U.S. Intelligence Performance on Central America
I. BACKGROUND Value and Difficulty of Intelligence on Central America From 1978, when the Sandinista-led revolution against Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua gained momentum, until El Salvador became...
...To address them properly, intelligence must meet especially high standards of acReprinted from U. S. Intelligence Performance on Central America...
...One document, for example, described assistance which the Cuban U.N...
...The remedy is to provide policymakers with first class, dependable intelligence products-not to present as "propaganda" a newspaper article which is simply one-sided in its perspective...
...More Central America articles appeared in the NID for a couple of months after the C.A.R...
...The 29NACLA Report briefer presented the slide as an illustration of the problem of guerrilla "propaganda" reaching the U.S...
...The clandestinity of certain groups, the "deniability" practiced by some who may direct certain killings, the breadth of the problem, and the physical danger associated with travel in El Salvador have all been cited as collection difficulties...
...9.State Department officials have recently reported that d'Aubuisson's visa was denied on 12 May 1980, before these documents-which were captured 7 May 1980-were available to the Department...
...The briefing was structured around a presentation of the evidence concerning each of the elements of the military build-up, including the growth of Nicaragua's army and militia, construction of new military bases, expansion of airfields, and acquisition of new equipment...
...In late 1980 documents were captured from the guerrillas which showed that a substantial amount of arms and other supplies had been obtained from communist countries...
...The information gaps noted in the mid-1980 intelligence study cited above have persisted, as the January 1982 Embassy report indicates...
...The rapid prominence of the conflict in El Salvador as a policy issue, and the change of U.S...
...This undermined Bourgois' claim that he was with noncombatants...
...The purpose of the C.A.R...
...valuable background papers compiled on major Central American political leaders...
...Therefore, the concern in this case is not that important analytic questions were neglected, but that the format of this particular presentation did not permit them to be addressed in a deliberate way...
...Achievements and Weaknesses The intelligence community has contributed significantly to meet the needs of policymakers on Central America...
...The briefing stated that "lots of ships have been traced" from the Soviet Union, through various other countries, and on to Nicaragua, but when the Committee asked how many ships had been traced along this route and when, the written response indicated that intelligence could show only a very few examples...
...The written intelligence community response stated: "(Bourgois) did not talk with the government forces involved in the campaign...
...State Department officers at the Inter-American Affairs Bureau and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) responded to staff queries by saying that they had heard "rumors" of such documents and had been looking high and low for them...
...Embassy over the past two years...
...Subcommittee staff understood this statement to mean that the insurgency was being commanded by graduates of schools comparable to the U.S...
...Finally, the job of intelligence is made difficult because apparent similarities across the region often serve to mask substantial differences from country to country...
...The brief text, which revolved around photographs of one of the destroyed villages and of refugee facilities, was so selective that it could not help policymakers to understand the detailed and often contradictory information available in charges and countercharges by Indians and Sandinistas, and the statements of Moravians and Catholics, among others...
...A major intelligence briefing, based primarily on an analysis of sensitive intelligence, was provided by the intelligence community to select audiences in the Congress and executive branch...
...After staff inquiries, INR also found the original State Department cable, which had transmitted a translation of the original document...
...The report concerns itself, rather, with how fully and reliably the intelligence community has addressed the information needs of policymakers facing difficult and sometimes unwelcome choices in Central America...
...On March 25, 1980, the day after Romero was killed, the NID expressed a judgment that the killing was "unquestionably" the work of the right...
...Rightist violence-as distinct from lawful political activites of the right-has been recognized as a necessary subject for reporting...
...Enders challenged news reports of a massacre in the Morazan Province village of El Mozote...
...According to the testimony given to Congress, two Embassy officers had been sent to investigate these reports, and "no evidence could be found to confirm that government forces systematically massacred civilians, nor that the number of civilians killed even remotely approached the 733 or 926 victims variously cited in press reports...
...produced in 1982, they found them to be compilations of current intelligence items...
...is convincing...
...and subsequent efforts at dialogue which, before the escalation of hostilities on the border, were observed to have produced certain positive results...
...INR noted that they and State Department attorneys would have liked to see such documents in connection with the Department's earlier efforts to exclude d'Aubuisson from the United States,' and asked the staff to notify them if it should locate the documents...
...This uncertainty is well described in a detailed analysis of statistics on violence in El Salvador prepared by the U.S...
...AREAS OF PARTICULAR CONCERN-INTELLIGENCE PERFORMANCE ON: A. External Support to Salvadoran Insurgents The intelligence community has devoted considerable effort to identifying support to the Salvadoran insurgents from other countries...
...The Bourgois article reported that the Salvadoran military attacked guerrillas and noncombatants indiscriminately, and described the latter as separate and distinguishable from the fighters...
...The criticisms voiced in this report must be seen in that context...
...Archbishop Romero 's assassination References in finished intelligence to the slaying of Archbishop Romero also reveal a lack of sustained attention...
...Communist Interference in El Salvador, U.S...
...As another example, the notion that "raising the cost" to Cuba or Nicaragua of "troublemaking" will temper those governments' actions appears regularly in intelligence briefings and written products...
...Department of State, 23 February 1981...
...In a question for the record, the Committee asked about these assumptions...
...Responding to a further query from the Committee staff, CIA provided a memo that acknowledged that "we have only fragmentary information on disciplinary actions taken by the Salvadoran armed forces against members of the military in 1981...
...I. BACKGROUND Value and Difficulty of Intelligence on Central America From 1978, when the Sandinista-led revolution against Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua gained momentum, until El Salvador became a major focus for East-West relations under the newly-elected U.S...
...and the dedicated and painstaking processing of many small items of information, which, taken together, provide significant insights...
...Although the briefing consisted essentially of a rigorous and successful analysis of intelligence data-a very important and informative accomplishment-the presentation itself was marred by the various overstatements and misstatements identified earlier in this report...
...The following, which may all be contributing factors, have been considered: 1. Collection Requirements...
...interests and objectives in revolutionary Central America is not always self-evident...
...C. Conduct of the Salvadoran Military Washington Post article The 4 March 1982 intelligence community briefing on external support to the Salvadoran insurgents included a section on guerrilla propaganda...
...Because the intelligence process typically involves participants from several agencies, it would not be appropriate in this report to distinguish sharply between the contributions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR...
...It is not the intent of this report to assess, let alone to criticize, policy decisions in this or the previous administration...
...Instead, the report examines the intelligence relative to such policy decisions and statements...
...In early 1982 Secretary Haig asserted that the Salvadoran insurgency was controlled by nonSalvadorans...
...was stopped in February 1982...
...It is essential to distinguish between the subject of right-wing politics, and the subject of rightist violence or terrorism...
...The staff concluded that "after an indisputably difficult production process, the result was a very high quality product...
...Again, intelligence officials interviewed acknowledged that Bourgois probably reported accurately what he saw, since he probably did not see the guerrillas' best-armed personnel...
...for example, it did not make clear that the destruction of the villages occurred after the people were removed...
...Ambassador Robert White sent a lengthy cable to Washington consisting primarily of a translation of the principal document, in which he stated that "this document will give the reader information regarding the people involved in a coup attempt," and possibly involved in a couple of recent assassinations...
...Reasons cited include the need to give priority to the leftist threat, the inappropriateness of applying intelligence resources to "criminal investigations," and the other reasons discussed below...
...Staff Report, Subcommittee on Evaluation, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S...
...DIA analysts in Washington never received or analyzed the documents...
...Thus, the NIE on Central America termed Nicaragua "the hub of the revolutionary wheel," but shrank from seriously considering the degree to which Central American revolution is driven by indigenous factors as opposed to outside actors...
...As noted above, an intelligence analysis of political violence in El Salvador, written in mid- 1980, noted the lack of firm data on rightist extremist activity...
...The dispute between the Sandinistas and the Indian organization MISURASATA, which precipitated much of the current hostility, is not explained...
...8. Most of the material has been published, translated into English, in: The Situation in El Salvador, hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S...
...Not surprisingly, given the dearth of hard data and systematic analysis, subsequent references in intelligence to the Romero killing have been notably inconsistent...
...Slightly inaccurate or misleading statements such as these are not likely to misinform anyone seriously, although the pattern can reduce confidence in the intelligence product...
...4. Ambassadorial constraints...
...These include careful analysis, sometimes conducted by personnel who have lived in the region, and honed by vigorous debate among analysts...
...policymakers must not be limited to information "from the guerrilla viewpoint," and it is important for intelligence producers to be aware of media coverage...
...Current Intelligence Recent current intelligence coverage on Central America has also raised Committee concerns...
...Rather, they can be symptoms of a more fundamental failure to collect on and to analyze fully the issues that might illuminate the policy process...
...Rather, the definition of U.S...
...This approach is questionable as an interpretation of the mission of the intelligence community...
...He noted specifically that the Salvadoran authorities had "transferred, retired, cashiered or punished over a thousand soldiers for various abuses of authority or for their cooperation with the violent right...
...The Committee asked about the evidence, and the written response explained the comment as "a figure of speech meant simply to emphasize the greater sophistication and training of the Salvadoran insurgents compared to the Sandinistas at the time that they overthrew Somoza...
...The Intelligence Assessment's treatment of these events was overly simplistic, however...
...Embassy-is a subject of which the United States admittedly had little grasp...
...A few apparently unevaluated DDO reports seemed of questionable reliability...
...The problem of death squad activity, the involvement of security forces in political killings, and the reputed attitudes of Salvadoran officials toward these problems 25NACLA Repod have all been treated in reporting from the U.S...
...White reports giving the documents to the Chief of Station, and requesting that CIA examine them closely...
...What can be concluded is only that CIA perceived that ambassadorial injunctions prevented it from collecting on a subject that it recognized as a requirement, and that for years the issue was not resolved...
...Intelligence Performance Prior to November 1978...
...Senate, April 9, 1981, pp...
...Following the briefing, the Committee asked whether there was evidence that Bourgois misrepresented himself or that the article was fabricated by others...
...In interviews, the responsible intelligence personnel insisted that the slide was not intended to imply a contradiction, although they recognized that the presentation could have had that effect...
...Foremost among these is that capabilities for collection and analysis had to be expanded rapidly, as a region which had been of low policy interest became a focus for concern...
...1,000 women, children attacked Guerrilla force totaled less than 1,000 people-military and civilian, Guerrillas keep away from Element needs help from other units peasants to draw fire away...
...deterioration caused by inflated promises and misunderstandings as well as by Sandinista actions to repress any movement toward autonomy or separation...
...Noting that "who constitutes the death squads is yet another difficult question," the study states "we believe that both on and off duty members of the security forces are participants," and that it was "unofficially confirmed by rightwing spokesman Roberto d'Aubuisson...that security force members used the guise of the death squad when a potentially embarrassing or odious task needed to be performed...
...Neither the erstwhile C.A.R., nor the NID coverage of Central America, has fully met this standard...
...No indication is given of the historical distrust between the English-speaking population of this region and the "Spaniards" of western Nicaragua, exacerbated under previous governments through traditionally arbitrary conduct by border guards and other Spanish-speaking government personnel, earlier relocations of border villages, and much-resented violations of Indian land rights...
...Government forces have broken up few right-wing groups, mostly because the right does not attack the security forces...
...The region has many historical and economic ties to the United States, and Americans have traditionally viewed it as a special area of interest...
...In a written response, the intelligence community claimed to have information that "Bourgois was with an FMLN (guerrilla) fighting unit...
...Clearly, U.S...
...Of greater concern is that these errors in presentation may suggest an underlying unevenness, or an excessive zeal in emphasizing certain points...
...The staff then reviewed this information...
...For the same reason, we have summarized the main points of Section II...
...The captured documents included a log of meetings, expenditures, arms lists with references to silencers and other special equipment, names, addresses and phone numbers of rightist Salvadoran businessmen, and various propaganda flyers discrediting U.S...
...But it is clear that, without such focused efforts, the United States has lacked an understanding of rightist violence comparable to the intelligence which has been provided about the organization and activities of the insurgents...
...Over the last two years perhaps its greatest achievement lies in determining with considerable accuracy the organization and activities of the Salvadoran guerrillas, and in detecting the assistance given to them by Cuba and other communist countries...
...The Subcommittee's view was that the Carter Administration's decision to go forward with the certification was a "policy decision," and that the intelligence process "had retained its independence and had not been undermined by this policy...
...policy in El Salvador and urging support for a coup...
...detailed reporting on the attitudes, structure, capabilities and needs of various military services in Central America...
...The briefing was based on a skillful and professional examination of data obtained from various sources...
...These issues were addressed directly in a separate, classified briefing, whose analytic judgments about Nicaragua's intentions were quite distinct from those that appeared implicit in the briefing on the build-up...
...Occasional overstatements and inattention to particular evidence do not in themselves constitute a major problem...
...Additionally, the slide suggested that the total number of military and civilians comprising the "guerrilla force" represented assets to the guerrillas, when the evidence from which this figure was taken indicated that they constituted a burden as well...
...was prepared only for the Director of Central Intelligence [DCI], and disseminated to a few other Cabinet members...
...Meanwhile, coverage in DIA's Defense Intelligence Summary has remained high...
...They showed Cuba, with Nicaraguan participation, to be heavily involved in the coordination, control, and movement of the materiel...
...punitive measures is causing them to try to reduce tensions, and second, that Castro's likely response to open U.S...
...Moreover, State Department officials have emphasized to staff that they have repeatedly requested more collection on rightest extremism...
...This report is sympathetic to the realities facing personnel in the field, as well as the difficulties facing intelligence analysts in Washington-scarcity of data on this subject, the demands of analysis on other subjects accorded high priority by intelligence consumers, and the heavy workload carried by the Central American and particularly El Salvador analysts...
...Yet the NIE on Cuban policy, which addresses the subject explicitly, does not distinguish clearly between two seemingly contradictory judgments: first, that Cuban concern about U.S...
...Another report at the time contained some reservations and qualifications bearing on whether there had been a fierce firefight in El Mozote, yet the subtleties and uncertainties which had been carefully conveyed in this report were disregarded by a State Department intelligence analyst in explaining what had happened...
...Since so little intelligence basis could be found for CIA's assurances about the disciplining of military personnel, the Committee staff asked the State Department for the basis for the Assistant Secretary's February 1982 statement...
...This is not surprising, given the growth of guerrilla activity, and the clear interest in identifying the insurgents' sources of support...
...As policies change, so do the kinds of questions that policymakers ask, and the kind of data required...
...We do not know how many transfers would have been made for these reasons rather than as a result of normal rotation....(T)ransfer instead of discipline has been used to curb repression because military leaders feel that the latter would drive some individuals into open opposition to the government...
...In the case of El Salvador, the staff has encountered indications that injunctions by U.S...
...Finally, the slide claimed that Bourgois had reported that the guerrillas had "no sophisticated weapons, WWII vintage rifles, and little ammunition," when Bourgois described the weapons he saw as "primarily World War II vintage" but also stated that the FMLN fighters had a handful of newer guns...
...Testimony to House Foreign Affairs Committee, 26 May 1982...
...1 2 Again, this report is not intended to judge the appropriateness of either the presidential certification or Mr...
...no fraudulent media manipulation has been shown...
...This is exactly the image the guerrillas want to have presented to the outside world...
...An additional subsection on International Terrorism deals with a major intelligence estimate in production at the time on the subject of "international terrorism worldwide, including revolutionary violence in Central America," undertaken following statements by Secretary of State Haig earlier in the year with regard to the role of the Soviet Union in promoting terrorism...
...it did not know whether the crimes occurred prior to January 1980...
...Asked to provide details on the latter point, the CIA official doubted whether any reporting could be found, citing disruption caused by a recent move of his analytic offices within the headquarters building...
...In one statement, the Salvadoran Ministry of Defense in March 1981 replied to an inquiry from the U.S...
...The influence of consumer desires for "ammunition" rather than analysis can be subtle or forceful, but its effect upon the intelligence process can become costly...
...It is recognized that the give and take of an oral presentation requires spontaneity, which can occasion inadvertent inaccuracies...
...Although educated guesses are sometimes made on the basis of the identity of the victim-murders of government informants and soldiers' families attributed to leftist killers, and murders of labor organizers and refugee workers attributed to rightists-other information about political killings that might permit such attribution is not systematically collected or analyzed...
...interests in each of the particular circumstances facing the United States throughout Central America is shaped to a large extent by intelligence-by the way it analyzes and presents the causes of conflict, the nature of the governments in the region, the actions and goals of the Soviet Union, the capabilities of guerrilla forces, and the objectives and popular support of other political groups...
...The statement did not address the extent of control of the insurgency by non-Salvadorans, a point which remained subject to differing interpretations...
...One involves the publication by CIA, during part of 1981 until February 1982, of a special weekly product whose purpose and professional standards were never adequately defined...
...INTELLIGENCE PERFORMANCE 1. Iran: Evaluation of U.S...
...Information on arms trafficking was growing when, in September 1980, President Carter's certification that Nicaragua was not aiding the insurgents focused major attention on the subject...
...Another agency's biographic profile had in June 1980 reported that he had been accused by his opponents of leading right-wing death squads that had assassinated hundreds of people in recent months, including Romero, but deleted all such references in a revised profile issued in May 1982...
...Despite this, intelligence has provided little firm information about the subject of violence by the right and the security forces...
...Instead his report represents an image of poor peasants, women, and children being bombed and killed by an unfeeling Salvadoran military...
...the skillful allocation of collection assets...
...Nevertheless, relatively more is known about the organization and whereabouts of the insurgents in their conduct of both guerrilla operations and of terrorist killings, than about the circumstances or lines of authority resulting in abductions of alleged leftist sympathizers or in the depositing of bodies along Salvadoran highways during curfew hours...
...At a briefing in October 1981, for example, Committee Members asked about two recent National Intelligence Estimates [NIE] on Central America and Cuba...
...successful exploitation of multiple sources of intelligence...
...Some were distillations of intelligence that had appeared during the week in the NID [National Intelligence Daily] or other products...
...Another example, not discussed above, may lie in the absence of critical analysis of the Salvadoran land reform program...
...There should be no doubt that the staff regards the Sandinista actions in removing the Indians from their border villages, and destroying their livestock and homes, as indisputably brutal...
...Whether deliberate collection and analysis on specific instances of terrorism could have effectively closed these information gaps is uncertain...
...These sometimes lie in analysis or in the management of collection, or sometimes simply in their presentation...
...Moreover, intelligence showed that the up to a thousand people with whom Bourgois reported he fled did include fighters as well as civilians...
...whether to focus on intercepting arms to guerrillas...
...House of Representatives, September 22, 1982...
...Statistics cover twelve-month period beginning September 1980...
...how to promote economic development...
...His certification, required in September 1980 for the continuation of U.S...
...In fact, analysts did not have hard evidence to sustain a judgment of that certitude...
...The presentation of the intelligence community's 4 March 1982 briefing on external support to the Salvadoran insurgency at times exemplified this problem...
...The weaknesses, which the report identifies in particular instances of intelligence on El Salvador and Nicaragua, include: "* Suggestion of greater certainty than is warranted by the evidence...
...The staff was soon able to do so, having learned that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee published the documents, along with former Ambassador White's testimony, in April 1981...
...aid to Nicaragua, stated, in the staff's words, that "the available evidence did not establish conclusively the involvement of the government of Nicaragua, although it acknowledged that there was 'substantial evidence' to indicate that the Nicaraguan territory was being used in support of the insurgents and that members of the Sandinista front were probably involved...
...references U.S...
...2-6...
...However, CIA's DDO could find no record of the documents or of any analysis...
...The remainder were attributed as follows: 14 percent to leftist terrorists, 13 percent to security forces, and 2 percent to rightist terrorists...
...Little ammunition...
...and how to reinforce positive developments and respond to negative ones-these are among the policy issues that confront the United States...
...119-159...
...That major study did, however, carefully analyze the available information about the groups associated with political violence...
...The cable reported that he was unwilling to discuss the comportment of government forces...
...Yet a close reading of the cable shows that the only confirmation of this from any of the refugees the investigators spoke with was that a man from a town several miles away from El Mozote "intimated that he knew of violent fighting in El Mozote and other nearby cantones...
...The memo showed that essentially the only source for the assurances consisted of statements from the Salvadoran Ministry of Defense that armed forces personnel had been demoted, dismissed, or transferred...
...administration in 1981, Central American issues increased dramatically as subjects demanding the attention and resources of the intelligence community...
...Mission gave to a Salvadoran insurgent leader traveling and seeking to organize support in the United States...
...M4Ssptlct192 Taken as a whole, intelligence on Central America is strong, and its task is both difficult and particularly important...
...Precisely qualified judgments and rigorous evaluation of contradictory evidence find little place in products whose primary function is to reinforce policy rather than to inform...
...intelligence...
...No sophisticated weapons WW-II vin- This unit, like others, equipped with autage rifles, tomatic rifles, machine guns, mortars...
...The result, that the briefing conveyed an implicit judgment about Nicaragua's objectives not entirely consistent with DIA's reasoned judgment, detracted from its informative value...
...Perhaps like those guerrilla documents that were not fully distributed and analyzed, the d'Aubuisson documents did not address an issue of immediate intelligence concern...
...According to the Subcommittee, the National Intelligence Estimate (May 27, 1981--classified) concludes "that the Soviets are deeply engaged in support of revolutionary violence and directly or indirectly support terrorism, while making careful distinctions and pointing out areas in which evidence was substantial, or thin, or on which interpretations differed...
...The staff's investigation is concerned with the way in which these documents were treated by the intelligence community...
...Of note, and perhaps related to the above, has been the irregularity in the volume of Central America coverage appearing in the NID...
...Acceptance of descriptions given by the Salvadoran government when intelligence analysts recognize grounds for skepticism...
...An intelligence official emphasized in an interview, "There are two sides of every story," and up until February 1982 the U.S...
...whether and with whom to negotiate...
...embassies does not lie wholly within the scope of this report...
...Briefing on Nicaraguan Military Build-up A briefing on Nicaragua's military build-up, which was given to the Committee by DIA on March 24, 1982, and was aired publicly earlier that month, presented a different problem...
...While the CIA concluded that "there is a very high likelihood that such support activities ('training, transit, material, and arms') are occurring and that they represent official FSLN policy," President Carter did not concur...
...It has not fully examined either political roadblocks to implementation-including some opposition from military personnel-nor technical problems affecting the reform's success...
...Notwithstanding the strengths described above, when intelligence is held against the high standards required of it, certain weaknesses appear...
...Policymakers at the State Department learned of the documents through Ambassador White's June 1980 cable, but chose not to make any immediate use of the documents...
...B. Extremist Elements of the Salvadoran Right Dearth of Firm Information In monitoring intelligence on El Salvador since late 1979, the staff has noted the importance of good intelligence not only on the guerrillas and their backers but also on Salvadoran right-wing extremists, whose activities and relationship to other elements of Salvadoran society have had a direct bearing on U.S...
...Declassified by Department of State in February 1982...
...The lead sentence of the Embassy report, which appeared in both the summary and the conclusion, stated: "Although it is not possible to prove or disprove excesses of violence against the civilian population of El Mozote by government troops, it is certain that the guerrilla forces who established defensive positions in El Mozote did nothing to remove them from the path of battle which they were aware was coming and had prepared for, nor was there any evidence that those who remained attempted to leave...
...El Mozote investigation Also in his February 1982 testimony, Mr...
...The author, Philippe Bourgois, an American anthropology student, has entered El Salvador's Cabanas Province to explore' the feasibility of a research project, and had found himself caught in an Army sweep and unable to leave for 14 days...
...Intelligence officials explained that the intention, instead, was to overcome what they viewed as excessively negative coverage of the Salvadoran military in the U.S...
...Embassy in January 1982...
...Testimony before Inter-American Affairs Subcommittee, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S...
...Most of the killings reported remain unattributed, with the Embassy's figures for last year showing fully 70 percent of the political murders as committed by "unknown assailants...
...That report said that "about 1400 enlisted men reportedly have been cashiered...for various abuses" during that first year following the October 1979 military coup...
...Information gaps concerning political killings and other terrorist actions were succinctly identified in a mid-1980 intelligence study, which stated, "there is scant intelligence on right-wing terrorist organization membership and the groups' relationship to each other, to the wealthy elite, or to the military...
...insightful descriptions of Guatemala's increasingly polarized society...
...Achievements and Selected Instances of Concern, a Staff Report by the Subcommittee on Oversight and Evaluation of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the U.S...
...After that, however, NID coverage on Central America had again dropped below the level normally associated with an area of active policy interest...
...Although voluminous reporting from the Embassy testifies to a recognition that the subject is of concern to U.S...
...Throughout this period and into the present, the Committee has monitored intelligence performance closely, partly to ensure the availability of the necessary resources for collection and analysis, but primarily to evaluate and reinforce the quality of analysis and the integrity of the intelligence process...
...It qualified this by continuing, "There are indications that some of these men have been recruited subsequently into rightist terrorist squads...
...THE PRODUCER-CONSUMER LINK: CASES FROM THE RECENT PAST [For space considerations we have deleted this section, which deals in particular with the second half of the Carter presidency...
...1 Recognizing the -difSeIpti]DlI2 31NACLA Report ficulties inherent in investigating such cases, the Committee staff examined closely the intelligence process" underlying the Assistant Secretary's statement and found the following: -Only the last paragraph of the long (nearly 2000 word) Embassy report on the field investigation explained that the investigators never reached the towns where the alleged events occurred...
...Policymakers must make decisions on the basis of a variety of factors...
...22SetIO'cti2 curacy, objectivity, and sensitivity to the full range of local and global factors, and to the political, military, and socio-economic dimensions of a given situation...
...These footnotes were deleted as part of the summarized section.] 7. "A Statistical Framework for Understanding Violence in El Salvador," 15January 1982...
...During late 1981 and early 1982 NID coverage on Central America was lighter than seemed warranted by events in the region...
...However, in interviews with other intelligence community personnel involved in collection, the staff has found that they have simply not considered the subject of Salvadoran rightist violence as a target for collection...
...Reliance on some unquestioned and sometimes contradictory assumptions...
...It holds the security forces responsible for "hundreds, and perhaps thousands" of the unexplained killings, but notes that the claim "by one interest group or another in which the security forces figure as the primary agents of murder here" is "an impossible charge to sustain...
...They did not receive the kind of routine intelligence evaluation given to a large number of the Salvadoran guerrilla documents captured later that year, which established the existence of large-scale Soviet, Cuban, and Nicaraguan support to the insurgents...
...In brief, it focuses on the Subcommittee's concern that "the evident preference of the Carter Administration to deal with Central America in local terms, rather than in East-West terms, might have inhibited the way that intelligence producers addressed any evidence of Cuban, Nicaraguan, and even Soviet support to the Salvadoran leftists...
...careful analyses of the effects upon the economies of the region of worldwide economic problems and of disruption caused by terrorism and guerrilla warfare...
...Fortunately, not all recent intelligence analysis on Nicaragua has been so one-dimensional, given that country's importance to the region, and the requirement for intelligence to maintain realism and discernment...
...The entire subject of political killings-whether by the right or the left-is often described as unknowable...
...Asked by a member of the Committee whether the government of El Salvador has control of the military, a CIA official in early February 1982 replied that much progress has been made, as evidenced partly by the fact that "hundreds and hundreds of military personnel" had been transferred, retired, or disciplined...
...The extrapolation would have required that figure to be representative of the budgets of the other four factions, and all five factions to be equally active on each of the five fronts...
...There is further persuasive evidence that the Sandinista government of Nicaragua is helping train insurgents and is transferring arms and support from and through Nicaragua to the insurgents...
...In interviews with staff, officials have emphasized that they recognized that rightist violence and its relationship to the security forces was a priority for their reporting...
...What was clear was that the publication was not up to the quality standards of most intelligence production on Central America...
...Thus the concerns expressed in this discussion in no way denigrate their efforts...
...Another statement was that, "You don't plan an operation like what is being run in El Salvador if you haven't gone to somebody's command and general staff college...
...A slide titled "Guerrilla Financing (Non-Arms)" indicated that Salvadoran guerrillas were receiving money in addition to weapons, showing a total of some $17 million annually...
...The Post article detailed his experience as he and other noncombatants sought to escape the fighting that encircled them...
...However, in reporting this reply, the Embassy cautioned that it did not know whether any of these crimes were committed for political reasons rather than as common crimes...
...It would be incorrect, however, to conclude that all the guerrilla documents were fully utilized in analysis...
...10...
...The subject of rightist violence clearly is encompassed by general requirements for collection by U.S...
...This should be avoided throughout the intelligence process because of the inherent danger that it might prevent the broader dimensions of a given subject, which do not directly reinforce these points, from being fully considered...
...This Committee received that briefing on March 4, and the Chairman issued the press release quoted earlier in this report...
...In addition, the report states that "assassination as a strategic weapon is also widespread" by the left and the right, and that "these murders appear to use killers selected for this particular purpose...
...The basic concern is that tendentious rhetoric, including occasional oversimplification and misstatement, can drive out some of the needed collection and analysis...
...However, they detracted somewhat from the credibility of the presentation...
...Although the paper concluded with a few paragraphs titled, "Significance of the Repression," it had only limited utility for a policymaker who might wish to understand the reasons for the conflict or to discern its future implications...
...But, as the intelligence official acknowledged, intelligence could not determine whether the guerrilla fighters kept their distance from noncombatants or mingledwith them...
...Disciplining of Salvadoran military personnel In January 1982, the President certified that El Salvador "is achieving substantial control over its armed forces," and Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs Thomas Enders then testified that 30"substantial progress" had been made toward the goals of controlling violence and bringing murderers to justice...
...Intelligence on the subject has been bland and supportive...
...The intelligence supporting these judgments...
...in meeting Government forces...
...These include CIA predictions in mid-1978 of Somoza's downfall...
...policies there...
...An official in El Salvador at the beginning of Ambassador White's tenure in early 1980 recalls that the Ambassador had imposed a total prohibition on contacts with the extreme right...
...The Committee, whose function is to oversee the performance of in23telligence-not the general conduct of foreign policy-does not routinely examine State Department reporting...
...The d'Aubuisson documents In May or early June 1980 the U.S...
...This is not to say that these products are intended to convey falsehoods, or that they lack serious analysis...
...policy, the reporting-and the analysis based on it- has largely remained at the level of generality and speculation...
...Reasons for intelligence weakness The Committee staff has not determined precisely the reasons why intelligence on right-wing extremists has been weak...
...policy there...
...Conclusion The instances cited in this report are, individually, of limited significance...
...It was based on a single piece of evidence indicating the monthly budget for the commander of one faction on one front...
...Throughout, the emphasis was on how each element increased the army's capability to launch offensive operations outside of Nicaragua...
...Personnel who served under White later recall a limited prohibition...
...Because the area was considered to be guerrilla controlled, the two investigators could not reach El Mozote nor, apparently, any of the other nearby towns in which the military had allegedly slaughtered civilians...
...The Embassy field report suggested greater certainty about whether a firefight occurred, and about the actions of the guerrillas, than was warranted by its own information...
...Due to space considerations, this reprint omits from the original the "Letter of Transmittal" by Edward P. Boland, Chairman, the introductory "Summary" and comments on "Preparation of This Report...
...and "* Resistance to examining objectively information from non-intelligence sources-a tendency to view such information simply as material to be countered...
...The latter is largely inaccessible through open sources, officials have explained...
...8 After reviewing the documents informally with local personnel, U.S...
...The investigation, which occurred a month after the event, was conducted by interviewing individuals who had been in the area and by overflying El Mozote in a helicopter...
...It has been insufficient to evaluate claims that some of the political assassinations which appear to be rightist may have been carried out by the left, and vice versa...
...Adding to the difficulty of intelligence in this region are the shifts in policy emphasis that have occurred over the last few years...
...Concerning Bourgois' claim that the guerrilla fighters kept their distance from the noncombatants, an intelligence official explained, "I collectively call the guerrillas and their followers a'group.'" As the article also indicated, the community displaced by the army sweep was part of a guerrilla-controlled area...
...Although the paper was broad in scope, describing the racial origins, livelihood, and current conditions of the Miskitos, national and international reactions to their treatment, and other topics, it provided little useful insight into the conflict between the Atlantic Coast population and the Sandinista government...
...The Department responded that the basis for the statement was the Department's own 1980 Country Report on Human Rights Practices...
...When the staff finally reviewed the C.A.R...
...3. Limited resources and competing demands...
...Embassy in El Salvador obtained a set of documents that were captured when former Major Roberto d'Aubuisson and some of his supporters were arrested and SWItMO 11982 2720 NACLA Reort charged with plotting to overthrow the Junta...
...House of Representatives, January 1979...
...From time to time, however, apparent weaknesses in analysis or presentation have led to informal inquiries or, where there seemed to be a pattern, expressions of criticism...
...Enders' testimony...
...These instances detracted somewhat from what otherwise were serious and necessary analytical products...
...Presumably the details they contained might have had some utility in further investigation of rightist violence generally...
...2. Difficulty of target...
...Intelligence Analysis on Miskitos The purpose of intelligence is to inform, to provide users with data and analysis needed to guide government decisions...
...This example, more than any other cited in this report, examines embassy field reporting as an integral part of the intelligence process...
...Without deliberate collection by all appropriate means, and without systematic correlation of available data about specific terrorist incidents, firm judgments about their significance, politically or in terms of the accountability of particular security forces or individuals, have been difficult...
...Therefore, it deserves the constant watchfulness of intelligence professionals...
...Under questioning from Members of the Committee, CIA retracted the word "unquestionably," explaining that the work had been inserted during 28 NA1CUR wrtSoptIOctI1982 the editorial review process and was not really justifiable in light of the available data...
...The staff review showed that "the intelligence community reached, and communicated quite early, a view that did not support the Administration's position...
...One concern, which the Subcommittee Chairman subsequently shared further in a letter and by providing CIA with a staff paper, centered on a few instances where colorful but imprecise language was substituted for necessary analysis...
...Thus, the February 1982 statement was based on a 1980 figure, the exact significance of which was uncertain even when it first appeared...
...Similarly, a later message issued by the State Department in response to an inquiry abroad recited the account with fewer indications of uncertainty than in the original field reports, even though no additional intelligence on the matter had been received in the interim...
...The staff would not normally concern itself with such instances...
...Therefore, consistent with the special status of this material, this report does not review embassy field reporting from Central America in general, but, in the context of examining certain cases of intelligence performance, notes the significance of particular embassy reports...
...It is hoped that the report may help promote the quality of intelligence on Central America by assisting all the participants in the intelligence process--producers and consumers alike-to identify and address its weaknesses, while also recognizing its strengths...
...and it did not know how many of the trials ended with verdicts of innocence...
...However, it should be noted that a number of the weaknesses discussed in this report can best be addressed by CIA, both through its collection functions and in its management of certain major briefings and written analyses...
...It states that "depredations may be carried out by the security forces under the guise of, or in active participation with, rightist forces," but also describes these actions as a response "which guerrilla tactics provoke among marginally trained forces...
...However, the formality of this presentation with its 47 viewgraphs, the fact that it had been briefed several times previously, and the senior position of the participants, placed this briefing on a level comparable to a written analysis...
...public...
...The offenses ranged from such infractions as drunkenness, cowardice, AWOL, and disobedience, to desertion, thievery or murder...
...As first described to the staff by intelligence analysts, the weekly "Central American Report" (C.A.R...
...On March 4, 1982, the Chairman of this Committee publicly recognized these achievements of the intelligence community by issuing a press release, which said in part: The insurgents are well-trained, well-equipped with modern weapons and supplies, and rely on the use of sites in Nicaragua for command and control and for logistical support...
...During the two years since their capture, these documents had been virtually ignored not only by policymakers, who felt they had no immediate use for them, but more importantly by the intelligence community...
...The cable appears to assume that there was a fight, rather than a massacre of noncombatants...
...Several factors have contributed to both the difficulty and the importance to the United States of intelligence on this region...
...Former Deputy Assistant Secretary James Cheek, however, believed they were significant and assumed that CIA would receive and examine them...
...It was misleading to present the article as an example of guerrilla "propaganda...
...The Embassy field report's lead sentence (not fully consistent with the body of the cable) implying callousness by guerrillas and/or civilian support for the guerrillas, suggests a desire to "balance" public reports of massacres...
...They are further providing the insurgents with bases of operation in Nicaragua...
...But the purpose of a product fundamentally affects its nature...
...It is nevertheless important to recognize the resulting degree of uncertainty about matters that are fundamental to El Salvador's politics and to U.S...
...Scant basis in intelligence exists for judgments not only about who carried out given killings or other terrorist actions, but, more importantly, about responsibility for the acts...
...press...
...He added that Bourgois probably was truthful in describing what he saw -The presentation appeared to imply that each of the four statements on the slide drawn from the Bourgois article was contradicted by the intelligence extract opposite it-a misleading implication, since the extracts were not parallel...
...However, the exact nature of U.S...
...In monitoring the voluminous production of written and oral intelligence on Central America, the staff has also found good performance in many other areas...
...House of Representatives, 2 February 1982, pages 1 and 3 of prepared statement...
...This resulted from an extrapolation which, as outlined by the briefer, seemed particularly tenuous...
...This format obscured DIA's analytic judgment on the difficult, but essential, questions about the significance of the build-up: what do Nicaragua's leaders intend to do with it, and what is the likelihood of Nicaragua's initiating various sorts of offensive operations against its neighbors...
...Although the documents dealing directly with external aid to the guerrillas were reflected in classified studies and in a White Paper published by the State Department, 1 0 certain other documents which were peripheral to that topic, but contained material of interest to the broader intelligence community, were not distributed to all appropriate analysts...
...At one point, senior CIA officials reversed an earlier decision to provide the Committee with the C.A.R...
...Several months later, when the staff learned that dissemination-had increased substantially, it requested copies for routine review...
...A careful review of these items and subsequent conversations with intelligence personnel revealed that, although the intelligence was valid, the presentation was misleading: -Available intelligence on deployment of guerrillas in the area, which encompass full-time organized units, part-time militias, and noncombatants, had enabled intelligence analysts to identify with certainty the guerrilla unit which resisted the Army's sweep operation on the dates when Bourgois was present...
...They argued that it was not a very good product, containing raw reporting that the DDO had not evaluated-adding that it should not have been distributed even to the DCI-and said they would halt its dissemination...
...This seemingly spurious point was made less certain by the body of the cable, which reported that an aged couple from El Mozote (apparently the only refugees from El Mozote interviewed), as well as refugees from other cantones near El Mozote, said that the guerrillas warned them of the impending Salvadoran military operation and urged them to leave because they were old...
...The situation has varied under different ambassadors...
...Prepared statement p. 2. 15...
...It was the last thorough analysis of the subject, although subsequent pieces have occasionally dealt with it in more limited fashion, sometimes indicating that the Salvadoran armed forces have made progress in reducing the incidence of "excesses" attributable to them...
...Familiar weaknesses in the intelligence process are evident in this case...
...only a fraction of these were the types of brutality considered politically motivated...
...In recent years, the limited collection resources of CIA have been devoted almost exclusively to the insurgency...
...The staff tentatively attributed this to the existence of the C.A.R., which by then was reaching many readers of the NID...
...However, one product whose major utility could lie only in reinforcing existing perspectives, rather than in providing policymakers with needed information and analysis, was a March 1982 CIA Intelligence Assessment, Nicaragua: Repression of the Miskito Indians...
...14* Peasant Farmers Guerrillas forced by Government to flee...
...The neglect of the d'Aubuisson documents, therefore, should be seen in the context of the selective analysis of other material...
...This statement confirmed the existence of convincing intelligence 24 NACLA ReorlodSetIotl9t 2 l that the insurgents rely on the use of sites in Nicaragua for certain headquarters and logistical operations, and of persuasive evidence of Cuban and Nicaraguan support...
...It acknowledges that the Embassy's statistical records, which rely on reporting in the Salvadoran media, understate the amount of political violence, particularly in the areas where travel is most dangerous...
...Two such cases are discussed below...
...The CIA analyst who covered El Salvador at that time vaguely recalls seeing a couple of pages containing many names and receipts for weapons, but did not examine them closely, although he thought that personnel in CIA's collection organization, the Directorate for Operations (DDO), might have analyzed them...
...press was reporting "mostly from the guerrilla viewpoint...
...One March 1982 analysis mentioned Christian Democrats' insinuation about involvement by d'Aubuisson in the Romero assassination simply as an indication of how hot the election campaign was getting, while a biographic profile by the same agency in May 1982 made no mention of that killing, but did state that "rather strong circumstantial evidence" indicated that he had been "involved in planning and promoting acts of terrorism...
...However, no intelligence existed to contradict Bourgois'claim that he was with noncombatants...
...However, it is the intelligence community's participation in these assurances that concerns this report...
...Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 1980, submitted to the Committees on Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs, 2 February 1981, p. 428...
...III...
...Clearly these inaccuracies were of little intrinsic importance...
...The concern of the Subcommittee was that "the ensuing highly-charged atmosphere might result in unhealthy pressures upon the intelligence producers to support or to refute these statements...
...Army Command and General Staff College-presumably in the Soviet Union or bloc countries...
...pressure would be to step up his troublemaking activities...
...The sudden rise of the Falklands Islands as a policy issue undoubtedly contributed to the irregularity...
...Phillipe Bourgois, "Running for My Life in El Salvador...
...Current intelligence serves best when it is consistent-that is, when it is reasonably clear to consumers and producers what type of news or insight reaches the threshold for publication...
...As the staff report on Iran documented in 1979, the effectiveness of intelligence can be constrained by Administration policies to avoid contact with certain groups...
...Virtually the only information to corroborate these official Salvadoran statements came in a closing paragraph of an Embassy cable, which reported...
...Uncertainties which did appear in field reporting were lost in subsequent presentations...
...ambassadors may have been a contributing factor...
...Intelligence analysts apparently had not systematically retained and correlated the data about killings and bombings that were publicly available, and pertinent intelligence collection had not been made...
...Nor is it set into context, which would include the initial hopes of the Miskitos that the revolutionary government would provide benefits and respect rights in the region better than its predecessors...
...When the staff asked to review the relevant intelligence report, intelligence officials responded that there was no single item that dealt specifically with Bourgois, but that their statement that he was with an FMLN fighting unit represented an "analytic judgment," based on much information which reflected the type of fighting going on in the area...
...It reports that "armed civilians who ostensibly form part of the state's security net" but who have "become a law unto themselves in many areas, operating within loosely defined boundaries...are judged responsible for a fair share of anonymous murders, including many marked by torture...
...It should also be noted that State Department reporting from U.S...
...As intelligence analysts and other observers repeated throughout 1980 and 1981, for example, the effectiveness of the U.S.-backed Junta was undermined by extremism of both the right and the left...
...Intelligence displayed a willingness to claim greater certainty than warranted by the evidence, and a complacent acceptance of official Salvadoran claims whose limitations had already been acknowledged...
...Intelligence analysis is dependent on collection...
...The large number of unexplained murders, witnesses' fear of retaliation, and the danger of travel in El Salvador, make the investigation of individual killings extremely difficult...
...Cuban involvement-in providing arms-is also evident...
...This may occur in a context in which intelligence users demand reinforcement more than illumination, but this fact does not absolve the intelligence producer from responsibility for quality...
...After this, their whereabouts is unknown...
...The contribution of intelligence in these and other areas testifies to the strengths of the intelligence community...
...Yet the presentation was flawed by several instances of overstatement and overinterpretation...
...Another intelligence official recalled that the extracts were selected to "shoot down" Bourgois' claims...
...Although amounts of aid and degrees of influence are difficult to assess, intelligence has been able to establish beyond doubt the involvement of communist countries in the insurgency...
...They may signal that the environment in which analytic thought and production decisions occur is under pressure to reinforce policy rather than to inform it...
...Alternatively, there may be a division of labor in which the ambassador chooses to restrict contact with certain sectors to himself, or to certain nonintelligence personnel...
...Although intelligence on the organization of the insurgency has been much stronger than on the chains of command or political direction associated with rightist violence, intelligence on the 26entire problem of political killings and of the groups reputed to engage in them has been weak...
...S)ome individuals believed to be involved in repressive activities have been transferred in an effort to remove them from troop commands or to break the local level alliance with land owners that has existed here for decades...
...Even if addressed as a high priority collection target by all appropriate collection resources, the subject of rightist violence-or of political murders generally-would command only limited attention, given the necessarily small complement of personnel available...
...The presentation focused on a slide, paraphrased below, which contrasted the way a Salvadoran military sweep operation was reported in the Washington Post" with what was known from available intelligence: Salvadoran Government Operation Cabanas Department November 1981 As reported in As reported Washington Post article by Intelligence of Feb...
...This examination reveals that the intelligence community supported policy claims with assertions based on little more than official statements of the Salvadoran military...
...As noted above, Embassy officials have recognized the subject as a requirement and have addressed it in their reporting...
...In its response, the intelligence community said it was unable to comment on whether the original monthly figure was representative, and instead explained that the bottom line of $17 million which appeared in the briefing slide was "not an estimate," but was intended only to indicate that "relatively large sums of currency" were going to the guerrillas...
...32By contrast, in 1982 there have been a few products whose primary purpose appears less to inform policy choices than to help mobilize support for policy...
...The reluctance of intelligence officials to permit it to be reviewed by the staff raised further questions about its nature...
...THE COSTS OF INTELLIGENCE MISUSE In its monitoring of intelligence performance over the years, the staff has found that most finished intelligence meets high standards...
...Beyond the limitations placed on analysis by the lack of available data, the staff has encountered cases which suggest that analysts themselves have not been fully attentive to the subject, even given the difficulties and competing demands on them...
...For a full month, access to this product was successively delayed, promised, and denied for a variety of reasons...
...The analysis was impressive and of definite value to policymakers...
...The full extent of their relationship to the Salvadoran armed forces and to terrorism-including violent attacks on the U.S...
...The degree to which their restrictions may have constrained collection on rightist terrorism has been impossible to determine, partly because the perceptions by CIA of these constraints differ from those of the State Department and other participants at the Embassy...
...Whom to aid and how...
...administrations while the region was in upheaval, have made intelligence more important to the policy process than it might otherwise be...
...remained unclear...
...However, as the Subcommittee recognized in an earlier staff report evaluating intelligence performance on Iran,' embassy field reporting constitutes an integral part of American capabilities for observing and understanding events abroad...
...Congress by stating that 28 members of the Army and security forces had been sent to trial for homicide since January 1980...
...In its various statements about political violence, the Embassy study indicates fundamental uncertainty about the level at which decisions are made concerning the political killings by the right or by security forces...
...One possible cost of this problem is illustrated by the fact that in the spring of 1982 the United States found itself with only a modest understanding of the rightist elements now prominent in El Salvador's government...
...Concluding views The discussion above of collection weaknesses, and the cases cited, suggest that determining the perpetrators and any others responsible for authorizing specific instances of rightist terrorism has not been considered a suitable task for intelligence...
...Despite the problems cited, the NID is to be commended for adopting within the past year a format which effectively distinguishes intelligence reporting from analytic judgment...
Vol. 16 • September 1982 • No. 5
