The Art of Coup: A Paper Trail of Covert Actions in Guatemala
Doyle, Kate
This past May, the Central Intelli- gence Agency (CIA) made public, along with several hundred other classified records, a September 11, 1953 memorandum entitled "Subject: Guatemala." The...
...Even before receiving offiinvasion, the Directorate of Plans ination list," using information the iad gathered in 1949 on "top flight g planning for PBFORTUNE in sed training "special squads" for operation was canceled, "the try and influence developments disposing of key figures in the ment...
...Arbenz...
...I Altogether, the collection of classified documents provides a blueprint for the secret invasion that toppled Kate Doyle is a foreign policy analyst and director of the Guatemala Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, an independent research institute and library in Washington, D.C...
...2 1 Castro would suffer "the same loss of In Honduras, the United States sought the nerve" that Arbenz did in 1954.19 -- E-cooperation of the powerful Honduran army in When he did not, the Agency ELASI its secret war against Nicaragua, arid spent churned out a succession of assas- Y huge sums annually on weapons, training, and sination attempts against the I ay 7 construction to secure it...
...At the same t aides were expressly interested in countering what they perceived as a creeping Soviet influence in the Third World...
...5. [Deleted] "Project Outline [Deleted] Guatemala," Job 78-865 (DO), Box 1, August 23, 1950...
...Although Project "PBHISTORY" turned up nothing of value on international Communism, it was extremely fruitful for the new Guatemalan regime...
...In the end, the Guatemalan armed forces decided l ceacf.u yIw O Across 4rovu 7AaJ cafcr 1 friors...
...As in 1954, the CIA cultivated, funded and trained a counter-revolutionary force, established paramilitary bases outside the country, employed a calculated strategy of overt and States...
...Ruled by powerful, anti-US President Arbenz, supported by a leftist coalition government..., Guatemala now represents a serious threat to hemispheric solidarity and to our security in the Caribbean area...
...2 2 complied...
...and "Guatemalan Communist Personnel to be disposed of during Military Operations of Callegeris," secret memorandum with attached lists, undated...
...The disclosures erupted in the middle of debate underway in Washington over whether and how to reform the CIA...
...4 That means the CIA was paying scores of torturers, kidnappers, murderers and thieves to produce information in a part of the world where no discernible threat to the national security of the United States exists...
...Tactical Instructions (Part II)," secret memorandum with attachment, May 26, 1954...
...And from "Study for Assassinat somewhere "deep in the jungle"-actually taped in CIA officials running Miami and broadcast from transmitters over the brief the training chie Guatemalan border---came the Voz de la Liberaci6n, the to begin training Casti Agency's clandestine radio station...
...1 3 In order to frighten unfriendly government, police, and military officials, the CIA and its agents sent them death notices, made anonymous phone calls ("preferably between 2 and 5 a.m...
...6 CIA's General Plan U.S...
...Immerman's study offers an excellent appraisal of the similarities between Operation Success and Operation Zapata, as the Bay of Pigs invasion was called...
...Coup headquarters, code-named Assassination care: LINCOLN, was established in Opa- nam Locka, Florida, on the outskirts of Miami...
...how does not matter...
...Other records contain lists of individuals recommended for "disposal...
...Acing to a 1995 analysis of the ssination files released in May, the ion" was requested by one of the the operation "to be utilized to f for PBSUCCESS before he left illo Armas' forces in Honduras on 'he footnotes show that the grisly deed sent by pouch on January 8, In, messenger, and recipient have Agency...
...erous packages of m Castillo Armas had first come to the CIA's attention in ing defense personn early 1950, when he was trying to organize an armed tance...
...The same CIA planners who had been so meticulous in preparing an invasion had, according to the Agency's historical account, "no plans for what would happen next...
...National Security Archive, Peter Kornbluh and Malcolm Byrne, eds., The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History (New York: The New Press, 1993), pp...
...And it was...
...According to the Cullather study, the Agency had launched several experimental programs of its own elsewhere in the Third World, worried that the persistence of feudal agricultural structures in undeveloped nations would be an invitation to Communist influence...
...The CIA played a Cuban leader that failed to kill him NBy key role, establishing deep liaisons with the but poisoned U.S.-Cuba relations L military and, beginning in 1981, indefinitely, helped create a new army intelligence In Guyana, Operation Success had a nit called Battalion 316 to counter direct impact on the Kennedy Admin- The Agency churned subversion in Honduras...
...To ensur ble of rapidly and decisively altering the political situa- Central American tion...
...PBFORTUNE, a p Although both Arbenz and his predecessor, Juan Jos6 ment-now under t Ar6valo, were regarded within Guatemala as reformists brother of Allen Dt bent on changing the country's rigid oligarchy, the Intelligence-signed United States considered them part of a threat of inter- Agency's covert-op national dimensions...
...See, for example, the CIA's Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual-1983, released in 1997 to The Baltimore Sun in response to a Freedom of Information Act request...
...POLICY iNerve War against Individuals 2. If such an effort is made by means shor it "psychological warfarfare" If it is focused i by logical reasoning, but primarily- upon movin maisf of harassment, by frightening, confusing *nerv war"*, Such a nerve war can be waged m3or groups of the population...
...Just as Agency officials saw [deleted] as a way to enlarge U.S...
...12 I it bombarded Guatemalans with vitriol, attacks on the murder manual was in Arbenz government, and fabricated news about the although its destination gathering storm...
...For the next three years- ture and kidnapping...
...C t i Ioevc NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS to depose President Arbenz not because they believed Castillo Armas was a serious threat, but because they feared the United States was prepared to invade the country...
...In the [deleted], the program organized 15,000 peasants into 75 study groups, each of which formed a credit union to help its members buy land...
...Arbenz permitted the Guatemalan swung into action...
...Here, in gory detail, are the plans and strategies for paramilitary, diplomatic and economic warfare, the provocation techniques, psychological operations, rumor campaigns, and sabotage...
...Its covert operators launched a that failed to kill The most recent Guatemala scandal program of provocation and economic him, but poisoned has brought the history of CIA operasabotage using black propaganda tech- tions in Latin America full circle...
...intellireceptive to U.S...
...Cullather, "Operation PBSUCCESS: The United States and Guatemala, 1952-1954...
...But in Latin America, fully half of the informants fired by the Agency were corrupt or guilty of human rights viola- tions...
...government documents cited in the article may be found in the holdings of the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C...
...The Cuba...
...early, some of the assassination trials in the collection were ended for use in training the ncy's Guatemalan allies...
...propaganda...
...Here, too, are the dozens of proposals to assassinate political leaders and activists...
...In an effort to maintain the tight- kill, the five folders instr est control possible, the unit assigned to reco PBSUCCESS reported directly to Frank containing "CIA and arer Wisner, chief of covert operations, who in ers turn reported directly to CIA director Guatemala Assa Dulles...
...13...
...7.[Deleted] "Guatemala," Job 80R01731R, Box 17, Folder 688, January 13, 1950...
...1 7 The CIA helped assemble a register and filing system on the suspected "Communists," and left them for Guatemalan security forces to use...
...after that tion aimed squarely at Guatemala...
...It looked to the create the conditions Guatemalan military for a solution...
...Many of the details in this article's account of the Guatemala coup come from his compelling and comprehensive study...
...17.Wisner, "Exploitation and Follow Ups," Job 79-01228A, Box 23, undated...
...See "Death Notices," secret memorandum, April 19, 1954...
...The CIA chose as its lead man for the coup a Nicaragua, Hondura disgruntled officer named Carlos Castillo Armas...
...They which married economic destabilization with shipments argue that the Agency's activities abroad should be of guns and money to right-wing army officers...
...INCLUDE NOTE "NE) THINfG...
...concerns rapidly turned into covert plans to ditions that could be destroy the Arbenz Administration...
...At a meeting of the Organization of Communists...
...Another fleet of planes was assem- Age bled in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, and cord manned by a motley crew of mercenary assa pilots ready to back the insurrectionists...
...offi- S cials were prepared to take even further steps __ including the fabrication of evidence showing Guatemala's subversive intent...
...newspaper to expose the CIA's activities in Honduras...
...18.Cullather, "Operation PBSUCCESS: The United States and Guatemala, 1952-1954...
...For a collection of their most important articles on the topic, see the reprint of their four-part series on Battalion 316 published June 11-18, 1995: "Unearthed: Fatal Secrets," by Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson...
...Cited in Cullather...
...In Guatemala, the coup had a deadly aftermath...
...Cullather joined the CIA's History Staff in 1992 to produce this document and left in 1993 to teach diplomatic history at the University of Indiana...
...Operation Success was finally ATION: born out of a convergence of Arbenz's increasingly hard line against his opponents, and the TO GOVT LEADERS, national security policies of a CT TIME, REAL new president in the White House...
...16...
...Intelligence (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1996...
...2 3 against Allende and his party since the Kennedy Even the reformists within the government agree that Administration-the CIA pursued "Track II," a policy the CIA's covert mission needs to be scaled back...
...Eisenhower and his top AN-ACCENTEO SPANISH, SAY OTHER COWIE, GOVT LEADER MUST COME TO CLANDESTINE MTG WITH KHOYVN "REACTIONARY", IE UFCO, IRCA REP, TEXAN MILLIONAIRE, ETC...
...END OF MESSAGE CIA "Memo to Director," dated June 8, 1954, tolerance of leftist political and labor activities...
...Arbenz's government cracked down on the opposition, arresting and torturing dozens of the young activists used by the Agency.15 Despite the millions of dollars spent by the CIA, Operation Success could hardly be called a success...
...all been deleted by the Proposals to assassinate leading members of the In the weeks beft Arbenz government and military permeated the CIA's Guatemalan allies use planning...
...influence, they regarded Decree 900 as a menacing instrument of Communist penetration...
...Cited in Cullather...
...The list of nations afflicted by the Agency is a long one...
...about their personal and professional lives, and mailed threatening symbols to their homes, such as a coffin or a hangman's noose...
...embassies in s and El Salvador turned over genilitary and development aid, bringel down to provide technical assisime, Washington halted delivery of NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON U.S...
...See pp...
...As a declassified account of the coup included in the collection explains, PBSUCCESS helped convince President Dwight D. Eisenhower that clandestine operations were 34NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34REPORT ON U.S...
...The Agency's solution was to and provide the support, relying on and covert actions launched with om the State Department and the e the compliance of Guatemala's neighbors, U.S...
...interests...
...See, for example, In From the Cold: The Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the Future of U.S...
...Provocation Plans," top secret memorandum, June 1, 1954...
...By 1952, the CIA present Arbenz Adm had begun actively seeking an oppositional force that port from the outsic could overthrow the government...
...Gerald K. Haines, "CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals 1952-1954," Central Intelligence Agency, History Staff, June 1995...
...POLICY in 1951, when it placed an agent inside the Institute of Anthropology and History in Guatemala City to try and identify "suitable Guatemalan indigenous personnel" to carry out missions devised by the Agency's Latin America division...
...3.Nicholas Cullather, "Operation PBSUCCESS: The United States and Guatemala, 1952-1954," secret, Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, History Staff, 1994...
...and "[Deleted] Instruction 'Nerve War Against Individuals,'" [classification excised] memorandum and attachment, June 9, 1954...
...The Sun has done more than any other U.S...
...Durin American States (OAS) in March 1954, Secretary of 1952, the CIA discus State Dulles presented a tough anti-Communist resolu- execution...
...Meanwhile, the CIA's Directorate of noth Plans, the euphemistically-named covert- Although the records ning operations team, was busy setting up the dent clandestine infrastructure needed to run are rife with plans to doci the coup...
...to'-Y accord Targets notU an eegt Jord and tit but accor to te aost import," partYi tle chairman is not always the most ipo the real head of a municipal gove r part al head influence upon Yayor always haS the greatest .f iue at the man who has the greatest i who has the best ished speaker , l the most accOuV Shed Spekr a "safe, inexpensive substitute for armed force"-the armed force of the United States, that is...
...KISS OF DEATH" TECHNIQUE...
...The Agency, however, is not getting the message...
...The CIA's record in the region, so intimately associated with the darkest chapters of Cold War history, makes all efforts to reform the Agency meaningless...
...The 1953 General a mixture of overt Plan of Action stated that the Agency regarded the mili- close cooperation fr tary as "the only organized element in Guatemala capa- Pentagon...
...intel plies...
...l 1 The CIA has taken great pains to point out in its press materials that proposals for assassination were "neither approved nor implemented" and amounted to ing more than "contingency plan." It is impossible to indepenly verify this claim...
...Two-Year 'Scrub' Finds Poor Sources, Serious Criminals, Washington Post, March 2, 1997...
...Collection of evidence, or fabrication of same, will be attended to accordingly...
...The art of the coup became part of its standard repertoire...
...the techniques employed in Guatemala when it printed a same CIA officers planned it and the same strategy of 1983 murder manual which advised rebel forces on the massive psychological warfare followed by invasion lay "selective use of violence" against civilians, including at its heart...
...2. See, for example, "Selection of individuals for disposal by Junta Group," [classification excised] memorandum with attached list, March 31, 1954...
...Central America...
...interests...
...A secret The Agency also cc report from June 2, just days before the operation began, the coup and its after records one senior CIA official telling his colleagues, cial approval for the "Arbenz must go...
...In Nicaragua, the Reagan Administration's contra war against the Sandinistas was a brutal, protracted campaign of destabilization that drew from lessons the CIA had learned during and since PBSUCCESS...
...As the Guatemalan leader began cracking down at home in the wake of reviously reluctant State Departhe control of John Foster Dulles, illes, the new Director of Central I up for the coup attempt...
...9 They got their resolution...
...Operation Success passed into Agency legend as an "unblemished triumph" and quickly became a model for future CIA activities in the hemisphere...
...Rummaging through the papers left behind by the ousted Arbenz Administration, U.S...
...As one of the iments states: "No assassination actions should ever be written or rded...
...In 1952, the Directorate of Plans undertook a global program, [deleted], to encourage small, independent landowners...
...The Agency official who met him in Mexico was impressed enough to cable headquarters stating that "if any man in Guatemala can lead a successful revolt against the present regime, it will be he who will do it.'7 He was also mild-mannered, pliable, and unquestionably friendly to U.S...
...The Art of the Coup 1. "Guatemala-General Plan of Action," top-secret memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence, September 11, 1953...
...2 4 By such standards, the rationale for maintaining a covert presence in Latin America has become simply untenable...
...nImCJ &vJr rOl Afaj4ne at C...
...Haines, "CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals 19521954...
...The resulting disaster at the Bay of Pigs on April Agency also revisited some of the gruesome training 17, 1961, was a direct descendent of PBSUCCESS...
...In Cuba, after Eisenhower signed a top-secret direcn- % SMeg ri O..crs j ivce 11o:6dJ :.^a...
...The remaining 10% were individuals linked to abusive or corrupt behavior...
...U.S.-Cuba relations June 1996, President Clinton's When the country's unions turned against Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) him, Jagan lost his seat to a despot more indefinitely...
...Richard Bissell, cited in Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982...
...Secretly, U.S...
...political, economic or national security goals...
...8. See "Guatemala-General Plan of Action": "The objective of the conference is to consider evidence that Guatemala constitutes a menace to Hemispheric solidarity and the internal security of friendly nations through aggressive Communist subversion...
...8. CALL COMtlE, GOVT LEADER IN AMERIC rebellion against the Ar6valo government...
...In niques perfected during PBSUCCESS...
...Civilian governments throughout the hemisphere are demanding that their armed forces-the CIA's natural allies-acknowledge the current political moment and return to the barracks...
...The CIA's declassified history reveals that when Eisenhower called CIA Director Allen Dulles and his senior covert planners into the White House meeting, the CIA lied about the operation...
...and British interests gence activities in Guatemala, conwho remained in power for 20 years...
...Control made all the difference...
...Objecting to Jagan and his attempts against ods were put into practice in the early People's Progressive Party as leftist, attempts against 1980s, when Battalion 316 tortured Kennedy ordered the CIA to crush him, the Cuban leader hundreds of Honduran citizens and and from late 1961 to 1964 the Agency "disappeared" scores more...
...commercial interests, in par- particularly promisii ticular those of the powerful United Fruit Company...
...4. "CIA Drops Over 1,000 Informants...
...ire the coup, the CIA and its d a variety of tactics to undermine nt Arbenz and his government, ,psychological warfare and promemo dated June 1, 1954, lists foreign and domestic outrage at istration, such as "simulated ,n against Honduras," faked kidt Guatemalan citizens and the des37 37 VOL XXXI, No 2 SEPT/OCT 1997REPORT ON U.S...
...On June 27, 1954, Arbenz stepped down after he realized he had lost the army's support...
...His study of available i policies set off alarm bells all over Washington...
...Nicholas Cullather's account of the coup describes the disastrous military planning and failed security measures...
...Every time the curtain pulls back on the region, we see that the CIA is incapable of operating without employing legions of torturers and kidnappers...
...3 The CIA has worked closely with Latin America's armed forces and intelligence services to contain the perceived Communist threat ever since...
...In what is perhaps the collection's most chill- and deceive Presidet ing document, an unsigned "Study of Assassination," including provocation the Agency laid out in excruciating detail its methods for paganda...
...and Guatemalan officials found "an intelligence gold mine," according to one participant...
...Launched on May 1, 10 January 1954...
...During the past few years," the memo began, "Guatemala has become the leading base of operations for Moscow-influenced Communism in BY KATE DOYLE The overthrow of the Arbenz government passed into CIA legend and quickly became a model for future Agency activities in the hemisphere...
...Eisenhower's enthusiasm for the quick fix of covert intervention found fertile ground in the CIA's Latin America division...
...spread rumors The "Conference Room Technique" memo offers graphic assassination instructions...
...Here are the "black budgets" and the freedom fighters...
...Sections on "accidents," "drugs," "edge proposals for stirring weapons," "blunt weapons" and "firearms" offered tips the Arbenz Admin on the most effective assassination techniques, such as Guatemalan aggression which poisons to use, how to choose a site for "acciden- nappings of prominent hafts, stair wells, unscreened winmd the correct way to club a man Impiled hit lists in preparation for math...
...Over the next four decades, the Agency established secret liaisons with Latin American military and intelligence services, and sought to change by force or clandestine influence any regime perceived to be hostile to U.S...
...POLICY weapons to Guatemala and successfully pressured other tal" falls ("elevator st governments to follow suit...
...1 4 The CIA also employed a network of anti-communist Guatemalan students to create the impression of a large, organized opposition to Arbenz...
...0f Jgt ot (DcreSr Group to frerreDa Iw'r mLsJdesrE ae-aG7,oI4Be ' 1 iofI66cf '(erCs MEd*'Ef .isruC...
...As Anthony Harrington, the head of the Intelligence Oversight Board, commented when the IOB had completed its work: "The board asked itself: 'The Cold War is over-what are we doing there?'' 2 5 The time has finally come for the CIA to pack its bags and go home...
...The operation code-named "PBSUCCESS" was the original bad seed for the CIA in Latin America, and all of the Agency's subsequent missions in the region grew organically from it...
...A Study of Assassination," Job 79-01025A, Box 73, Folder 4, unsigned, undated...
...tive in early 1960 authorizing the CIA "to get rid of covert aggression, exaggerated Soviet influence on the Castro," the Directorate of Plans dusted off its regime, and launched a massive campaign of psychoGuatemala operation and rewrote it for revolutionary logical warfare, propaganda and provocation...
...The recently released documents reveal the growing unease of the CIA with respect to the political developments in Guatemala during the late 1940s and early 1950s...
...In 1995, revelations about the Agency's contemporary Guatemalan operations exploded onto the public arena...
...A intelligence," pointed out that the of Action, "reveals no internal condeveloped into a vital threat to the inistration without determined suple...
...With support from neighboring U.S.allied dictators-Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza Garcia and Jos6 Manuel Galvez of Honduras-Castillo Armas had the credentials he needed to convince Washington...
...The General Plan of Action describes a "swift, climactic military action" that included the "neutralization of key military figures" as the centerpiece of the operation...
...194-197...
...The Agency's first covert project was carried out VoL XXXI, No 2 SEPT/OCT 1997 I 35REPORT ON U.S...
...And its success, according to one of the using assassination against "judges, magistrates, police senior officials involved, rested on the assumption that and state security officials...
...They considered democracy an "unrealistic" alternative for the country, and envisioned a moderate authoritarian regime which would be friendly to U.S...
...The President's commitment to the new covert apparatus gave Agency planners the green light they had been waiting for...
...Incredible," said the President...
...As the Central Intelligence Agency celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year, peace is breaking out all over Latin America...
...According to the docu- dows and bridges"), a ments, the CIA was willing to consider any means nec- to death.10 essary to overthrow the Guatemalan president...
...See Cullather...
...And although the records ife with plans to kill, the five foldcontaining "CIA and Guatemala issination Proposals" have been fully purged of all names-the es of CIA officials involved and names of their intended victims...
...6. Ironically, even the CIA supported some of the principles underlying "Decree 900," Arbenz's land reform program...
...A top-secret murder...
...information on thousands of Guatemalan citizens from pro-Arbenz political parties, labor unions, student organizations and farming cooperatives...
...Although evidence suggests that this project was not very fruitful, the fact that it existed at all is evidence of a growing preocupation with the political sympathies of the Guatemalan government...
...But Guatemala's political center quickly "vanished from politics into a terrorized silence...
...8 was building an "elim Unilateral actions were matched by international Guatemalan military h maneuvering...
...Report Faults CIA on Hiring of Informers in Guatemala," The New York Times, June 29, 1996...
...These documents not only offer an exceptionally close look at the U.S...
...5 The CIA's fears, shared to a lesser extent by the State Department, centered on the Guatemalan government's FOLLOWINGtI t__ "ACTIONS FOR YOUR CONSIDER A. SEND PKGS CONTAINING ALARM CLOCKS REDS, TO SIMULATE TIME BO4B...
...The ,erations directorate immediately :uation within Guatemala was not ng for coup plotters in 1953...
...According to istration's covert assault on the govern- OUt a succession of recently declassified documents, the ment of Cheddi Jagan, the freely elected CIA trained the unit in surveillance, prime minister of what was then British assassination interrogation and torture...
...1 8 After a small insurgency developed in the wake of the coup, Guatemala's military leaders developed and refined, with U.S...
...These tactics succeeded too well...
...In the p: nerve war against individuals...
...A Kennedy-CIA Plot Returns to Haunt Clinton," The New York Times, October 30, 1994...
...Castillo Armas took his place shortly afterward as the head of the Guatemalan government...
...The murder manual was published in book form as Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare (New York: Vintage, 1985...
...The CIA also broke the law, building on a covert program of political manipulation, according to the IOB, failing to inform congressional propaganda and disinformation that had been ongoing oversight committees about the crimes of those agents...
...1 6 Several days after the coup, the Directorate of Plans dispatched two officers to Guatemala City " seeking proof of Soviet control of the Arbenz government...
...Recent reports on the CIA's decision to sever ties with scores of foreign informants contained a chilling detail...
...But although numerous government officials, members of Congress and independent analysts agreed that the time had come for the CIA to face the brave new post-Cold War world, their debate was focused almost exclusively on incremental, bureaucratic changes aimed at renovating the Agency, not on radically changing its structure...
...The United States Agency continued to lobbied hard for its passage, threatening nations and float ideas for with aid withdrawals and lecturing them on the [deleted] govern evils of the Soviet menace...
...9. "Contact Report," secret meeting minutes, June 2, 1954...
...The ten-page memo, labeled "top-secret eyes only," outlined "A General Plan of Action" to destroy the government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmin, Guatemala's democratically elected reformist president...
...This and all U.S...
...Even before the election of Arbenz in November 1950, officials were complaining about "the rapid growth of Communist activity in Guatemala and the probability that Guatemala may become a central point for the dissemination of anti-U.S...
...A presidential panel linked members of the Guatemalan military-paid agents of the CIA-to murder, torture and kidnapping, leading the Director of Central Intelligence, John Deutch, to fire senior CIA officials and temporarily suspend most of the operations of the Agency's Guatemala station...
...In Washington, there was jubilation...
...There is only one sure way to change the nature of its covert operations in Latin America: end them...
...The CIA backed the rebel officer in an early, aborted coup attempt during 1952 dubbed PBFORTUNE, and then kept him on retainer until it was ready to try again two years later...
...Proposals" have the r An abandoned air strip in the Canal Zone Cl called France's Field was used for "black" been carefully mat flights carrying personnel, arms and sup- purged of all names...
...Students leafleted public gatherings, covered walls with anti-government graffiti and distributed phony news articles written by CIA operatives...
...Worldwide, 90% of the assets released were fired for failing to deliver useful information to the Agency...
...Cited in Cullather...
...released its report on U.S...
...An Agency briefer told Eisenhower that only one of the rebels it had backed had died...
...POLICY ecration of Guatemalan churches with pro-communist slogans...
...assistance, a massive counterinsurgency campaign that left tens of thousands massacred, maimed or missing...
...The CIA scrambled to convince the White House that the operation was an unqualified and all but bloodless victory, even lying to President Eisenhower during a formal briefing about the number of casualties suffered by rebel forces...
...These methGuiana...
...foreign policy of that period, but also a rare view of the underpinnings of covert CIA operations that continue to this day...
...Allende aimed at genuinely dangerous problems: terrorist groups was overthrown in 1973, and the violent and repressive out to kill Americans, countries with nuclear capabilimilitary dictatorship that replaced him ruled for nearly ties, or rogue nations with vendettas against the United two decades...
...Intelligence Oversight Board, Report on the Guatemala Review, June 28, 1996...
...2 The document also reads like a primer on 40 years of CIA aggression in the region...
...Certainly, none of the "blue-ribbon" commissions organized to ponder the issue ever considered that the Agency might be forced to end its clandestine activities overseas...
...2 0 cluding that CIA agents among the In Chile, Salvador Allende's ascension to the presi- Guatemalan armed forces had "ordered, planned or pardency in 1970 prompted Nixon's famous order to ticipated in serious human rights abuses" while working Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms to for the Agency, including assassination, execution, tor"make the economy scream...
...Communist Party to operate openly, and his land reform However, the sit program challenged U.S...
...In fact, at least four dozen were dead, according to the CIA's records...
Vol. 31 • September 1997 • No. 2
