report, auvhor's name deleted, 18 June 1962, the result of conversations with "Western diplomats"
concerning the Kennedy-Macmillan meeting, in Declassified Documents Reference System, 1975 volume, docu-
ment no. 240 A.
13. THE MIDDLE EAST 1957-1958
1. Wilbur Crane Eveland, Ropes ofSand: America's Failure in the Middle FMst [W. W, Norton & Co., New York,
1980) p. 240. What Evefand calls "Russia's threat" may not have been all that it appeared to be. Kennert Love
(see note re him in chapter) reported later that the CIA had manufactured several reports of Russian military
activity which were without any basis in fact, to induce France and Great Britain to call a cease fire — Suez: The
Twice-Fought War (Great Britain, 1969), p. 615.
2. Events in Jordan: New York Times, 5 April 1957, p, 1: 25 April, pp. 13; 26 April, p. 1; the words ofthe "inter-
vention" quotation are those of the Times, 26 April.
3. Richard Barnet, Intervention and Revolution, (London, 1972) p. 149.
4. Washington Post, 18 February 1977.
5. Kennert Love, op. cit., p, 655.
6. DwightD. Eisenhower, Tie While House Years: Waging Peace, 1956-1961 (New York, 1965) p. 201.
7. Declassified Documents Reference System, (Arlington, Va.) 1981 volume, document 47 IB, 17June 1957.
B. Eisenhower, p. 198.
P. Emmet John Hughes, The Ordeal of Power [London, 1963) pp. 253-4; the remark was made to Hughes "a few
months after Hertertook office" on 22 February 1957.
10. Barry Blechman and Stephen Kaplan, Force Without War: US. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument (The
Brookings Institution, Washington, 1978) p. 84; although the study was undertaken at the Pentagon's request
and with its full co-operation, the book stipulates that the views expressed are the authors' alone.
11. Events concerning Syria: New York Times, 6 September 1957, pp. 1, 2; 8 September, p. 3: 10 September, pp. 1, 8,
9; 11 September, p. 10; 12 September, p. 1; 13 September, pp. 1, 3; Barnet, pp. 149-51: Eisenhower, pp. 196-
203; Patrick Seale, The Struggle for Syria: A Study ofPost-War Arab Politics, 1945-19SS (London, 1965) p. 303.
12. The norm has been for the CIA to be accused of involvement in a coup which the Agency or its scribes deny, fn
this case, it appears that the young CIA had a need to blow its own horn and it encouraged the word to be passed
that it had been the motivating force behind the Egyptian army coup. But this assertion, found often in the litera-
ture, has never been accompanied by any clear description of how this took place, not even an explanation of
why the CIA preferred Farouk out and the army in. Miles Copeland, one ofthe Agency's earliest officers and a
great admirer of Kermit Roosevelt, goes to some length in his 1969 book, The Came of Nations, to propagate
the story, but his account is pure crypto-mumbo-jumbo. In the same book, Copeland asserts that the CIA, with
404
Notes
himself personally involved, directed a coup in Syria in 1949, This tale, too, is written in a manner that does not
inspire credibility. It is perhaps relevant that CIA colleague Wilbur Crane Eveland (p. 148) has written that "I'd
already had evidence that Copeland tended to exaggerate."
13. Saud, Illah, and plot against Nasser: Eveland, pp. 243-4.
14. Ibid., pp. 246-8.
15. Plots:
a) New York Times, 8, 13-15 August 1957; 21 October 1957; 24, 28, December 1957; 14 February 1958; 6-8, 14,
29 March 1958; 8 October 1958.
b) Eveland, p. 273.
c) Eisenhower, pp. 263-4.
d) The Times (London), numerous references from July 1957 to October 1958 — see the newspaper's index under
"Egypt" and "Syria": "espionage" and "political situation".
16. Eveland, p. 292n.
17. Soviet proposals: New York Times, 6 September 1957, p. 2; 11 September, p. 10.
18. Eisenhower, p. 269.
19. David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government [New York, 1965, paperback edition) p. 337.
20. 1957 election and aftermath: Eveland, pp. 248-53, 256; Eisenhower, p. 265; Barnet, pp. 143-8.
21. Eisenhower quotations: Eisenhower, pp. 266-7.
22. Dulles news conference, 20 May 1958: Department of State Bulletin, 9 June 1958, p. 945.
23. Barnet, pp. 147-8.
24. Eisenhower, p. 268.
25. Eveland, p. 276.
26. Robert Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors (US, 1965), p, 450.
27. Eisenhower, p. 273.
28. Murphy, p. 445,455.
29. Eisenhower, p, 275.
30. Eveland, pp. 294-5; Eisenhower refers to similar situations, p. 277.
3 1. Eveland, pp. 295-6.
32. Wise and Ross, pp. 337-8; news item from the S(. Louis Post Dispatch, 23 July 1958, cited on p. 338,
11. Blechman and Kaplan, p. 253.
34. Claudia Wright, New Statesman magazine (London), 15 July 1983, p. 20. She doesn't say how the Soviets found
out about the plan,
35. Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, The Select Committee to Study
Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate), 20 November 1975, p. 181, foot-
note. In the report, Kassem is referred to as "an Iraqi colonel". See also: Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the
Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York, 1979) pp. 161, 163 for a discussion of how President
Eisenhower would have to have given the approval for the action against Kassem.
36. See, e.g., Eisenhower, pp. 274-5.
37. Ibid., pp. 290-1.
14. INDONESIA 1957-1958
1. Joseph Burkholder Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1976) p, 205.
2. New York Times, 18 May 1956.
3. Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book 4, Final Report of The Select
Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (U.S. Senate), April 1976,
p. 133.
4. New York Times, 12, 30 April 1955; 3, 4 August 1955; 3 September 1955; 22 November 1967, p. 23.
5. John Discoe Smith, / Was a CIA Agent in India (India, 1967) passim; New York Times, 25 October 1967, p. 17;
22 November, p. 23; 5 December, p. 12; Harry Rositske, The KGB; The Eyes of Russia (New York, 1981), p.
164.
6. Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, The Select Committee to Study
Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (U.S. Senate), 20 November 1975, p, 4, note.
7. David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government (New York, 1965, paperback edition) pp. 149-50.
8. Julie Soutbwood and Patrick Flanagan, Indonesia: Law, Propaganda and Terror (London, 1983) pp. 26-7,
9. Wise and Ross, p. 148.
10. J.B.Smith, pp. 210-11.
11. Ibid., pp. 228-9.
12. Ibid., p. 240.
13. Ibid,, pp. 229,246.
14. Ibid., p. 243.
15. Srx-blackmail operations: ibid., pp. 238-40, 248. Smith errs somewhat in his comment about Round Table. The arti-
cle's only [apparent) reference to the Soviet woman is in the comment on p. 133; "Other and more scandalous rea-
sons have been put forward for the President's leaning towards the Communist Party. *
16. New York Times, 26 January 1976.
405
KILLING HOPE
17. Truman Smith, "The Infamous Record of Soviet Espionage", Reader's Digest, August 1960.
1SJ.B. Smith, pp. 220-1.
1.9 Referred to in a memorandum from Allen Dulles to the White House, 7 April 1961; the memo briefly summarizes
the main points of the US intervention: Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington, Va.) released 18
December 1974.
20. The military operation and the Pope affair:
a) Wise and Ross, pp. 145-56.
b) Christopher Robbins, Air America (US, 1979), pp. 88-94.
c) Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, US Air Force, Ret., The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the World {New
York, 1974) pp. 155,308,363-6.
d) New York Times, 23 March 1958, p. 2; 19 April; 2S May, p. 9.
c) Sukarno, An Autobiography, as told to Cindy Adams {Hong Kong, 1966) pp. 267-71; first printed in the US in
1965; although a poor piece of writing, the book is worth reading for Sukarno's views on why it is foolish to call
him a Communist; how he, as a Third- Worlder who didn't toe the line, was repeatedly snubbed and humiliated
by the Eisenhower administration, apart from the intervention; and how American sex magazines contrived to
make him look ridiculous.
f) J, B, Smith, pp. 246-7. There appears to be some confusion about the bombing of the church. Smith states that it
was Pope who did it on 18 May before being shot down. Either he or other chroniclers have mixed up the events
of April and May.
21. Wise and Ross, p. 145.
15. WESTERN EUROPE 1950s and 1960s
1. Richard Fletcher, "How CIA Money Took the Teeth Out of British Socialism", in Philip Agee and Louis Wolf,
eds., Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe (New Jersey, 1978) p. 200.
2. The CCF, its activities and its publications:
a) For a detailed, and sympathetic, history of the CCF, see Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for
Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York, 1989), passim; CCF magazines
— chapters 5 and 11; CCF books — Appendix D, plus elsewhere;
b) Russell Warren Howe, "Asset Unwitting: Covering the World for the CIA", MORE (New York], May 1978, pp.
20-27, a magazine associated with the Columbia University School of Journalism;
c) New York Times, 26 December 1977, p. 37; 27 April 1966, p. 28; 8, 9 May 1967, and other issues in 1967;
d) Commentary magazine (New York), September 1967;
e) Fletcher, pp. 188-200.
Amongst other non-European CCF magazines were: Thought, and Quest in India, Aportes, Cademos Brasileiros,
and Informes de China in Latin America, Black Orpheus, and Transition in Africa, Horison, Social Science
Review, Jiytt and Solidarity in Asia, and Hiwar in Beirut.
3. Ray Cline, Secrets, Spies and Soldiers (US, 1976), p. 129.
4. New York Times, 26 December 1977, p. 37.
5. Washington Post, 15 May 1967, p. 1.
6. Forum World Features: Howe, op. cit. Howe is the Forum writer quoted, CIA budget: House Committee report,
cited in Howe, p. 27. For a detailed study of CIA use of American news organizations, see Carl Bernstein, "The
CIA and the Media", Rolling Stone, 20 October 1977, and New York Times, 26 December 1977, pp. 1 and 37.
7. The Nation (New York), 19 June 1982, p. 738. The article reports that some CIA officers have maintained that
Springer was rather liberal in the early 1950s and he was financed ro counter neo-Nazi and rightist elements in
Germany. This should be taken with a grain of salt, for the overriding policy of the American occupation admin-
istration during this period, regardless of the sentiments of any individual American official, was to suppress the
influence of persons and groups to the left of center — Communists, radicals, and social democrats alike; at the
same time, the US authorities were employing "former" Nazis in every area of administration and intelligence
(see chapter on Germany).
8. Tom Braden, 'Tm Glad the CIA is Immoral'," Saturday Evening Post, 20 May 1967.
P. Ibid.
10. Labour Party/CND: Fletcher, pp. 196-7; The Times (London), 5 October 1961,
11. Braden, p. 14.
12. Political parries/CIA:
a) New York Times, 7 and 9 January 1976.
b) Jack Anderson in the San Francisco Chronicle, 11 and 12 November 1981.
c) Coleman, pp. 183-5.
d) Chapman Pincher, Inside Story: A Documentary of the Pursuit of Power (London, 1979) p. 28.
13. Operation Gladio:
a) The Observer (London), 7 June 1992.
b) The Guardian (New York), 5 December 1990, p. 5, article from Milan citing the Italian news magazine Panorama,
Agence France Presse, and other European sources.
c) Washington Post, 14 November 1990, p. A19.
d) Die We/r (Germany), 14 November 1990, p. 7.
406
Notes
e) Los Angeles Times, 15 November 1990, p. A6.
16. BRITISH GUIANA 1953-1964
I. Events of 1953: The Guardian (London), 28 December 1984, for a detailed description of the raw cynicism
behind the British action, based on government documents released in 1984; see also The Times (London) 7 and
10 October 1953; Cheddi Jagan, The Weston Trial (London, 1966) chapters 7 and 8; "The Ordeal of British
Guiana", Monthly Review, (New York) July-August 1964, pp. 16-19.
1. Parliamentary Debates, House ofCommons, 22 October 1953, column 2170, speech by Oliver Lyttleton.
3. Ticket incident: New York Times, 16 October 1953, Jagan, p. 149. Pan Am: Morton Halperin, et al., The
Lawless State (Penguin Books, New York, 1976), p. 47; Christopher Robbins, Air America (New York, 1979), p.
58; CounterSpy magazine (Washington) December 1983-February 1984, p. 21; Trippe was a member of two
long-time CIA fronts: The American Institute for Free Labor Development, and The Asia Foundation (formerly
called National Committee for a Free Asia)
4. ORIT: Jagati, pp. 296-7; Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York, 1975) see index; Survey of the
Alliance for Progress: Labor Policies and Programs, Staff Report of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
Subcommittee on American Republics Affairs, 15 July 1968, pp. 8-9; Serafino Romuatdi, Presidents and Peons:
Recollections ofa Labor Ambassador in Latin America (New York, 1967), p. 346.
5. Events of 1957-59: The Sunday Times (London) 16 and 23 April 1967.
6. New York Times, 22 February 1967, pp. 1,17.
7. The Sunday Times, op. cit.
8. Jagan, p. 304.
9. Richard Barnet, Intervention and Revolution (London, 1972) p. 244.
10. Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days (Boston, 1965) pp. 774-9.
II. San Francisco Chronicle, 21 March 1964, p. 27; New York Times, 31 October 1964, p. 7; The Times (London),
29junel963,p.8.
12. Jagan, p. 255.
13. 1962 strike: New York Times, 22 February 1967, p. 17; 30 October 1994, p. 4 [media):Barnet,'p. 245; Agee, pp.
293-4; Jagan, pp. 252-69; The Times (London) 13 March 1962, p. 10.
14.1963 strike, general description: Jagan, chapters 13 and 14.
15. Parliamentary Debates, House ofCommons, 4 May 1966, columns 1765-7; see also 29 April 1966, columns
1133-4.
16. New York Times, 22 February 1967, p. 17.
17. Thomas J. Spinner Jr., A Political and Social History of Guyana, 1945-1983 (London, 3984) pp. 115-6; Agee, p.
406; New York Times, 4 January 1964, p. 10.
18. The Sunday Times, op. cit.
19. Ibid.
20. New York Times, 11 August 1963, p. 28.
21. Ibid., 11 September 1963, p. 1.
22. The Sunday Times (London) 25 May 1975, p. 4.
23. San Francisco Chronicle, 21 March 1964, p. 27.
24. Jagan, pp. 372-5.
25. New York Times, 31 October 1964, p. 7.
26. The Times (London) 29 June 1963, p. 8: the words are those of The Times.
27. Parliamentary Debates, House ofCommons, 21 April 1964, column 109.
28. The Times (London) 7 December 1964, p. 8.
29. Events of December 1964: The Times (London), 4 to 15 December 1964.
30. The Nation, June 4, 1990, pp. 763-4
31. New York Times, 30 October 1994, p. 4.
32. Ibid., pp. land 4.
33. Ibid., p. 4.
17. SOVIET UNION late 1940s to 1960s
1. Spy Planes:
a) JamesBamford, ThePuzzle Palace (Penguin Books, Great Britain, 1983) pp, 136-9, 180-5.
b) Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, USAF, ret., The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the World (New York,
1974) pp. 167-72, 187-9,369-79,419-29.
c) Sanche de Grarnont, The Secret War (New York, 1963) chapter 9.
d) Harry Rositzke, The CIA's Secret Operations [New York, 19771 p. 23,
e) New York Times, 6 May 1960, p. 7, a list of air incidents to that date.
2. Yeltsin: Los Angeles Times, 13 June 1992; Volkogonov: ibid, 12 November 1992. To add to the confusion, the
New York Times of 12 November reported that Volkogonov said that all 730 airmen, after being interned in
Russian prison camps, had been "sent back home". All attempts by the author to locate Volkogonov's exact tes-
timony have been unsuccessful. It appears that his testimony was never published.
3. New York Times, 12 May 1960.
I
407
KILLING HOPE
4. Emmet John Hughes, Ordeal ofPower (London, 1963) p. 301.
5. Prouty, pp, 399, 421-4, 427.
6. Francis Gary Powers, Operation Overflight (New York, 1970), pp.. 81-5,113 and elsewhere,
7. Prouty, p. 189.
8. New York Times, S May 1960, p. 29.
9. Ibid,, 10 May 1960. The article referred to the continental United States. Whether any Soviet flights had been
made over Alaska, which became a state in 1959, was not mentioned.
10. Caught in The Act: Facts About U.S. Espionage and Subversion Against the U.S.S.R. (Foreign Languages
Publishing House, Moscow, second revised edition, 1963), p. 95.
U. Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York, 1979) pp. 155, 157
12. Emigres, infiltration into the Soviet Union:
a) De Grainont, pp. 185-9,480-6.
h) Konstantin Cherezov, NTS, A Spy Ring Unmasked (Moscow, 1965) passim; the author worked closely with NTS
in 'Western Europe for several years before returning to the Soviet Union.
c) Rositzke, pp. 18-50.
d) Caught in the Act, passim.
e) Wilbur Crane Eveland, Ropes ofSand: America's failure in the Middle East {NY. 1980) p. 263.
f) Kim Philby, My Silent War (MacGibbon and Kee, London 1968) pp. 199-202.
g) Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York, 1975) pp. 204-6.
h) Louis Hagen, The Secret War for Europe (London, 1968) pp. 163-4.
i) Nem York Times, 30 August 195 S, p. 1, training of Eastern Europeans at Fort Bragg, N.C. in guerrilla warfare,
j) Kalian's Business (published by the United States Chamber of Commerce), April 1952, pp. 25-7, 68-9, discusses
many of the sabotage and other tactics employed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
13. Cherezov, passim; de Gramont, pp. 480-6; Marcherti and Marks, p. 165.
14. Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book 1, Final Report of The Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (U.S. Senate), April 1976, p. 193.
15. Book Week {Washington Post), 5 February 1967.
16. Foreign andMilitary Intelligence, op. cit., p. 194.
17. For further discussion of CIAUS1A books and the source of these and other titles, see the references in notes 14
and 15; also Washington Post 28 September 1966; New York Times, 22 March 1967 and 22 December 1977;
Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of
Postwar Europe (New York, 1989), Appendix D and elsewhere; Alexander Kendrick, Prime Time: The Life of
Edward R. Murrow (London, 1970), p. 478; Marchetti and Marks, pp, 180-1; E. Howard Hunt, Undercover:
Memoirs of an American Secret Agent (London, 1975) pp. 70, 132.
18. Marcherti and Marks, pp. 174-8; de Gramont, pp. 486, 488-92.
19. Washington Post, 17 and 20 May 1982; 4 November 1982. For fuller discussions of the use of Nazis and their
collaborators by the US Government in the anti-communist crusade, see: Christopher Simpson, Blotvback:
America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York, 1988), passim, and John Loftus,
The Belarus Secret (New York, 1982), passim.
20. See references for note 12.
2 1 . Hearings before The Select Committee to Study Govcmmenral Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities
(U.S. Senate), Volume 4, 1975; Washington Post, 16 January 1975, p, 18; Rositzke, p. 62.
22. Washington Post, 25 April 1979.
23. Rositzke, pp. 21,33, 37.
24. San Francisco Chronicle, 9 October 1978.
25. Rositzke, p. 15.
18. ITALY 1950s to 1970s
1. Unattributed, dated 19 June 1953; copy reproduced in Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington,
Va.), 1977, document 137A
2. Philip Agee and Louis Wolf, eds., Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe (New Jersey, ]978) pp. 168-9, English
translation of interview with Victor Marcherti in Panorama (Milan, Italy), 2 May 1374, entitled "Le mani suUTtalia".
3. CIA memorandum to The Forty Committee (National Security Council), presented to the Select Committee on
Intelligence, US House of Representatives (The Pike Committee) during closed hearings held in 1975. The bulk of
the committee's report which contained this memorandum was leaked to the press in February 1976 and first
appeared in book form as CIA — The Pike Report (Nottingham, England, 1977). The memorandum appears on
pp. 204-5 of this book. (See the Notes section for Iraq 1972-75 for further information about this report.}
4. Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York, 1975) p. 172; William
Colby, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York, 1978) p. 119.
5. CIA — The Pike Report, p. 193.
6. New York Times, 1 January 1976, p. 1
7. Bob Woodward, VEIL: The Secret Wars ofthe CIA, 1981-1987 (New York, 1987), p. 398.
8. New York Times, 7 January 1976, p. 4.
9. Ibid., p. 1.
408
Notes
10. CIA quote: New York Times, 26 December 1977, p. 37. Daily American: ibid; Carl Bernstein, "The CIA and the
Media", Rolling Stone, 20 October 1977, p. 59; Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms
and the CIA (New York, 1979, paperback edition) p. 414. One of the owners of the newspaper was Robert
Cunningham, a CIA employee from 1956 to 1964. (Washington Post, 19 September 1985, p. A18)
11. Fred Landis, "Robert Moss, Arnaud de Borchgrave, and Right-Wing Disinformation", Covert Action Information
Bulletin (Washington), August-September 1980, p. 43.
12. Colby, p. 124. Colby does not mention which year he's referring to, but in 1955, in a shop stewards' election at
Fiat, the Communist union's share of the vote fell to 39% from 63% the year before. (New York Times, 30
March 1955, p. 9) The Times article stated that the dominance of the Communist union had greatly impaired
Fiat's value for Western defense and its eligibility for offshore procurement orders from the United States.
13. Agee and Wolf, p. 169.
14. Mark Aarons and John Loftus, Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, The Nazis and Soviet Intelligence (New York,
1991), passim
15. Agee and Wolf, p, 171.
16. Colby, chapter 4.
17. The Sunday Times [London) 21 March 1976, p. 34.
13. VHLTNAM 1950-1973
1. he Monde, 13 April 1950, cited in R.E.M, Irving, The First Indochinese War (London, 1975) p. 101.
2. Cited in Hans Askenasy, Are We AH Nazis? (Lyle Stuart, Secaucus, NJ, 1978) p. 64.
3. New York Times, 21 March 1954, p. 3;11 April 1954, IV, p. 5. According to Bernard Fall, Tfcs Two Vietnams
(Frederick A. Fraeger, Publishers, New York, 1967, second revised edition) p. 472, only $954 million of the $ 14
billion had been spent at the time of the ceasefire in 1954.
4. The Pentagon Papers {NY. Times edition, Bantam Books, 1971), p. xi.
5. Ibid., pp. 4, 5, 8, 26.
6. Washington Post, 14 September 1969, p. A25. Lansing was the uncle of John Foster and Allen Dulles. He
appointed them hoth to the American delegation at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1918-19, where it was that
Ho Chi Minh presented his appeal.
7. Ho Chi Minh and Vietminh working with OSS, admirers of the US: Archimedes L.A Parti, Why Vietnam?
Prelude to America's Albatross (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1980), passim. Parti is the former OSS
officer consulted by Ho; Chester Cooper, The Lost Crusade: The Full Story of US Involvement In Vietnam from
Roosevelt to Nixon (Great Britain, 1971) pp. 22, 2.5-7, 40. Cooper was a veteran American diplomat in the Far
East who served as the Assistant for Asian Affairs in the Johnson White House. He was also a CIA officer,
covertly, for all or part of his career.
French collaboration with the Japanese: Fall, pp. 42-9.
Ho Chi Minh not a genuine nationalist: Department of State Bulletin (Washington), 13 February 1950, p. 244,
Dean Acheson; 10 April 1950, Ambassador Loy Henderson; 22 May 1950, Dean Acheson.
Ho Chi Minh's desk: Blanche W. Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower [New York, 1981). p. 184.
Declaration of Independence: Full text can be found in Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works, Volume HJ [Hanoi, 1961),
pp. 17-21.
8. Fall, pp. 122, 124.
9. The Pentagon Papers, p. 5; Fall, p. 473.
10. Fall, p. 473.
11. Christopher Robbins.ytir America (G. P. Putnam, New York, 1979) pp. 59-60.
12. New York Times, 11 April 1954, IV, p. 5.
13. The Pentagon Papers, p. 11.
14. Ibid., p. 36.
15. Ibid., pp. 5, 11; Dwight Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 19S3-19S6 (New York, 1963)
pp. 340-41; Cooper, chapter IV; Sherman Adams, Firsthand Report (New York, 1961) p. 122; Adams was
Eisenhower's White House chief of staff
16. Adams, p. 124.
17. The Pentagon Papers, p, 46.
18. The Times (London) 2 June 1954, quoting from an article by Willoughby.
19. Cooper, p. 72.
20. Bernard Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: Tbe Siege of Dien Bien Phu (Great Britain, 1967) p. 307; Parade maga-
zine {Washington Post) 24 April 1966; Roscoe Drummond and Gaston Coblentz, Duel at the Brink (New York,
1960) pp. 121-2.
21. Joseph Burkholder Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (New York, 1976) pp. 172-4.
22. Ibid., pp. 173-4.
23. Eisenhower: Time magazine, 12 July 1954.
24. US policy toward the Geneva Conference; Cooper, chapter IV; Cooper was a member of the American delegation
at the conference.
25. Fall (Two Vietnams), pp. 153-4.
26. All other actions: Tfce Pentagon Papers, Document No. 15; "Lansdale Team's Report on Covert Saigon Mission
409
KILLING HOPE
in'54 and "55", pp. 53-66.
27. CL. Sulzberger, New York Times, 22 January 1955, p. 10.
28. New York Times, 17July 1955.
29. US Department of Defense, United States - Vietnam Relations, 1945- 67 (the government edition of the Pentagon
Papers) book 2, IV, A. 5, tah 4, p. 66, cited in Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, The Washington
Connection and Third WorldFascism (Boston, 1979) p. 370.
30. j.B.Smith,p. 199.
31. Eisenhower, p. 372.
32. ThePentagonPapers, p. 22.
33. Ibid„p. 25
34. Life magazine, 13 May 1957.
35. ThePentagonPapers, p. 23.
36. Emmet John Hughes, T& Ordeal of Power (London, 1963) p. 208; Hughes was a speech writer for President
Eisenhower.
37. Michael Mare, War Without End (Random House/Vantage Books, New York, 1972) pp. 261-3; David Wise and
Thomas B. Ross, Vie Espionage Establishment [Random House, New York, 1967) p, 152.
38. Time, 30 June 1975, p. 32 of European edition.
39. David Wise, "Colby of CIA— CIA of Colby", New York Times Magazine, 1 Juiy 1973, p. 9.
40. Donald Duncan, The New Legions (London, 1967) pp. 156-9.
41. Newsweek, 22 March 1976, pp. 26,31.
42. Washington Post, 20 March 1982,p. A19.
43. In numerous places; see, e.g., I.F. Stone's Weekly, (Washington), 4 March 1968; "The Thantom Battle' that Led
to War", y.S. News and WorldReport, 23 July 1984, pp. 56-67; Joseph C. Goulden, Truth is theFirst Casualty:
The Gulf of Tonkin Affair — Illusion andReality (Rand McNally &c Co., U.S., 1969), passim.
44. Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington) No. 10, August-September 1980, p. 43.
45- Washington Post, 24 March 1967.
46. Chicago Daily News, 20 October 1965; WashingtonPost, 21 October 1965.
47. Copy of Oglesby's speech in author's possession.
48. WashingtonPost, 12 February 1967.
49. Ibid, 18 December 1966.
50. Alexander M. Haig, Jr. Caveat: Realism, Reagan, andForeignPolicy [New York, 1984), p. 202.
51. New York Times, 28 July 1975, p. 19.
52. New YorkHerald Tribune, 25 April 1965, p. 18.
53. U.S. Assistance Program in Vietnam, Hearings before a Subcommittee ofthe House Committee on Government
Operations, 19 July 1971, p. 189.
54. Ibid, p. 183.
55. Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York, 1975)pp. 236-7.
56. William Colby, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York, 1978) pp. 272, 275-6.
57. Marchetti and Marks, p. 237.
58. Wise, p. 33.
59. New York Times, 3 August 1971, p. 10.
60. Congressional Record, House, 12 May 1966, pp. 9977-78, reprint of an article by Morley Safer of CBS News.
61. Washington Post, 25 November 1966.
62. U.S. Aid to North Vietnam, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs, House Committee on
International Relations, 19 July 1977, Appendix 2.
63. Atlantajournal, 25 September 1965.
64. San Francisco Chronicle, 9 January 1971; also see Telford Taylor, Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American
Tragedy (New York, 1970).
20. CAMBODIA 1955-1973
1. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, as related to Wilfred Burchett, My War With Tfce CIA (London, 1974, revised edi-
tion) pp. 75-6. The SEXTO treaty of 1954 actually had a protocol attached which unilaterally placed Cambodia,
Laos and South Vietnam under its umbrella Sihanouk later asserted that he had rejected Cambodia's inclusion,
although at the time he was reportedly amenable to his country being a member of some sort of Western security
system for south-east Asia. In any event, for various reasons, he soon moved away from this position and toward
the policy of neutralism he maintained thereafter. For a fuller discussion of these matters, see Michael Lafer,
Cambodia: The Searchfor Security (London, 1967) particularly chapter 3,
2. Events of 1956: Sihanouk, pp. 82-6; New York Times, 17 March 1956, p. 2; 24 March, p. 3; 20 April, p, 5; 21
April, p. 3.
3. Sihanouk, p. 94
4. Neak CheatNiyum ("The Nationalist", Phnom Penh) 19 September 1963, cited in Leifer, p. 144,
5. Pentagon Papers, Vol 10, p. 1100, cited by William Shawcross, Side-Show: Kissinger, Nixon andthe Destruction
ofCambodia [New York, 1979, paperback edition) p. 53.
6. Sihanouk, pp. 102-3; New York Times, 26 June 1958, p. 1; 25 April 1966, p. 20.
410
Notes
7. Shawcross, p. 54.
& Ibid.
9. Ibid, p. 121
10. Washington Post, 2 January 1966, p. E4.
11. US involvement with the Khmer Serei and Khmer Krom: Charles Simpson, Hi, Inside the Green Berets — The
First 30 Years — A History of the US Army Special Forces (London, 1983) pp. 114-5; Shawcross, passim;
Sihanouk, passim.
12. Plot of 1958-59: Sihanouk, pp. 102-109; Washington Post, 7 September 1965, p. 1; Shawcross, pp. 54-5; The
Observer (London) 22 February 1959, p. 8.
13. Sihanouk, p. 125,
14 Ibid., pp. 124-5.
15. William Colby, HonorableMen: My Life in the CIA (New York, 1978), pp. 149-50.
16. Sihanouk, pp. 113-135,118-121.
17. Effects of US aid to Cambodia; Sihanouk, passim, particularly pp. 93-6, 133-8; Shawcross, pp. 58-60; Washington
Post, 2 January 1966, p. E4.
18. Sihanouk, pp. 139-40.
19. See, e.g., Washington Post, 4 August 1966 & IS October 1966.
20. Francois Ponchaud, Cambodia Year Zero, translated from the French (London, 1978) p. 186.
21. SoaFranciscoChronicle, 23 Jury 1973,
22. Ibid., 16 July 1973; Shawcross, pp. 287-90.
23. Shawcross, pp. 148-9.
24. Ibid., pp. 114-15, based on interviews with Snepp by Shawcross.
25. Ibid, p. 114.
26. Seymour M. Hersh, Kissinger: The Price of Power (London, 1983) p. 176. Hersh, in chapter 15, provides further
details of the machinations between the US and Lon Nol and others indicating American foreknowledge and
encouragement of the coup,
27. Shawcross, p. 122.
28. Ibid, pp. 118-19.
29. Ibid., p. 120.
30. Roger Morris, UncertainGreatness:HenryKissingerandAmericanForeignPolicy(Great'Britam, 1977)p. 173.
31. Shawcross, p. 119; Snepp's remarks based on interview with him by Shawcross.
32. New York Times, 21 March 1970, p. 1.
33. Morris, p. 174.
34. Newsweek, 22 November 1971, p. 37.
35. Shawcross, p. 400.
36. Testimony before US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Hearings on Supplemental Assistance to Cambodia, 24
February 1975, p. 64.
37. American support of the Khmer Rouge:
a) Jack Calhoun, "US. Supports Khmer Rouge", Covert Action Information Bulletin, No. 34, Summer 1990, pp. 37-
40.
b) David Munro, "Cambodia: A Secret War Continues", Covert Action Information Bulletin, No. 40, Spring 1992,
pp. 52-57,
c) Newsweek, 10 October 1983, p. 41.
d) Los Attgtlu Times, 5 December 1980 (Ray Cline); 27 February 1991 (Bush administration admission of "tactical
military cooperation" between US-backed forces and Hie Khmer Rouge.)
21. LAOS 19S7-1973
1. Vientiane (Laos) correspondent, "The Labyrinthine War", Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong conserva-
tive weekly), 16 April 1970, p. 73.
2. Testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee, Hearings on Fiscal Year 1972 Authorizations, 22
July 1971, p. 4289.
3. Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Foreign Operations and Monetary Affairs, Committee on
Government Operations, Hearings on US Aid Operations in Laos, May-June 1959j see also New York Times, 20
January 1961, p. 2, and Washington Post, 10 April 1966 for statements of Laotian Prime Minister Souvanna
Phouma re US opposition to a coalition or neutralist government
4. New York Times, 25 April 1957.
5. Ibid., 18 May 1958, IV, p. 7.
6. Ibid., 23 July 195S, p. 2; 25 July, p. 4.
7. Ibid, 20 January 1961, p. 2; Washington Post, 10 April 1966.
S. New York Times, 15 January 1959, p. 15.
9. Fred Branfman, Voices from the Plain of Jars: Life Under an Air War (Harper & Row, New York, 1972) p. 12;
New York Times, 18 May 1958, IV, p. 7.
10. New York times, 25 April 1966, p. 20.
11. Anhur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days (Boston, 19651, p, 325.
411
KILLING HOPE
12. 19.58: Ibid., pp. 325-6 (this has to do with the events of 1958 referred to earlier - see notes 6 and 7 above); 1959:
Ibid., p. 326; Branfman, p. 12; I960: Chester Bowles, Promises to Keep: My Years in Public Life, 1941-1969
(New York 1971} p. 334; Bowies was a prominent American diplomat,
13. Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation (New York, 1967) pp, 111-2.
14. New York Times, 25 January 1958, p. 6; 25 February, p. 6.
15. Ibid., 9 August 1960.
16. Norman Cousins, "Report from Laos", Saturday Review., 18 February 1961, p. 12.
17. Secret Army;
a) Hew Yori Times, 26 October 1969, p. 1.
b) Fred Branfman, "The President's Secret Army", in Robert Borosage and John Marks, eds., The CIA File (New
York, 1976) pp. 46-78.
c) Christopher Robbins, Air America (New York, 1979) chapters 5 and S.
d) Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, US Air Force, Ret., The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the World (New
York, 1974) pp. 190-93,438.
e) Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cflt of Intelligence (New York, 1975) pp. 54,
f) San Francisco Chronicle, 25 July 1973 (reporting deaths).
18. New York Times, IS May 1958, IV, p. 7.
19. Robbins, op. cit,
20. Branfman [CIA file), p. 65.
2 1 . Robbins, op. cit.
22. For a comprehensive account of CIA involvement in drug trafficking from Latin America to Southeast Asia to
Afghanistan, from the 1950s to the 1980s, see:
a) Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics ofHeroin in Southeast Asia (Harper & Row, New York, 1972) passim; revised and
updated edition, The Politics ofHeroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (Lawrence Hill Books, New
York, 1991) passim.
b) Henrik Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, and International Fascism (Boston, 1980, originally
published in Danish in 1976), passim
c) Christopher Robbins, Air America (New York, 1979), pp. 128,225-243
d) Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control (New York, 1987), passim
e) Peter Dale Scott, Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Centra! America (University
ofCAPress, 1991), passim,
f) Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, a Report of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, 1989
23. Testimony of Daniel Oleksiw, USIA, before US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings on US Security
Agreement! and Commitments Abroad: Kingdom ofLaos, October 1969, pp. 586-7,
The USIA produced a number of other unattributed publications in Asia during the 1950s and 1960s. A 1954
document lists: Four Seas (monthly magazine, southeast Asia), Free World (monthly magazine, nine Far Eastern
countries), American Reporter (bi-weekly newspaper, India), Panorama (bi-weekly newspaper, Pakistan), and
News Review (weekly magazine, Beirut). [White House Memo based on information prepared by USIA, 15
February 1954, Declassified Documents Reference System, 1987, document no. 548.]
24. New York Times, IS April 1966, p. 20.
25. Ibid., 20 January 1961, p. 2.
26. Marchetti and Marks, p. 132; Branfman (Voices), p. 16:
27. Robbins, p. 116.
28. William Lederer & Eugene Burdick, .ANation ofSheep (London, 1961) pp. 12-13; see also Bernard Fall, Anatomy
of a Crisis: The Laotian Crisis of 1960-1961 (New York, 1969), chapter 7.
29. Lederer and Burdick, pp. 15-22.
30. Bernard Fail, Street Without Joy: Insurgency in Indochina, 1946-63 (London, 1963, Third revised edition) p. 329;
New York Times 3 January 1961, p. 10.
31-FalI(Sfre«(),p,332.
32. Schlesinger, p. 329.
33- Ibid., p. 517; see also Andrew Tully, The Super Spies (London, 1970) p. 165.
34. Robbins, p. 115.
35. Prouty, p. 314.
36. New York Times, 3 May 1964, p. l;7May, p. 7; 14May, p. 11.
37. Congressional Record, 18 July 1973, pp. 24520-22.
38. Branfman (Voices), p. 5; Branfman was in Laos 1967-71, first as an educational adviser to International
Voluntary Services ("a Bible Belt version of the Peace Corps" • Robbins), then as a writer and researcher.
39. Refugee and Civilian War Casualty Problems in Indochina, Staff Report prepared for the US Senate Subcommittee
on Refugees, Committee on the Judiciary, 28 September 1970, pp. 19 and v.
40. Ibid,, p. 32.
41. The Guardian (London) 14 October 1971, p. 4.
42. Robbins, p. 132.
43. Branfman {Voices/, p. 15.
412
Notes
44. New York Times, 23 February 1973, p. I.
45. Ibid., 8 April 1954.
22. HAITI 1959-1963
1. Robert I. Rotberg with Christopher K. Clague, Haiti: The Politics of Squalor (A Twentieth Century Fund Study,
Boston, 1971), p. 244,
2. New York Times, 15 and 16 August 1959: Robert Debs Heinl, Jr. and Nancy Gordon HeinI, The Story of the
Haitian People, 1492-1971 (Boston, 1978), p. 600.
3. Hispanic American Report (Stanford University, California) October 1959, p. 434.
4. New York Times, 17 and 18 August 1959.
5. Heinl, p. 600; New York Times, 15 August 1959,
6. Heinl, p. 600; Rotberg, p. 219.
7. New York Times, 16 August 1959.
8. Heinl, p. 600.
9. New York Times, 16 August 1959.
10. Rorberg,p. 219.
11. Heinl, p. 618.
12. Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, The Select Committee to Study
Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate), 20 November 197J, p. 4, footnote
1. The Report doesn't specify when this took place, but the New York Times, 14 November 1993, p. 12, placed
it in 1961.
13. Fritz Longchamp and Worth Cooley-Prost, "Hope for Haiti", Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington),
No. 36, Spring 1991, p. 56. Longchamp is Executive Director of the 'Washington Office on Haiti, an analysis and
public education center; Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. A Thousand Days (Boston, 1965) pp. 782-3; Heinl, p. 617.
23. GUATEMALA 1960
The principal sources of this chapter are:
a) Richard Gott, Rural Guerrillas in Latin America (Great Britain, 1973, revised edition) pp, 68-77; first published in
1970 as Guerrilla Movements in Latin America,
b) David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government (New York, 1965, paperback edition) pp. 22-4,33.
c) Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, US Air Force, Ret,, The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the World (New
York, 1974) pp. 45-6.
d) John Gerassi, The Great Fear in Latin America (New York, 1965, revised edition) pp. 184-5; Gerassi was a corre-
spondent in Latin America for the New York Times and an editor of Time magazine.
1. Gorr, p. 70.
2. Hem York Times, 18 November 1960.
3. Ibid., 15, 19 November 1960.
4. Gott, p. 71; Wise and Ross, p. 33; Prouty, p. 46.
5. Gerassi, p. 185.
6. New York Times, 19 November 1960.
7. Thomas and Marjorie Melville, Guatemala: The Politics of Land Ownership (US, 1971) p. 142; Gott, p. 76.
8. Gott, p. 77.
24. FRANCE/ALGERIA 1960s
1. Andrew Tully, CIA: The Inside Story (New York, 1962), p. 44.
2. Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence (New York, 1965), p. 175.
3. New York Times, 4 May 1961, p. 10.
4. Cited in Tully, p. 45, article by Crosby Noyes, no date of Washington Star given.
5. Cited in Sanche de Gramont, The Secret War (New York, 1963) pp. 29-30
6. New York Times, 24 April 1961.
7. Washington Post, 5 May 1961, p. A16.
8. Time, 12 May 1961, p. 19.
9. New York Times, 29 Aprii 1961, pp. 1, 3
10. Ibid., IMay 1961, p. 28.
11. Cited in de Gramont, pp. 30-3 1.
12. Newsweek, 15 May 1961, pp. 50-51.
13. L'Kxprejs/Claude Knef: As reported in Alexander Werth, "The CIA in Algeria", The Nation (New York), 20 May
196t,p P . 433-5
14. Time, 12 May 1961, p. 19
15. New York Times, 19 April 1961, p. 3.
16. Ibid., 2 May 1961, p. 18.
17. Ibid.,24 June 1975, p.ll.
18. Christian Plume & Pierre Demaret, Target: De Gaulle {translation from the French, London, 1974) passim.
413
KILLING HOPE
19. Chicago Tribune, 15 June 1975, p. 1.
20. David Wise, The Politics ofLymg (New York, 1973, paperback edition), p. 43 1.
2 1 . Military Assistance Training, Hearings before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on
National Security Policy and Scientific Developments, October and December 1970, p. 120.
22. Chicago Tribune, 20 June 1975, p. 6.
25. ECUADOR 1960 to 1963
1. Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York, 1975) pp. 106-316, passim. Agee's book made him
Public Enemy No. One of the CIA. In a review of the book, however, former Agency official Miles Copeland —
while not concealing his distaste for Agee's "betrayal" — stated that "The book is interesting as an authentic
account of how an ordinary American or British "case officer' operates ... As a spy handler in Quito, Montevideo
and Mexico City, he has first-hand information ... All of it, just as his publisher claims, is presented "with deadly
accuracy'." {The Spectator, London, 11 January 1975, p. 40.)
2. New York Times, 14 July 1963, p. 20, For an interesting and concise discussion of the political leanings of
Velasco and Arosemana, see John Gerassi, The Great Fear in Latin America (New York, 1965, revised edition)
pp. 141-8.
26, THE CONGO 1960-1964
1. Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, The Select Committee to Study
Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate), 20 November 1975, pp. 14, 15, 16
respectively; hereafter referred to as Assassination Report.
2. Washington Post, 28 August 1960, p. A4.
3. Assassination Report, p. 58.
4. Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World (New York, 1984} p. 57,
5. Alan Merriam, Congo: Background to Conflict (Northwestern U. Press, Evanston, 1961} pp. 352-4.
6. David Gibbs, The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money, and U.S. Policy in the Congo
Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 100, provides the details of these ties; p. 90 re US embassy request-
ing Belgian intervention.
7. Ibid., pp. 92-3.
8. New York Times, 4 September 1960, IV, p. 3; Gibbs, p. 100.
9. Kwitny, pp. 62-3, 65: Stephen R. Weissman, American Foreign Policy in the Congo, 1960-1964 (Cornell
University Press, Ithaca, 1974), pp. 88-95 (Weissman is a former staffmember ofthe Subcommittee on Africa of
the House Foreign Affairs Committee); Andrew Tully, CIA: The Inside Story [Fawcett, New York, 1962, paper-
back), pp. 179-80 (CIA men).
10. Assassination Report, p. 16.
11. Victor Marchctti (former executive assistant to the Deputy Director ofthe CIA) and John D. Marks, The CIA and
the Cult of Intelligence (Laurel/Dell, 1983), p. 28; this edition contains more of the previously deleted and classi-
fied passages.
12. Stephen R. Weissman, "CIA Covert Action in Zaire and Angola: Patterns and Consequences", Political Science
Quarterly (PSQ), Summer 1979, p. 267 (see information about Weissman above).
13. Coup: Kwitny, p. 66\ quotes re Lumumba: Assassination Report, pp. 16,17, 18, 63 respectively. The lastthree are
quotes or paraphrases of the words of American officials.
14. Ibid., p. 19-30. Gottlieb is referred to as Joseph ,'icheider in the Assassination Report.
15. Ibid., p. 13.
16. New York Times, 22 February 1976, p. 55.
17. Assassination Report, p. 30.
18. Ibid., pp. 18-19.
19. Gibbs, pp. 96-7.
20. Ibid., p. 48.
21. Tully, p. 178; for further discussion ofUS-Mobutu relationship, see Gibbs, p, 96; Kwirny, pp. 63, 66-7; Weissman
{American Foreign Policy), pp. 94-9, 108-9; Weissman (PSQ), p. 268.
22. John Stockwell, In Search ofEnemies (New York, 1978) p. 105; see also "137, 236-7.
23. Cables: 18 January 1961, from US Ambassador in Leopoldville to American Consulate in Elizabethville, and 20
January 1961, from Elizabethville to Washington, Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington, Va.),
Retrospective Collection volume, documents 375B, E. Both cables were sent after Lumumba's death, indicating
that these State Department officials were not privy to the CIA's actions.
24. Gibbs, chapter 4; Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days (Boston, 1965) p. 576.
25. Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, US Air Force, Ret., The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the World
(Ballanrine Books, New York, 1974, paperback) pp. 26, 129-30,438.
26. Costa Rica in 1955 (cf. this chapter); and Burma in 1970, if not also earlier, when the US military aided the
Burmese air force to mount strikes against Burmese rebels, while the CIA was assisting the rebels from its opera-
tion in Laos. {San Francisco Chronicle, 16 October 1970, p. 22.) Additionally, in Angola during the 1960s and
70s, and in Cuba, 1957-58, the Agency gave funds to insurgents attempting to overthrow governments which
were being provided with arms by the United States ro suppress the insurgents, (cf these chapters)
414
Notes
27. Assassination Report, p. 18. Lawrence Devlin is referred to as Victor Hedgman in the Report.
28. Kwitny, p. 67.
29. Newsweek 22 November 1971, p. 37.
30. State Department memo, 17 November 1961, from L.D. Battle, Executive Secretary, to McGeorge Bundy, Special
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs; Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington,
Va.), Retrospective Collection volume, document 383C.
31. Marchetti and Marks, p. 28.
32. Kwitny, pp. 67-8; Weissman (American Foreign Policy) pp. 105, 205; Weissman (PSQ} p. 270; the CIA memoran-
dum was entitled: "Congo: United States Assistance to Adoula Againsr Gifcenga", no date, but apparently written
in November 1961, found in the National Security Files, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, cited by
Weissman (PSQ).
33. "CBS Reports", 26 April 1962, "The Hot and Cold Wars of Allen Dulles", pp. 19-20 of transcript, cited by
Stephen R Weissman in "The CIA and U.S. Policy in Zaire and Angofa" in Ellen Ray, et at, eds., Dirty Work 2:
The CIA in Africa (New Jersey, 1979}, p. 200; this is another version of Weissman's article in PSQ referred to
above.
34. William Arwood, The Reds and the Blacks (London, 1967), p. 194; Atwood was US Ambassador to Kenya, 1964-
65; Weissman (PSQ), pp. 271-2; Weissman (American Foreign Policy), pp. 226-30.
35. Atwood, p. 192.
36. CIA mercenaries: David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Espionage Establishment (New York, 1967) p. 167;
Stockwell, pp. 187-8; Marchetti and Marks, p. 104; Roger Morris (former staff member of the National Security
Council) and Richard Mauzy, "Zaire (the Congo): An Exercise in Nation Building" in Robert Borosage and John
Marks, eds., The CIA File (New York, 1976) pp. 35-7.
37. New York Times, 26 April 1966, p. 1.
38. Ibid., 17June 1964, pp. 1, 12; 18 June, p. 1.
39. M. Crawford Young, "Rebellion and the Congo", in Robert Rotberg, ed., Rebellion in Black Africa (Oxford
University Press, 1971), p. 230.
40. Young, p. 227, and passim; Atwood, p, 192 (witch doctors); Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets:
Richard Helms and the CIA (New York, 1979) p. 153 (Mulele).
41. Young, p. 209.
42. New York Times, 15 November 1964, p. 27.
43. Ibid, 1 November 1964, p. 12: 3 November, p. 14; Atwood, chapter 16.
+4. Richard Bamet, Intervention and Revolution (London, 1970) p. 250.
45. Arwood, p. 218.
46. The Times [London) 25 November 1964.
47. Marchetti and Marks, p. 111.
48. Atwood, p. 194.
49. Dwight Eisenhower, The White House Years: WagingPeace, 1956-1961 (New York, 1965) p. 270.
27. BRAZIL 1961 to 1964
1. Phyllis R. Parker, Brazil and the Quiet Intervention, 1964 (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1979) p. 64. This
book draws heavily upon declassified documents found at the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson presiden-
tial libraries. The author augmented this information with interviews of key figures in the events discussed here.
2. Ibid., p. 67.
3. Ibid., p. 65.
4. Ibid,, p. 20, Washington, April 1962
5. Ibid., pp. 30-31,34.
6. Ibid., p. 3 1, meeting in Brazil 17 December 1962.
7. Ibid., pp. 45, 21, Walters' report to the Pentagon, 6 August 1963.
8. Ibid., pp. 41-2.
9. Ibid., p. 44 and passim
10. John Gerassi, The Great Fear in Latin America (New York, 1965, revised edition) p. 83.
11. Ibid., p. 82.
12. New York Times, 12 July 1961, p. 13.
13. Peter Bell, "Brazilian-American Relations" in Riordan Roett, ed., Brazil in the Sixties (Vanderbilt University Press,
Nashville, 1972) p. 81; Bel! interview of Cabot, Washington, DC, 15 January 1970.
14. Gerassi, p. 84.
15. New York Times, 16 March 1962, p. 7.
16. Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinier, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala
(Doubleday & Co., New York, 1982) pp, 103-4,108.
17. New York Times, 16 March 1962, p. 7.
18. Gerassi, pp. 84-8.
19. Thomas E. Skidmore, Politics in Brazil, 1930-1964: An Experiment in Democracy (Oxford University Press, New
York, 1967) p. 130; Gerassi, pp. 80-81.
20. Jan Knippers Black, United States Penetration of Brazil (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1977),
415
KILLING HOPE
p. 40; the words quoted are Black's, based on her interview with Lt. Col. Edward L. King, a member of the Joint
Brazil-US Defense Commission in the second half of the 1960s; also see Bell, p. S3 re US doubts about Goulart
from the beginning of his presidency.
21. Arthur Schlesinger, A ThousandDays (Boston, 1965) pp. 780-2; New York Times, 5 December 1961, p. 11.
22. New York Times, 5 April 1962, p. 3.
23. Time, 3 November 1961, p. 29.
24. Gerassi, pp. 83,88.
25. Parker, p. 29, interview with Gordon, 19 January 1976.
26. Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York, 1975), p. 321.
27. Parker, p. 27.
28. A. J, Langguth, Hidden Terrors (New York, 1978) p. 92; Langguth was formerly with the New York Times and
in 1965 served as Saigon Bureau Chief for the newspaper.
29. Parker, p. 26, memo from President Kennedy to AID administrator Fowler Hamilton, 5 February 1962,
30. Ibid., pp. 87-97.
31. Agee, p. 362.
32. Langguth, pp. 77, 89-90, 92, 108.
33. Parker, p. 40.
34. For the most important incident/example ofthis see the story ofthe Navy mutiny in Skidmore, pp. 296-7.
35. Philip Siekman, "When Executives Turned Revolutionaries", Fortune magazine (New York), September 1964, p.
214.
36. Parker, p. 63, interview of Walters.
37. Langguth, pp. 61-2, 98; Washington Post, 5 February 1968, p. 1.
38. Skidmore, p. 330; also see James Kohl and John Lift, Urban Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America (The MIT Press,
Cambridge, Mass., 1974) p. 39 for further discussion ofthe strong pro-US, anti-leftist bias ofthe college's cur-
riculum.
39. Parker, p. 98, cable to State Department, 4 March 1964. In this and the following quotations from cables, missing
articles and prepositions have been inserted for the sake of readability. For further discussion of the closeness of
US and Brazilian military officers and the presumed influencing of the latter along pro-US, anti-communist lines
see: a) Langguth, pp. 94-6, 162-70; b) Black, chapters 9 and 10; c) Michael Klare, War Without End (Hew York,
1972) chapter 10; d) Alfred Stepan, The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil (Princeton University
Press, Newjersey, 1971,aRAND Corp. Study) pp. 123-33.
40. Parker, p. 65.
41. Ibid,, p. 68.
42. Ibid., pp. 68-9.
43. Ibid., p. 74.
44. Ibid., p. 75, teletype, Washington to US Embassy, Brazil, 31 March 1964.
45. Ibid., p. 68.
46. Ibid., pp.74, 77.
47. Ibid., pp. 72, 75-6; also see the statement of former Brazilian Army Col. Pedro Paulo de Baruna; exiled by the
junta, about the effect of the naval force upon the thinking of Castelo Bratico: Warner Poekhau, ed., White
Paper, Whitewash [New York, 1981) p. 51.
48. Survey of the Alliance for Progress: Labor Policies and Programs, Staff Report of the US Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Subcommittee on American Republics Affairs, 15 July 1968, p. Si; the background of AIFLD can be
found in earlier pages ofthis report; also see Black, chapter 6.
49. US Senate Report cited in the previous note, p. 14, quoting from a radio program in which Doherty took part.
50. Eugene Methvin, "Labor's New Weapon for Democracy", Reader's Digest, October, 1966, p. 28,
il.Poelchau, pp. 47-51.
52. Langguth, pp. 110, 113; Washington Post, 2 April 1964, p. 23.
53. Langguth, pp. 112-13.
54. Ibid., p, 113; Washington Post, 3 April 1964, p. 17.
55. Gordon's cables; Parker, pp. 81-3.
56. Ibid., p. 83.
57. Hearing on the Nomination of Lincoln Gordon to be Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, US
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 7 February 1966, pp. 44-5.
58. The Department of State Bulletin, 20 April 1964, news conference of 3 April 1964.
59. Langguth, p. 116, from Langguth's interview of Gordon.
60. Senate Hearing, op. cit,
61. Foreign Assistance Act of 1965, Hearings before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, 25 February 1965, p. 346.
62. Langguth, p. 1 13, citing the Brazil Herald, 6 March 1964, p. 4.
63. New York Times, 11 July 1965, p. 13.
64. Ibid., 25 November 1966, p. 4.
65. MarcEdelman, "The Other Super Power; The Soviet Union and Latin America 1917-3 987", NACLA's Report on
the Americas (North American Congress on Latin America, New York), January/February 1987, pp. 32-4; day of
mourning: p. 29, citing the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS-LAM), 15 November 1982.
416
Notes
66. Reader's Digest, November 1964, pp. 135-58.
67. Agee, p. 364.
68. Parker, pp. 85-6.
69. Agee, pp. 364-5.
70. New York Times, 6 April 1964, p. 1.
71. Reader's Digest, October, 1966, op. cit.
72. Parker, p. 59.
73. The repressiveness of [he Branco government and the Washington connection:
a) Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People: The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America — The Catholic Church in
Conflict with US. Policy (Penguin Books, London, 1982) pp. 166-75, 313-32, and elsewhere.
b) langguth, chapters 4, 5 and 7 and elsewhere.
c) Torture and Oppression in Brazil, Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Organizations and
Movements of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 11 December, 1974; contains testimony by and about
torture victims and reprints of articles from the US press.
d) Noam Chomsky and F,dward Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (Boston, 1979) see
index.
74. Agency for International Development (AID), Program anA Project Data Presentation to the Congress for Fiscal
Year 1971, p. 26.
75. Langguth, p. 94; Podchau, p. 65, interview of Langguth.
76. Amnesty International, Report on Allegations of Torture in Brazil (London, 1974) p. 40.
77. Jomal do Brazil, 25 May 1972, cited in Amnesty International, op. cit., p. 49.
78. Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (Penguin Books, New York, 1991),
p. 122.
79. Special Study Mission to Latin America on Military Assistance Training, House Committed on Foreign Affairs
Report, 1970.
80. New York Times, 27 April 1966, p. 28.
28. PERU 1960 to 1965
1. New York Times, 22 December 1960, p. 3.
2. Philip Agee, Inside the Compa>ry: CM Diary (New York, 1975) pp. 145-6.
3. Wall Street Journal, 5 January 1961, p. 1.
4. New York Times, 28 December 1960, p. 5.
5. Ibid., 6 and 7 January 1961; Agee, p. 146; Agee does not mention Ramos by name but it appears rather clear
that he is referring to the same man.
6. John Gerassi, The Great Fear in Latin America (New York, 3965, revised edition) pp. 20, 129; originally pub-
lished as The Great Fear (New York, 1963).
7. For the background, ideology, and fate of the various revolutionary movements in Peru during this period, see
Richard Gott, Rural Guerrillas in Latin America (Great Britain, 1973, revised edition) pp. 363-463; James Petras
and Maurice Zeitlin, eds., Latin America: Reform or Revolution? (Fawcert, New York, 1968) pp. 343-. 50; New
York Times, 30 August 1966, p. 1.
8. Victor Matchetti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York, 1975) p. 137.
9. Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services and the Subcommittee on Department of Defense of die
Committee on Appropriations (US Senate), 23 February 1966, p. 38.
10. Michael Klare, War Without End (Random House/Vantage Books, New York, 1972) pp. 297-S.
n.Neiv York Times, 12 September 1965, p. 32.
12. Agee, p. 440; see also pp. 267-9, 427.
13. Gott, op. cit; Pettas, p. 349; Nortnan Gall, "The Legacy of Che Guevara", Commentary magazine (New York)
December 1967, p. 59.
14. Petras, p. 349.
29. DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 196U to 1966
1. Jerome Slater, "The Dominican Republic, ] 9(51-66" in fir.rry Bleclinian unj Stephen Kaplan, Force Without War:
U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument (The Brookings Institution, Washington, 197SJ pp. 290-91, a study
undertaken at the tequest of the Pentagon and wirh its (sill cooperation, although the book stipulates that the
views expressed are the authors' alone.
2. Bernard Dicderich, Trujitlo: The Death of the Goat (London, J978) p. 43.
3. Ibid., pp. 48-9; New York Times, 23 June 1975, p. .17 (this article is more understandable when one knows that
Lear Reed was addressed as "Colonel", hfs World War I! mnfc — Diederich, p. -19).
4. Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving foreign Leaders, The Select Committee to Study
Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate), 20 November 1975, p. 192; here-
after referred to as Assassination Report*
5. Ibid.
6. Diederich. p. 44.
7. Assassination Report, 191-215, passim; Diederich, passim, particularly pp. 40-56.
411"
KILLING HOPE
8. Assassination Report, p, 210.
9. Arthur M. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days (Boston, 1965) p. 769.
10. Diederich, pp. 170-249, summary on page 265.
11. Schlesinger, p, 661.
12. Events of 1961 following the assassination: Stater, pp. 294-7; Diederich, pp. 220-5 1.
13. Slater, p. 298; New York Times, 20Januaty 1962, p. 4.
14. John Barrlow Martin, Overtaken by Events: The Dominican Crisis From the Fall ofTmjillo to the Civil War
(New York, 1966) p. 100.
15. Ibid., p. 122.
16. New York Times, 9 June 1962, p. 10-
17. US involvement in elections; Mattin, pp. 227-9, 347-8.
18. Martin, pp. 455-6; Richard Bamet, Intervention and Revolution (London, 1972) p. 168.
19. Miami News quote; Cited in Newsweek, I October 1963, p. 64. Hendrix; Carl Bernstein, "The CIA and the
Media", Roiling Stone, 20 October 1977, p. 59; Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms
and the CIA (Pocket Books, New York, 1979) p. 461.
20. Martin, p. 451,
21.Ibid.,pp.477-B.
22. Sam Halpcr, "The Dominican Upheaval", The New Leader (New York), 10 May 1965, p. 4.
23. Martin, pp. 481-90; New YorkTimes, 17 July 1963, p. 10.
24. CONATRAL; Survey of the Alliance for Progress: Labor Policies and Programs, Staff Report of the U.S. Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on American Republics Affairs, 15 July 1968, p. 18; Jan Kippers
Black, The Dominican Republic: Politics and Development in an Unsovereign State (Boston, 1986), pp. 35, 96,
117;Barnet, pp. 170-71.
25. Martin, p. 570,
26. Newsweek, 7 October 1963, pp. 64-5.
27. New York Times, 14 December 1963, p. 12.
28. Washington Post, 27 June 1965, p. E2.
29. Wall Street Journal, 25 June 1965, p. 8.
30. Slater, p. 308; Tad Szuk, Dominican Diary (New Yotk, 1965) p. 32; Szulc was the New York Times correspon-
dent in the Dominican Republic during this period.
31. Slater, p. 307.
32. Martin, pp. 656-7; New York Times, 1 May 1965; Slater, p. 309; Wall Street Journal, 25 June 1965, p, 8.
33. Marrin, p. 658.
34. Washington Post, 27 June 1965, p, E5; Slater, pp. 322-3; New York Times, 20 May 1965.
35. New York Times, 20 May 1965; Slater, p. 325,
36. New York Times Magazine, 14 July 1982, p. 20.
37. Ibid.
38. New York Times, IS February 1967.
39. Communists amongst the rebels: Washington Post, 27 June 1965, p. E4; CIA cable: Declassified Documents
Reference System (Arlington, Virginia) 1977 Volume, Document 14G.
40. Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New Yotk, 1975) p. 421.
41. Barnetpp. 175-6.
42. Ibid.; Szuk, pp. 71-3; Washington Post, 27 June 2965, p. E4,
43. Slater, p. 321; New York Times, 22 March 1967.
44. David Wise, The Politics ofLying (New York, 1973, paperback edition) p. 32.
45. Barnetpp. 178-9.
46. See, e.g., Wait Street Journal, 7 September 1971, "hi Dominican Republic, Political Murders Rise, and So Does
Poverty"; also, various Amnesty International Reports on Torture and Annual Reports during the 1970s.
30, CUBA 1959 to 1980s
1 Khrushchev Remembers (London, 1971] pp. 494,496,
2. Time, 2 November 1962.
3. Cited hy 'William Appteman Williams, "American Intervention in Russia: 1917-20", in David Horowitz, ed.,
Containment and Revolution (Boston, 1967). Written in a letter to Ptesident Wilson by Secretary of State Robert
Lansing, uncle of John Foster and Allen Dulles.
4. Facts on File, Cuba, the V.S. andRussia, 1960-63 (New York, 1964) pp. 56-8.
5. International Herald Tribune (Paris), 2 October 1985, p. 1.
6. New York Times, 23 October 1959, p. 1.
7. Facts on File, op. cit., pp. 7-8; New York Times, 19, 20 February' 1960; 22 March 1960.
8. New York Times, S, 6 March 1960.
9. David Wise, "Colby of CIA— CIA of Colby", New York Times Magazine, 1 July 1973, p. 9.
10. A report about the post-invasion inquiry ordered by Kennedy disclosed that 'Tt was never intended, the planners
testified, that the invasion itself would topple Castro. The hope was that an initial success would spur an uprising
by thousands of anti-Castro Cubans- Ships in the invasion fleet carried 15,000 weapons to be distributed to the
418
Notes
expected volunteers." U.S. News & World Report, 13 August 1979, p. 82. Some CIA officials, including Allen
Dulles, later denied that an uprising was expected, but this may be no more than an attempt to mask their ideo-
logical embarrassment that people living undet a "communist tyranny" did not respond at all to the call of "The
Ftee World".
11. Attacks on Cuba:
a) Taylor Branch and George Crile III, "The Kennedy Vendetta", Harper's magazine (New York), August 1975, pp.
49-63
b) Facts on File, op. cit., passim
c) New York Times, 26 August 1962, p. 1; 21 Match 1963, p. 3; Washington Post, 1 June 1966; 30 September 1966;
plus many other articles in both newspapers during the 1960s
d) Warren Hinckle and William W. Turnet, Tbe Fish is Red: The Story of the Secret War Against Castro (Hatpet 8c
Row, New York, 1981) passim.
12. Branch and Ctile, op. cit., pp. 49-63. The article states that there were in excess of 300 Americans involved in the
operation, but in "CBS Reports: The CIA's Secret Army", broadcast 10 June 1977, written by Bill Moyers and
the same George Crile in, former CIA official Ray Cline states that there were between 600 and 700 American
staff officers.
13. New York Times, 26 August 1962, p. 1.
14. John Gerassi, The Great Fear in Latin America (New Yotk, 1965, revised edition) p. 278.
15. Branch and Crile, op. cit., p. 52,
16. The Times (London), 8, 10 January 1964; 12 May, p. 10; 21 July, p. 10; 28, 29 October; Tfee Guardian (London),
28, 290ctobetl964.
17. Washington Post, 14 Febiuary 1975, p. C3I; Anderson's story stated that there were only 24 buses involved and
that they wete dried and used in England.
18. Branch and Crile, op. cit., p. 52.
19. New York Times, 28 April 1966, p. 1.
20. Branch and Crile, op. cit., p. 52
21. Washington Post, 21 March 1977,p. A18.
22. Hinckle and Turner, p. 293, based on their interview with the participant in Ridgecrest, California, 27 September
1975.
23. San Francisco Chronicle, 10 January 1977.
24. Bill Schaap, "The 1981 Cuba Dengue Epidemic", Covert Action information Bulletin (Washington), No. 17,
Summer 1982, pp. 2S-31
25. San Francisco Chronicle, 29 October 1980, p. 15.
26. Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington), 13 Januaty 1967, p. 176.
27. Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington), No. 22, Fail 1984, p. 35; the trial of Eduardo Victor Arocena
Perez, Federal Disttict Court for the Southern District of New York, transcript of 10 September 1984, pp. 2187-
89.
28. See, e.g., San Francisco Chronicle, 27 July 1981,
29. Washington Post, 16 September 1977, p. A2.
30. Ibid., 25 October 1969, column by Jack Anderson.
31. Reports of the assassination attempts have been disclosed in many places; see Interim Report; Alleged
Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with
Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate), 20 November 1975, pp. 71-180, for a detailed, although not com-
plete, account. Stadium bombing attempt: New York Times, 22 November 1964, p. 26.
32. New York Times, 12 Decembet 1964, p. 1.
33. Ibid., 3 March 1980, p. 1.
34. Terrorist attacks within the United States:
a) Jeff Stein, "Inside Omega 7", The Village Voice (New York), 10 March 1980
b) New York Times, 13 September 1980, p. 24; 3 March, 1980, p. 1.
c) John Dinges and Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row (London, 1981), pp. 251-52, note (also includes
attacks on Cuban targets in other countries)
d) Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington), No, 6, October 1979, pp. 8-9.
35. The plane bombing:
a) Washington Post, 1 November 1986, pp. Al, A1S.
b) Jonathan Kwitny, Tfce Crimes of Patriots (New York, 1987), p. 379
c) William Schaap, "New Spate of Terrorism: Key Leaders Unleashed", Covert Action Information Bulletin
(•Washington), No. 11, December 1980, pp.4-8.
d) Dinges and Landau, pp. 245-6.
e) Speech by Fidel Castro, 15 Octobet 1976, teprinted in Toward Improved U.S. -Cuba Relations, House Committee
on International Relations, Appendix A, 23 May 1977.
The CIA documents: Amongst those declassified by the Agency, sent to the National Archives in 1993, and made
available to the public. Repotted in The Nation (New York), 29 November 1993, p. 657.
36. Dangerous Dialogue: Attacks on Freedom of Expression in Miami's Cuban Exile Community, p. 26, published by
Americas Watch/The Fund for Free Expression, New York and Washington, August 1992.
419
KILLING HOPE
37. Ibid,, passim. Also see: "Terrorism in Miami: Suppressing Free Speech", Counterspy magazine (Washington), Vol.
8, No. 3, March-May 1984, pp. 26-30; The Village Voice, op. dr.; Covert Action Information Bulletin
(Washington), No. 6, October 1979, pp. 8-9.
38. New York Times, 4 January 197.5, p. 8.
39. San Francisco Chronicle, 12January 1982, p. 14; Parade magazine (Washington Post), IS March 1981, p. 5.
40. The Village Voice, op. cit.
41. Jerome Levinson and Juan de Onis, The Alliance That Lost its Way: A Critical Report on the Alliance for
Progress (A Twentieth Century Fund Study, Chicago, 1970) p. 56.
42. Ibid., p. 309; the list of Alliance goals can be found on pp. 352-5.
43. Ibid., pp. 226-7.
44. New York Times, 26 December 1977, p. 37. See also: Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York,
1975) p. 380 (Editors Press Service).
45. Tad Szulc, Fidel, A Critical Portrait (New York, 1986), pp. 480-1.
46. Richard Nixon, Six Crises (New York, 1962, paperback edition) pp. 416-17.
47. Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York, 1975), p. 289.
48. Marc Edelman, "The Other Super Power: The Soviet Union and Latin America 1917-1987", NACLA'S Report on
the Americas (North American Congress on Latin America, New York), January-February 19S7, p. J6; Sziilc, see
index.
49. Szulc, pp. 427-8.
50. Miami Herald, 29 April 1996, p.l
31. INDONESIA 1965
1. Time, 17 December 1965.
2. New York Times Magazine, 8 May 1966, p. 89.
3. This is the widely-accepted range; see, e.g., various Amnesty International reports on Indonesia published in the
1970s.
4. Rex Mortimer, Indonesian Communism Under Sukarno: Ideology and Politics, 1959-1965 (Cornell University
Press, Ithaca and London, 1974) pp. 413-17; Indonesia — J96S: The Coup that Backfired (CIA Research Study,
Washington, December 1968) p. 21, hereafter referred to as CIA Study.
5. Mark Selden, ed., Remaking Asia: Essays on the American Uses ofPower (New York, 1974) pp. 47-8.
6. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, The Washington Connection and Third "WorldFascism (Boston, 1979) p.
207.
7. New York Times, 12 March 1966, p. 6.
8. Life, 11 July 1966.
9. CIA lists: Kathy Kadane, San Francisco Examiner, 20 May 1990. See also Covert Action Information Bulletin,
No. 3 5, Fall 1990, p. 59, for excerpts from the interviews with the American diplomats conducted by Kadane.
10. Nugroho Notosusanto and Ismail Saleh, The Coup Attempt of the 'September 30 Movement' in Indonesia
(Jakarta, 1968), cited by Mortimer, p. 419, who notes that "both authors were closely connected with the
Indonesian army".
11. CIA Study, p. 199.
12. Notosusanto and Saleh, p. 9, cited by Mortimer, p. 419.
13. CIA Study, from the Foreword.
14. Ibid., pp. 3-4; Mortimer, p. 414,
15. Discussion of Sjam's role:
at CIA Study, pp. 23,28, 100, 112, 117, and elsewhere
b) 'Mortimer, pp. 418-40, passim
c) W.R Wertheim, "Suharto and the Untung Coup — The Missing Link", Journal of Contemporary Asia (London)
Winter 1970, pp. 53-4
d) Selden, p. 48
e) Julie Southwood and Patrick Flanagan, Indonesia: Law, Propaganda and Terror (London, 1983), p. 9
16. CIA Memorandum, 18 June 1962, Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington, Virginia) 1975 volume,
Document 240 A.
17. Arthur Schlesinger, .4 ThousandDays (Boston, 1965) p. 533,
18. Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation (New York, 1967) p. 377.
19. Military Assistance Training in East and Southeast Asia, a Staff Report for the Subcommittee on National Security
Policy and Scientific Developments ofthe House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 16 February 1971, p. IS.
20. Ibid., 2 April 1971, p. 13.
21. New York Times, 27 April 1966, p. 28.
22. Hearings on Foreign Assistance, 1966, before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 11 May 1966, p. 69i.
23. Green has been quoted on this theme in a number of books and periodicals with slight variations here and there,
due, apparently, to the fact that he touched upon the same point in several different speeches in Australia. Some
sources give only "what we did we had to do"; others provide a fulier quotation. What I have presented here is a
combination taken from: a) Denis Freney, The CIA 's Australian Connection (Australia, 1977), p. 17, citing a talk
Green delivered before the Australian Institute for International Affairs in 1973; and b) Peter Britton,
420
Notes
"Indonesia's Neo-colonial Armed Forces", Bulletin Of Concerned Asian Scholars, July-September 1975.
24. New York Times, 19 June 1966, p. 12E.
25. Journal of Contemporary Asia (London), Vol. 9, No. 2,1979, p. 252.
26. Chomsky and Herman, pp. 208-17.
27. The Guardian (London), 12 December 1983.
28. Los Angeles Times, 15 June 1991, p. 10.
19. Ibid., 13 October 1989, p. A6
30. New York Times 13 December 1975, p. 26, editorial.
3 1. San Francisco Chronicle, 9 November 1979, p. 6 1.
.52. For a fuller discussion of these matters, see: Chomsky and Herman, pp. 129-204; Denis Freney, "US-Australian
Role in East Timor Genocide", CounterSpy magazine (Washington), Vol. 4, No, 2, Spring 1980, pp. 10-2).
32. GHANA 1966
1. K-wame Nkrumah, Dark Days in Ghana (London, 1968) p. 96.
2. E.H. Cookridge, The Africa Dossier', The Daily Telegraph Magazine (London), 21 January 1972, part 2 of a 3-
part series on the QA.
3. John StockwelL In Search ofEnemies (New York, 1978) p. 201, note,
4. ibid.; New York Times, 9 May 1978, article by Seymour Hmh.
5. StockwelL p. 201, note. Another account is that 25 Russians who made up Nkrumah's palace guard were all shor and
killed when they tried to surrender; Seymour Friedin and George Bailey, The Experts [New York, 1968) p, 210.
6. New York Times, op. cit.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Washington Post, 17 March 1966.
10. Nkrumah, pp. 97-102 (state-owned industries, price of cocoa).
11. John Barron, KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents (Bantam Books, New York, 1981; paperback edition
of Reader's Digest Press, 1974), p. 342.
33. URUGUAY 1964 to 1970
1. Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, Pasaporte 113.13: Ocho Ahos con la CIA (Havana, 1978), p. 286.
2. AJ, Langguth, Hidden Terrors (New York, 197S) pp. 48-9, 51 and passim. Langguth was formerly with the
New York Times and in 1965 served as Saigon Bureau Chief for the newspaper.
3. New York Times, 1 August 1970.
4. Langguth, pp. 285-7; New York Times, 15 August 1970,
5. Alain Labrousse, The Tnpamaros: Urban Guerrillas in Uruguay (Penguin Books, Ixindon, 1973, translation from
French 1970 edition) p. 103.
6. Langguth, p. 289.
7. Langguth, pp. 232-3, 253-4; Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York, 1975), see index (Otero's
relationship to the CIA).
8. Major Carlos Wilson, The Tupamaros: The Unmentionables (Boston, 1974) pp. 106-7; Langguth, p. 236. Agee,
p. 478, confirms Cantrell's identity,
9. langguth, p. 252.
10. Interview of Langguth in the film "On Company Business" [Directed by Allan Francovich), cited in Warner
Poelchau, ed., White Paper, Whitewash (New York, 1981) p. 66.
11. Extracts from the report of the Senate Commission of Inquiry into Torture, a document accompanying the film
script in State of Siege (Ballantine Books, New York, 1973) pp. 194-6; also see "Death of a Policeman:
Unanswered Questions About a Tragedy", Commonweal (Catholic biweekly magazine, New York), 18
September 1970, p. 457; Langguth, p. 249.
12. Death Squad, TSD: Langguth, pp. 245-6, 253.
13. Michael Klare and Nancy Stein, "Police Terrorism in Latin America", NAClAs Latin America and Empire
Report (North American Congress on Latin America), January 1974, pp. 19-23, based on State Department doc-
uments obtained by Senator James Abourezk in 1973; also see Jack Anderson, Washington Post, 8 October
1973, p. C33; Langguth, pp. 242-3.
14. Klare and Stein, p. 19.
15. New York Times, 25 September 1968, 1 August 1970; Langguth, p. 241.
16. Hevia, p. 284, translated from the Spanish and slightly paraphrased by author; a similar treatment of this and
other passages from Hevia can be found in Langguth, pp. 311-13.
17. New York Times, 5 August 1978, p. 3.
18. Mitrione's philosophy: Hevia, pp. 286-7 (see note 16 above).
19. Poelchau, p. 68.
20. Langguth, p. 305,
21. The Guardian (London) 19 October 1984.
22. Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts With Tarturen (Penguin Books, 1991) p. 121
23 . Ibid,, p. 147, said to Weschler by Galeano.
421
KILLING HOPE
24. Nancy Stein and Michael Klare, "Merchants of Repression", NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report (Norrh
American Congre&s on Latin America), July-August 1976, p. 3 1.
25. DEA, arms manufacturers, etc.: Stein and Klare, pp. 31-2; New York Times, 23 January 1975, p. 38; 26 January
1975, p 42; Langguth, p. 301.
26. Argentine Commission for Human Rights, Washington, DC: Report entitled "U.S. Narcotics Enforcement
Assistance to Latin America", 10 March 1977, reference to a May 1974 press conference in Argentina.
27. San Francisco Chronicle, 2 November 1981.
28. Agee, pp. 325-494, passim.
29. Cable News Network en Espariol, 23 July 1998; El Diorio-La Prensa (New York) 24 July 1998; Clarm (Buenos
Aires daily) 22 July 1998, p.45
34. CHILE 1964 to 1973
1. Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973, a Staff Report of The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations
with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate) 18 December 1975, p. 16; hereafter referred to as Senate
Report.
2. Washington Post, 6 April 1973.
3. Senate Report, pp. 14, 18.
4. Ibid., p. 9.
5. Washington Post, 6 April 1973.
6. Senate Report, p. IS.
7. PaulE. Sigmund, The Overthrow ofAllende and the Politics of Chile, 1964-1976 (University of Pittsburgh Press,
1977) p. 297.
8. Senate Repott, pp. 15-16.
9. Sigmund, p, 34.
10. Propaganda from abroad: Senate Report, p. 16.
11. Sigmund, p. 35; Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York, 1975) p. 387; Miles Wolpin, Cuban
Foreign Policy and Chilean Politics (Lexington, Mass., 1972) pp. 88, 176.
12. Senate Report, p. 8.
13. Washington Post, 6 April 1973.
14. Senate Report, pp. 9, 16; Wolpin, pp. 175, 372.
15. David Wise, The Politics of Lying (New York, 1973, paperback edition) pp. 167-8.
16. Time magazine, 11 August 1975, European edition, p. 47.
17. Penny Lernoux, Cry of the People: The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America — The Catholic Church in
Conflict with US. Policy (Penguin Books, London, 1982) pp. 25-9, 289-92.
18. Senate Report, p. 16.
19. Ibid., p. 5.
20. Ibid., p. 18.
21. Ibid., p. 9.
22. Survey of the Alliance for Progress: Labor Policies and Programs, Staff Report of the US Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Subcommittee on American Republics Affairs, 15 July 1968, p. 3.
23. Newsweek, 23 September 1974, pp. 51-2, amongst many other places where this now-famous remark can be
found.
24. Senate Report, p. 21.
25. Ibid., pp. 21-2.
26. Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, The Select Committee to Study
Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate) 20 November 1975, p. 227; here-
after referred to as Assassination Report.
27. Senate Report, p. 24,
28. Assassination Report, passim; Senate Report, p. 23.
29. Seymour Hersh, Kissinger: The Price of Power (London, 1983) pp. 259, 274, 292.
30. Senate Report, pp. 23, 25; Hersh, p. 273.
3 1. Senate Report, pp. 26, 37.
32. Ibid., pp. 24,25.
33. Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book 1, Final Report of The Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate), April 1976, p. 200.
34. Washington Post, 5 January 1978; Senate Report, p. 25.
35. Senate Report, p. 24.
36. Assassination Report, p. 234.
37. Ibid., p. 240.
38. Ibid., 226, 245, 252, and elsewhere; for another overall description of the 4 September-24 October 1970 period,
see Hersh, Chapters 21 and 22.
39. The Sunday Times (London), 27 Ocrober 1974, p. 15, referring to William Colby's secret testimony before a
Congressional committee on 22 April 1974. See the Neie York Times, 8 September 1974, p. 1, for a paraphrase
of Colby's statement.
422
Notes
40. Senate Report, p. 33.
41. Almost all books dealing with Chile under Allende go into the economic boycott in some detail; e.g., Edward
Boorstein, Allende's Chile: An Inside View (New York, 1977) and James Petras and Morris H. Morley, How
Allende Fell (Great Britain, 1974).
42. Adam Schesch and Patricia Garrett, "The Case of Chile" in Howard Frazier, ed., Uncloaking the CIA (The Free
Press/Macmillan, New York, 1978) p. 38; Senate Report, pp. 32-3.
43. The Sunday Times (London), 27 Ocrober 1974, p. 16.
44. Schesch and Garrett, p. 48; Senate Report, pp. 37-8.
45. Time, 30 September 1974; Senate Report, p. 31; New York Times, 21 September 1974, p. 12.
46. John Dinges and Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Rom (London, 1981} p, 43.
47. AIFLD: Fred Hirsch, An Analysis of Our AFL-CIO Role in Latin America (San Jose, California, 1974) passim,
Chile, pp. 30-42; NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report (North American Congress on Latin America,
New York and Berkeley, California) October 1973, p. 11; The Sunday Times (London), 27 October 1974, pp.
15, 16; Hortensia Bussi de Allende (Salvador Allende's widow) "The Facts About Chile" in Frazier, op. tit., p.
60.
48. The author's own observations while in Chile from August 1972 to April 1973,
49. One of the publications closed down was Panto Final, a magazine put out by the left wing of Allende's own
Socialist Party, during a state of emergency declared after an aborted June 1973 military coup.
50. Senate Report, p. 31; Hortensia Bussi de Allende, op. cit., pp. 60, 63; the bombing school in Los Fresnos is
described in the chapter on Uruguay.
5 1. Senate Report, pp. 36-8.
52. Ellen Ray and Bill Schaap, "Massive Destabilization in Jamaica", Covert Action Information Bulletin
(Washington, D.C.) August-September 1980, p. 8; Fred Landis, "Robert Moss, Arnaud de Borchgrave and Right-
wing Disinformation" in ibid., p. 42. (Landis was a consultant to the Senate committee which produced the
reports cited in this chapter.)
53. Landis, p. 42; Senate Report, p. 39.
54. The Guardian (London), 20 December 1976, p. 9; Landis, pp. 37 A 4.
55. Landis, pp. 38-9; Senate Report, p. 30 (refers to "an opposition research organization"); Daily Mail (London) 22
December 1976, p. 6.
56. Senate Report, p. 38.
57. Various published accounts plus the author's personal acquaintance with many Americans and other foreigners
who were in Santiago at the rime of the coup.
58. Time magazine, 30 September 1974.
59. Victor Marcherti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York, 1975), p. 43; Dinges and
Landau, p. 50; Hersh, p. 333.
60. Time, 24 September 1973, p. 46.
6 1. Senate Report, p. 39.
62. Hortensia Bussi de Allende, op. cit., p. 64; she adds that the pilots of the WB-575 plane were Majors V. Duenas
and T. Schull.
63. Thomas Hauser, The Execution ofCharles Horman (New York, 1978) Chapters 9 and 10, the book that the film
"Missing" is based on.
64. New York Times, 17 September 1974, p. 22.
65. Ibid.
66. Senate Report, p. 47; Washington Post, 21 October 1973, p, CI.
67. Assassination Repott, p. 229.
35. GREECE 1964 to 1974
1. The Observer [London), 1 July 1973, article by Charles Foley.
2. Junta's actions: James Becket, Barbarism in Greece (New York, 1970) p. 1; Bernard Nossiter, "Saving Greece
from the Greeks™, New Republic (Washington), 20 May 1967, p. 10; The Nation (New York) 22 May 1967, p,
644.
3. Becket P, 90 [Amnesty International Report, 27 January 1968).
4. Philip Deane, / Should Have Died (Atheneum, New York, 1977) pp. 92-124, composed of conversations with
Greek and American individuals in or close to the conspiracy, and references to testimony from the 1975 trials of
junta members and torturers.
5. Ibid., pp. 113-14.
6. New York Times, 2 August 1974, p. 3; see also Newsweek, 12 August 1974, p. 36, concerning CIA buying politi-
cians and votes in Greece before the coup.
7. Stephen Rousseas. "The Deadlock in Greece", The Nation (New York), 27 March 1967, p. 392.
8. Washington Post, 15 May 1967, p. A18,
9. Andreas Papandreou's political views: No&siier, p. 9; Deane, p. 1 16; Lawrence Stern, Tfae Wrong Horse: The
Politics oflntervention and the Failure of American Diplomacy (N.Y. Times Books, 1977) pp. 20-30.
423
KILLING HOPE
10. Deane, pp. 116-17.
11. New York Times, 2 August 1974, p. 3; 3 August, p. 4.
12. George Papandreou: Rousseas, pp. 390-1; Nossiter, p. 9; Deane, p. 115.
13. The Observer, op. cit.
14. Ibid.; see also Deane, p. 96 re bugging ministers.
15. Deane, p. 96, citing Andreas Papandreou as the source. Julius Mader, Who's Who in CIA (East Germany, 1968),
p. 34, stares that Anschuetz served in the Military Intelligence Service of the US Army during World War 2 and
joined the CIA in 1950. This book, however, has not always proven to be reliable.
16. The Observer, op. cit,
17. Ibid.; Deane, p. 96; Becker, p. 13.
IS, Washington Post, 15 May 1967, p, A18.
19. Stern, pp. 42-3.
20. The Observer, op. cit,
21. Ibid.
22. New York Times, 2 August 1974, p, 1; Deane, p. 96.
23. The Observer, op, cit.; Deane, p. 126.
24. The Observer, op. cit.
25. Ibid.
26. Becket, p. S.
27. Ibid., p. 10.
28. Ibid., p. xi.
29. Ibid., p. 15.
30. Ibid., p. 91.
31. See, e.g., Becket, pp. 18-85; Deane, pp. 128-33; Amnesty International, Torture in Greece: The First Torturers'
Trial in 1975 (London, 1977) passim.
32. Becket, pp. 4 and 115,
33. Amnesty International, Report on Torture (London, 1973), pp. 93-t; also see Deane, p, 119, for evidence of the
fraudulent nature of the junta's claims before the coup of a communist threat; State Department statement; New
York Times,!} December 1969.
34. Report on Torture, op. cit., p. 77; see pages 88, 89, 95, 98 for choice examples of what Amnesty was referring to.
35. The Observer, op. cit.
36. Seymour Hersh, Kissinger: The Price of Power (Simon & Schuster/Summit Books, New York, 1983) p. 140.
37. The Observer, op. cit.
38. Heish, pp, 137-8,648; Los Angeles Times, 1 August 1990, p. S.
(P. Becket, p. 16; see also p. 127.
40. Report on Torture, op. cit., p. 96.
41. Deane, p. 134; New York Times, 2 August 1974, p. J.
42. Deane, p. 134.
43. New York Times, 1 September 1975, p. 6.
44. Deane, p. 125,
45. Andreas Papandreou, Democracy at Gunpoint: The Greek Front {New York, 1970) p. 294.
36. BOLIVIA 1964 to 1975
The account of the events leading up to the coup of 1964 was derived primarily from the following sources;
a) Cole Blasier, The United Stares and the Revolution' in James M. Malloy and Richard Thorn, eds., Beyond the
Revolution: Bolivia Since 1952 (University or Pittsburgh Press, 1971) pp. 90-105;
b) James Dunkerley, Rebellion in the Veins: Political Struggle in Bolivia 1952-1 ')X2 (London, 1984) pp. 112-9;
c) Lawrence Whitehead, The United States and Bolivia: A Case qfNeo-Coloniatism (London, 1969), pp. 11-25;
d) Christopher Mitchell, The Legacy of Populism in Bolivia: From the MNR to Military Rule (New York, 1977),
Chapter 5;
e) William H. Brill, Military Intervention in Bolivia: The Overthrow of Paz, Estenssoro and the MNR {Washington,
1967), pp. 18-47.
1. Cornelius H. Zondag, Bolivia's 1952 Revolution' in Jerry R. Ladman, eil„ Modem-Day Bolivia (Arizona State
University, 1982) p. 37.
A > Washington Post, 5 February 1968. Fo* was named as a CIA officer by Antonio Arguedas, Minister of the
Interior under Barricntos. This is mentioned in Victor Marcbetti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of
Intelligence (New York, 1975), p. 144, but was tensored by the CIA in the original manuscript. (Also see note 22
below.)
3- New York Times, 9 August 1964, p. 10.
4- Ibid., 24 August 1964, p. 26.
5- Blasier, pp. 89-90; Whitehead, p. 14; Dunkerley, p. 106.
424
Notes
6. Blasier, pp. 97-8; Dunkerley, p. 113; Whitehead, p. 16; Washington Post, 5 February 1968.
7. .Miners' strength, Zavaleta quote: Whitehead, pp. 24-5. Henderson had actually been ambassador only one year
at the time of the coup, so Zavaleta may have been referring to Henderson's predecessor as well.
8. New York Times, 22 November 1964, p. 26.
9. US build-up of armed forces: Dunkerley, p. 114; Blasier, pp. 93-5; Whitehead, p. 24; Richard Harris, Death of a
Revolutionary: Che Guevara's Last Mission (New York, 1970) p. 172.
10. Washington Post, S February 1968.
11. Blasier, p. 98.
12. Mitchell, p. 94; Dunkerley, pp. 116-17.
13. Shooting incident and aftermath leading to Barrientos replacing Fortun: Dunkerley, p. 117; Mitchell, pp. 94-5.
14. El Diario and Sanjines: Dunkerley, pp. 113-14; Blasier, p. 95; Whitehead, p. 15 (citing cabinet member Antonio
Arguedas).
15. Mitchell, p. 95.
16. Brill, p, 28,
17. Ibid., pp. 27-9, 36-8.
18. Ibid., p. 37.
19. Washington Post, 5 February 1968.
20. Mitchell, pp. 100-1.
21. Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services and the Subcommittee on Department of Defense of the
Committee on Appropriations (US Senate), 23 February 1966, p. 39.
22. Washington Post, 17 May 1975;Nejt> York Times, 17-18 May 1975. Arguedas revealed a number of other things
about CIA activities in Bolivia and his own strange connection to the Agency — see Harris, chapter 14;
Intercontinental Press (New York weekly newsmagazine) 23 September 1968 {transcript of a press conference
held by Arguedas).
23. Norman Gall, The Legacy of Che Guevara', Commentary (New York) December 1967. p. 35.
24. Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York, 1975) p. 438.
25. Military operation against Guevara: Michael Klare, War Without End (Random House, New York, 1972) pp.
173-4, 177-9: Marchetti and Marks, pp. 138-45; Harris, pp. 172-8.
26. Harris, pp. 185-6. See note 22 above.
27. New York Times, 14 December 1969, p. 22.
28. Ibid.
29. Inter Press Service dispatch of 18 December 1969, cited in Gregorio Selser, La CIA en Bolivia (Buenos Aires,
1970) p. 5.
30. Associated Press dispatch from La Paz, appearing in La Naclon (Buenos Aires' leading newspaper), 21 December
1969, p. 4.
3 1. New York Times, 24 January 1970, p. 9
32. Ibid., 20 July 1970, p. 9.
33. Ibid., 23 September 1970, p. 13.
34. Torres' policies: Latin American Bureau, Bolivia and Coup d'Etat (London, 1980) pp. 36-8; Dunkerley, pp. 180,
186.
35. San Francisco Chronicle, 30 August 1971.
36. Washington Post,29 August 1371.
37. Dunkerley, p. 197.
38. Dunkerley, p. 200; Washington Post, 29 August 1971.
39. San Francisco Chronicle, 1 September 1971, reporting from Mexico City and citing "knowledgeable sources
here".
40. Banzer's post-coup statements: Washington Post, 25 August 1971; New York Times,. 25 August 1971; Los
Angeles Times, 24, 25 August 1971.
41. New York Times, 30 December 1973.
42. Penny Lernoux, Cry oflhe People: The Struggle for Human Rights in Latin America — The Catholic Church In
Conflict with VS, Policy (Penguin Books, London, 1982) pp. 142-5.
43. The Guardian [London), 15 July 1985, p. 6.
44. Bolivia — An Assessment ofUS. Policies and Programs: Report to the Congress by the Comptroller General of
the United States, 30 January 1975, p. 29.
45. New York Times, 28 July 1978, article by Max Holland.
37. GUATEMALA 1962 lo 1980s
The details of the events and issues touched upon in this chapter through 1968 were derived primarily from the fol-
lowing sources;
a) Thomas and Matjone Melville, Guatemala — Another Vietnam? (Great Britain, 1971) Chapters 9 to 16; particu-
larly for the conditions ofthe poor, and US activities in Guatemala. Published in the United States the same year
in a slightly different form as Guatemala: The Politics of Land Ownership.
b) Eduardo Galeano, Guatemala, Occupied Country (Mexico, 1967; English translation: New York, 1969) passim;
for the politics ofthe guerrillas and the nature ofthe right-wing terror; Gateano was a Uruguayan journalist who
425
KILLING HOPE
spent some time with the guerrillas.
c) Susanne Jonas and David Tobis, editors, Guatemala (Berkeley, California, 1974) passim; particularly "The
Victimization of Guatemala: U.S. Counter-insurgency Programs" pp. 193-203, by Howard Sharckman; pub-
lished by the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA, New York and Berkeley),
d) Amnesty International, Guatemala (London, 1976) passim; for statistics about the victims of the terror. Other AI
reports issued in the 1970s about Guatemala contain comparable information.
e) Richard Gott, Rural Guerrillas in Latin America {Great Britain, 1973, revised edition) Chapters 2 to 8; for the poli-
tics of the guerrillas.
1. The Guardian (London), 22 December 1983, p. 5.
2. The plight of the poor: a montage compiled from the sources cited herein.
3. New York Times Magazine, 26 June 1966, p. S.
4. US counter-insurgency base: El Impartial (Guatemala City conservative newspaper) 17 May 1962 and 4 January
1963, cited in Melville, pp. 163-4.
5. Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kimer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala
(New York, 1982), p. 242.
6. Georgie Anne Geyer: Miami Herald, 24 December 1966. Also see: New York Herald Tribune, 7 April 1963, arti-
cle by Bert Quint, section 2, p. I; Schlesinger and Kinzer, pp. 236-44.
7. Galeano, p. 55.
8. Ibid., pp. 53-6.
9. Time, 26 January 1968, p, 23.
10. Ibid.
1 1. Atrocities and torture: compiled from rhe sources cited herein; also see A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors (New York,
1978) pp. 139, 193 for US involvement with the use of the field telephones for torture in Bra?il,
12. Melville, p. 292.
13. Ibid., p. 291.
14. Washington Post, 27 January 1968, p. A4, testimony of Rev. Blase Bonpane, an American Maryknoll priest in
Guatemala at the time.
15. Panama: revealed in September 1967 by Guatemalan Vice-President Clemente Manroquin Rojas in an interview
with the international news agency Inter Press Service (IPS), reported in Latin America, L5 September 1967, p.
159, a weekly published in London. Eduardo Galeano, p. 70, reports a personal conversation he had with
Marroquin Rojas in which the vice-president related the same story. Marroquin Rojas was strongly anti-commu-
nist, but he apparently resented the casual way in which the American planes violated Guatemalan sovereignty,
16. Norman Diamond, "Why They Shoot Americans", The Nation (New York), 5 February 1968. The title of the
article refers to the shooting of John Webber.
17. Opening quotation: Clyde Snow, forensic anthropologist, cited in Covert Action Quarterly, spring 1994, No. 48,
p. 32. Right-wing terrorism: compiled from the sources cited herein.
18. Washington Post, 4 February 1968, p. Bl, The historic dialogue in Latin America between Christianity and
Marxism, begun in the 1970s, can be traced in large measure to priests and nuns like Bonpane and the Melvilles
and their experiences in Guatemala in the 1950s and 60s.
19. Galeano, p. 63.
20. Ellmpartial (Guatemala City), 10 November 1967, cited in Melville, p. 289.
2 1 . Richard Gott, in the Foreword to the Melvilles' book, p. 8.
22. AID, OPS, Alliance for Progress:
a) "Guatemala and the Dominican Republic", a Staff Memorandum prepared for the US Senate Subcommittee on
Western Hemisphere Affairs, Committee on Foreign Relations, 30 December 1971, p. 6;
b) Jonas and Tobis, pp. 199-200;
c) Galeano, pp. 72-3;
d) Michael Klare, War Without End (Random House, New York, 1972) pp. 241-69, for discussion of the OPS cur-
riculum and philosophy;
e) Langguth, pp. 242-3 and elsewhere, for discussion of OPS practices, including its involvement with torture; the
author confines his study primarily to Brazil and Uruguay, but it applies to Guatemala as well;
f) CounterSpy magazine (Washington), November 1980-January 1981, pp. 54-5, lists the names of almost 300
Guatemalan police officers who received training in the United States from 1963 to 1974;
g) Michael Klare and Nancy Stein, "Police Terrorism in Latin America", NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report
(North American Congress on Latin America, New York), January 1974, pp. 19-23, based on State Department
documents obtained by Senator James Abourezk in 1973;
h) Jack Anderson, Washington Post, 8 October 1973, p. C33.
23. AID figure cited in Jenny Pearce, Under the Eagle: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean (Latin
American Bureau, London, updated edition 1982) p. 67.
24. George Cotter, "Spies, strings and missionaries", The Christian Century (Chicago), 25 March 1981, p. 321.
25. F.qbal Ahmad, "The Theory and Fallacies of Counter-insurgency", The Nation (New York), 2 August 1972, p.
73,
26. Relationship of Arana to US military: Joseph Goulden, "A Real Good Relationship", The Nation (New York), 1
June 1970, p. 646; Norman Gall, "Guatemalan Slaughter", N.Y. Review of Bonks, 20 May 1971, pp. 13-17.
426
Notes
27. UMonde Weekly (English edition), 17 February 1971, p. 3.
28. New York Times, 27 December 1970, p. 2; New York Times Magazine, 13 June 1971, p. 72.
29. US Senate Staff Memorandum, op, cit.
30. New York Times, 18 February 1976.
31. Ibid., 9 November 1977, p, 2,
32. Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, Jane Hunter, The Iran — Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert
Operations in the Reagan Era (South End Press, Boston, 1987), chapter V, passim; The Guardian (London), 9
December 1983; CounterSpy, op. cit., p. J3, citing Elias Barahona y Barahona, former press secretary at the
Guatemalan Ministry of the Interior who had infiltrated the government for the EGP.
33. CounterSpy, op. cit (Barahona) p. S3.
34. Pearce, p. 278; a book was published later which ttanscribed Menchii's own account of her life, in which she
recounts many more atrocities of ihe Guatemalan military: Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, ed„ / ... Rigoherta Menchu:
An Indian Woman in Guatemala (London, 1984, English translation).
35. Pearce, p. 176; Sherwood's role in 1954: Schlesinger and Kinzer, pp. 116, 122, 128. His statement is partially
quoted in Penny Lernoux, In Banks We Trust (Doubleday, New York, 1984), p. 238, citing CBS News Special,
20 March 1982: "Update: Central America in Revolt".
36. Washington Post, 22 February 1981, p. C7, column by Jack Anderson; Anderson refers only to an "official
spokesman" of the MLN; the identity of the speaker as Sandoval comes from other places — see, e.g., The
Guardian (London), 2 March 1984.
37. Washington Post, ibid. For a discussion of the many ties between American conservatives and the Guatemalan
power structure, see the report of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (Washington), by Allan Nairn in 1981.
38. New York Times, 19 March 1981, p. 10.
39. Washington Post, 14 May 1981, p, A16.
40. Ibid.; New York Times, 18 May 1981, p. 18; Report issued by the Washington Office on Latin America (a
respected human-rights lobby which has worked in liaison with the State Department's human-rights section), 4
September 1981.
41. Washington Office on Latin America report, op, cit. Presumably it was the traditional right-wing fear of the poor
being educated which lay behind this incident.
42. New York Times, 28 December 1981-
43. Ibid., 21 June 1981; 25 April 1982; The Guardian (London), 10 January 1983.
44. San Francisco Chronicle, 27 August 1981, p, 57,
45. Washington Post, 21 October 1982, p. Al.
46. The Guardian (London), 10 January 1983; 17 May 1983.
47. New York Times, 25 April 1982. p. 1.
48. Ibid., 12 October 1982, p. 3 (deaths, citing Amnesty International); Los Angeles Times, 20 July 1994, p. 11 (vil-
lages, citing "human rights organizations"). For the gruesome details of death squads, disappearances, and tor-
ture in Guatemala during the early 1980s, see Guatemala: A Government Program of Political Murder (Amnesty
International, London, 1981) and Massive Exlrajudicial Executions in Rural Areas Under the Government of
General Efrain Rias Monti (Aljuly 1982).
49. New York Times, 6 December 1982, p. 14.
50. Contemporary Marxism (San Francisco), No. 3, Summer 1981,
5 1. The National Catholic Reporter (Kansas City, Missouri weekly), 31 January 1968.
52. Los Angeles Times, 25 December 1988.
53. Occurred on 2 December 1990; Report, Summer 1991, from Witness for Peace, Washington, a religious-oriented
human rights organization concerned with Central America.
54. Los Angeles Times, 1 May 1990.
55. DeVine and Bamaca cases: New York Times, 23 March 1995,p. l;24March,p. 3; 30 March, p A; Los Angeles Times, 21
March 1995, p. 7; 24Marth,p. 4; 31 March, p. 4; 2 April, p-M2; Time magazine, 10 April 1995, p. 43.
38. COSTARICA 1970 to 1971
1. New York Times, 11 February 1971.
2. Ibid. The term "economic offensive" was apparently that of the newspaper.
3. The primary sources for the overall story are the Miami Heratd, 7 February 1971 and the Los Angeles Times, 28
February 1971; see also the Miami Herald, 9, 10, 11, 13 February 1971.
4. Neui York Times, 11 February 1971; Miami Herald, 11 February 1971.
5. Miami Herald, 10 February 1971.
39. IRAQ 1972 to 1975
The primary source of informaEion for this chapter is the Staff Report of the Select Committee on intelligence, US House of
Representatives, based on hearings held during 1975. Publication of the report was suppressed by the full House until
the White House could censor it But portions of the undensored report, which came to be known as The Pike Report
after the committee's chairman Rep, Otis G. Pike, were leaked to the press, in particular The Village Voice of New
York which published much of it in its issues of 16 and 23 February 1976. The first, and probably only, appearance of
this material in book form occurred in 1977 in England under the title: CIA — The Pike Report, published by
427
KILLING HOPE
Spokesman Books for ihe Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Nottingham. Ii is this book which is referred to in the
ptesent chapter, pp. 56, 195-8, 211-17, hereafter referred to as Pike Report. The report refers to the Kurds as "the eth-
nic group", Iran or the Shah as "our ally*, Iraq as "our aliy's enemy", Israel as "another government". Hete, the prop-
er names are used r
1. Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (Summit Books/Simon & Schuster,
New York, 1983] p. 542n.
2. New York Times, 5 February 1976, p. 31, column by William Safire.
3. PikeReport.p. 196.
4. Political background of the Kurds: The Times [London), 26-28 November 1974.
5. Pike Report, p. 212.
6. Ibid,, pp. 197,214-15.
7. Ibid., p. 214.
8. Ibid., p. 197.
9. New York Times, 12 February 1976, p. 3 1, column by William Safire.
10. Pike Report, p. 214,
11. New York Times, 1 June 1972, p. 1; 3 June, p. 1; 8 June, p. 69,
12. Ibid.,5 February 1976, p. 3 1 , column by William Safire.
13. Pike Report, pp. 198, 215.
14. Ibid., 215-216.
15. Ibid., p. 217.
16. New York Times, 12 February 1976, p. 3 1, column by William Safire; Pike Report, p. 19S, Kissinger is referred to
as "a high U.S. official".
40. AUSTRALIA 1973 to 1975
I. Henry 5. Mh'mski, Australian External Policy Under Labor (Australia, 1977) p. 126.
2. Joan Coxsedge, Ken Coldicutt, Gerry Haranr, Rooted in Secrecy: The Clandestine Element In Australian Politics
(Australia, 1982) p. 21 .
3. Albinski, p. 125,
4. Ibid.
5. Coxsedge, et al., p. 24; Seymour Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon While House (Summit
Books/Simon &. Schuster, New York, 1983) p. 295.
(,. Richard Hall, The SecretState (Australia, 1978), p. 2,
7. Coxsedge, etal,, p, 25-6.
8. Denis Freney, The CIA's Australian Connection (Sydney, 1977) pp. 75-80, for the text of the interview. This
book deals with many of the events discussed in this chapter.
9. Desmond Ball, A Suitable Piece of Real Estate: American Installations in Australia (Sydney, 1980) passim.
10. The National Times (Sydney weekly newspaper), 6-12 May 1983, p. 3.
II. Jimjose, "The Whitlam Years: illusion and Reality" in Pat Flanagan, ed., Big Brother or Democracy' (Great
Britain, 1981) p. 50; Albinski, p. 11; Ball, passim.
12. Albinski, pp. 9, 24 1 , 254-6.
13. Coxsedge, et al., p. 26.
14. Jose, p. 50.
15. The Australian Financial Review (Sydney daily newspaper), 4 November 1975, p. 1; 5 November, p. 4. In his
book on the National Security Agency, The Puzzle Palace (New York, 1982), p. 205, James Bamford identifies
Stalling as an official of the NSA, not the CIA,
16. New York Times, 24 September 1974, p. 2.
17. Ibid., 5 May 1977, citing the Sydney Sun, 4 May 1977.
18. Coxsedge, et at., p. 35.
19. The Australian Financial Review, 28 April 1977, p. 1; Jose, p. SI, adds that the official, Dr. Farrands, denied the
allegation but did admit to visiting Kerr in October, although he refused to discuss the nature of the meeting.
20. The Australian Financial Review, 28 April 1977, p. 1,
2). Albinski, p. 169,
22. Coxsedge, etal., p. 96.
23. Freney, pp. 30-31, for the full textofthe telex.
24. Coxsedge, et al, p. 35; Freney, p 33;The Village Voice (New York), 1-7 July 1981,
25. Discussion of the political and legal issues surrounding the budget crisis and Kerr's dismissal of Whitlam:
a) Coxsedge, op. cit., Freney, op. cit, Flanagan, op. cit.
b) Sir John Kerr, Matters for judgment: An Autobiography (New York, 1979) chapters 20-22.
ctRussel Ward, The History of Australia: The Twentieth Century, I90M975 [London, 1978) pp. 398-419.
d) New York Times, 12, 14 November 1975.
26. New York Times, 14 November 1975, p. 7.
27. Tfce Age, 12 November 1975, pp. 9 and 3.
28. Kerr, chapters 20-22.
29. Victor Marcheiii and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult oflntelligence (New York, 1975) p. 178; see pp. 178-9
for a description of the Asia Foundation.
428
Notes
30. Kerr in the Association for Cultural Freedom and Lawasia: Kerr, pp. 172-86, and most of the Australian books
mentioned above; the Quadrant article was in the Spring, 1960 issue, pp. 27-38.
3 1. San Francisco Chronicle, 24 May 1982. Boyce is the subject of the book and film "The Falcon and the Snowman"
by Robert Lindsey.
32. New York Times, 28 April 1977, p. 18; The Guardian (London), 29 April 1977, p. 7.
33. Nugan Hand Bank:
a) Sunday Times (London), 31 August 1980, p. 2;
b) New York Times, 13 November 1982, p. 3 1;
c) The Village Voice, 1-7 July 1981;
d) CounterSpy magazine (Washington, D.C.), November 1980- January 1981, pp. 30-3.3;
e) Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money and the CIA (New York, 1987), passim.
41. ANGOLA 1975 to 1980s
1. New York Times, 25 September 1975; 19 December 1975.
2. John A. Marcum, The Angolan Revolution, Vol.1, 1950-1962 (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1969) pp. 229-30.
3. New York Times, 17 December 1964, p. 14.
4. Comparison of the three groups:
a) Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly Worfif (New York, 1984) chapter 9;
b) Marcum, Vol. H, 1962-1976 (1978) pp. 14-15, 132,172 and elsewhere;
c) Basil Davidson, in the Eye of the Storm: Angola's People (London, 1972) passim;
d) Ernest Harsch and Tony Thomas, Angola: The Hidden History of Washington's War (New York, 1976) passim.
International appeals for support made by Roberto and Savimbi: see also New York Times, 4 January 1964, p.
15; Kwitny, p. 136; Declassified Documents Reference System, 1977 volume, document 210D (cable, 17 July 1964,
US embassy Congo to State Department).
5. Kwitny, pp. 132-3.
6. State Department Circular 92, 16 July 1963, cited in Marcum II, p. 16.
7. Hearings before the House Select Committee on Intelligence (The Pike Committee) published in CIA - The Pike
Report (Nottingham, England, 1977) p. 218; hereafter referred to as Pike Report. (See Notes: Iraq for further
information.}
8. Ibid., p. 201.
9. New York Times, 25 September 1975; 19 December.
10. Pike Report, p. 199, the words in quotes are those of the Pike Committee; the date comes from John Stockwell, In
Search of Enemies [New York, 1978) p. 67. Stockwell was a CIA officer and head of the Agency's Angola task
force.
11. Stockwell, pp. 67-8; Marcum II, pp. 257-8 (he ciles several international press accounts).
12. New York Times, 25 September 1975
13. Pike Report, p. 199.
14. Stockwell, p. 67.
15. New York Times, 12 December 1975; Harsch and Thomas, p. 100, citing CBS-TV News, 17 December 1975, and
Senator JohnTunney, 6 January 1976.
16. New York Times, 16 July 1978, p. 1
17. Interview of Stockwell by author.
18. Srockwell, pp. 223-4; see also Harsch and Thomas, pp. 99-100,
19. Chapman Pincher, Inside Story: A Documentary of the Pursuit of Power (London, 1978) p. 20
20. Srockwell, p. 225.
21. New York Times, 16 July 1978, referring to Kissinger's statement of 29 Janjary 1976.
22. Stockwell, pp. 162,177-8, plus interview of Stockwell by author.
23. Ibid., pp. 194-5
24. The capture of Russians and Cubans story appeared in the press 22 November 1975; the rape story, 12 March
1976.
25. Stockwell, p. 196.
26. San Francisco Chronicle, 9 May 1978.
27. Stockwell, pp. 196-8.
28. Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book 1, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental
Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (US Senate), 26 April 1976, p. 129.
29. Stockwell, p. 193.
30. Ibid., pp. 205-6 ("Bob Temmons" is probably a pseudonym); after the war ended, the State Department did
release the planes to Angola.
31. Newsweek (International Edition), 17 May 1976, p. 23, implicitly admitted to by South African Prime Minister
Balthazar Johannes Vorster.
32. New York Times, 16 July 1978, p. 1; 23 July 1986, p. 1; Stockwelf, pp. 208, 218; Stephen Talbot, "The CIA and
BOSS: Thick as Thieves" in Ellen Ray, et al., eds., Dirty Work h The CIA in Africa [New Jersey, 1979) pp. 266-
75 (BOSS is the South African Bureau of State Security); Bob Woodward, VEIL: The Secret Wars of the CIA
19£M9S7(New York, 1987), p. 269.
429
KILLING HOPE
33. The Guardian (London), 15 August 1986; The Times (London) 4 August 1986, p. 10.
34. New York Times, 25 March 1982, p. 7, citing a report of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
35. Stockwell,p.209.
36. Ibid., p. 75.
37. StockweJJ, pp. 216-17 discusses how this came about
38. Wayne S. Smith, "Dateline Havana: Myopic Diplomacy", Foreign Policy [Washington, D.C.) Fan 1982, p. 170.
see also New York Times, 31 March 2002, p.4
39. Stockwell, pp. 234-5.
40. New York Tims, 24 December 1975, p. 7.
41. Henry Kissmger,AmericanForeignPolicy (New York, 1977, third edition), p. 317.
42. See, for example, New York Times, 25 September 1975.
43. Hearings before the Subcommittee on Africa of the House Committee on International Relations, 25 May 1978,
p. 7.
44. Pike Report, p. 200.
45. New York Times, 9 January 1976, p. 3.
46. Washington Post, 18 December 1975, p. A23.
47. Kwilny,p. 148,
48. Harsch and Thomas, pp. 82-91; New York Times, 8 February 1981, IV, p. 5.
49. StockwelLpp. 203-4, 241; phis interview of Stockwell by author.
JO. Stockwell, p. 172; see also New York Times, 31 March 2002, p,4.
51. Galen Hull, "Internationalizing the Shaba Conflict", Africa Report (New York) July-August 1977, p. 9. For far-
ther discussion of possible Soviet connection to the rebellion and the Russian attitude toward Angola, see
Jonathan Steele, "Soviet Relations wHi Angola and Mozambique" in Robert Cassen, ed., Soviet Interests in the
Third World (Published by Sage for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, 1985), p. 290; see also
New York Times, 31 March 2002, p. 4.
52. The Observer (London), 22 January 1984,
53. The Guardian (London), 21 December 1983.
54. The Times (London), 23 October 1986, p. 8; the vote in the European Parliament was 152-150.
55. The Guardian (London), 25 June 1990, p. 10; Sharon Beaulaurier, "Profiteers Fuel War in Angola", Covert
Action Quarterly (Washington, DC), No. 45, Summer 1993, pp. 61-65.
56. New York Times, 17 January 1993, D7, p. 5.
42. ZAIRE 1975 to 1978
1. Mobutu's fortune: New York Times, 3 June 1978, article by Michael Kaufman; The Nation (New York) 26
February 1983, p. 230, Malnutrition; World Bank report, 1975, cited in Africa Today [Denver, Colorado),
October-December 1978, p. 7,
2. Roger Morris (former staff member of the National Security Council) and Richard Mauzy, "Zaire [the Congo);
An Exercise in Nation Building" in Robert Borosage and John Marks, eds., Tfie CIA File (New York, 1976) pp.
36-7. For a detailed description of Mobutu's corruption and cruelly, see Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies- The
Makingofan Unfriendly World (Penguin Books, New York, 1986), pp. 86-91.
3. Coup accusation and attendant events: New York Times, 18-23 June 1975; 2 September 1975, p. 21; John
Stockwell, in Search ofEnemies (New York, 1978) p, 44.
4. Stockwell, p. 96, quoting CIA officer Bill Avery.
5. For a profile of Hinton, see NACLA 's Latin America and Empire Report, October 1973, pp. 14-15, published by
North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), New York
6. Stockwell, p. 169.
7. Ibid., p. 164.
8. Ibid, p. 246, and note.
9. New York Times, 21 January 1976, p. 1.
10. Ibid., 9 April 1977; the quoted words are those of the newspaper.
11. The overall events of 1977: New York Times, 16 March to 3 May 1977, passim; Galen Hull, "Internationalizing
the Shaba Conflict' ', Africa Report (New York), July-August 1977, pp. 4-9.
12. Bufldn/mercenaries: Newsday (Long Island, NY), 17 April 1977; New York Times, 17, 18, 20 April 1977.
13. New York Times, 8 August 1977.
14. Background of the Balunda ("8a" is plural): Gerald Bender, "Zaire: Is There Any Rationale for U.S.
Intervention?", Los Angeles Times, 27 March 1977, VD, p. 2; Hull, op. cit; Kwitny, chapter 2; Stockwell, p,
151.
15. New York Times, 6 April 1977.
16. Mobutu: Ibid., 13 April 1977.
17. Confiscation of businesses: Bender, op. cit
IS. New York Times, 13 April 1977.
19. Washington Post, 16 March 1977.
20. New York Times, 20 May 1978.
21. 1978 military events: NewYorkTimes, 15 Mayto24June 1978, passim; Washington Post, 21 May 1978, p. 14.
430
Notes
22- New York Times, 23 May 1978.
23. Ibid, 19 May 1978.
24. Ibid., 20 May 1978. The words are those of the Times, paraphrasing "high administration officials".
25. See, for example, New York Times, 10 April 1977,
26. Carter-Castro exchange: Ibid, 11, 13,15 June 1978.
27. Ibid, 24 June 1978.
43. JAMAICA 1976 to 1980
1. Ernest Volkman and John Cummings, "Murder as Usual", Penthouse magazine [New York), December 1977, p.
114, quoting a participant in the meeting of the two men. {Volkman is a former national correspondent for
News day.)
2. MichasA Manley, Jamaica: Struggle in the Periphery (London, 1982)p. 116.
3. John Dinges and Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row (London, 1981) p. 44.
4. Testimony by de Roulet before the US Senate: Multinational Corporations and United Stales Foreign Policy,
Hearings before the Subcommittee on Multinational Corporations .of the Committee on Foreign Relations, 19
July 1973, pp. 117-18. A State Department official who was testifying at the same time was clearly embarrassed
by de Roulet's disclosure and quickly tried to play down the story,
5. Volkman and Cummings, p. 114,
6. Maniey.p. 116.
7. Ibid, p. 136.
8. Ibid, pp. 98-103.
9. New York Times, 1 October 1979, p. 2.
10. Manley,p.l01.
11. Ibid, pp. 116-17.
12. Ibid, p. 117.
13. Volkman and Cummings, p. 182.
14. Ibid, p. 183. Posada and plane bombing: see Cuba chapter and notes.
15. Ellen Ray, "CIA and Local Gunmen Plan Jamaican Coup", CounterSpy magazine (Washington), Vol. 3, No. 2,
December 1976, p. 39; Volkman and Cummings, p. 182.
16. Volkman and Cummings, p. 182; Manley, p. 103.
17. New York Times, 17July 1976, p. 29.
18. Manley, p. 228.
19. Ray, pp. 38, 40; Manley, pp. 229, 236;Afew York Times, 30 January 1976.
20. Ray, p. 37; Volkman and Cummings, pp. 183, 188.
2 1 . Ray, p. 4 1 ; Washington Post, 5 July 1979.
22. Volkman and Cummings, p. 182; Ray, p. 4 1 .
23 . Assassination attempts: Volkman and Cummings, pp. 112, 183, 188, 190.
24. Ray, p. 40.
25. Fred Landis, "The CIA and the Media: IAPA and the Jamaica Daily Gleaner", Covert Action Information Bulletin
(Washington) December 1979-January 19S0, pp. 10-12; Manley, p. 231; Fred Landis, "CIA Media Operations in
Chile, Jamaica and Nicaragua", CAIB, March 1982, pp. 32-43; Carl Bernstein, "The CIA and the Media",
. Rolling Stone, 20 October 1977, p. 64.
26. Ray, p. 41.
27. Newsday (Long Island, NY), 28 February 1980, cited in Ellen Ray and Bill Schaap, "Massive Destabilizarion in
Jamaica", Covert Action Information Bulletin, August-September 1980, p. 14; the date of the earlier article is not
mentioned.
28. Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), 1 June 1950, p. 10; see also Fred Landis, op. cit. 1982.
29. Manley, pp. 1934.
30. Ibid, pp. 199-200.
44. SEYCH ELLE S 1979 to 1981
1. Rene" and US-Seychelles relations: Sunday Tribune (Durban, South Africa), 29 November 1981, two separate arti-
cles, pp. 1 arid 52; Ellen Ray, "Seychelles Beats Back Mercenaries", CovertAction Information Bulletin [CAIB]
(Washington), No. 16, March 1982, pp. 4-10.
2. Sunday Tribune, op. cit, p. 52.
3. CAIB, op. cit, p, 5.
4. Sunday Tribune, op. cit, p. I; CAIB, op. cit, pp. 4-10.
5. Ibid.; New Vori Times, 6 November 1982, p. 4 (prosecution of editors).
6. New York Times, 10 May 1982, p. 2; The Guardian (London), 19 August 1982, p. 13.
7. The trial and aftermath: New York Times, 6 January 1982, p, 9; 11 March, p, 6; 22 April, p. 5; 4 May, p. 10; 10
May, p. 2; 17 June, p. 12; 30 July, p. 6; 28 November, p. 5; The Guardian (London), 14 July 1986
8. CAIB. op. cit, p. 10.
9. The Guardian (London), 3 December 1983.
431
KILLING HOPE
45. GRENADA 1979 to 1984
1. New York Times, 1 November 1983: Les Janka was the man in whom (he FBI security check failed to discover a
conscience,
2. US presence: Hugh O'Shaughnessy, Grenada: Revolution, Invasion and Aftermath (London, 1984) p. 156
(O'Shaughnessy was the Latin America correspondent for The Observer and before that for The Financial Times,
both London; he won a British Press Award in 1983 for his coverage of the Grenada invasion}. For the relevant
sections of rhe OECS treaty: William C. Gilmore, The Grenada Intervention: Analysis and Documentation
(London> 1984) Part II, "The Grenada Intervention in International Law" and Appendix 2.
3. The Guardian (London), 28 October 1983.
4. The Observer (London), 30 October 1983 (article by Hugh O'Shaughnessy, see note 2); see also Bob Woodward,
VEIL: The Secret Wars ofthe CIA 1981-1987 (Hew York, 1987), p. 290.
5. O'Shaughnessy, p, 153,
6. Woodward, p. 290.
7. The Guardian, 3] October 1983.
8. The Observer, 30 October 1983.
9. The Guardian, 1 November 1983.
10. The Guardian, 28,29 October 1983; The Observer, 30 October 1983.
11. O'Shaughnessy, p. 165; His page contains other evidence which refutes Reagan's contention which is not discussed here.
12. TheGuardian, 260ctober 1983.
13. New York Times, 27 October 1983.
14. O'Shaughnessy, p. 205.
15. TheGuardian, 26 October 1983.
16. O'Shaughnessy, p. 160.
17. The Guardian, 27 October 1983.
18. Ibid, 28 October 1983.
19. New York Times, 27 October 1983.
20. Ibid., 28 October 1983.
21. The Guardian, 29 October 1983; Casey: Woodward, p. 294.
22. O'Shaughnessy, p, 204.
23. The Guardian, 31 October 1983.
24. New York Times, 1 November 1983.
25. Woodward, p. 299, the quote is his paraphrase.
26. O'Shaughnessy, pp. 15, 16, 204.
27. The Observer, 23 October 1983.
28. From a speech by Fidel Castro on 14 November 1983 in Havana; reprinted in The Guardian, 19 November 1983,
p. 8.
29. The Guardian, 27 October 1983.
30. Ibid., 1 November 1983.
31. New York Times, 1 November 1983.
32. TheGuardian, 12June 1984.
33. O'Shaughnessy, pp. 87, 9S.
34. Ibid, p. 85.
35. The Guardian, 4 November 1983,
36. 'Woodward, p. 290.
37. Cited by Bishop in his speech of 13 April 1979, in Chris Searle, ed., In Nobody's Backyard: Maurice Bishop's
Speeches 1 979-1983 (London, 1984).
38. New York Times, 20 August 1979. p. 4.
39. Chris Searle, Grenada, The Struggle Against Destabilizativn (London, 1983), p. 56; this appeared as a news item
in the US media as well, and was seen or heard by mysdf, but [ have been unable to locate it again.
40. New York Times, 27 August 1983.
41. Washington Post, 27February 1983,p, 1,
42. O'Shaughnessy, p. 192. The correspondent was Ed Cody. Oddly enough, it appears that the Post itself did not run
the story.
43. Washington Post, 27 February 1983, p. 1.
44. New York Times, 26 March 1983.
45. The Nation (New York), 16 April 1983, p. 467, contains a table which compares the various airports.
46. O'Shaughnessy, p. 90.
47. TheNation (New York), 16 April 1983, p. 467; O'Shaughnessy, p. 89.
48. The Guardian, 31 October, 2 November 1983.
49. Ibid., 2 May 1983.
50. WallStreetJournal, 29 April 1981; The Guardian, 2 May 1983,
51. TheGuardian, 11 November 1983.
52. New York Times, 20 August 1979, p. 4,
53. Ibid. 432
Notes
54. Hie Observer, 30 October 1983, p, 9.
55. The Guardian, 25 November 1983.
56. Ibid, 27 October 1983, according to the Cuban ambassador in London.
57. From speech by Fidel Castro on 14 November 1983 in Havana; reprinted in The Guardian, 19 November 1983,
p. 8.
58. The Observer, 30 October 1983, p 9.
59. TheGuardian, 76November 1983,
60. The Observer, 30 October 1983.
61. O'Shaughnessy, p. 208; The Guardian, 76November, 19 December 1983.
62. The Guardian, 5 Match 1984.
63. Ibid., 12 June 1984.
64. New York Times, 4 November 1983, p. 16.
65. Ibid., 22 March 1986.
66. New York Times, 15 April 1984, p. 10
67. Ibid., 4 December 1984
68. Ibid., 10 December 1984, p. 3
69. The Guardian (London), 3 January 1986. Though the Reagan administration described COHA as left-wing, me
same annual report strongly criticized Cuba, Nicaragua and the Shining Path guerrillas of Peru for human-rights
violations.
70. "Importation of Publications (Prohibition) Order", Statutory Rules and Orders No. 6 of April 11, 1989, govern-
ment of Grenada.
71. Los Angeles Times, 25 August 1989. ;
46. MOROCCO 1983
1. The Nation (New York), 26 March 1983, p. 356.
2. Interview in Africa Now (London), March 1983, pp. 14-18.
3. CBudia Wright, "Showdown in the Sahara", Inquiry magazine (Washington), 12 April 1982, p. 24; New York
Times, 1 February 1983, p. 3.
4. AfricaNow, op. eft., p. 14.
5. New York Times, 1 February 1983, p. 3.
6. Wright, p. 24.
7. Ibid, pp. 24-5.
8. AfricaNow, op. cit.,pp. 14-15.
9. Ibid., p. 14.
47. SURTNAME 1982 to 1984
1. MiamiHerald, 1 June 1983.
2. New York Times, 1 June 1983, p. 13.
3. Miami Herald, 1 June 1983.
4. The Guardian (London), 1 November 1982, 7 January 1983; New York Times, 7January 1983, p. 5.
5. New York Times, 12 December 1982, p. 4; 30 November 1983.
6. TomBany, eta]., The Other Side of Paradise: Foreign Control in the Caribbean (Grove Press, New York, 1984),
p. 361, citing Soberaiti'a magazine (Managua, Nicaragua) February A March 1983. See index of the present book
for further information on the AIFLD.
7. New York Times, 7 January 1983, p. 5.
8. Ibid, 19July 1983.
9. MiamiHerald, 1 June 1983; Barry, op. cit, pp. 361-2, citing Latin America Weekly Report (London). 9 June
1983.
10. New York Times, 27 October 1983, p. 4; 31 October, p. 10; Miami Herald, 29 November 1983; Washington
Post, 5 November 1983.
11. Newsweek, 7November 1983, p. 78.
12. The Guardian (London), 22 February 1983, p. 7.
U.Miami Herald, 29 November 1983.
14. The Guardian (London), 11 and 13 January 1984.
15. Ibid, 28 November 1985; Washington Post, 28 November 1985, p. 50
48. LIBYA 1981-1989
1. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kantpf (Roa§Aon Mifflin Co., Boston, 1971; original version 1925) Vol. 1, chapter 10, p.
231.
2. New York Times, 15 April 1986.
3. Seymour Hersh, "Target Qaddafi", Tf-eAfew York Times Magazine, 11 February 1987, p. 22.
4. New York Times, 15 April 1986, p. 11
5. Hersh, p. 20. A corroborating comment is given by an air force pilot. See also: The Guardian (London), 19 April
433
KILLING HOPE
1986.
6. San Francisco Chronicle, 6 October 1987.
7. IbfcL, 16 April 1987, p. 15.
8. The Guardian (London), 24 February 1987.
9. Hersh, p. 20.
10. The Guardian (London), 9 May 1986, p. 11; see also New York Times, IS April 1986, p. 11.
11. New York Times, 15 April 1986, transcript of Reagan's address, and Larry Speakes cited in article, p. 11; Bob
Woodward, VEIL: The Secret Wars ofthe CIA 1981-1987 (New York, 1987), pp. 444-5
12. Der Spiegel (Hamburg, West Germany), 21 April 1986, p. 20; Los Angeles Times, 11-13 January 1988; New
York Times, 22 December 1988, p. 14; Hersh, p. 74. In December 1992, German officials charged a Palestinian
with the bombing. It is not clear what the outcome of that arrest was,
13. Hersh, p. 74.
14. Time magazine, 16 January 1989, p. 20.
15. The Times (London), 2 October 1989, p, 10; 28 September 1989, p. 9; LA Weekly (Los Angeles), 27 October-2
November 1989, p. 10, column by Alexander Cockburn; Los Angeles Titties, 2 November 1988; Washington
Post, 2 & 26 September 1999
16. Los Angeles Times, 24 November 1988, p. 16.
17. Newsweek, 20 July 1981, p. 42, citing a Western ambassador in Tripoli.
18. New York Times, 16 April 1986, pp. 1, 20.
19. Washington Post, 21 March 1981, p. A3.
20. Newsweek 3 August 1981, p. 19.
21. See Boston Globe, 25 March 1986, p. 7 for a discussion of this question.
22. Washington Post, 13 October 1981, p. D17, Jack Anderson.
23. Hersh, p. 24.
24. NewsMKfc 19 October 1981, p. 43; New York Times, 25 October 1981; 26 October, 1981, p. 4.
25. Time magazine, 23 November 1981.
26. New York Times, 13 November 1981, p. 3.
27. Ibid, 4 December 1981, p. 1.
28. Ibid, 8 December 1981, p. 7.
29. Jack Anderson, SmFrancisco Chronicle, 7 January 1982.
30. Hersh, pp. 24,26.
31. Duncan Campbell and Patrick Forbes, 'Tale of Anti-Reagan Hit Team Was 'Fraud'," New Statesman magazine
(London), 16 August 1985, p. 6; Jack Anderson, San Francisco Chronicle, 13 January 1989, p. E5,
32. Time magazine, 23 November 1981, p. 40.
33. Hersh, p. 48.
34. Washington Post, 20 February 1987, p. 1.
35. Tlie Guardian (London), 30 and 31 December 1985.
36. San Francisco Chronicle, 13 July 1987, Jack Anderson column; Hersh, pp. 4 8 , 7 1 .
37. Sunday Times (London), 6 April 1986, p. 12.
38. Tlie Guardian (London), 3 April 1986.
39. New York Times, 19 December 1986, p. 1, and 20 December, p, 6, for a summary ofthe incident The Reagan
administration acknowledged Wilson's action in March, and he resigned under pressure in May. Ir would have
been earlier if not for the fact that he was a close f riend of Reagan.
40. Tlie Guardian (London), 30 August 1986, citing the French news magazine LFxpress.
4 1 . Sec, e.g., Wall Street Journal, 25 August 1986, p. 1, for a story about Oaddafi's plans for new anti-US terrorist
attacks and US plans to attack Libya, and Washington Post, 2 October 1986 which reported that the information
in the journal article (picked up by much ofthe US media) had been part of a disinformation program See also
the Post, 27 August 1986, p. 1 and 5 October 1986, p. 1.
42. The Guardian (London), 18 September 1987, citing The Montgomery journal (presumably the paper in
Montgomery, Alabama of that name).
43. WashingtonPost, 2 October 1986, p. 1.
44. New York Times, 27 August 1986, p. 7
45. T&e Guardian [London), 9 October 1986.
46. Ibid., 13 October 1986, citing a story in lheSHHtfh> Telegraph (London) of 12 October,
47. WashingtonPost, 31 August 1986, p. A25.
48. Wall Street Journal, 2 September 1986, p. 31.
49. Patrick Seale & Maureen McConviUe, The Hilton Assignment (London, 1973), pp. 176-7 and passim; New York
Times, 3 October 1971, p. 26.
50. See Jonathan Bearman, Qadhafi's Libya (Zed Books, London, 1986) for a detailed discussion of Oaddafi's ideo-
logical development and his program of social revolution for Libya
51. Oaddafi's alleged record of terrorism and idiosyncracies: see, e.g., John K. Cooley, "The Libyan Menace", Foreign
Policy (Washington), Spring 1981, pp. 75-7; David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, Qaddafi and the Libyan
Revolution (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1987), chapter 6 plus page 21; also, many ofthe newspaper articles
cited herein, such as Los Angeles Times, 19 January ^§§9-
Notes
52. Peter Maas, Manhunt: The Incredible Pursuit of a CIA, Agent Turned Terrorist (Random House, New York,
1986), passim.
53. SanFranciscoChronicle, 18 July 1987.
54. Los Angeles Times, 26 October 1988,19 January 1989.
55. New York Times, 15 March 1990, p. 1,
56. Los Angeles Times, 19 January 1989.
57. New York Times, 6 July 1972, p. 2. The same article states that the Black Muslims in Chicago [Farrakhan's
group] received a loan, not a contribution, of $3 million to build a mosque. (But whether the money was actually
given, is not certain.) See Bhindy and Lycett, p. 80, re the skepticism of British security forces about the IRA get-
ting much, if any, money from Qaddafi.
58. Chicago Tribune, 1987: 3 April, 8 October, 15 October, 28 Ocrober, 30 October, 19 November, 25 November.
59. Bill Schaap, Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington, DC), No. 30, Summer 1988, p. 76.
60. Washington Post, 11 May 1989, p. 1.
61. Los Angeles Times, 10 October 1990, p. 1.
62. Ibid., U November 1991, p. 25.
63. Mark Perry, Eclipse: TheLastDays ofthe CIA (Wm. Morrow &c Co., New York, 1992) pp. 335 A 8. Despite the
title, the author is sympathetic to the CIA and accepts the official version ofthe guilt ofthe Libyans, although it's
not easy for him or for the reader,
64. Dei- Spiegel (Hamburg, Germany), 18 April 1994, pp. 92-7; Sunday Times (London), 19 December 1993, p. 2;
The Times (London), 20 December 1993, p. 11; Los Angeles Times, 20 December 1993.
65. DerSpiegel, 18 April 1994, p. 93.
66. See William Blum's essay: nttp^/members^ol. com/bblum6/panamJitm
67. Los Angeles Times, 24 November 1988, p. 1,
68. Ibid, 19 January 1989,
69. Ibid., 4 September 1989; 26 October 1989, citing an interview in the Egyptian magazine A' Mussawar. it can not
be determined from the article whether Qaddafi himself referred to any of these groups as "terrorist".
49. NICARAGUA 1981-1990
1. New York Times, 11 January 1927, p. 2
2. Ibid., 22 July 1979, HL p. 1
3. Newsweek, 8 November 1982, p. 44
4. Shirley Christian, Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family (Random House, New York, 1985) pp. 73 A S; for a
description ofthe discussion process, see chapter 5; also, Bernard Diederich, Somoza (London, 1982) chapter 14,
5. Christian, p. 82
6. Geovge~B\ack, Triumph ofthe People: The Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua (hondon, 1981)p. 176
7. Christian, p. 81
8. Bob Woodward, VEIL: The Secret Wars ofthe CIA 19SJ-J9S7 (New York, 1987), p. 113
9. Black, p, 177
10. New York Times, 15 January 1981, p. 10
11. Carter administration aid: Christian, pp. 143-4; Jeff McConnell, 'Counterrevolution in Nicaragua: The U.S.
Connection', CounterSpy magazine (Washington, DC), Vol. 6, No, 3, May-June 1982, pp. 11-23, particularly
concerning aid to private organizations.
12. Economic measures: The Times (London) 1 October 1984; The Guardian (London) 1 July 1983, 30 May 1984, 8
March 1985, 1 May 1985; New York Times, 11 October 1984.
13. The Guardian [London) 24 May 1985, 14 June 1985
14. International Herald Tribune, 18 April 1984; see also Time, 31 August 1987, p. 14
15. SanFrancisco Chronicle, 4 August 1982
16. Holly Sklar, Washington's War on Nicaragua (Boston, 1988), pp. 46-8, 66; McConnell, pp. 15,21
17. Newsweek, 15 June 1987, pp. 27-8
18. The Guardian (London) 8 and 13 October 1983; 9 and 22 March 1984; 9 April 1984
19. Ibid., 17 October 1983
20. Ibid, 18 May 1983, 6 June 1983, 30 May 1984
21. Barricada International (English-language weekly newspaper ofthe Sandinista National Liberation Front,
Managua) 8 November 1982, p. 12
22. The Guardian (London) 30 May 1984
23. Bitter Witness: Nicaraguans and the'Couert War', a Chronology and Several Narratives (Witness for Peace
Documentation Project, Santa Cruz, Ca., 1984) pp. 7-16, 18-22 (chronology of events, January 1981-June 1982)
24. The Guardian (London) 12 May 1984; Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington, DC) No. 22, Fall 1984,
pp. 25-9 — a summary ofthe military exercises appears on p. 26; Los Angeles Times, 17 March 1988
25. Eddie Adams, How Latin Guerrillas Train on Our Soil', Parade Magazine (Washington Post) 15 March 1981, p.
5 % New York Times, 17 March 1981; training in the US began in 1980.
26. SanFrancisco Chronicle, 8 June 1982; The Guardian (London) 4 and 9 April 1983,27 April 1984
27. David MacMichael in a television documentary shown on 'Diverse Reports', Channel 4, London, 30 October
1985, p. 2 oftranscript
435
KILLING HOPE
28. Nttti York Times, 19 August 1984, p. 10; 4 September 1984, p. 1; Washington Post, 19-22 January- 1984 (US
helicopter piloted by American shot down in Nicatagua and attempt at cover-up); International Herald Tribune,
14 December 1984; The Guardian (London), 6 and 7 October 1983, 7 September 1984, 10 October 1986;
Miami Herald, 26 July 1987; Time, 31 August 1987, p. 14
29. New York Times, 17 December 1984; The Guardian (London) 18 December 1984, both based on a story in the
Detroit Free Press of 16 December 1984.
30. The Guardian (London) 4 May 1984; San Francisco Chronicle, 27 July 1987
3 1. San Francisco Examiner, 22 November 1987, article by Seymour Hersh
32. The Guardian (London), 15 November 1984. Accounts of contra atrocities are numerous; see, e.g., Witter Witness,
op. cit., passim; legal brief filed by the Onter for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild against
the US Government, excerpts in Peter Rosset and John Vandermeer, editors, The Nicaragua Reader: Documents
of a Revolution under Fire (New York, 1983), pp. 228-36; New Yorker magazine, 25 March 1985, "Talk of the
Town" section; New York Times, 10 March 1985, IV, p. 23, column by Anthony Lewis; Reed Brody, Contra
Terror in Nicaragua (Boston, 1985), passim.
33. The Guardian (London) 15 November 1984
34. New York Times, 27 December 1984, p. 1
35. The Guardian (London) 3 June 1983
36. New Yorfc Times, 17 October 1984, pp. 1 and 12
37. Ibid., 20 and 24 October 1984
38. The Guardian (London) 25 January 1985
39. Ibid., 7 June 1983; New York Times, 7 June 1983
40. Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington, DC) No. 20, Winter 1984, p. 39
41. "World in Action" television program, ITV London, 24 March 1986, documentary on Nicaragua showing an
interview with a member of the hit team, part 2, pp. 12-13 of transcript
42. New York Times, 19 October 1984, p. 8; Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington, DC) No. 22, Fall
1984, p. 28
43. New York Times, 19 January 1981, p. 11.
44. Ibid., 12 February 1981, p. 11
45. The Guardian (London) 23 July 1983
46. Bob Woodward, VEIL: The Secret'Wars ofthe CIA 1981-1987 (New York, 1987), p, 120
47. New York Times, 11 June 1984, p. B6
48. The Guardian (London) 9 January 1385
49. New York Times, 4 February 1988, pp. 1 and 12
50. Statement of Lt. Col. John H. Buchanan, USMC, ret, before the House Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs,
Committee on Foreign Affairs, 21 September 1982, reprinted in Rosset and Vandermeer, pp. 48-57.
51. The Guardian (London) 30 March 1985
52. New York Times, 10 March 1982, p. 16
53. The Guardian (London) 12 March 1986
54. Ibid., 25 March 1985, 24 February 1986 (quotation)
55. Ibid., 28 April 1983; see also New York Times 1 October 1987, p. 6 for a similar report of Soviet sentiments.
56. Washington Post, 22 May 1987, A18
57. New York Times, 1 May 1987
58. Los Angeles Times, 16 and 18 December 1987
59. Washington Post, 3 October 1984, p. A24, 6 November 1984, p. Al
60. New York Times, 3 October 1984, p. 3
61. Ibid., 24 September 1984, p. 12
62. Washington Post, 2 October 1984, p. A12
63. Ibid., 6 November 1984, p. Al.
64. See Sklar, chapter 13, for a detailed discussion ofthe US undermining role in the long Contadora process and the
subsequent Central American Peace Accord process.
65. Panama, Honduras, Mexico; Miami Herald, 10 May 1987; see also New York Times, 18 May 1987
66. New Yori Times, 25 September 1988, p. 15
67. Washington Post, 4 November 1984, p. Al; see also New York Times, 4 November 1984 fora similar report
68. New York Times, 5 November 1984
69. Ibid., 26 July 1984, p. 5; 16 August 1984
70. Ibid., 29 July 1984, IV, p. 2
71. Ibid., 26 July 1984, p.5
72. Ibid., 24 September 1984
73. Ibid., 23 August 1984, p. 10
74. Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington, DC) No, 22, Fall 19S4, p. 27 — contains a reproduction ofthe
advertisement
75. New York Times, 21 October 1984, p. 12
76. Ibid., 31 October 1984, p, 1
77. Ibid,, 7 November 1984, p. 26.
436
Notes
78. Ibid., S October 1984, p. 3
79. Ibid., 19July 1984, p. 6
80. Tfe Guardian (London), 13 August 1986
81. International Herald Tribune, 22 January 1984; both attributions are from a letter of Eugene Stockwell who testi-
fied before the commission following a visit to Nicaragua with the World Council of Churches.
82. Tfoe Guardian (London) 15 March 1986
83. Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington, DC) No. 20, Winter 1984, p, 25
84. New York Times, 31 December 1983, p. 9; the American ambassador, Anthony Quainton, was replaced in May
1984, whether due to Kissinger cannot be determined.
85. The Guardian (London) 21 March 1986
86. San Francisco Chronicle, 3 June 1987, Jack Anderson column
87. New York Times, 3 March 1982, p. 5; the photograph was first printed in the right-wing French newspaper Le
Figaro, which then admitted its 'mistake' after being exposed by other French publications; it appears that Flaig
did not make any public retraction.
88. Miami Herald, 19 July 1987, p. 18A
89. Peter Kornbluh, "Propaganda and Public Diplomacy: Selling Reagan's Nicaragua Polity' , Extra! (Published by
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, New York), Summer 1989, p. 20.
90. Miami Herald, 21 December 1986, p. 30A; Kornbluh, op. cit., pp. 20-22; Extra! (FAD*, New York), June 1987,
p. 3, October/November 1987, p. 4.
91. Kornbluh, op. cit., pp. 20-22; Extra! (FAIR, New York), October/November 1987, p. 4, citing the example of
Prof. John Guilmartin's op-ed ("Nicaragua is Armed for Trouble" in the Wall Street Journal, 11 March 1985.)
92. The Guardian (London) 9 January 1985
93. Black, p, 218
94. Ibid., pp. 215, 332, 356 give a number of examples of the economic sabotage
95. The Guardian (London) 13 July 1985, p. 7
96. Boston Globe, 9 February 1986, A20
97. Black, p. 306
98. New York Times, 21 September 1988, p. 6; 22 September, p. 15; 23 September, p. 5; 25 September, p. 15
99. In These Times (Chicago weekly newspaper), 21-27 October 1987, citing a spokeswoman at The Nicaraguan
Resistance.
100. William I, Robinson, A Faustian Bargain: U.S. Intervention in the Nicaraguan Elections and American Foreign
Policy in the Post-Cold War Era (Westview Press, Colorado, 1992) pp. V9-81; San Francisco Chronicle, 13
October 1987; Jacqueline Sharkey, "Anatomy of an Election: How U.S. Money Affected the Outcome in
Nicaragua," Common Cause Magazine (Washington) May/June 1990, p. 24
101. New York Times, 1 June 1986; Robinson, passim.
102. Washington Post, 22 September 1991, p. C4. The Post itself added that NED "did openly what had once been
unspeakably covert".
103. Los Angeles Times, 23 September 198S, p. 24; Netu York Times, 21 September 1988, p. 6.
104. San Francisco Chronicle, 20 April 1987; Los Angeles Times, 31 December 1987
105. New York Times, 20 August 1987, p. 1, based on an intelligence report dared February 1985
106. Iran/Contra, a sampler;
a) Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Washington, D.C., 1993), Volumes I and II,
passim
b) The National Security Archive, The Chronology (New York, 1987), passim.
c) Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, Jane Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection (Boston, 1987), passim
d) Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA (New York,
1987), see index
e) Sklar, see index
107. Bush and Dole: Sharkey, pp. 22-3
108. Abrams; LA Weekly (Los Angeles) 9-15 March 1990, p. 12.
109. Sharkey, p. 22
110. LA Weekly up. cit.
111. National Endowment for Democracy (Washington DC), Annual Report, 1989 and 1990.
112. The manipulation of the election by Washington was a wide-ranging and complex operation. For much fuller
details than presented here, see Robinson, passim; also Sharkey, passim, and LA Weekly, op. cii.
113. Sharkey, p. 23.
50. PANAMA 1969-1991
1. Compiled from: 1) Francisco Goldman, "What Price Panama? A visit to a barrio destroyed by U.S. forces",
Harper's Magazine (New York), September 1990; 2) Las Angeles Times, 1 April 1990, op-ed article by David
and John Kiyonaga, lawyers representing more than 100 Panama invasion victims; 3) a speech by Olga Mejia,
President of the National Human Rights Commission of Panama, at Town Hall, New York City, 5 April 1990
(excerpted in Covert Action Information Bulletin [Washington], No. 34, Summer 1990, p, 13).
2. New York Times, 22 December 1989, p. 16
437
KILLING HOPE
3. John Dinges, Our Man in Panama (revised edition, New York, 1991) p. 33; New York Times, 28 September
1988.
4. Dinges, p, 52, William Jorden, US Ambassador to Panama 1974-78, has written that he's almost certain that US
intelligence agents gave the plotters tacit approval forthe coup: Panama Odyssey (Austin, Texas, 1984), p. 144.
5. "The Noriega Connection", a documentary film aired on "Frontline" (PBS), 30 January 1990, citing former CIA
officer John Bacon (on loan to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs) and other unnamed CIA and fed-
eral investigators. See also: article by joe Conason and John Kelly in The Village Voice (New York), 11 October
1988, and Dinges pp. 63-4, for BNDD discussions about assassinating Noriega during the Nixon administration,
based on documents of the Attorney General's office and the US Senate.
6. Newsweek, 18 June 1973, p. 22.
7. New York Times, 2 October 1988, p. 25.
S. Frederick Kempe, "The Noriega Files", Newsweek, 15 January 1990, p. 21; "The Noriega Connection", op. cit.
At Noriega's trial in Miami in 1-991, the prosecution stated that Noriega had been paid a total of only $16(),0(X)
over the years by the CIA and a like amount by the US Army. But the prosecution was seeking to counter the
claim of Noriega's lawyers that the millions of dollars possessed by their client came nor from drug dealing but
from US government payments.
9. Dinges, pp. 85-36; Los Angeles Times, 16 January 1990, p, 15.
10. Dinges, pp. 88-90.
1 1 . SitnFrancisco Chronicle, 1 1 June 1987.
12. Dinges, p. 158.
13. Dinges, pp. 160, 234, 241; Newsweek, 15 January 1990, p. 23; Los Angeles Times, 16 January 1990, p. 15 (met
at least six times).
14. Re sabotage: Newsweek, 15 January 1990, p. 22.
15. For different views of the source of the article, which was by Seymour Hersh, see Dinges, p. 243-4, Newsweek, 22 June
1987, p. 37, and Kevin Buckley, Panama, The Whole Story (New York, 1991), pp. 53-7.
16. Dinges, p. 253, citing Oliver North's trial stipulations 97-99, 101 and 106; also, see Los Angeles Times, 16
January 1990, pp. 14-15.
17. Dinges, pp. 253-4, ciring a Foreign Agents Registration Act form signed by an official of the public relations firm
and his testimony before the Iran-Contra Committee.
18. Dinges, p. 258,
19. William French Smith: Dinges, p. 27; Lawn: Los Angeles Times, 16 January 1990, p. 14. The latter also reports: A
March 1984 note from then-DEA Administrator Francis Mullen thanked Noriega for an autographed photo-
graph, saying that he "had it framed, and it is proudly displayed in my office."
20. Los Angeles Times, 4 January 1990, p. A12
21. Dinges, 295-6.
22. Saul Landau, "General Middleman", Mother Jones, Feb7March 1990, p, 17.
23. New York Times, 8 May 1988, p. 1. The same article reports that Edward Everett Briggs, who had been US
Ambassador to Panama, had told Bush of Noriega's connection to drugs in 1985.
24. Los Angeles Times, 16 January 1990, p. 15; Newsweek, 15 January 1990, p. 19. In addition to his meeting with
Noriega when he was CIA Director, Bush, as Vice President, met with him in December 1983 in Panama.
25. New York Times, 19 February 1989, p. 15.
26. New York Times, 24 April 1989, pp. 1, 11, Congressional intelligence committees do not have the formal power
to kill covert operations. But Hiey must be notified of them in advance and, very infrequently, their united oppo-
sition can dissuade an administration from proceeding. In actual practice, prior to the end of the cold war, the
CIA was normally engaged in continuous, daily covert actions and thus only the most serious actions (and only in
recent years) could be brought to the attention of the intelligence committees.
In October 1989, President Bush, perhaps in reaction to this congressional rejection, and in anticipation of the
upcoming invasion of Panama, issued a new executive order allowing operations which might result in the death
of a foreign political leader as long as it wasn't premeditated murder. [Los Angeles Times, 14 October 1989, p.
1]
27. VS. News& WorldReport, 1 May 1989, p. 40; Los Angeles Times, 23 April 1989, p. 1.
28. LosAngeles Times, 21 March 1992, p. A2
29. Dinges, pp. 187-9, 195-200, 369-72 (excerpts from the report). Dinges obtained a copy of the embassy report
through a Freedom of Information request.
30. Buckley, pp. 197-218; New York Times, 8 October 1989, p. 16; Washington Post, 5 October 1989, p. 1; 6
October, p. 36; 8 October, p. 1.
3 1. New York Times, 6 October 1989, p. 10; 8 October, p. 16; Washington Post, 7 October 1989, pp. 1, 16; 12
October, p. 35; helicopters: Los Angeles Times, 4 October 1989.
32. It was reported on rhe ABC-TV program "Nightline", 4 October 1989, that while the rebels had not offered to
turn Noriega over, Key had asked that American troops come and get him by helicopter. This was denied by the
Pentagon. (As reported intheAfew York Times, 5 October 1989, p. 14.)
33. New York Times, 6 October 1989, p. 10; 8 October, p. 16.
34. Washington Post, 21 December 1989, p. 37.
35. Los Angeles Times, 6 January 1990, p. 18. The Washington Post, 23 December 1989, p. 1, reported that in the
438
Notes
hours before the invasion, US forces had searched for Noriega at his many known lairs, including his mistress's
apartment (which means the same apartment building as the diplomat), but no mention was made of the apart-
ment of the mistress's grandmother,
36. New Yor* Tones, 21 December 1989 (Cheney), 22 December, p. 16 (Bush).
37. New York Times, 18 December 1989, p. 8.
38. Los Angeles Times, 22 December 1990, ciring three American military and civilian sources who confirmed rhe
facts independently of one another. (It should be noted that as to the claim about the American couple being
roughed up, the administration offered no supporting evidence.)
39. Buckley, pp. 228-9. The transcript of the marine's conversarion was included in the report of the U.S. Army's
Joint Debriefing Center,
40. Buckley, pp. 187, 191; Timothy Harding, "Why Are We In Panama?", LA Weekly (Los Angeles), 29 December
1989 -4 January 1990, p. 16.
41. Buckley, p. 193,dringthe Washington PostNational Weekly Edition, 22-28 January 1990.
42. New York Times, 24 December 1989, p, 9. The headline of this story on page one was: "US. Invasion: Many
'Weeks of Rehearsals". An earlier edition of the Times that day had headlined the same story: "US. Drafted
Invasion Plan Weeks Ago".
43. New York Times, 19 December, 1989, p. 12.
44. Washington Post, 21 December 1989, p. 36.
45. Compiled from: Los Angeles Times, 24, 26, 27, 30, 31 December 1989; 2, 4, 8, 25 January 1990; and
Washington Post, 31 December 1989, p, 1,
46. Los Angeles Times, 24 December 1989, pp. 1 and 6.
47. Ibid, 21 December 1990, editorial.
48. Datelined 20 December, but appearing in the New York Times 21 December 1989, p. 24,
49. New York Times, 22 December 1989, p. 16,
50. Los Angeles Times, 23 December 1989.
51. Ibid, 23 December 1990.
52. Alan Nairn, "The Eagte is Landing", The Nation, 3 October 1994, p. 347.
53 New Yvrk Times, 6 December 1990, p. 1; Dinges, p. xxvii.
54. Tlie Nation, op. dr., p. 346.
55. Lns Angeles Times, 23 June 1990.
56. New York Times, 22 December 1990, p. 26, editorial; Los Angeles Times, 19 December 1989, 1 February 1990.
57. Extra! January/February 1990, p. 5 [published by FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), New York!
58. Los Angeles Times, 28 April 1991.
59. Ibid, 1 February 1990, p. A8; 27 December 1990, p. AU; 20 April 1991; 28 Aprii 1991, p. A6. An earlier treaty
of August 1990 had been repudiated by the Panamanian governmenr.
60. Kiyonaga (Los Angeles Times), op, cit
6 1 . Los Angeles Times, 27 October 1990.
62. New York Times, 24 December 1989, p. 9.
63. Ibid, 22 December 1989, p. 17.
64. Ibid, 24 December 1989, p. 9,
51. BULGARIA 1990
1. New York Times, 11 February 1990, p. 20.
2. The Guardian (London), 21 May 1990, p. 6.
3. National Endowmenr for Democracy, Washingron, D.C, Annual Report, 1990 (October 1, 1989 - September 30,
1990), pp. 23-4. The NED grants also included $111 thousand for an international election observation team.
4. Los Angeles Times, 3 December 1990, p. 13.
5. New York Times, 6 June 1990, p. 10; 11 February 1990, p. 20.
6. The Guardian (London), 9 June 1990, p. 6.
7. Luan Troxel, "Socialist Persistence in rhe Bulgarian Elections of 1990-1991", East European Quarterly [Boulder*
CO) Januaty 1993, pp. 412-14,
8 Los Angeles Times, 12June 1990.
9. Tfee Guardian (London), 12 June 1990, p. 7.
10. Los Angeles Times, 12 Jgne 1990; The Times (London), 12 June 1990, p. 15; The Guardian (London) 12 June
1990, p. 7.
11. The Times (London), 20 June 1990, p. 10.
12. The Guardian (London), 28 May 1990, p. 6.
13. The Times (London), 20 June 1990, p. 10.
14. TheTimesHigherEducationalSupplement(hondon),29J\me 1990,p. 11.
15. NED Annual Report, 1990, op. cit, pp. 6-7, 23.
16. The Times (London), 7July 1990, p. 11.
17. The Times Higher Educational Supplement (London), 13 July 1990, p. 9.
18. The Guardian (London), 12 July 1990, p. 10; The Times (London), 20 July 1990, p. 10.
19. TB"? Times (London), 28 July 1990, p. 8; 30 July, p. 6.
439
KILLING HOPE
20. Ibid., 27 August 1990, p. 8.
21. The Times Higher Education Supplement (London), 14 December 1990, p. 8.
22. Russ BeUanE and Louis Wolf, "The Free Congress Foundation Goes East", Covert Action Information Bulletin,
Fall 1930, No. 35, pp. 29-32, based substantially on Free Congtess Foundation publications.
23. New York Times, 9 October 1990, p. D20.
24. The Guardian {London], 29, 30 August 1990, both p. 8.
25. NED Annual Report, 1990, op. cii., p. 23; Los Angeles Times, 3 December 1990, p. 13.
26. Howard Frailer, editor, Uncloaking the CIA (The Free Press/Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, 1978) pp.
241-8.
27. The Guardian (London), 7 November 3 990, p. 10,
28. The Times Higher Educational Supplement (London), 16 November 1990, p. 11.
29. The Guardian (London), 9 June 1 990, p. 6.
30. The Times (London), 24 November 1990, p. 10; 27November, p. 16.
31. The Times Higher Educational Supplement (London), 30 November 1990, p. 8.
32. The Guardian (London), 30 November 1990, p. 9; The Times (London), 30 November 1990, p. 10.
33 . Los Angeles Times, 3 December 1990, p, 13.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., 6 February 1994, article by Carol J, Williams.
36. Ibid., 13 June 1991, p. 14.
37. National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, D,C, Annual Report, 1991 (October 1, 1990- September 30,
1991), p. 42.
52. IRAQ 1990-1991
1. Los Angeles Times, 17 March 1991, p. 8.
2. Washington Post, 13 January 1990, p. 11; 8 February 1990.
3. Ibid., 12 February 1990,16 June 1990, p. 6.
4. Los Angeles Times, 11 July 1990, p. 1.
5. The Gallup Poll; Public Opinion 1990 (Wilmington, Del. 1991)
6. a) Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gw//(Thunder's Mouth Press, NY, 1992), pp. 12-
13; this book is based largely on the findings of the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes
Tribunal, which gathered testimony from survivors and eyewitnesses.
b) Ralph Schoenman, Iraq and Kuwait: A History Suppressed, pp. 1-11, a 21-page monograph published by
Veritas Press, Santa Barbara, CA
c) New York Times, 15 September 1976, p. 17; the incursion was resolved without war.
7. a) "Note from the Iraqi Minister ofForeign Affairs, Mr. Tariq Aiiz, to the Secretary-General of the Arab League,
July 15, 1990", Appendix 1 of Pierre Salinger and Eric Laurent, Secret Dossier: The Hidden Agenda Behind the
Gulf War (Penguin Books, New York 1991), pp. 223-234.
h) New York Times, 3 September 1990, p, 7.
c) Los Angeles Times, 2 December 1990, p. M4 (article by Henry Schuler, director of energy- security programs
for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington).
d) John K. Cooley, Payback: America's Long War in the Middle East (Brasscy's [US], McLean, Va., 1991) pp.
183-6.
8. Murray Waas, "Who Lost Kuwait? How the Bush Administration Bungled its Way to War in the Gulf', The
Village Voice'(New York), 22 January 1991, p, 35; New York Times, 23 September 1990.
9. New York Times, 23 September 1990.
10.Ibid.,25Julyl990,pp.l,8.
11. Ibid., 23 September 1990.
12. Ibid,, 17 September 1990, p. 23, column by 'William Satire.
13. Waas, p. 31.
14. New York Times, 28 July 1990, p. 5.
15. Los Angeles Times, 21 October 1992, p. 8.
16. "Developments an the Middle East*, p. 14, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East of
the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, 31 July 1990.
17. Kuwaiti document: Los Angeles Times, 1 November 1990, p. 14.
IS. Washington Post, 19 August 1990, p. 29.
19. Los Angeles Times, 1 November 1990, p. 14.
20. Schoenman, pp. 11-12; New York Review of Books, 16 January 1992, p. 51.
21. Christian Science Monitor, 5 February 1991, p. 1.
22. Micbaet Emery, "How Mr. Bush Got His War" in Greg RuggierO and Stuart Sahulka, eds., Open Fire (The New
Press, New York, 1993), pp. 39, 40, 52, based on Emery's interview of King Hussein, 19 February 1991 in
Jordan. (Revised vetsion of article in the Village Voice, 5 March 1991).
23. Ibid., p. 42; "they" also referred to the Saudis, for reasons not pertinent to this discussion.
24. Milton Viorst, "A Reporter At Large: After the Liberation", The New Yorker, 30 September 1991, p. 66.
25. Schoenman, pp. 12-13, from a letter sent by the Iraqi Foreign Minister to the Secretary-General of the UN, 4
440
Notes
September 1990; Emery, pp. 32-3.
26. New York Times, 5 August 1990, p. 12.
27. Waas, pp. 30 and 38.
28. New York Times, 24 January 1991, p. D22.
29. Washington Post, 8 March 1991, p. A26.
30. a) Major James Blaekwell, US Army Ret., Thunder in the Desert: The Strategy and Tactics of the Persian Gulf
War [Bantam Books, New York, 1991), pp. 85-6.
b) Triumph Without Victory; The Unreponed History of the Persian Gulf War (U.S. News and World ReportfTimes
Books, 1992) pp. 29-30.
6) AIR FORCE Magazine (Arlington, Va.), March 1991, p. 82.
d) Newsweek, 28 January 1991, p. 61.
3 1. Los Angeles Times, 5 August 1990, p. 1.
32. Washington Post, 23 June 1991, p. A16.
33. Blaekwell, pp. 86-7.
34. Financial Times (London), 21 February 1991, p. 3.
35. Waas, p, 30.
36. New York Times, 31 May 1991.
37. Ibid., 2 August 1990, p. 1; Washington Post, 3 August 1990, p. 7; the Bush quotation is the Post summary of his
remarks.
38. New York Times, 3 August 1990; Los Angeles Times, 3 August 1990, p. 1; Washington Post, 3 August 1990, p.
7.
39. Los Angeles Times, 4 August 1990, p. 20.
40. Washington Post, 10 August 1990, p. Fl,
41. New York Times, 23 September 1990, IV, p. 21.
42. Washington Post, 15 November 1990, p. C4.
43. 7.os Angeles Times, 2 October 1990, p. 18. See Washington Post, 10 October 1990, p. 5, and 18 October, p. 1,
for some of the actual numbers and programs testifying to how Congress went out of its way not to rock the new
war boat,
44. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1989 (Wilmington, Del. 1990); ditto for 1990, published in 1991.
45. Reported in many places; see, e.g., Wall Street Journal, 14 January 1991, p. 14; Fortune magazine (New York), It
February 1991, p. 46; Clark, pp. 153-6; Washington Post, 30 January 1991, p. A30 (IMF and World Bank);
Daniel Pipes, "Is Damascus Ready for Peace?", Foreign Affairs magazine (New York), Falf 1991, pp. 41-2
(Syria); Los Angeles Times, 18 June 1992, p. 1 (Turkey); Elaine Sciolino, The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein's
Quest for Power and the Gulf Crisis (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1991), pp. 237-9 (China, Russia).
46. Sciolino, pp, 237-8. Baker's exact words differ slightly in several of the sources reporting this incident; also,
whether he said it out loud or not; the amount of aid lost by the Yemenis differs widely as well.
47. Los Angeles Times, 4 May 1991, p. 8.
48. The Guardian [London), 9 January 1991.
49. For an analysis of the Bush administration's method of negotiating, see John E. Mack and Jeffrey Z. Rubin, Ts
This Any Way to Wage Peace?", Los Angeles Times, 31 January 1991, op, ed,; also see ibid., 1 October 1990, p.
1, and 2 November 1990, p. 18.
50. New York Times, 9 August 1990, p. 15.
5 1. Los Angeles Times, 6 November 1990, p. 4,
52. August: Robert Parry, "The Peace Feeler That Was", The Nation, 15 April 1991, pp. 480-2; Newsweek, 10
September 1990, p, 17; October: Los Angeles Times, 20 October 1990, p. 6.
53. New border: Wall Street journal, 11 December 1990, p. 3,
54. Newsweek, 10 September 1990, p. 17
55. Parry, op. cit.
56. Washington Post, 25 November 1990, p. C4.
57. Fortune, op. cit.
58. Ibid,
59. The Guardian (London), 12 January 1991, p. 2.
60. Theodore Draper, "The True History of the Gulf War", 77ie New York Review of Books, 30 January 1992, p. 41.
61. Ibid.
62. Wall Street! ournal, 21 November 1990, p. 16.
63. New York Times, 3 August 1990, p. 9; 12 August, p. 1; Los Angeles Times, 17 November 1990, p. 14; Waif
Street Journal, 3 December 1990, p. 3.
64. The Observer (London), 21 October 1990.
65. Webster, 23 January 1990, p. 60, and Schwarzkopf, 8 February 1990, pp. 586, 594 of "Threat Assessment;
Military Strategy; and Operational Requitements", testimony before Senate Armed Services Committee.
66. Basic Petroleum Data Book [American Petroleum Institute, Washington), September 1990, Section II, Table la,
1989 figures: Middle East - 572 billion barrels of reserves, "Free World" - 824 billion, USSR • 84 billion.
67. "Threat Assessment; Military Strategy; and Operational Requirements", op. cit., p. 600, for 19S9 figures.
68. Speaking on the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, 11 September 1990.
441
KILLING HOPE
69. Draper, op. cit., p. 41.
70. Judith Miller and Laurie Mylroie, Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the GKf/(Times Books, New York, 1990), p.
192.
71. Bob Woodward, The Commanders (Simon 8c Schuster, New York, 1991}, pp. 263-73.
72. 1.0$ Angeles Times, 17 October 1990 (hecklers); 17 November, p. 14; 1 December, p, 5,
73. The Guardian (London), 12 September 1990, p, 7.
74. See, e.g., Christopher Hitchens, Harper's Magazine, January 1991, p. 72; Dilip Hiro, The Longest War: The Iran-
Iraq Military Conflict (London, 1989), p. 71. US policy had to do with the hostages held in the US embassy in
Teheran.
7 '5 . Saudi Arabia: Religion! intolerance: The arrest, detention and torture ofChristian worshippers and Shi' a Muslims
(Amnesty International report, New York, 14 September 1993).
76. Miller and Mylroie, pp. 220, 225; Denis MacShane, '"Working in Virtual Slavery", The Nation, 18 March 1991.
77. Draper, op. cit-, p. 38, provides details.
78. See, as a small sample, Los Angeles Times, 7, 13, and 17 March 1991, 12 June 1991, and 10 July 1992
(Amnesty),
79. All three quotations: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "White Slaves in the Persian Gulf, Wall Street Journal, 1 January
1991, p. 14.
80. New York Times, 18 November 1990, p. 1.
81.ScioIino, pp. 139-40.
82. Las Angeles Times, 7 May 1991, p. 16; 6 September 1991, p. 17; Clark, p. 92, lists eight countries with whom
Washington made such arrangements.
83. "Threat Assessment; Military Strategy; and Operational Requirements", op, cit-, pp. 589-90.
84. Scott Armstrong, "Eye of the Storm", Mother Jones magazine, November/December 1991, pp. 30-35, 75-6.
85. Los Angeles Times, 1 December 1990, p. 1.
86. Ibid., 7 June 1991, pp. 1, 30.
87. Los Angeles Times, 12 September 1991, p. 1; Washington Post, 13 September 1991, p. 21; this occurred on 24-25
February 1991.
88. Los Angeles Times, 12 June 1991, p. I; 26 September, p. 16; occurred on 18 January 1991.
89. United Nations General Assembly Resolution: "Establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region of the
Middle East", 4 December 1990, item No. 45/52.
90. New York Times, 24 January 1991, p. 11; 31 January, p. 12; Los Angeles Times, 26 January 1991, p. 6.
91. Clark, pp. 97-8; Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, "Is Military Research Hazardous to Veterans' Health?
Lessons from the Persian Gulf, 6 May 1994, pp. 5-6.
92. Peacelink magazine (Hamilton, New Zealand), March 1991, p. 19; Washington Post, 8 February 1991, p. 1.
93. Clark, pp. 98-9. The UKAEA report was obtained and published by Tfee Independent newspaper of London.
94. Needless Deaths in the GulfW'dr: Civilian Casualties During the Air Campaign and Violations of the Ijaus of
War, a report ofMiddle East Watch/Human Rights Watch [US and London), November 1991, pp. 95-111, 248-
272.
95. Washington Post, 13 February 1991, p. 22, citing Rear Admiral Mike McConnell, intelligence director for the
Joint Chiefs of Staff
96. The Guardian (London), 20 February 1991, p. 1, entitled: "Bombs rock capital as allies deliver terrible warning".
97. Heedless Deaths ... op. cit., pp. 128-47; Clark, pp. 70-72, for an explanation of the 1,500 number and for a par-
ticularly gruesome description of the carnage and the horror.
9S. "The Gulf War and Its Aftermath", The 1992 Information Please Almanac (Boston 1992), p. 974.
99. I A urie Garrett (medical writer for Newsday), "The Dead", Columbia Journalism Review (New York), May/June
1991, p. 32.
100. Needless Deaths ... op. cit,, p. 135.
101. Los Angeles Times, 18 February 1991, p. 11,
102. Effects of the destruction of the electrical system: Needless Deaths ... op. cit., pp. 171-93. Also see Clark, pp. 59-
72, for a discussion of the desttuction of the infrastructure.
103. Washington Post, 23 June 1991, p. 16; Los Angeles Times, 21 May 1991, p. 1; Needless Deaths ... op. cit., pp.
184-5 (The Harvard Study Team Report discusses the methodology used to derive the figure of 170,000. I
104. Julia Devin, Member of the Coordinating Committee for the International Study Team (87 health and environ-
ment researchers who visited Iraq in August 1991), testimony before the International Task Force of the House
Select Committee on Hunger, 13 November 1991, p. 40.
105. Washington Post, 23 June 1991, pp. 1 and 16.
106. Needless Deaths ... op. cit., pp. 177-80.
107. Washington Post, 23 June 1991, p. 16.
108. Needless Deaths ... op. cit., pp. 201-24; Clark, pp. 72-4; Los Angeles Times, 31 January 1991, p. 9; 3 February,
p, 8; apparently these attacks took place mainly duting late January and early February 1991.
109. Road to Basra: Washington Post, 27 February 1991, p. 1; Los Angeles Times, 27 February 1991, p. ]; Ellen Ray,
"The Killing Deserts", Lies Of Our Times (New York), April 1991, pp. 3-4 (cites Tte Independent/.
110. Stephen Sackur, On the Basra Road (London Review of Books, 1991), pp. 25-6, cited in Draper, op. cit., p. 42.
111. Los Angeles Times, 14 August 1990.
442
Notes
112. Ibid.,21 January 1991.
113. Ibid., 30 September 1994, p. 26.
114. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1991 (Wilmington, Del, 1992).
115. Dennis Bernstein, quoted in the Newsletter of the National Association of Arab Americans (Greater Los Angeles
Chapter), July 1991, p. 2, For an excellent description of the media as government handmaiden during the war,
see Extra! (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, New York), May 1991, Special issue on the Gulf War.
116. Micah L. Sifry & Christopher Cerf, eds., The Gulf War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions (Times Books,
New York, 1991), p. 345, for the main previsions of the agreement arrived at between the Soviet and Iraqi for-
eign ministers.
117. Clark, chapters 8 and 9 and appendices, plus elsewhere, explores all this in detail.
118. Interview with Ignatenko on CBS-TV, aired in Los Angeles during the evening of 22 February 1991.
119. "The Gulf War and Its Aftermath", The 1992 Information Please Almanac (Boston 1992), p. 974.
120. Clark, pp. 75-84.
121. Los Angeles Times, 7 September 1994, p. 6.
122. International Herald Tribune, 5 April 1991.
53. AFGHANISTAN 1979-1992
1. Tim Weiner, Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget (Warner Books, New York, 1990), p. 149.
2. Ibid., pp. 149-50.
3. a) Selig Harrison, "The Shah, Not the Kremlin, Touched off Afghan Coup", Washington Post, 13 May 1979, p.
CI; contains other examples of the Shah/US campaign.
bl Hannah Negaran, "Afghanistan: A Marxist Regime in a Muslim Society", Current History (Philadelphia), April
5979, p. 173.
c) New York Times, 3 February 1975, p. 4.
d) For a brief summary, from the Soviet point of view, of the West's attempts to lure Afghanistan into its fold during
the 1950s and 60s, see The Truth About Afghanistan: Documents, Facts, Eyewitness Reports (Novosti Press
Agency Publishing House, Moscow, 1981, second edition) pp. 60-65,
e) Dwight IX Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 19S6-1961 (New York, 1965) pp. 493, 495, 498
discusses his concern about Soviet influence in Afghanistan,
4. Selig Harrison, op, cit.
5. New York Times, 4 May 1978, p. 11.: Louis Dupree, "A Communist Label is Unjustified", letter to New York
Times, 20 May 1978, p, 18. Dupree had been an anthropologist who lived in Afghanistan for many years; he was
also at one time a consultant to the U.S. National Security Council, and an activist, both in Pakistan and in the
United Stales, against the leftist Afghan government, which declared him persona non grata in 1978.
6. New York Times Magazine, 4 June 1978, p. 52 (prime minister's quote).
7. New York Times, IS May 1979, p. 29, article by Fred Halliday, a Fellow at the libetal Transnational Institute,
Amsterdam, and author of several books on South Asia.
S. The Economist (London), 11 September 1979, p. 44.
9. New York Times, 13 April 1979, p. 8.
10. Newsweek, 16 April 1979, p. 64.
11. CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 31 December 1979, p, S-13, cited in CounterSpy magazine
(Washington, DC), No. 4-2, Spring 1980, p. 36, article by Konrad Ege.
12. New York Times, 16 June 1978, p. 11
13. Robert Neumann, in Washington Review of Strategic and International Studies, July 1978, p, 117.
14. New York Times, 1 July 1978, p. 4.
15. San Francisco Chronicle, 4 August 1979, p. 9.
16. New York Times, 24 March 1979, p. 4; 13 April 1979, p. 8.
17. Washington Post, 11 May 1979, p. 23. U.S. intelligence officials confirmed that Islamic rebels killed Soviet male
and female civilians and mutilated their bodies, New York Times, 13 April 1979, p. 8,
18. New York Times, 11 September 1979, p, 12.
19. Washington Post, 15 November 1992, p. 32, from the official minutes of the conversation, amongst declassified
Politburo documents obtained by the newspaper.
20. Ibid,, citing an article published in 1992 by the former KGB deputy station chief in KabuS.
21. Ibid., 23 December 1979, p. A8.
22. Selig Harrison, "Did Moscow Fear An Afghan Tito?", New York Times, 13 January 1980, p. E23.
23. The Sunday Times (London), 6 January 1980, reporting the interview with Amin by the newspaper A.' Sharq Al
Awast ("The Middle East") published in London and Mecca.
24. Washington Post, 15 November 1992, p. 32, citing a "recent" account in the Moscow newspaper
Komsomolskaya Pravda.
25. The Truth About Afghanistan, op. cit., p. 15, taken from Pravda, 13 January 1980.
26. The Times (London), J January 1980.
27. New York Times, 15 January 1980, p. 6. The newspaper stated that the CIA-accusations appeared to have been
dtopped by the Soviets at this time, perhaps because they were embarrassed by the incredulous reaction to it from
around the world. But it was soon picked up again, conceivably in reaction to the Times' story.
443
KILLING HOPE
28. Phillip Bonosky, Washington's Secret War Against Afghanistan (International Publishers, New York, 1985), pp.
3iA. The Washington Post, 23 December 1979, p. A8, also mentions Ainin being a student at Columbia teachers
college,
29. "How the CIA turns foreign students into traitors", Ramparts magazine (San Francisco], April 1967, pp. 23-4.
This was a month after the magazine printed its famous expose of the extensive CIA connection to the National
Student Association, the leading organization of American students.
30. Bonosky, p. 34. When I spoke to Mr. Bonosky in 1994 about this claim, he said that he couldn't remember its
source, but that it may have been something he was informed of in Afghanistan when he was there in 1981.
31. Charles G. Cogan, "Partners in Time: The CIA and Afghanistan since 1979", World Policy journal (New York),
Summer 1993, p. 76. Cogan was chief of the Near East and South Asia Division of the CIAs Directorate of
Operations (Clandestine Services) from 1979 to 1984, He refers to Amin's connection to the Asia Foundation as
"some sort of loose association", and says nothing further about it, but given his past position, Cogan may well
know more than he's willing to reveal about a key point of the Afghanistan question, or else the article was cen-
sored by the CIA when Cogan submitted it for review, which he would have had to do.
32. Classified State Department cables, 11, 22, 23, 27, 29 September 1979, 28, 30 October 1979, among the docu-
ments found in the takeover of the US Embassy in Teheran on 4 November 1979 and gradually published in
many volumes over the following years under the title: Documents from the Den of Espionage; hereafter referred
to as "Embassy Documents". The cables referred to in this note come from vol. 30. These embassy documents
and those which follow are cited in Covert Action Information Bulletin, No. 30, Summer 1988, article by Steve
Galster, pp. 52-4. Except where quotations are used, the language summarizing the documents' content is that of
Galster,
Amin's party knew of these covert activities long before the documents were published. On 16 January 1980, a
PDP spokesperson told the Afghan News Agency (Bakhtar): "In September 1979, Amin began preparing the
ground for a rapprochement with the United States. He conducted confidential meetings with U.S. officials, sent
emissaries to the United States, conveyed his personal oral messages to President Carter." (cited in Bonosky, p.
52)
33. Interview with Karmal in World Marxist Review (Toronto), April 1980, p. 36.
34. New York Times, 2 January 1980, p. 1.
35. Wall Street journal, 7 January 1980, p. 12.
36. Werner, p. 145.
37. Amongst the "Embassy Documents", op. cit., vol. 29, p, 99: Classified Department of State cable, 14 May 1979,
refers to a previous meeting with a rebel leader in Islamabad on 23 April 1979.
38. Robert Gates [former CIA director), tram the Shadows [NY, 1996) p. 146,
39. Truth About Afghanistan, op. cir., pp. 16-17.
40. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981 (New York,
1983) p. 430.
41. The Guardian (London), 5 March 1986.
42. Washington Post, 13 January 1985, p. A30. The unnamed official may have been CIA Director Stansfield Turner
who is quoted as saying something very similar in Wciner pp. 146-7.
43. Ibid,
44. Amongst the "Embassy Documents", op, cit.: Classified CIA Field Report, 30 October 1979, vol. 30.
45. New York Times, 22 November 1979, p. 1.
46. Weiner, p. 146
47. John Balbach, former staff director of the Congressional Task Force on Afghanistan, article in rhe Los Angeles
Times, 22 August 1993.
48. Cited in Tie Guardian (London), 28 December 1983 and 16 January 1987, p. 19.
49. Los Angeles Times, 17 October 1988, L3 March 1989,16 March 1989.
50. The Daily Telegraph (London), 5 August 1985.
5 1. Brzezinski, p. 356, mentioned three times on this one page alone,
52. New York Times, 9 February 1980, p. 3; though written after the Soviet invasion, the article refers to April 1979.
53. For a discussion of some of these and related matters, see Selig Harrison, "Afghanistan: Soviet Intervention,
Afghan Resistance, and the American Role" in Michael Klare and Peter Kornbluh, eds., Low Intensity Warfare:
Counterinsurgency, Proinsttrgency, and Antiterrorism in the Eighties (Pantheon Books, New York, 1988J pp.
188-190.
54. Ibict., p. 188; the portion about the middle class was attributed by Harrison to an article by German journalist
Andreas Kohlschutter of Die Zeit.
55. For a fuller discussion of these matters see the three articles in The Guardian of London by their chief foreign cor-
respondent Jonathan Steele, 17-19 March 1986.
56. Lawrence Lifschutu, "The not-so-new rebellion", Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong), 30 January 1981,
p.32.
57' '. Los Angeles Times, 22 April 1989, pp. 12-13.
58. Ibid., 1 December 1987, p. 8.
59. Amongst the "Embassy Documents", op. cit., vol. 30 — Department of State Report, 16 August 1979.
60. Los Angeles Times, 17 February 1989, p. 8,
444
Notes
61. Najibullah, textbooks: Ibid., 18 February 1989, p. 18.
62. Washington Post, 13 January 1985, p. A30. The article speaks of 70 Russian prisoners "living lives of indescrib-
able horror"; it appears, although it's not certain, that they are included in the 50 to 200 figure given earlier in
the article.
63. John Fullerton, The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan (London, 1984).
64. Los Angeles Times, 28 July 1989.
65. Amnesty International, Torture in the Eighties (London, 1984), Afghanistan chapter.
66. Jack Anderson column, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 May 1987. For his, and many other persons', ties to the
Afghan lobby, see Sayid Khybar, "The Afghani Contra Lobby", Covert Action Information Bulletin, No. 30,
Summer 1988, p. 65.
61. New York Times, 11 September 1979, p. 12.
68. Washington Post, 13 January 1985, p. A30.
69. Cited by Extra! (published by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, New York, October/Nov ember 1989), p. 1,
referring to a series of articles in the New York Post beginning 27 September 1989.
70. Mary Williams Walsh, "Strained Mercy", The Progressive magazine (Madison, Wisconsin) May 1990, pp. 23-6.
Walsh, as the Wall Street journal's principal correspondent in South and Southeast Asia, had covered
Afghanistan. The. journal refused to print this article, which led to her resignation.
73. Sfl«FrflncjscoCferoni<;fe,20July 1987.
72. New York Times, 9 March 1982, p. 1; 23 March 1982, pp. 1, 14; The Guardian (London) 3 November 1983, 29
March 1984; Washington Post, 30 May 1986.
73. Julian Robinson, et al, "Yellow Rain: The Story Collapses", Foreign Policy magazine, Fall 1987, pp. 100-117;
New York Times, 31 August 1987, p. 14.
74. Congressional Record, 6 June 1980, pp. S13582-3.
75. New York Times, 29 March 1982, p. I.
76. San Francisco Chronicle, 16 September 1985, p. 9.
77. The Truth About Afghanistan, op. cit., pp. 85, 89, with a photo of the alleged victims lying on the ground and
another photo of an American chemical grenade.
78. Los Angeles Times, 28 July 1989.
79. Ibid., 30 April 1990, pp. 1 and 9.
80. Weiner, pp. 150,152.
81. Weiner, p. 151; Los Angeles Times, 26 May 1988. Shooting down passenger planes: New York Times, 26
September 1984, p. 9; 11 April 1988, p. 1.
82. San Francisco Chronicle, Jack Anderson's columns: 29 April and 2 May 1987; 13 July 1987; Time magazine, 9
December 1985; Washington Post, 13 January 1985, p. A30.
83. Drugs, the Moujahedeen and the CIA:
a) Weiner, pp. 151-2;
b) New York Times, 18 June 1986;
c) William Vornberger, "Afghan Rebels and Drugs", Covert Action Information Bulletin, No. 28, Summer 1987, pp.
11-12;
d) Los Angeles Times, 4 November 1989, p. 14;
e) Washington Post, 13 May 1990, p. 1.
84. Los Angeles Times, 22 August 1993.
85. Hekmaryar, Neumann: Ibid., 21 April 1992.
86. Ibid., 24 May 1992.
87. Ibid., 4 January, 24 May, 8 September, 1992.
54, EL SALVADOR 1980-1994
1. New York Times, 7 March 1981, p. 10,
2. Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador (Times Books, New York, 1984) p. 24.
3. Events of 1960-1: John Gerassi, The Great Fear in Latin America (New York, 1965, revised edition) p. 178;
Michael McClinrock, The American Connection: State Terror and Popular Resistance in E! Salvador (Zed Books,
London, 1985) pp. 135-7,149; Netv York Herald Tribune, 7 April 1963, section 2, page 1.
4. Human Rights in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador: Implications for U.S. Policy, Hearings before the
House Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations, 8 June 1976,
pp. 33-4.
5. New York Times, 22 October 1987, p. 11. For further discussion of the US role in this process in the 1960s and
70s, see: McClintock, chapter 12; American Civil Liberties Union & Americas Watch Committee, Report on
Human Rights in El Salvador (Vintage Books, New York, 1982) pp. 179-80, 189-97; James Dunkerley, The
Long War: Dictatorship and Revolution in El Salvador (London, 1982) pp. 74-5; Jenny Pearce, Under the Eagle
(London, 1982) pp. 214-16,
6. McClintock, pp. 158, 226 (note 44).
7. Elections of 1960s and 70s: Robert Armstrong and Janet Shenk, El Salvador: The Face of Revolution (London,
1982) pp. 50-87; McClintock, pp. 358-183, passim; Dunkerley, pp. 79-86, 103-6; Gerassi, p. 179; testimony of
Fabio Castillo before US Congress, op. cit., pp. 42-4 [see note 4). •
445
KILLING HOPE
8. Armstrong and Shenk, pp. S7-8; McClinrock, pp. 183-4; Dunkeriey, pp. 106-7,
9. Facts onFile (New York), 12 March 1977, p. 181.
10. Allan Nairn, "Behind IDe Death Squads", The Progressive magazine (Madison, Wisconsin) May 1984, pp. 1, 20-
29 — a detailed account of the OA's long-standing and close ties to the Death Squads ancVor their parent organi-
zations and to the organizations' leaders who were on the OA payroll. See also New York Times, 22 October
1987, p. 11; 6 December 1987, TV, p. 2.
11. Carolyn Forche, "The Road to Reaction in El Salvador", The Nation (New York) 14June 1980, p. 712.
12. October 1979 to January 1980: Dunkeriey, pp. 132-44; McClintock, pp. 245-60; Armstrong and Shenk, pp. 115-
30.
13. Armstrong and Shenk, p. 122; Dunkeriey, pp. 87-8.
14. Dunkeriey, p, 144.
15. Events of January to March 1980: The Guardian (London) 24 January 1980; 20 March 1980; McClintock, pp.
262-4; Dunkeriey, pp. 146, 156-7; Liisa North, Bitter Grounds: Roots ofRevolt in El Salvador (Toronto, 1981)
Appendix 1, Chronology of Events — February 1977-June 1981, for further details of government/death squad
killings; Armstrong and Shenk, p. 149, quote from Romero's last sermon.
16. James R. Brockman, Oscar Romero, Bishop and Martyr (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York, 1982) pp. 222,
236 (note 28); Detmit Keogh, Romero, El Salvador's Martyr (Dominican Publications, Dublin, 1981) p. 113;
New York Times, 31 March 1980, p. 1.
17. Los Angeles Times, 24 November 1987; New York Times., 25 November 1987; CIA knowledge: CIA memo to
Reagan's national security adviser Richard Allen, March 1981, New York Times, 9 November 1993, p. 9;
Washington Post, 27 April 1982, p. A3, article by Mary McGrory, quoting d'Aubuisson's remark from the
Mexican newspaper ElDia.
18. McClintock, p. 268; see pages 266-71 for a discussion of agrarian reform in El Salvador in the early 1980s.
19. "Fl Salvador — A Revolution Brews", NACLA Report on the Americas (North American Congress on Latin
America, New York), July-August 1980, p. 17, based on an interview with the technician in San Salvador, 2 June
1980.
20. Philip Wheaton, Agrarian Reform in Ei Salvador (Ecumenical Program for Intersmencan Communication and
Action, Washington, DC, 1380), p. 13.
21. New YorkTimes, 18 January 1981, p. 7; 19 January, p. 11; McCiintock, p. 286 (the "observer"); The Guardian
(London) 20 July 1983 (Carter's statement).
22. New York Times, 12 February 1985, p. 1; 16 November 1987, p. 5.
23. "Dissent Paper on El Salvador and Central America", 6 November 1980, Section B3, International Context'
(Argentina Chile, Uruguay) - this document, apparently the work of members of the foreign policy establishment
who disagreed with American policy in Central America, was circulated throughout offidai circles in Washington
in 1980, reprinted in Warner Poelchau, eel, White Paper, Whitewash (New York, 1981), Appendix B; New York
Times, 1 December 1981 (Argentina); Clarence Lusane, "Israeli Arms in Central America", Covert Action
Information Bulletin (Washington, DC) Winter 1984, No. 20, pp. 34-7.
24. McClintock, p. 337; New York Times, 12 February 1985; 19 August 1986, p. 3; the "Dissent Paper", op. cit., dis-
closed that large amounts of US military aid were devoted to expanding the number of Salvadorean troops;.
Newsweek, 14 March 1983, p. 18, reported that oi the Salvadorean Army's 22,400 men at that time, about
4,100 had been trained in the US.
25. McClintock, p. 334; New York Times, 2 February 1982, p. 10.
26. New York Times, 30 March 1984, p. 1.
27. The Guardian, (London), 5 February 1983; New York Times, 30 March 1984, p. 1; 20 October 1984; 26
February 1991,p. 10; San Francisco Chronicle, 17July 1987.
28. For example, see: Washington Post, 14 February 1982, p. 1; The Guardian (London) 26 March 1984, 22 October
1984; New York Times, 13 February 1982, 21 October 1984, 12 February 1985, 13 February 1986, p. 3, 1 April
1987, p. 1; McClintock, pp. 347-8,
29. SanFranciscoChronicle, 24 June 1982
30. Washington Post, 19 December 1980, p. A26; 1 January 1981, p, A12
31. McClintock, p. 345, citing an article from Bailey's hometown newspaper: "El Salvador: A Mercenary's View",
News-Press (Fort Myers, Florida daily), 23 Oct 1983.
32. Los Angeles Times, 9 July 1987, pp. 1 and 22; see also the Village Voice (New York), 11 August 1987, pp. 21-22.
33. Los Angeles Times, 27 September 1988, p. 2.
34. Playboy magazine [Chicago), November 1984, p. 73, interview by Marc Cooper and Gregory Goldm.
3 5. Stephen Webre, Jose Napoleon Duarte and the Christian Democratic Party in Salvadoran Politics, 1960-1972
(Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, La, 1979), p. 57. Duarte's remarks were made in a speech.
36. Bob Woodward, VEIL: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987 (New York, 1987), pp. 117, Woodward states
that Duarte "had been a good source of intelligence over many years, but he was a man of independence who
was in no sense controlled and may not have known he was giving information to the CIA"
37. The detailed account appears in Mark Danner, "The Truth of EI Mojote", The New Yorker, 6 December 1993,
also in expanded form in a book, The Massacre at Ei Mozote (Vintage Books, 1994). Also see, Los Angeles
Times, 3 January 1993, p. 1; New York Times, 27 January 1982, p. 1; The Guardian (London) 29 January 1982;
McClintock, pp. 308-9.
446
Notes
38. U.&MtelligencePerformanceonCentralAmerica:AchievementsandSelectedInstancesofConcem,StajfReport,
House Subcommittee on Oversight and Evaluation, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 22 September
1982, pp. 18-19.
39. Los Angeles Times, I February 1982, p. 4. Two weeks later an even worse incident: see the Washington Past, 14
February 1982, p. CI, for a particularly graphic first-hand account of the indiscriminate barbarity of the
Salvadorean armed forces towards the population, another story which Washington officials tried hard to dis-
credit before the Congressional committee, but without success (see U.S. Intelligence Performance ... report, op,
cit).
40. New York Times, 11 January 1982, p. 2.
41. The National Guardsman, identified only as "Manuel", was interviewed in the television documentary "Torture",
produced and directed by Rex Bloomstein for Thames Television Ltd. (Great Britain) in 1986 with the coopera-
tion of Amnesty International. Video copy in author's possession.
42. The Guardian (London), 7 August 1986.
43. Amnesty International, Torture in the Eighties (London, 19S4)pp. 155-6.
44. See, e.g., McClintock, pp. 306-12; New York Times, 13 January 1986, p. 3, 1 February 1987, p. 11; Tina
Rosenberg, Children of Cain; Violence and the Violent in Latin America [William Morrow and Company, New
York, 1991) passim.
45. The Guardian (London), 9 March 1984.
46. Ibid, 11 March 19S4. In a similar humanitarian vein, in 1983 the Reagan administration dissuaded the European
Common Market from its plan to distribute cereal and powdered milk to the victims of the fighting in El
Salvador because Washington feared that the food would be diverted to the guerrillas. [New York Times, 18
February 1981, p. 3.)
47. SanFranciscoChronicle, 18 July 1987, p. 9,
48. Los Angeles Times, 11 July 1987, p, 1.
49. Los Angeles Reader, 10 June 1988, special report on FBI spying on domestic dissidents; Los Angeles Times, 28
January 1988.
50. New York Times, 3 March 1984, p. 1; 22 March 1984, p, 1; 25 February 1986, p. 17; Newsweek, 2 April 1984,
identified the official as Santibahez; The Guardian (London) 22 March 1985, 29 March 1985.
51. Los Angeles Times, 2 February 1989.
52. Washington Post, 27 October 1989, p. Al; 19 November 1989, p. F2 [column by Colman McCarthy); Los
Angeles Times, 27 October 1989; LA Weekly (Los Angeles), 19-25 January 1990, 27July-2 August 1990.
53. LA Weekly (Los Angeles), 27 July-2 August 1990, p. 14.
54. Washington Post, 22 October 1992, p. A5.
55. Los Angeles Times, 1 May 1990, p. 1; 25 August 1990, p. 3; 26 April, 1991 (op-ed essay by Father Jose Maria
Tojeira); 10 September 1991, p. H6; 15 August 1992, p. 12; LA Weekly (Los Angeles), 22-28 December 1989; 2-
8 February 1990; New York Times, 19 January 1990, p. 3; 30 September 1991. The two officers were sentenced
to 30 years in prison on 25 January 1992.
56. Newsweek, 14 March 1983, p. 24, international edition.
57. New York Times, 29 February 1988, article by James LeMoyne,
58. Extra! [Newsletter of FAIR [Fairness Sc Accuracy in Reporting], New York), July-August 1988, pp, 1, 12, also
contains several other examples of Salvadorean government disinformation; September-October 1988, p.2; New
York Times, 15 September 1988 (recantation); LA Weekly (Los Angeles), 27 May ■ 2 June 1988, column by
Mate Cooper.
For further examples of disinformation on the part of Salvadorean officials, see New York Times, 29 March
1987, p. 3; 8 January 1988, p. 3; 20 February 1988, p. 3; 18 February 1990, p. 14
59. New York Times, 17 March 1982, p. 1.
60. Ibid, 3, 5 and 6 March 1982, each p. 1,
61.Ibid.,13Marchl982,p. 1.
62. Time, 22 March 1982, p. 5, international edition,
63. NewYorkTimes, 19 January 1981, p. 11.
64. SanFranciscoExaminer, 20 December 1981,
65. NewYorkTimes, 19 January 1981, p. 11.
66. US State Department, Communist Interference in El Salvador, 23 February 1981, Special Report No. 80 (known
as the White Paper), Section H, Communist Military Intervention: A Chronology.
67. The Guardian (London) 7 December 1985.
68. Dunkerley, p. 182; New York Times, 31 July 1983,
69. Wall Street Journal, 8 June 1981, pp. 1 and 30; for other analyses of the White Paper (US State Department,
Communist Interference in EI Salvador, 23 February 1981, Special Report No. 80), see: Philip Agee in Warner
Poelchau, ed, White Paper, Whitewash (New York, 1981), and Ralph McGehee, "The CIA and the White Paper
on El Salvador", The Nation (New York), 11 April 1981.
70. Wall Street Journal, 8 June 1981, p. 10.
71. Playboy, op. cit, p. 74.
72. Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington, DC), March 1982, No. 16, p. 27; this was also reported in the
daily press.
447
KILLING HOPE
73. US. News and World Report, 26 January 1981, p. 37, interview with White.
74. San Francisco Chronicle, 24 February 1981.
75. New York Times, 30 July 1982 (equipment); 16 April 1983, p. 1 (Awacs); 31 July 1983, p. 1 (radar); Time, 22
March 1982 (aerial photos).
76. ElDiaria de Hoy (San Salvador) 9 April 1991 p. 5.
77. New York Times, 9 February 1990, p. 7.
78. Truth Commission, amnesty: Los Angeles Times, 76 March 1993, pp. 1 and 6; 21 Match; 26 March.
79. Ibid., 19 March 1993
80. New York Times, 9 November 1993, p. 9; Los Angeles Times, 24 April 1994, p. 10.
81. -Las Angeles Times, 14 December, 1993; New York Times, ]4 December 1993, p. 1.
82. New York Tones, 26 August 1990, p. 24; 10 February 1991, p. 3; 11 February 1991, p. 3.
83. The election:
U.N. and U.S. government observations: Los Angeles Times, 24 April 1994, p. 10, 22 March, p. 12, and 21
February, p. 10.
Intimidation story: ibid., 12 March, p. 6.
See also ibid., 23 March, p. 10 and 24 March; LA Weekly (Los Angeles), 15-21 Aprill994, pp. 12-13;
CISPES observer reports: written papers and talks delivered at meetings in Los Angeles.
84. New York Times, 1 October 1990, p. 10.
85. Ibid., 5 August 1991, p. 4.
SS. HAITI 1986-1994
1. New York Times, 27 February 1986, p. 3; 11 April 1986, p. 4.
2. Fritz Longchamp and Worth Cooley-Prost, "Hope for Haiti", Covert Action Information Bulletin (Washington),
No. 36, Spring 1991, p. 58. Longchamp is Executive Director of the Washington Office on Haiti, an analysis and
public education center; Paul Farmer, The Uses of Haiti (Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 1994), pp.
128-9.
3. The Guardian (London), 22 September 1986.
4. Ibid.
5. Reagan: jean-Bertrand Aristide, An Autobiography (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 1993, translation from 1992
French edition), p. 79. Hereafter, Aristide Autobiography.
6. Time magazine, 30 November 1987, p. 7.
7. CIA and the 1987-88 election: 'Lai Angeles Times, 31 October 1993, p. 1; New York Times, 1 November 1993,
p. 8.
8. New York Times, 1 November 1993, p. 8.
9. Allan Nairn, "The Eagle is Landing", The Nation, 3 October 1994, p. 344; citing US Col. Steven Butler, former
planning chief for US armed forces in the Caribbean, who was involved hi the operation.
10. Farmer, p. 150; New York Times, 13 March 1990, p. 1.
11. Aristide Autobiography, pp. 105-6, 118-21.
12. Haitian Information Bureau, "Chronology: Events in Haiti, October 15, 1990 - May 11, 1994", in James
Ridgeway, ed., The Haiti Files: Decoding the Crisis (Essential Books, Washington, 1994), p. 205.
13. Robert I. Rotberg, Washington Post, 20 December 1990, p. A23.
14. Washington Post, 6 June, 1991, p. A23. In his autobiography, op. cit., pp. 147-8, Aristide writes that he reduced
his salary from ten to four thousand as well as eliminating a number of other expensive perks.
15. Aristide Autobiography, p. 144. He presumably meant the per capita wealth of the poor; the overall per capita
wealth wouldn't of course be reduced because of such aid.
16. Ibid., pp. 127-8,139.
17. Aristide's policies in office:
a. Washington Post, 6 June, 1991, p. A23; 7 October 1991, p. 10;
b. Aristide Autobiography, chapter 12;
c. Farmer, pp. 167-180;
A, Multinational Monitor (Washington, DC), March 1994, pp. 18-23 (land reform and unions)..
18. San Francisco Chronicle, 22 October 1991, p. A16.
19. Alan Nairn, "Our Man in FRAPH; Behind Haiti's Paramilitaries", The Nation, 24 October 1994, p. 460, refer-
ring to Emannuel Constant, the head of FRAPH.
20. NED, etc.:
a) The Nation, 29 November 1993, p. 648, column by David Corn;
b) Haitian Information Bureau, "Subverting Democracy", Multinational Monitor (Washington, DC), March 1994,
pp. 13-15.
c) National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, D.C, Annual Report, 1989, p. 33; Annual Report, 1990, p. 41.
d) Arisride Autobiography, p. Ill, Radio SoleO's catering to the government.
21. New York Times, 8 October 1991, p. 10.
22. Boston Globe, 1 October 1992.
23. New York Times, 1 November 1993. p. 8; 14 November, p. 12. Latell's report was presented in July 1992.
24. Ibid., 14 November 1993, p. 12.
448
Notes
25. Howard French, New York Times, 27 September 1992, p. ES.
26. "Chronology", The Haiti Files, op. cit.,p. 211.
27. New York Times, 1 November 1993, p. 1.
28. Drugs: Ibid., p. 8; The Nation, 3 October 1994, p. 344, op. cit; Los Angeles Times, 20 May 1994, p. 11.
29. SIN: New York Times, 14 November 1993, p. 1; The Nation, 3 October 1994, p. 346, op. cit.
30. a) The Nation, 24 October 1994, pp. 4S8 A 61, op. cit,; Allan Nairn, "He's Our S.O.B.", 31 October 1994, pp.
481-2.
b) Washington Post, 8 October 1994, p. A8;
c) Los Angeles Times, 8 October 1994, p. 12;
d) New York Daily News, 12 October 1993, article by Juan Gonzales, which lends further credence to the idea that
the ship incident was a set-up.
3 1. Time magazine, 8 November 1993, pp. 45-6.
32. Farmer, p. 152.
33. Aristide's mental state:
a) Los Angeles Times, 23 October 1993, p. 14; 31 October, p. 16; 2 November, p. S.
b) New York Times, 31 October 1993, p. 12 (re fraudulent document).
c) Washington Post, 22 October 1993, p. A26.
d) CBS News, 13 October 1993; 2 December 1993, report by Bob Faw, stated: "This hospital in Montreal told the
Miami Herald it never treated Aristide for psychiatric disorders."
34. Neif York Times, 23 October 1993, p. 1.
35. Dwight Eisenhower, The White House Years; Waging Peace, 1956-1961 (New York, 1965) p. 573; Jonathan
Kv/itny, Endless Enemies: The Making ofan Unfriendly World (New York, 1984) p. 57.
36. Time magazine, 8 November 1993, p. 46.
37. Clinton administration's relation to Haitian leaders: Ibid., p. 45.
38. George Black and Robert O. Weiner, op-ed column in the Los Angeles Times, 19 October 1993. Black is editorial
director and Weiner coordinator of the Americas program of the Committee.
39. Washington Post, 2 December 1987, p. A32; 11 September 1989, p. C22, column by Jack Anderson; The
Guardian (London), 22 September 1986,
40. Juan Gonzalez, "As Brown Fiddled, Haiti Burned", New York Daily News, 9 February 1994.
41. Neii* York Times, 18 December 1993, p. 7.
42. Los Angeles Times, 16 February 1994, p. 6.
43. Ibid., 24 February 1994, 26 February; Multinational Monitor, March 1994, op. cit., p. 15.
44. Los Angeles Times, 14 April 1994, p. 4. Kozak's remark was made in February.
45. Kim Ives, "The Unmaking of a President", in The Haiti Files, op. cit., pp. 87-103.
46. Multinational Monitor, March 1994, op. cit., p. 15; Los Angeles Times, 14 April 1994, p. 4.
47. Murray Kempton, syndicated column, Los Angeles Times, 12 May 1994.
48. Los Angeles Times, 25 September 1994, p. 10.
49. Ibid., 21,24 May 1994; the words are those of the Times; Amnesty Action (AL New York), Fall 1994, p. 4.
50. The Nation, 3 October 1994, p. 346, op, cit.
51. Los Angeles Times, 23 September 1994, p. 5.
52.Ibid.,24Junel994,p.7.
53. Ibid., 16 September 1994.
54. ibid., 16 September 1994, p. 8.
S3. Ibid., 14 October 1994, p. 1.
56. Isabel Hilton, "Aristide's Dream", The Independent (London), 30 October 1993, p. 29, cited in Farmer, p. 175;
Aristide added, "hut the reality's differenr in the United States."
57. Los Angeles Times, 5 September 1994, p. 18, Gore was speaking on "Meet the Press".
58. Ibid., 1 October 1994.
59. Ibid., 17 September 1994, pp. 1 and 10; see also p. 9.
60. Ibid., 1 October 1994, p. 5.
61. ibid., 8 October 1994, p. 12.
62. New York Times, 16 September 1994.
63. Los Angeles Times, 24, 25 October 1994.
64. Ibid., 19 October 1994.
65. A slightly condensed version of the Haitian economic plan can be found in Multinational Monitor (Washington,
DC), July/August 1994, pp. 7-9. For a description of life in Haitfs oppressive assembly sector, see: National
Labor Committee, "Sweatshop Development", in The Haiti Piles, op. cit., pp. 134-54.
66. New York Times, 5 February 1992, p. 8.
67'. Multinational Monitor, July/August 1994, op. cit.
68. Aristide Autobiography, pp. 166-7.
449
KILLING HOPE
56. THE AMERICAN EMPIRE 1992 TO PRESENT
1. Testimony before the House International Relations Committee, 6 February 2002
2. US Defense Department website: Deployment Link: 10 December 20O2: http://deploymentlink.osd.mil/
deploy/info/infoitttro.shtml
3. "Defense Planning Guidance forthe Fiscal Years 1994-1999", as quoted in New York Times, 8 March 1992, p. 14
(emphasis added)
4. General Joseph Ashy, at the time Commandei-in-Chief ofthe U.S. Space Command, cited in Aviation Week and
Space Technology'(New York), 5 August 1996, p. 51 (emphasis in original)
5. Keith R Hall, Assistant Secretary ofthe Air Force for Space and Director ofthe National Reconnaissance Office,
speaking to the National Space Club, 15 September 1997.
6. Charles Knighr, Project on Defense Alternatives, panel presentation at the Council on Foreign Relations, New
York, 14 June 2000, on "U.S. Military-Strategic Ambitions: Expanding to Fill the post-Soviet Vacuum";
http://www.comw.org/pda/0006vatuum.html
7. "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century" — A report ofthe Project for
the New American Century {Washington, DC), September 2000, p. 14
8. Michael Ledeen, former Reagan official of Iran-Contra fame, now of the American Enterprise Institute
(Washington, DC) — the leading neo-conservative think tank and drum-beater for invading Iraq — condemned
the caution of those in the CIA and the State Department who believe America should fight the war on terror one
battle at a rime, "No stages," he said. "This is total v/m. "Village Voice (New York), 27 November 2001, p.46;
Scotland on Sunday (Glasgow), 25 November 2001
9. Submirted by the Department of Defense to Congress on 31 December 2001 as a classified document, which subse-
quendy became public; see Los Angeles Tmes, 9 and 10 March 2002
10. James Laxer, professor of political science, York University, Toronto, Canada, from an article by him in the
Toronto Globe andMail, 24 September 2002, p. AJ5.
11. Washington Post, 28 November 2002, p.B4
12. See William Blum, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" (Common Courage Press, Maine,
2000) for brief descriptions ofthe foregoing US interventions.
13. Marc Herold, Blown Away: The Myth and Reality of "Precision Bombing" in Afghanistan (Common Courage
Press, Maine, 2003), Appendix 4, "Daily casualty count of Afghan civilians killed by U.S. bombing and special
forces attacks, October 7,2001 until present day"
14. For further discussion, see essay by William Blum: "September 11, 2001 and the bombing of Afghanistan",
<http ://members . aol.com/bblum6/sep 1 1 ,htm>
li. See < http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm ? for an excellent selection of articles on this topic; search "Venezuela".
16. "Dangerous Dialogue: Attacks on Freedom of Expression in Miami's Cuban Exile Community", p.26, published
by Americas Watch/The Fund for Free Expression, New York and Washington, August 1992.
17. New York Times, 16 August 1989; Jane Franklin, Cuba and the United States: A ChronologicalHistory (Ocean
Press, Melbourne, 1997), see "Bosch Avila, Orlando" in index; also see page 190 herein
18. Michael Parenri, To Kill a Nation; The Attack on Yugoslavia(Veiso, London/NY 2000), chapter 10 and passim;
Washington Times, 4 May 1999, p.l
19. Washington Post, 30 July 200 1 , p.l
20. The Associated Press, IS September 2001
2 1 . Rogue State, op. cit„ chapter 9
22. Christian ScienceMonitor, 26 April 2002
23: "The Bush Doctrine", The Weekly Standard (Washington, DC), 4 June 2001
24. Foreign Affairs, the journal ofthe Council on Foreign Relations, New York, November 2002
25. "The Benevolent Empire", ForeignPoftcy (Washington, DC), Summer 1998
26. Robert Kagan, OfParadise and Power: America and Europe In the New World Order (New York, 2003), p. 99
27. The Observer (London), 7 April 2002
28. See, e.g., testimony of John Maresca, Unocal Corporation, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, of House
Committee on International Relations, 12 February 1998
29. The (London) Times Online, 15 January 2003
30. Sydney Morning Herald, 25 March 2003
3 1 . John Cochran, "WH Official Admits WMD NOT Main Reason for Iraq War", ABCNews.com , 25 April 2003
32. See the author's essay on the reasons for the Iraqi invasion at hrtp J/members. aol.com/bblum6/mafia.htm
55. The Guardian (London), 19 September 2002
34. Washington Post, 21 October 2002
35. White House press briefing, 14 November 1997, US Newswire transcript
36. Washington Post, 17 March 2002, p.25
37. Ibid., 15 February 2002, p. 12 and p. 13
38. Antara (Indonesian National News Agency), 13 December 2002; Agence France Presse, 23 December 2002;
Jakarta Fost, 5 January 2003; Washington Post, 9 November 2002, p. 15, 18 November, p. 16, 14 January 2003
39. WashingtonPost, 27 December 200 1, p.C2
40. Ibid., 5 March 2003, p, 19, 9 March 2003, p.B3
41. New York Times, 17 January 2003, p. 10
450
451
Appendix I
452
453
APPENDIX H
Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-1945
(Prepared by Foreign Affairs Division, Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, US Government
Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1975, revision of 1969 version.)
1798-1800 - Undeclared naval war with France: This contest included land actions, such as that in the
Dominican Republic, city of Puerto Plata, where marine? captured a French privateer under the guns
of the forts.
1801-05 - Tripoli: The First Barbary War, including the George Washington and Philadelphia affairs and
the Eaton expedition, during which a few marines landed with United States agent William Eaton to
raise a force against Tripoli in an effort to free rhe crew of the Philadelphia. Tripoli declared war but
not the United States.
1806 - Mexico (Spanish territory): Capt, Z.M. Pike, with a platoon of troops, invaded Spanish terrirory at
the headwaters of the Rio Grande deliberately and on orders from Gen. James Wilkinson. Me was
made prisoner without resistance at a fort he constructed in present day Colorado, taken to Mexico,
later released after seizure of his papers. There was a political purpose, still a mystery.
1806-10 - Gulf of Mexico: American gunboats operated from New Orleans against Spanish and French pri-
vateers, such as La Fitte, off the Mississippi Delta, chiefly under Capt. John Shaw and Master
Commandant David Porter.
1810 - West Florida (Spanish territory): Gov. Claiborne of Louisiana, on orders of the President, occupied
with troops territory in dispute east of Mississippi as far as the Pearl River, later the eastern bound-
ary of Louisiana. He was authorized to seize as far east as the Perdido River. No armed clash.
1812 - Amelia Island and other parts of east Florida, then under Spain: Temporary possession was autho-
rized by President Madison and by Congress, to prevent occupation by any other power: but posses-
sion was obtained by Gen. George Matthews in so irregular a manner that his measures were dis-
avowed by the President.
1812- 15 - Great Britain: War of 1812. Formally declared.
1813 - West Florida (Spanish territory): On authority given by Congress, General Wilkinson seized Mobile
Bay in April with 600 soldiers. A small Spanish garrison gave way. Thus U.S. advanced into disput-
ed territory to the Perdido River, as projected in 1810. No fighting.
1813- 14 - Marquesas Islands: Built a fort on island of Nukahiva to protect three prize ships which had been
captured from the British.
1814 - Spanish Florida: Gen. Andrew Jackson took Pensacola and drove out the British with whom the
United States was at war.
1814- 25 - Caribbean: Engagements between pirates and American ships or squadrons took place repeatedly
especially ashore and offshore about Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, and Yucatan. Three thou-
sand pirate attacks on merchantmen were reported between 1815 and 1823. In 1822 Commodore
James Biddle employed a squadron of two frigates, four sloops of war, two brigs, four schooners, and
two gunboats in the West Indies.
1815 - Algiers: The second Barbary War, declared by the opponents but not by the United States. Congress
authorized an expedition. A large fleet under Decatur attacked Algiers and obtained indemnities.
1815 • Tripoli: After securing an agreement from Algiers, Decatur demonstrated with his squadron at Tunis
and Tripoli, where he secured indemnities for offenses during the War of 1812.
1816 - Spanish Florida: United States forces destroyed Nicholls Fort, called also Negro Fort, which harbored
raiders into United States territory.
1816-18 - Spanish Florida - Firsr Seminole War: The Seminole Indians, whose area was a resort for
escaped slaves and border ruffians, were attacked by troops under Generals Jackson and Gaines and
454
Appendix II
pursued into northern Florida. Spanish posts were attacked and occupied, British citizens executed.
There was no declaration or congressional authorization but the Executive was sustained.
1817 -Amelia Island (Spanish territory offFlorida): Under orders of President Monroe, United States forces
landed and expelled a group of smugglers, adventurers, and freebooters.
1818 - Oregon: The U.S.S. Ontario, dispatched from Washington, landed at the Columbia River and in
August took possession. Brirain had conceded sovereignty but Russia and Spain asserted claims to
the area.
1820-23 - Africa; Naval units raided the slave traffic pursuant to rhe 1819 act of Congress.
1822 - Cuba: United States naval forces suppressing piracy landed on the north-west coast of Cuba and
burned a pirate station.
1823 - Cuba; Brief landings in pursuit of pirates occurred April 8 near Escondido; April 16 near Cayo
Blanco; July 11 at Siquapa Bay; July 21 at Cape Cruz; and October 23 at Camrioca.
1824 - Cuba: In October rhe U.S.S. Porpoise landed bluejackets near Matanzas in pursuir of pirates. This
was during rhe cruise authorized in 1822.
1824 - Puerto Rico (Spanish territory): Commodore David Porter with a landing party attacked the town of
Fajardo which had sheltered pirates and insulred American naval officers. He landed with 200 men
in November and forced an apology.
1825 - Cuba: In March cooperating American and British forces landed at Sagua La Grande to capture
pirates.
1827 - Greece: In October and November landing parties hunted pirates on the islands of Argenteire,
Miconi, and Andross.
1831-32 - Falkland Islands: To investigate the capture of three American sealing vessels and to protect
American interests.
1832 - Sumatra - February 6 ro 9: To punish natives of the town of Quallah Battoo for depredations on
American shipping.
1833 - Argentina - October 31 to November 15: A force was sent ashore at Buenos Aires to protect the
interesrs of the United States and other countries during an insurrection.
1835-36 - Pern - December 10, 1835 to January 24, 1836 and August 31 to December 7, 1836: Marines
protected American interests in Callao and Lima during an attempted revolution.
1836 • Mexico: General Gaines occupied Nacogdoches (Tex.), disputed territory from July to December
during the Texan war for independence, under orders to cross the "imaginary boundary line" if an
Indian outbreak threatened.
1838-39 - Sumatra ■ December 24, 1838 to January 4, 1839: To punish natives of the towns of Quallah
Battoo and Muckie (Mukki) for depredations on American shipping,
1840 - Fiji Islands -July: To punish natives for attacking American exploring and surveying parties.
1841 - Drummond Island, Kingsmitl Group: To avenge the murder of a seaman by the natives.
1841 - Samoa - February 24: To avenge the murder of an American seaman on Upolu Island.
1842 - Mexico: Commodore T. A.C.Jones, in command of a squadron long cruising off California, occupied
Monterey, Calif, on October 19, believing war had come. He discovered peace, withdrew, and
saluted. A similar incident occurred a week later at San Diego.
1843 - China: Sailors and marines from the St. Louis were landed alter a clash between Americans and
Chinese at the trading post of Canton.
1843 - Africa • November 29 to December 16: Four United States vessels demonstrated and landed various
parties (one of 200 marines and sailors) to discourage piracy and the slave trade along the Ivory
coast, etc., and to punish attacks by the natives on American seamen and shipping.
1844 - Mexico: President Tyler deployed U.S. forces to protect Texas against Mexico, pending Senate
approval of a treaty of annexation. (Later rejected.) He defended his action against a Senate resolu-
455
KILLING HOPE
tion of inquiry.
1846-48 - Mexico, the Mexican War: President Polk's occupation of disputed territory precipitated it. Wat
formally declared.
1849 - Smyrna: In July a naval force gained release of an American seized by Austrian officials.
1851 - Turkey: After a massacre of foreigners (including Americans) at Jaffa in January, a demonstration by
the Mediterranean Squadron was ordered along the Turkish (Levant) coast. Apparenrly no shots
fired.
1851 • Johanna Island (east of Africa), August: To exact redress for the unlawful imprisonment of the cap-
tain of an American whaling brig.
1852- 53 - Argentina- February 3 to 12,1852; September 17, 1852to April 1853: Marines were landed and
maintained in Buenos Aires to protect American interests during a revolution.
1853 - Nicaragua - March 11 to 13: To protect American lives and interests during political disturbances.
1853- 54 -Japan: The "opening of Japan" and the Perry Expedition,
1853-54 - Ryukyu and Bonin Islands: Commodore Perry on three visits before going to Japan and while
waiting for a reply from Japan made a naval demonstration, landing marines twice, and secured a
coaling concession from the ruler of Naha on Okinawa. He also demonstrated in the Bonin Islands.
All to secure facilities for commerce.
1854 - China- April 4 to June 15 or 17: To protect American interests in and near Shanghai during Chinese
civil strife.
1854 - Nicaragua - July 9 to 15; San Juan del Norte (Greytown) was destroyed to avenge an insult to the
American Minister to Nicaragua.
1855 - China - May 19 to 21 (?): To protect American interests in Shanghai. August 3 to 5 to fight pirates
near Hong Kong.
1855 - Fiji Islands - September 12 to November 4: To seek reparations for depredations on Americans.
1855 - Uruguay - November 25 to 29 or 30: United States and European nava! forces landed to protect
American interests during an attempted revolution in Montevideo,
1856 - Panama, Republic of New Grenada - September 19 to 22; To protect American interests during an
insurrection.
1856 - China - October 22 ro December 6: To protect American interests at Canton during hostilities
between the British and the Chinese; and to avenge an unprovoked assault upon an unarmed boat
displaying the United States flag.
1857 - Nicaragua - April to May, November to December: To oppose William Walker's attempt to get con-
trol of the country. In May Commander C.H. Davis of the United States Navy, with some marines,
received Walker's surrender and protected his men from the retaliation of native allies who had been
fighting Walker. In November and December of rhe same year United States vessels Saratoga,
Wabash, and Fulton opposed another attempt of William Walker on Nicaragua. Commodore Hiram
Paulding's act of landing marines and compelling the removal of Walker ro rhe United States, was
tacitly disavowed by Secretary of State Lewis Cass, and Paulding was forced into retirement.
1858 - Uruguay - January 2 to 27: Forces from two United States warships landed to protect American
property during a revolution in Montevideo.
1858 - Fiji Islands- Octobers to 16: To chastise the natives for the murder of two American citizens.
1858-59 - Turkey: Display of naval force along the Levant at the request of the Secretary of State after mas-
sacre of Americans at Jaffa and mistreatment elsewhere "to remind the authorities (of Turkey) ... of
the power of the United States."
1859 - Paraguay: Congress authorized a naval squadron to seek redress for an attack on a naval vessel in the
Parana River during 1855. Apologies were made after a large display of force.
1859 - Mexico; Two hundred United States soldiers crossed the Rio Grande in pursuit of the Mexican
456
Appendix II
bandit Cortina.
1859 • China -July 31 to August 2: For the protection of American interests in Shanghai.
1860 - Angola, Portuguese West Africa - March 1: To prorect American lives and property at Kissembo
when the natives became troublesome.
I860 - Colombia, Bay of Panama - September 27 to October 8; To protect American interests during a revo-
lution.
1863 - Japan - July 16: To redress an insuit ro the American flag - firing on an American vessel - at
Shimonoseki.
1864 - Japan ■ July 14 to August 3, approximately: To protect the United States Minister to Japan when he
visited Yedo to negotiate concerning some American claims against Japan, and to make his negotia-
tions easier by impressing the Japanese with American power.
1864 - Japan - September 4 to 14 - Straits of Shimonoseki; To compel Japan and the Prince of Nagato in
particular to permit the Straits to be used by foreign shipping in accordance with treaties already
signed.
1865 - Panama - March 9 and 10: To protect the lives and property of American residents during a revolu-
tion,
1866 - Mexico: To protect American residents, General Sedgwick and 100 men in November obtained sur-
render of Matamoras. After 3 days he was ordered by U.S. Government to withdraw. His acr was
repudiated by the President.
1866 - China - June 20 to July 7; To punish an assault on the American consul at Newchwang; July 14, for
consultation with authorities on shore; August 9, at Shanghai, to help extinguish a serious fire in the
city.
1867 - Nicaragua: Marines occupied Managua and Leon.
1867-Island of Formosa -June 13; To punish a horde of savages who were supposed ro have murdered the
crew of a wrecked American vessel.
1868 -Japan (Osaka, Hiogo, Nagasaki, Yokohama, and Negata) -Mainly, February 4 to 8, April 4 ro May
12, June 12 and 13: To protect American interest's during the civil war in Japan over the abolition of
the Shogunate and the restoration of the Mikado.
1868 - Uruguay - February 7 and 8, 19 to 26: To protect foreign tesidents and the customhouse during an
insurrection at Montevideo.
1868 - Colombia - April 7 - at Aspinw3il: To protect passengers and treasure in transit during the absence of
local police or troops on the occasion of the death of the President of Colombia.
1870 - Mexico, June 17 ant) 18: To desnoy the pirate ship Forward, which had been run aground about 40
miles up the Rio Tecapan.
1870 - Hawaiian Islands - September 2 1 : To place the American flag at half mast upon the death of Queen
Kalama, when the American consul at Honolulu would not assume responsibility for so doing,
1871 - Korea - June 10 to 12: To punish natives for depredations on Americans, particularly for murdering
the crew of the General Sherman and burning the schooner, and for larer firing on other American
small boats taking soundings up the Salee River.
1873 - Colombia [Bay of Panama) - May 7 to 22, September 23 to October 9: To protect American interests
during hostilities over possession of the government of the State of Panama.
1873 - Mexico: United States troops crossed the Mexican border repeatedly in pursuit of cattle and other
thieves. There were some reciprocal pursuits by Mexican troops into border territory. The cases
were only technically invasions, if that, although Mexico protested constantly. Notable cases were at
Remolina in May 1873 and at Las Cuevas in 1875, Washington orders often supported these excur-
sions. Agreements between Mexico and the United States, die first in 1882, finally legitimized such
raids. They continued intermittently, with minor disputes, until 1S96,
1874 - Hawaiian Islands - February 12 to 20; To preserve order and protect American lives and interests
457
KILLING HOPE
during the coronation of a new king.
1876 - Mexico - May 18: To police the town of Matamoras temporarily while it was without other govern-
ment.
1882 - Egypt - July 14 to 18: To protect American interests during warfare between British and Egyptians
and looting of the city of Alexandria by Arabs.
1885 - Panama (Colon) - January 18 and 19: To guard the valuables in transit over the Panama Railroad,
and the safes and vaults of the company during revolutionary activity. In March. April, and May in
the cities of Colon and Panama, to re-establish freedom of transit during revolutionary activity.
1888 - Korea - June: To protect American residents in Seoul during unsettled political conditions, when an
outbreak of the populace was expected.
1888 - Haiti - December 20: To persuade the Haitian Government to give up an American steamer which
had been seiied on the charge of breach of blockade.
1888-89 - Samoa - November 14,1888, to March 20,1889; To protect American citizens and the consulate
during a native civil war.
1889 -Hawaiian Islands-July 30 and 3 1 ; To protect American interests at Honolulu during a revolution,
1890 - Argentina: A naval parry landed to protect U.S. consulate and legation in Buenos Aires.
1891 - Haiti: To protect American lives and property on Navassa Island.
1891 - Beting Sea-July 2 to October 5; To stop seal poaching.
1891 - Chile - August 28 to 30: To protect the American consulate and the women and children who had
taken refuge in it during a revolution in Valparaiso.
1893 - Hawaii - January 16 to April 1; Ostensibly to protect American lives and property; actually to pro-
mote a provisional government undet Sanford B. Dole. This action was disavowed by the United
States.
1894 - Brazil - January: To protect American commerce and shipping at Rio de Janeiro during a Brazilian
civil war. No landing was attempted but there was a display of naval force.
1894 - Nicaragua - July 6 to August 7: To protect American interests at Bluefields following a revolution.
1894-95 - China: Marines were stationed at Tientsin and penetrated to Peking for protection purposes dur-
ing the Sino-Japanese Wat.
1894-95 -China: Naval vessel beached and used as a fort at Newchwang for protection of American nation-
als.
1894-96 - Korea - July 24, 1894 to April 3, 1896: To protect American lives and interests at Seoul during
and following the Sino-Japanese War. A guard of marines was kept at the American legation most of
the time until April 1896.
1895 - Colombia - March 8 to 9: To protect American interests during an attack on the town of Bocas del
Toro by a bandit chieftain.
1896 - Nicaragua - May 2 to 4: To protect American interests in Corinto during political unrest.
1898 - Nicaragua - February 7 and 8: To protect American lives and property at San Juan del Sur.
1898 - Spain: The Spanish-American War. Fully declared.
1898- 99 - China - November 5, 1898, to March IS, 1899: To provide a guard for the legation at Peking
and the consulate at Tientsin during contest between the Dowager Empress and her son.
1899 - Nicaragua: To protect American interests at San Juan del Norte, February 22 to March 5, and at
Bluefields a few weeks later in connection with the insurrection of Gen. Juan P. Reyes.
1899 - Samoa - March 13 to May 15: To protect American interests and to take part in a bloody contention
over the succession to the throne.
1899- 1901 - Philippine Islands; To protect American interests following the war with Spain, and to conquer
458
Appendix II
the islands by defeating the Filipinos in their war for independence.
19(X) - China - May 24 to September 28: To protect foreign lives during the Boxer rising, particularly at
Peking. For many years after this experience a permanent legation guard was maintained in Peking,
and was strengthened at times as trouble threatened. It was still there in 1934.
1901 • Colombia (State of Panama) - November 20 to December 4: To protect American property on the
Isthmus and to keep transit lines open during serious revolutionary disturbances.
1902 - Colombia - April 16 to 23; To protect American lives and property at Bocas del Toro during a civil
war.
1902 - Colombia (State of Panama) - September 17 to November 18: To place armed guards on all trains
crossing the Isthmus and to keep the railroad line open.
1903 - Honduras - March 23 to 30 or 3 1 ; To protect the American consulate and the steamship wharf at
Puerto Cortez during a period of revolutionary activity.
1903 - Dominican Republic - March 30 to April 21: To protect American interests in the city of Santo
Domingo during a revolutionary outbreak.
1903 - Syria - September 7 to 12: To protect the American consulate in Beirut when a local Moslem uprising
was feared.
1903-04 - Abyssinia; Twenty-five marines were sent to Abyssinia to protect the U.S. Consul General while
he negotiated a treaty.
1903-14 • Panama: To protect American interests and lives during and following the revolution for indepen-
dence from Colombia over the construction of the Isthmian Canal. With brief intermissions, Marines
were stationed on the Isthmus from November 4,1903 to January 21,1914, to guard American interests.
1904 - Dominican Republic - January 2 to February H: To protect American interests in Puerto Plata and
Sosua and Santo Domingo City during revolutionary fighting.
1904 - Tangier, Morocco: "We want either Perdicaris alive or Raisula dead." Demonstration by a squadron
to force release of a kidnapped American Marine guard landed to protect consul general.
1904 - Panama - November 17 to 24: To protect American lives and property at Ancon at the time of a
threatened insurrection.
1904-05 -Korea -January 5, 1904 to November II, 1905: To guard the American Legation in Seoul,
1904-05 - Korea: Marine guard sent to Seoul for protection during Russo-Japanese War.
1906-09 - Cuba - September 1906 to January 23, 1909: Intervention to restore order, protect foreigners,
and establish a stable government after serious revolutionary activity,
1907 - Honduras - March 18 to June 8: To protect American interests during a war between Honduras and
Nicaragua; troops wete stationed for a few days or weeks in Trujillo, Ceiba, Puerto Cortez, San
Pedro, Laguna and Choloma.
1910-Nicaragua ■ February 22: During a civil war, to get information of conditions at Corinto; May 19 to
September 4, to protect American interests at Bluefields.
1911 - Honduras - January' 26 and some weeks thereafter: To protect American lives and interests during a
civil war in Honduras.
1911 - China: Approaching stages of the nationalist revolution. An ensign and 10 men in October tried to
enter Wuchang to rescue missionaries but retired on being warned away.
A small landing force guarded American private property and consulate at Hankow in October.
A marine guard was established in November over the cable stations at Shanghai.
Landing forces were sent for protection in Nanking, Chinkiang, Taku and elsewhere.
1912 - Honduras: Small force landed to prevent seizure by the Government of an American-owned railroad
at Puerto Cortez. Forces withdrawn after the United States disapproved of the action.
1912 - Panama: Troops, on request of both political parties, supervised elections outside the Canal Zone.
1912 - Cuba -June 5 to August 5: To protect American interests on the Province of Oriente, and in Habana.
459
KILLING HOPE
1912 - China - August 24 to 26, on Kentucky Island, and August 26 to 30 at Cam? Nicholson: To protect
Americans and American interests during revolution activity.
1912 - Turkey - November 18 to December 3: To guard the American legation at Constantinople during a
Balkan War.
1912-25 - Nicaragua - August to November 1912: To protect American interests during an attempted revo-
lution. A small force serving as a legation guard and as a promoter of peace and governmental stabil-
ity, remained until August 5,1925.
1912-41 - China: The disorders which began with the Kuomintang rebellion in 1912, which were redirected
by the invasion of China by Japan and finally ended by war between Japan and the United States in
1941, led to demonstrations and landing parties for the protection of U.S. interests in China continu-
ously and at many points from 1912 to 1941. The guard at Peking and along the route to the sea
was maintained until 1941. In 1927, the United States had 5,670 troops ashore in China and 44
naval vessels in its waters. In 1933 U.S. had 3,027 armed men ashore. All this protective action was
in general terms based on treaties with China ranging from 1858 to 1901.
1913 - Mexico - September 5 to 7: A few marines landed at Claris Estero to aid in evacuating American citi-
zens and others from the Yaqui Valley, made dangerous for foreigners by civil strife.
1914 - Haiti - January 29 to February 9, February 20 to 2 1 , October 19: To protect American nationals in a
time of dangerous unrest.
1914- Dominican Republic - June and July: During a revolutionary movement, United States naval forces by
gunfire stopped the bombardment of Puerto Plata, and by threat of force maintained Santo Domingo
City as a neutral zone.
1914- 17 - Mexico: The undeclared Mexican-American hostilities following the Dolphin affair and Villa's
raids included capture of Vera Cruz and later Pershing's expedition into northern Mexico,
1915- 34 - Haiti - July 28, 1915 to August 15, 1934: To maintain order during a period of chronic and
threatened insurrection.
1916 - China: American forces landed to quell a riot taking place on American property in Nanking.
1916- 24 • Dominican Republic - May 1916 to September 1924: To maintain order during a period of
chronic and threatened insurrection.
1917 - China: American troops were landed at Chungking to protect American lives during a political crisis.
1917-18: World War I. Fully declared.
1917- 22 - Cuba: To protect American interests during an insurrection and subsequent unsettled conditions.
Most of the United States armed forces left Cuba by August 1919, but two companies remained at
Camaguey until February 1922.
1918-19 - Mexico: After withdrawal of the Pershing expedition, our troops entered Mexico in pursuit of
bandits at least three rimes in 1918 and six in 1919. In August 1918 American and Mexican troops
fought at Nogales.
1918- 20 -Panama: For police duty according to treaty stipulations, at Chiriqui, during election disturbances
and subsequent unrest.
1918-20 - Soviet Russia: Marines were landed at and near Vladivostok in June and July to protect the
American consulate and other points in the fighting between the Bolsheviki troops and the Czech
Army which had traversed Siberia from the western front. A joint proclamation of emergency gov-
ernment and neutrality was issued by the American, Japanese, British, French, and Czech comman-
ders in July and our party remained until late August.
In August the project expanded. Then 7,000 men were landed in Vladivostok and remained until
January 1920, as part of an allied occupation force.
In September 1918, 5,000 American troops joined the allied intervention force at Archangel, suffered
500 casualties and remained until June 1919.
A handful of marines took pan earlier in a British landing on the Murman coast (near Norway) but
only incidentally.
460
Appendix II
All these operations were ro offset effects of the Bolsheviki revolution in Russia and were partly sup-
ported by Czarist or Kerensky elements. No war was declared. Bolsheviki elements participated at
times with us but Soviet Russia still claims damages.
1919 - Dalmatia: U.S. Forces were landed at Trau at the request of Italian authorities to police order
between the Italians and Serbs.
1919 - Turkey: Marines from the U.5.S. Arizona were landed to guard the U.S. Consulate during the Greek
occupation of Constantinople.
1919 - Honduras - September 8 to 12: A landing force was sent ashore to maintain order in a neutra! zone
during an attempted revolution.
1920 - China - March 14: A landing force was sent ashore for a few hours to protect lives during a distur-
bance at Kiukiang.
1920 - Guatemala - April 9 to 27: To protect the American Legation and other American interests, such as
the cable station, during a period of fighting between Unionists and the Government of Guatemala.
1920-22 - Russia (Siberia) - February 16, 1920 to November 19, 1922: A marine guard to protect the
United States radio station and property on Russian Island, Bay of Vladivostok.
1921 - Panama-Costa Rica: American naval squadrons demonstrated in April on both sides of the Isthmus
to prevent war between the two countries over a boundary dispute,
1922 - Turkey - September and October: A landing force was sent ashore with consent of both Greek and
Turkish authorities, to protect American lives and property when the Turkish Nationalists entered
Smyrna.
1922-23 - China: Between April 1922 and November 1923, Marines were landed five times to protect
Americans during periods of unrest.
1924 - Honduras - February 28 to March 3 1 , September 10 to 15: To protect American lives and interests
during election hostilities.
1924 - China - September: Marines were landed to protect Americans and other foreigners in Shanghai dur-
ing Chinese factional hostilities.
1925 - China -January 15 to August 29: Fighting of Chinese factions accompanied by riots and demonstra-
tions in Shanghai necessitated landing American forces to protect lives and property in the
International Settlement.
1925 - Honduras - April 19 to 21 : To protect foreigners at La Ceiba during a political upheaval.
1925 - Panama - October 12 to 23 : Strikes and rent riots led to the landing of about 600 American troops to
keep order and protect American interests.
1926 - China - August and September: The Nationalist attack on Hankow necessitated the landing of
American naval forces to protect American citizens. A small guard was maintained at the consulate
general even after September 16, when the rest of the forces were withdrawn. Likewise, when
Nationalist forces captured Kiukiang, naval forces were landed for the protection of foreigners
November 4 to 6.
1926-33 - Nicaragua - May 7 to June 5, 1926; August 27, 1926 to January 3, 1933; The coup d'etat of
General Chamorro aroused revolutionary activities leading to the landing of American marines to
protect the interests of the United States, United States forces came and went, but seem not to have
left the country entirely until January 3, 1933. Their work included activity against the outlaw leader
Sandinoinl928.
1927 - China - February: Fighting at Shanghai caused American naval forces and marines to be increased
there. In March a naval guard was stationed at the American consulate at Nanking after Nationalist
forces captured the city. American and British destroyers later used shell fire to protect Americans
and other foreigners. "Following this incident additional forces of marines and naval vessels were
ordered to China and stationed in the vicinity of Shanghai and Tientsin."
1932 - China: American forces were landed to protect American interests during the Japanese occupation of
Shanghai.
461
KILLING HOPE
1933 - Cuba: During a revolution against President Gerardo Machado naval forces demonstrated but no
landing was made.
1934 - China: Marines landed at Foochow to protect the American Consulate.
1940 - Newfoundland, Bermuda, St. Lucia, Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua, Trinidad, and British Guiana;
Troops were sent to guard air and naval bases obtained by negotiation with Great Britain. These
were sometimes called lend-lease bases.
1941 - Greenland: Taken under protection of the United States in April.
1941 - Netherlands [Dutch Guiana): In November the President ordered American troops to occupy Dutch
Guiana but by agreement with the Netherlands government in exile, Brazil cooperated to protect alu-
minum ore supply from the bauxite mines in Suriname.
1941 • Iceland: Taken under the protection of the United States, with consent of its Government, for strate-
gic reasons.
1941 - Germany: Sometime in the spring the President ordered the Navy to patrol ship lanes to Europe. By
July U.S. warships were convoying and by September were attacking German submarines. There was
no authorization of Congress or declaration of war. In November, the Neutrality Act was partly
repealed to protect military aid to Britain, Russia, etc.
1941-45 - Germany, Italy, Japan, etc: World War II. Fully declared.
462
APPENDIX m
U.S. Government Assassination Plots
On June 26, 1993, the United States carried out a bombing attack on Iraq in retal-
iation for an alleged Iraqi plot to assassinate former president George Bush. The attack, said
President Clinton, "was essential to send a message to those who engage in state-sponsored
terrorism ... and to affirm the expectation of civilized behavior among nations."
Following is a list of prominent foreign individuals whose assassination (or plan-
ning for same) the United States has been involved in since the end of the Second World
War. The list does not include several assassinations in various parts of the world carried
out by anti-Castro Cubans employed by the CIA and headquartered in the United States.
1949 - Kim Koo, Korean opposition leader
1950s - CIA/Neo-Nazi hit list of more than 200 political figures in West
Germany to be "put out of the way" in the event of a Soviet invasion
1950s - Zhou Enlai, Prime minister of China, several attempts on his life
1950s, 1962 - Sukarno, President of Indonesia
1951 - Kim II Sung, Premier of North Korea
1953 - Mohammed Mossadegh, Prime Minister of Iran
1950s (mid) - Claro M. Recto, Philippines opposition leader
1955 - Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India
1957 - Gamal Abdul Nasser, President of Egypt
1959/63/69 - Norodom Sihanouk, leader of Cambodia
1960 - Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem, leader of Iraq
1950s-70s - Jose Figueres, President of Costa Rica, two attempts on his life
1961 -Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, leader of Haiti
1961 - Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo
1961 - Gen. Rafael Trujillo, leader of Dominican Republic
1963 - Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Vietnam
1960s-90s - Fidel Castro, President of Cuba, many attempts and plots on his life
1960s - Raul Castro, high official in government of Cuba
1965 - Francisco Caamafto, Dominican Republic opposition leader
1965-6 - Charles de Gaulle, President of France
1967 - Che Guevara, Cuban leader
1970 - Gen. Rene Schneider, Commander-in-Chief of Army, Chile
1970 - Salvador Allende, President of Chile
463
KILLING HOPE
1970s, 1981 - General Omar Torrijos, leader of Panama
1972 - General Manuel Noriega, Chief of Panama Intelligence
1975 - Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire
1976 - Mchael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica
1980-1986 - Moammar Qaddafi, leader of Libya, several plots and attempts upon
his life
1982 - Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of Iran
1983 - Gen. Ahmed Dlimi, Moroccan Army commander
1983 -Miguel d'Escoto, Foreign Minister of Nicaragua
1984 - The nine comandantes of the National Directorate of Nicaragua
1985 - Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanese Shiite leader
1991 - Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq
1998, 2001-2 - Osama bin Laden, leading Islamic militant
1999 - Slobodan Milosevic, President of Yugoslavia
2002 - Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Afghan Islamic leader, watlotd, former US ally
2003 - Saddam Hussein and family members
464
Index
Note: The names of most non-
American individuals are not listed
here unless they appear in more
than one chapter. They can be
found in the chapter of their coun-
try.
Entries for US presidents refer to
them individually and/or their
administrations.
A
Abrams, Elliott, 304, 371
Acheson, Dean, 6 1 , 65-6, 75, 122
Afghanistan, 338-352, 386, 389-92
Agee, Philip, 153-5, 166.1S3, 204-5
Agency for International
Development (AID, formerly
Economic Cooperation
Administration), 102, 142-*, 166,
200,207,234-5,315,356, 373,
376, 3R2; connection to CIA, 235
Agnew, Spire, 220
Air America, see CIA: Airlines
Albania, 55-7, 320
Algeria, 149-51
Alliance for Progress, 191,234
Allison, John, 101
Alsop, Joseph, 394n24
Alsop, Stewart, 36, 394n24
American Civil War, 5i, 186
American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees
(AFSCME), 109-10
American Institute for Free Labor
Development (AIFLD): origins,
168; in Brazil, 168, 170; British
Guiana, 109, 111; Chile, 212;
Dominican Republic, 180;
Jamaica, 263; Nicaragua, 291;
Surinatne, 279
American Revolution, 185-6
Amstutz, Bmce, 343
Androutsopoulos, Ar, 221
Angleton, James, 245
Angola, 249-259
Anshutz (Anschuerz), Norbert, 217-8
Arafat, Yasser, .523
Argentina, 169, 357
Asia foundation, 248, 343
assassinations, US government
involvement in, see Appendix HJ;
see also 294,361-2
Arwood, William, 162-3
Australia, 244-9
Austria, 104, 106
Avery, Bill, 430n4
B
Bailey, Laurence, 358
Baker, James, 314, 327, 329-30, 374
Bane, Howard, 199
Barnes, Michael (Cong.), 297
Barnes, Tracy, 79
Bechtel Corp,, 324
Belgium, 107-8,156-7,162,186,
259-62
Bennett, W. Tapley, 181,183
Berle, Adoif, Jr., 164-5
Betancourt, Romulo, 176
Bevan, Aneurin, 34,110
Bin Laden, Osama 387
Bolivia, 221-9
Bonpane, Blase, 233-4
Bosch, Orlando, 387
Bosnia, 385
Boyce, Christopher, 248-9
Braden,Tom, 105
brainwashing, 52-3
Brazil, 163-72, 280
British Guiana, 10814
Brown, Ron, 378
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 344, 346
Buchanan, Patrick, 296
Buckland, Eric (Maj.), 362
Buckley, William F. Jr., 133
Bufkin, David, 260
Bulgaria, 60,314-20
Bundy, McGeorge, 130
Burma, 23-4, 414n26
Bush, George 1, 239,287,289,304-
14, 320-38, 348, 362, 374, 378-9,
387
Bush, George II, 387, 390
Bush, Jeb, 387
c
Cabot, John Moors, 164-5
Camara, Helder (Dom), 370
Cambodia, 133-9
Cantrell, William, 201
Carroll, George, 72
Carterjimmy, 72, 236-7, 253, 2.59-
62, 266, 21 A, 282, 284-5, 290-1,
306, 343-4, 355-7, 372, 380
Casey, William, 20,120, 272, 279,
295, 307-8
Castro, Fidel, 225,263,296-7; see
also Cuba
Castro, Juanita, 207
Center for Democracy, 303
Channel!, Carl, 298
Chapman, Christian, 284
Charles, Eugenia, 270, 274
chemical and biological warfare, US
use of against China and Korea,
26-7, 53; Cuba, 188-9; Jamaica,
265; Vietnam, 132-3; within the
United States, 27, 188-9
Cheney, Dick, 310, 321-2
Chile, 206-15, 245, 357
China, 21-27, 99, 122-6, 129, 134-6,
161, 15*9, 250-3, 260, 344-5; aid
to US in Vietnam, 130-l;aidto
Contras, 297
Chomsky, Noam, 331
ChouEn-lai, 15,21,23,99,131,
394n20
Christian Anti-Communist Crusade,
110
Christopher, Warren, 378
Churchill, Winston, 7, 34-5, 65,108
CIA: airlines, 22,103,124, 142,
144; and drug trafficking, 24, J42,
249,303,307,351,375-6,
412n22; front organizations and
conduits: chapter 15, Appendix I;
immunity from bribery and murder
laws, 259yn military opposition to
another arm of the USG, 84,159,
414n26
Clark, William, 284
Cline, Ray, 104,139
Clinton, BUI, 376-82
Colby, William, 29, 121, 131, 152,
210-11,249,251,253*
Collins, Patrick (Col.), 376
Colombia, 385
Committee In Solidarity with the
People of El Salvador (CISPES),
360, 368
Congo, The, 156-63; see also Zaire
Congress for Cultural Freedom, 104-
5,248
Cook, Truman, (Col.), 223
Cooper, Chester, 409n7 and n24
Cooper, Robert, 383
Copeiand, Miles, 404nl2
Corea, Yanira, 360
Costa Rica, 83-4, 239-41, 296, 298
Corram, Richard, 68
Cuba, 145-7,153-6, 162,165,173,
175,184-93,222,260-3,252-6,
271-6, 279-80, 327, 379, 386-7;
relations with Soviet Union, 256,
296-7; US disinformation and dirty
tricks against, 153-5, 172, 186-91 A
205-6,210,212, 225,234, 252,
262-3,266, 271-2,276,280,294,
296, 363-5
Cuban exiles, use of by CIA: in
Bolivia, 226; Congo, 161;
Guatemala, 147, 237; Jamaica,
265-6
Cunningham, Robert, 409nl0
Czechoslovakia, 60, 73,129,155
D
Davis, Nathaniel, 120
Dean, John, 306
death squads, US connection to: in
Brazil, 171; El Salvador, 353-4,
360-1,366-7; Guatemala, 234-5;
Haiti, 370, 376; Indonesia, 194;
Uruguay, 202
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),
183,373,376
De Gaulle, Charles, 149-52
Denmark, 104
465
KILLING HOPE
De Roulet, Vincent, 263
Descoteaux, Norman, 264
DeVine, Michael, 239
Devlin, Lawrence, 159
Diego Garcia (island), 246, 258
Dillon, Douglas, 156,165
Djilas, Milovan, 36-7,117
Doherry, William, jr., 109,1 13,16S
Dole, Robert, 304, 322, 325, 349-50
Dominican Republic, 175-84
Donovan, William, 30
Dooley, Tom, 265
Downey, John, 25
Drug Enforcement Administration
PEA), 204, 308
Dulles, Allen, 58-9, 7 1 , 73-5, 87, 92-
3,134,149,156,158,160,192
Dulles, John Foster, 11, 64-7, 70-75,
79-S7, 92-8,'103,124-7,133-4,
140,145
Duncan, Donald, 128
Dunn, James Clement, 32
Dupree, Louis, 443n5
E
Eastern Europe(ans) (Soviet bloc),
57-61, 161, 187,205; guerrilla
training of 60
East Germany, 62-3,289
East Timor, 197-8,246
Ecuador, 153-6, 385
Egypt, 86, 90-98, 285-7, 289, 326,
345, 404nl2
Eisenhower, Dwight 49, 73, 75-6,
79, 82,89-98,103,115,125-6,
130,135,145,147,156-8,175-6,
m,405n3S
Elder, Walter 146
elections, US interference in: in
Australia, 246-7; Brazil, 166;
British Guiana, 110-13; Bulgaria,
314-20; Chile, 206-9; Dominican
Republic, 178-9,184; Ecuador,
154-5; Guatemala, 231; Haiti,
370-1, 373; Indonesia, 100; Italy,
27-34, 120-2; Jamaica, 263-7;
Laos, 141; Lebanon, 94-5;
Nicaragua, 299-300; Panama, 308-
9; Philippines, 40-4; Uruguay, 205;
Vietnam, 126-7. See also political
parties...
El Salvador, 352-69
Engle, Byron, 200-1
Esso Corp., 292
Ethiopia, 363, 365
European Commission of Human
Rights, 215,219
European Common Market, 275,
291,447n46
European Movement, The, 112
Eveland, Wilbur Crane, 86-97 pas-
sim
Export-Import Bank, 211
Exxon Corp., 71, 120
F
Fadlallah, Sheikh Mohammed
Hussein, see Appendix HI
FBI, 360
Fecreau, Richard, 25
Field, Hermann/Herta/Noel 57-60,
400n2
Figueres, Jose, 83-4, 239-41
Ford, Gerald, 197,214
Ford Foundation, 62
Forum World Features, 105, 213
Fox, Edward, 222, 225
France, 29, 93-4,104,122-6,135,
149-52,259-60, 262,26 8, 278,
281,285-6,373
Free Congress Foundation, 317
Free Trade Union Institute, 318
G
Galbraith, Evan, 270
Garwood, Sterling, 64
Gerassi, John, 165,173
germ warfare, see chemical and bio-
logical warfare
Germany, 327, 33 1 . See also East
Germany, West Germany, Nazi
Germany, United States working
with Nazis ...
Geyelin, Philip, 181
Ghana, 12,159,198-200
Gilpatrick, Roswell, 128
Gladio, see Operation Gladio
Glaspie, April, 322-3, 325
Glassman, Jon, 364
Goodwin, Richard, 193
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 17-18, 297,
348
Gordon, Lincoln, 163-70 passim
Gottlieb, Sidney, 158
Grady, Henry, 38
Great Btitain, 12,58,79-80,86,
104-7,1 16,122-3, 270, 276, 286,
289, 315, 321;involvementwith
US interventions in: Albania, 55-
7;British Guiana, 108-13; Egypt,
92-3; Germany, 62; Greece, 34-5;
Indonesia, 102,195; Iran, 65-6,
69,71; Syria, 87, 89
Greece, 34-9,107,215-221
Green, Marshall, 196
Grenada, 269-77, 280
Griswold, Dwight, 36, 38
Guatemala, 72-83,147-8, 229-39
Guevara, Ernesto (Che), 81-2, 162,
165,189,192-93,225-6
Gulf Oil Corp., 71, 225-8, 255
Guyana. See British Guiana
H
Haig, Alexander, 131, 237, 284,
301,349,363
Haiti, 145-6, 370-83
HammarskjUld, Dag, 79-80, 157-8
Harbury, Jennifer, 239
Harriman, Avereli, 128, 183
Harrison, Lawrence, 241
Heath, Donald, 95
Heinl, Robert Debs, Jr., 146
Helms, Richard, 209
Henderson, Douglas, 221-2
Henderson, Loy, 67-8, 70, 91
Hendnx, Hal, 179
Herter, Christian, 91-2
Hillsman, Roger, 141
Hinton, Deane, 258, 367
Hiroshima, 15,18
Hobbing, Enno, 80
Holt, James, 266
Honduras: re Guatemala, 76, 80- 1 ;
re Nicaragua, 292-8
Horman, Charles, 214
Hughes, Emmet John, 91-2,115
Hungary, 60-1, 104
Hunt, E. Howard, 79, 306
L
India, 26, 397n2e,412n23
Indonesia, 99-103,193-8
Inter-American Development Rank,
211,291
Intemationl Confederation of Free
Trade Unions, 109,160
International Monetary Fund (IMF),
20,199,274,291,326-7,373,
381
International Telephone and
Telegraph (ITT), 21 1
Iran, 14, 64-72,114, 242-4, 332,
339 A 1, 344-5, 350-1
Iraq, 86, 91-8, 242-4, 320-38, 390-2
Israel, 72, 93, 236, 345, 357, 370
italy, 27-34, 104,107-8,119-22,
282; US coup in, 28-9
Jacobowitz, Daniel, 301
Jamaica, 263-7
janka, Les, 423nl
Japan, 327, 33 1 . See also: US work-
ing with ...
Jeton, Francis, 88
John Bitch Society, 9
Johnson, Lyndon B, 129-30,152,
182-4,216-7,231
Johnson, U. Alexis, 140
Jones, Howard, 101
Jordan, 90-6
Joya Martinez, Cesar Vielman, 361
K
Kagan, Robert, 388-9
Kalb, Bernard, 286
466
Index
Kehy, John, 322
Kennan, George F., 17
Kennedy, John F., 89,110,112,130,
135-6,143, 146,166-7, 176-9,
188,191, 193,195,206,231
Kennedy, RobertF., 103, 163, 169,
178,187
KGB, 11-12, 120
Khomeini (Ayatollah), See Appendix
III
Khrushchev, Nikita, 8, 47-8, 82, 97-
8,143,169,185
Kim U Sung. See Appendix HI
KimKoo. See Appendix HI
Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 269, 367
Kissinger, Henry, 137, 197, 209,
215, 220, 242 A , 252-5, 258,261,
263 A , 300-1
Korb, Lawrence, 326, 328
Korea/Korean War, 26,45-55. See
also North Korea
Korry, Edward, 211
Kozak, Michael, 378
Kuwait, 321-37 passim
L
labor movements and the CIA, 32,
108-12, 120-1,153-4, 160,168,
170,180, 208-9, 212, 248-9, 265,
279, 29 1 ; See also AIFLD, ORIT,
National Endowment for
Democracy
Lansdale, Edward, 41-4, 125-6
Laos, 140-5
Latell, Brian 374, 377
Lawasia (Law Asia), 248
Lawn, John, 308
Leaf, Jessie J., 402n43
Lebanon, 90-98, 406n2e, 412n23
Ledecn, Michael, 120
Libya, 280-9, 345
Lie, Trygve, 48
Liechty, Philip, 129
Lineberget, Paul, 397n25
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 79,130
Love, Kennett, 70, 72, 90
Luce, Ciare Booth, 121
Lundin, Robert, 228
M
Mac Arthur, Douglas, 49
McAuliffe, Dennis (Lt. Gen.), 291
McCabe, William Howard, 109, 111
McClosky, Pete, 139
MacMichael, David, 295, 301
McNamara, Robert, 128, 130,133.
163,174,196,225
MacVeagh, Lincoln, 38
Maheu, Robert, 102
Mandela, Nelson, 253
Mann, Thomas (State Dept), 148,
183
Marshall, George, 22-3, 30, 36
Martin, John Bartlow, 178-9
Martinez, Richard, 168
Matsui, Victor Masao, 135
Maury, John, 216
Meakins, Gene, 111
media covertly used by CIA and
other USG agencies: 32, 43-4, 77,
84, 104-6, 113,1 17-8, 120, 1 24-6,
129,142, 154-5, 166,179,191,
206-13,223-4, 248, 252, 266-7,
275,286,291,299,301,374,
397nl3, 406n2. See also Radio
Free Europe, USIA, Appendix I
Mein, John Gordon, 234-38
Melville, Thomas/Marjorie/Arthur,
233,238
mercenaries, CIA use of in: Angola,
252; Congo, 161; El Salvador,
358; Guatemala, 76; Indonesia,
102; Nicaragua, 293; Seychelles,
268-9; Zaire, 260
Mexico, 298, 3S5
Mchigan State University, 128
Mddle East, 89-99. See also individ-
ual countries of the Mddle East
Mitrione, Dan, 17], 200-3
Moakley, Joseph (Cong.), 361
Mobil Oil Corp., 120
Mobutu Sese Seko (Joseph Mobutu),
158-62, 2J4-63 passim
Molloy, Robert, 88
Mongolia, 385
Monthly Review (New York), 1 10
Moose, James, Jr., 86
Morocco, 260, 262, 278-9
Morris, Roger, 139
Moss, Robert, 213
Moynihan, Daniel, 255
Murphy, Robert, 97
Murtow, Edward R, 128
N
Narut, Thomas, 53
National Committee for a Free
Europe, 62
National Endowment for
Democracy, 280, 303-5, 315-18,
320, 373-4
National Security Agency, 114, 245,
253,282
National Security Council, 100-1,
124, 134, 156-7, 176, 192, 199,
209,239,251,285,298,371
National Security Resources Board,
119
"National Security Strategy" (White
House paper), 384-5
National Student Association, 182
NATO, 105-7,151,216, 282, 386
Nazi Germany, 8, 10, 16, 19
Nehru, jawaharial. See Appendix HI
Netherlands, 197, 279
Neumann, Robert, 351
Nicaragua, 76, 84, 290-305, 312,
363-5, 385-6
Nixon, Richard, 25,132, 137,192,
209, 220, 242, 245, 306
Nkramah, Kwame. See Ghana
Noriega, Manuel, 296, 298, 305-13
North, Oliver, 282, 292, 296-7, 301,
307-8
North Korea, 114, 205, 212, 250,
258. See also Korea
NTS (Soviet emigre organization),
116-8
Nugan Hand Bank, 249
Nuremburg Doctrine applied to
Vietnam, 133
Nutting, Wallace {General}, 306
0
Obey, David (Cong.), 366
Office of Public Safety (OPS), 171,
200, 202, 204, 234-5
Office of Strategic Services (OSS),
21,58,123
Olivares, Luis (Rev), 360
OMeara, Andrew (General), 169
Operation Gladio, 63 A 1, 106-8
Organization of American States
(OAS), 165,181,270,291,312,
378-9
ORIT (Inter- American Regional
Labor Organization), 109, 227
Ortiz, Dianna (Sister), 239
Osbotn, K Barton, 131
P
Pakistan, 341, 344-5, 349-52,
412n23
Palestine Liberation Organisation
(PLO), 365
Pan American Airlines, 108
PanAm flight 103, 288-9
Panama, 30.5-14,359
Papandreou, Andreas, 38, 216-8,
221 ; worked with CIA, 217
Parsons, J, Graham, 140
Peetjohn, 400n8a
Peru, 172-4,385
Pezzullo, Lawrence, 379
Philby, Kim, 55, 57
Philippines, The, 39-44; aiding US
policies in Asia, 102,126, 128,
141
Phillips, David Adee, 79
Ploeser, Walter, 241
Poindexter, John, 282, 2S6, 298
Poland, 57-61,155,297, 345
Polansky, SoL315
political parties/politicans, US covert
funding of, 32, 64, 84,104,106,
154, 158, 206-9, 216, 225, 246-7,
249, 265, 270, 303, 375. See also
elections, US interference in
467
KILLING HOPE
Pomeroy, William J., 397n2c
Pope, Allen Lawrence, 103
Portugal (re Angola}, 250-2
Posada Carriles, Luis, 265
Potts, James,218
Powell, Colin (General), 311,331,
365, 383
Powers, Francis Gary, 1 14- J
Praeger, Frederick A., Inc., 397nl3
Public Services International
(London), 109, 111
Puerifoy, John, 73-6, 80-2
Q
Quainton, Anthony, 437n84
R
Radio Free Europe, 59-62,118
Reagan, Ronald, 13,17-1S, 20,139,
237-8, 256, 269-309 passim, 339,
349-50, 352, 357-66 passim, 371,
378
Reed, Lear, 175
Reich, Otto, 387
religion and the CIA, 77,125,154,
207-8, 228,292, 371
Remon, Jose Antonio. See Appendix
III
Rickard, Donald, 253
Rirrer,Scott,391
Rockefeller family, 71
Romualdi, Serafino, 109
Roosevelt, Archibald, 86, 92-3
Roosevelt, Kermit [Kim), 64-71, 88,
92-3
Rositzke, Harry, 119
Rostow,Wa[t,117,218
Rumania, 60
Rumsfeld, Donald, 390
Rusk, Dean, 15-16,27,113,128,
130,133,169-70
Russia, See Soviet Union
s
Sandys, Duncan, 112
Saudi Arabia, 92-3, 120, 324-7, 330-
3,345
Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 1 10,1 13
schools, CIA and other USG, to train
foreigners:
"bomb school" (Texas) 171, 202,
212,234
EscoU Superior de Guena (Brazil),
167
Institute for the Study of Hie USSR
(W Germany), 116
Institute Cultural Trabalho (Brazil),
168
Inter- American Police Academy
(Panama), 234
International Police Academy
(Washington), 234
International Police Services
(Washington), 201
School of the Americas (Panama and
Georgia), 223, 227,230, 238-9
US Army Chemical School
(Alabama), 189
See also AJFLD, OPS
Schwarzkopf, Norman, 327, 330,
333
September 11, 2001 terrorist attack,
386
Seychelles, 267-9
Sherwood, Fred, 236
Shultz, George, 285, 309, 324
Sinatra, Frank, 30, 203
Singapore, 102
Smitti and Wesson, 204
Smith, John Discoc, 99-100
Smith, Joseph Burkholder, 100-1,
125
Smith, Walter Bedell, 75
Smith, Wayne, 254, 301
Smith, William French, 308
Snepp, Frank, 137
Soldier of Fortune (magazine), 294
Somalia, 385
Somoza, Anasrasio, 76-7, 84,290-1
South Africa, 160-1,252-6,267-9,
303
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
(SEATO),99,133-5,184
Soviet Union, 1-20 passim, 25, 66,
71,114-19,151,157-61, 164,
169, 243, 250-6, 267,272-6, 296-
7, 337, 339-52, 385;aidto US in
Vietnam, 130; CIA/Cuban exiles
attacks against, 187,189-90, 292;
not supporting Communist
Chinese Revolution, 23 ; Western
intervention into, 1918-20, 7-9; US
disinformation and dirty tricks
against, 8-9,19-20,172, 252, 255-
6,261-2,296,301,349,365,
404nl; see also Khrushchev,
Nikita
Spellman, Francis Cardinal, 77
Springer, Axel, 105
Stalin, Joseph, 23, 35-7,48
Stall ings, Richard Lee, 246-7
Standard Fruit Company, 292
Stockwell, John, 11-12, 159, 199,
252-3, 256
Stone, Howard, 88
Strata, Carl, 135
Suharto, 193-8, 249
Sukarno, 99-103,193-6
Suriname, 279-80
Swank, Emory, 139
Sweden, 104, 107
Swiado, Joseph, 57-60
Switzerland, 104,107
Sylvester, Arthur, 132
Syria, 84-96,326, 404nl2
T
Talbot, Phillips, 221
Tasca, Henry, 220
Temmons, Bob, 253
Tetpil, Frank, 287
Thailand: aiding US policies in Asia,
134-5,140-1,144
Thatcher, Margaret, 17-18, 345
Thurman, Maxwell (Gen,), 365
Tibet, 25-6
Tock, Mike, 295
Tonnini, Franklin J., 120
torture, US connection to, 38, 72,
116,128-9,131-2,171,200-5,
219-21,226,232,239,279,359-
61,375
Trippe,Juan, 108
Trujillo, Rafael, 83,175-6
Truman, Harry, 9-10, 2 1 , 3 1 , 48,
65-6,75,130
Truman Doctrine, 32-3, 36
Turkey, 91,93,98,107, 114, 185
u
Uhl, Michael, 131
United Fruit Company, chapter 10
passim
United Nations, 20, 46, 48-9, 55,
79-80, 83, 95-6,127,157-60,197-
8,256, 270,276, 326-38 passim,
348,351,365-8,376-8,390
United States working with Nazis,
Japanese, Italian fascists and their
collaborators during and after
World War 2: in Albania, 56;
China, 2 1 , 26; Greece, 34-5, 37,
218-9; Iran, 67-9; Italy, 28, 121;
Korea, 49-50; Philippines, 40;
Soviet Union, 116, 118; Vietnam
(the French), 123; West Germany,
59,63-4
United States Information Agency
(USIA, known abroad as US
Information Service), 30-1, 77, 95,
110,117-8,142,183,276
Uruguay, 170, 200-6, 357
V
Vatican, the, 121,372-3
Vekemans, Roger, 207-8
Venezuela, 386
Vietnam, 7, 122-33, 134-9, 142-3,
345-6, 365
w
Walker, William, 367
Wallace, Henry, 33
Walters, Vernon, 164, 167, 237, 306
Watergate, 213
Weafherwax, Bob, 155
Webb, James, 326
468
Webber, John D. (Col), 232-3
Webster, William, 308, 322, 324,
330
Weinstein, Allen, 303
Westfall, Bernard, 233
West Germany, 56, 60, 61 a 104-5,
116, 282; CIA/Neo Nazi hit list of
politicians, 63-4
Western Europe, 104-8, See also
individual countries
Westmoreland, William, 133
White, Robert, 364-5, 377
Williams, Pete, 321-2
Williamson, Earl (Ted), 240-1
Wilson, Charles (Cong.), 345
Wilson, Edwin, 287
Wilson, William, 286
Wisner, Frank, 56, 99
Wolfowitz, Paul, 321
Woolsey, James, 392
World Bank, 20,211,273,275,291,
326-7,381
World Federation of Trade Unions,
109
World Trade Center bombing
(1993), 352
Wright, Jim (Cong.), 302-3
Y
Ydigoras Fuentes, Miguel, 147, 230-
1
Yemen, 327
Young, Andrew, 372
Yugoslavia (including former
republics), 385, 387
z
Zaire, 257-63.See also Congo, The
Zander, Arnold, 109
Zogby, Ghosn, 93
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Blum left the State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspitation of
becoming a Foreign Service Officer, because of his opposition to what the United States was
doing in Vietnam.
He then became one of the founders and editors of the Washington Free Press, the
first "underground" newspaper in the capital.
In 1969, he wrote and published an expose of the CIA in which was revealed the
names and addresses of more than 200 employees of the Agency.
Mr, Blum has been a freelance journalist in the United States, Europe and South
America. His stay in Chile in 1972-3, writing about the Allende government's "socialist
experiment", and then its tragic overthrow in a CIA-designed coup, instilled in him a per-
sonal involvement and an even more heightened interest in what his government was doing
in various corners of the world.
In the mid-1970's, he worked in London with former CIA officer Philip Agee and
his associates on their project of exposing CIA personnel and their misdeeds.
The tate 1980s found Mr. Blum living in Los Angeles pursuing a career as a
screenwriter. Unfortunately, his screenplays ail had two (if not three) strikes against them
because they dealt with those things which make grown men run screaming in Hollywood:
ideas and issues.
In 1999, he was one of the recipients of Project Censored's awards for "exemplary
journalism" for writing one of the top ten censored stories of 1998, an article on how, in
the 1980s, the United States gave Iraq the material to develop a chemical and biological
warfare capability.
He is once again living in Washington, DC, outstandingly ineligible to renew his
lapsed security clearance; indeed, because of his questionable political views, doubtlessly
unhirable by any government agency or right-thinking private company, and reduced, as
can be seen, to writing rather eccentric books in a desperate attempt to make a living.
He is also the author of Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
(2000) and West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir (2002).
email: bblum6@aol.com
http// www.kiliinghope.org
