The Day of Reckoning Is Coming

...At all...

...That, of course, is closest to reality...

...And although it ap-pears to exclude the revolutionaries of the Left from the negotiations, I believe there may be some flexibility there...

...js: It seems very similar to what happened in the State Department after the Chinese revolution...

...That Cuba is involved there's no doubt...

...It invites other countries to participate in negotiations leading to elections...

...And then what...

...My real argument with the Reagan Administration is that they threw away a very useful tool without even applying the pragmatic test of whether the policy was good or bad...

...When you advo-cate sending arms to Guatemala, you doom El Salvador...

...The far Left are just totally dedicated revolutionaries who, if they came into power, would reject the United States...

...js: Is the Chilean military aiding the Salvadoran military...

...You know, "There's El Salvador, and we can dramatize the difference between us and the soft-headed Carter Administration...

...Is El Salvador "another Vietnam" to you...

...This purge, though, is even more complete because the number of people at senior levels who know or are involved in Central America are really very few...

...js: That is, if you're for human rights you're "soft on communism...

...white: Yeah...

...white: They did...

...military advisers in place when Reagan came in...

...Why, if there were people around like yourself drawing these conclusions, did it take one free-lance reporter [John Dinges for Pacific News Service] three months to provoke the rest of the media into taking a critical look at the White Paper...

...white: The Chilean government has al-ways had a team of military advisers in El Salvador, and they are now increasing their numbers...

...Can you comment...

...There's no doubt about that...

...white: I don't think there's any question about that...

...js: In thinking about the possible long years of bloodshed ahead, it seems tragic to have missed an opportunity for negotiations...

...And the Left sees the guer-rilla forces as just the result of historical injustices and the growing up of a group of dedicated patriots...

...Duarte and Ungo [who resigned from the Junta last winter] have far more in common than Duarte has with Colonel Moran of the Treasury Police, or than Ungo has with the guerrilla leader [Salvador Cayetano] Carpio...

...I won't make any accusations...

...In this Administration, the whole front Office of the Latin American region has been removed, and none of them has received an ambassadorial as-signment...

...And can't the Reagan Administration claim that it is continuing what Carter be-gan...

...Look, Somoza was a liberal compared to the Salvadoran military...

...They said so, and they went after them...

...Somoza used to teil me, "Those Salvadoran fourteen families give me hell because they say I'm too soft, because I'm too liberal," and I believe he was telling me the truth when he said that...

...white: It really is tragic...

...he has been Latin American director of the Peace Corps, deputy permanent representative to the Organization of American States, and ambassador to Paraguay...

...And career officers—who are vulnerable to political revenge—whether at State, CIA, or the Pentagon, started to say, looking toward the Reagan Administration, "Well, we'd better try and bur-nish ourimage with the new fellows...

...This was the day of the "final offensive," also, and I was quick to use anything I could to try to demon-strate that Nicaragua was involving itself when it shouldn't, because it was a mis-take for Nicaragua to do it...

...If you want to reject morality in foreign affairs, fine, that's one approach...

...Won't we likely be locked into a succes-sion of Saigon-style governments...

...js: That leads me to the State Department's White Paper on El Salvador...

...I stopped it...

...js: Is there a political purge going on in the State Department right now...

...On the day we spoke in his new office in the modernistic Carnegie Endowment for International Peace headquarters off Washington's Dupont Circle, Thomas O. Enders, the State Department 's chief of Latin American policy, was delivering a speech across town that advocated a "political Solution" to the war but, atthesame time, seemed to reiterate a stance of no negotia-tions with declared revolutionary forces in El Salvador...

...Ambassador to El Salvador BY JEFF STEIN In February, the Reagan Administration removed career Foreign Service officer Robert E. White from his post as U.S...

...js: Traitorous...

...There may even still pos-sibly be a chance today, if the Reagan Administration would turn on a dime and come out in favor of negotiations...

...You know, in Nicaragua all the people were against Somoza...

...white: There was very little of that when I was there...

...In-stead, what you've got are U.S...

...On the other hand, it is an interesting coincidence that all this happened when it did, and it could have been designed to dramatize the in-volvement of Nicaragua...

...white: Very little...

...And they have undoubtedly sent some arms to the Salvadoran revolutionaries...

...Whether it will be in two months or six months, I don't know...

...and (3), that some Cuban and Nicaraguan leaders met with Salvadoran revolutionaries to talk about a common strategy...

...If you want to make that equation, then indeed the Soviet Union is involved...

...The present tactic is much more insidious because they're pretending that everything is just normal and going forward routinely, and that no one is being "purged...

...But the thing that really licked us was that Nicaragua had permitted its territory to be used to supply the guerrillas for the January "final offensive...

...js: On the seventh floor [Haig's executive offices...

...JS: That presents the United States with a fait accompli, right...

...In those days, the ideologues of the Right were much more naive, open, and honest...

...military Intervention and placing El Salvador squarely on the East-West Cold War chessboard, right...

...white: Right...

...white: I can't pin it to one person...

...JS: One had the feeling here that the Pentagon almost attempted a coup on El Salvador policy in the last days of the Carter Administration...

...white: There's something very close to it...

...js: There were reports that Venezuela was training Salvadoran police...

...You may find that hard to believe, but it's true...

...white: I'm suspicious...

...In El Salvador, what you have had building up is a real class war...

...2), that he did obtain some support from them...

...It won't work...

...And the idea that I'm some sort of martyr— well, I'm not...

...js: Will the time ever come when the Robert White at the site where four murdered religious workers were found: "The United States can now only postpone the day when the Right exacts its price...

...domestic forces—the left wing of the Democratic Party and the right wing of the Republican Party—fighting out their ideological bat-tles with El Salvador as the ploy...

...I can't be sure, but I think that would be the way they would act...

...But obviously the human rights policy was a very useful tool in some cases, as I think it was to some ex-tent in El Salvador...

...But there is obviously increas-ing Cooperation between Honduran and Salvadoran forces, such as the forcible re-moval of refugee camps from the Honduran frontier...

...The current Reagan strategy, White declared, can't help but support the "creeping coup" from El Salvador's rightist and military elements, which are out to eliminate the reformist Christian Democrats as a factor in a peaceful Solution to the civil war now raging...

...I think there was still a chance to salvage something right up until a couple of months ago...

...In light ofthe es-calating violence and U.S...

...They have announced their intention to eliminate the Christian Democrats from the government...

...And that price is the exit of Christian Democrats...

...At that time, Carter, Mondale, and Muskie were totally in-volved in the Iranian hostage crisis—right through the Administration's last three days, and the pressure increased dramati-cally for the kind of policy that you're now seeing...

...That's all you can say the White Paper and the documents prove...

...Both sides have to face the fact that they've got indigestible, antidemo-cratic elements of considerable power within their coalitions, and the way to iso-late those is to get together...

...white: The second stage of the land reform had been explicitly canceled with U.S...

...white: Well, yes, but look: There was increasing pressure from the Pentagon to get into El Salvador with training programs, groups, and so on, and I just re-sisted, because I didn't think this was the right idea...

...Besides his ambassadorship to El Salvador, White has held several otherprestigious posts in his twenty-five-year career...

...So I think the class hatred that has admittedly been engendered by the military and the economic elites which have been sup-ported in the past by the United States has created a Situation that is really very dangerous...

...white: They thought it was like rolling a drunk...

...Urbane, articulate, and considered wide-ly to be one of the State Department's most knowledgeable and thoughtful specialists on Latin America, White vigorously pursued a policy which he thought would lead to nego-tiations between El Salvador's revolutionary forces and the Christian Democratic Party— a political Solution that has been rejected by the Reagan Administration infavor of military victory and "elections" that exclude rebel leaders...

...js: The new metaphor for "losing China" seems to be being in favor of a human rights policy...

...js: They seem to have taken exactly the op-posite tack...

...I wouldn't accept it...

...In other words, I wanted them to under-stand who they're supposed to be fighting for...

...But actually, the Chilean officers are probably a positive dement in the sense that they have professional qualifications and they look down their noses in horror at some of the Salvadoran military's barbarous practices, and they talk about Central Americans as— js: Chilean military officers look down on Salvadorans for barbaric practices...

...white: Well, your question really is, why didn't / come out and say this was ridicu-lous...

...white: All right...

...white: I agree—and I thought exactly along those lines at the time...

...white: Well, if you regard Cuba as a total Surrogate ofthe Soviet Union, that Cuba's a marionette and the Soviet Union pulls the strings, then you could say that any place that Cuba is involved, the Soviet Union is involved...

...white: The United States now can only postpone the inevitable day of reckoning when the Right exacts its price, and that price is either the elimination or the total neutralization of the Christian Demo-crats...

...The Pentagon never supported the human rights policy any way, and when the re-straining hand of Muskie was gone, you had them gaining increasing power...

...Venezuela's involvement is more Christian Democrat to Christian Democrat...

...JS: The Right sees the guerrillas as Soviet proxies...

...United States will see it in its own interest to throw in with the other side—the one that we're fighting...

...I agree that it's hard to make it stick for a party that wants to keep itself in power...

...I believe that the documents are genuine if only for the reason that they prove so little...

...And the powers that be are refusing to accept the first phase of land reform as afait accompli—they want to roll it back...

...I think they've trained somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 Salvadoran revolutionaries in Cuba...

...white: Well, I don't think so...

...js: I agree only to an extent...

...js: One last question: Is the Reagan Administration trying to overthrow the government of Nicaragua...

...It was tough to fight, but even so, we tried to fight it...

...js: How about U.S...

...I don't go out looking for windmills to joust...

...If the Guatemalan military can get anything it wants—a government that has to have one of the most repressive policies in the world—then what incentive does the Salvadoran military have to clean up its act...

...You plow with what you've got...

...The day the Administration decided to support the government of Guatemala was, in effect, the day it wrote "finish" to any serious reform in the rest of Central America that depends on U.S...

...js: There are reports that Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are cooperat-ing in a policy of arrests, detentions, and "disappearances...

...Do you think you were mis-led...

...Later, I sent my military attache down to the area, and he couldn't find anything...

...white: The best policy for the United States t? advocate is negotiations...

...Had the Carter Administration been more intelligent a year and a half, two years ago, instead of—but this is what happens when you become captive of a weak, vindictive oligarchy and a brutal military...

...white: Oh, absolutely...

...support, because the military of El Salvador are perfectly able to catch the nuances in the messages from Washington...

...That day is Coming...

...That turned out to be false, andit seemed— even at the time—to have been a deliber-ate attempt to spread a false report and smear Nicaragua...

...js: Argentine involvement...

...Very close to it...

...js: What was your reaction when the White Paper was published...

...You stood behind the initial reports...

...They tend to prove only (1), that [Communist Party chief Shafik] Handel went to Moscow, that he got what you might call a mixed reception there, and that from Moscow he jumped— presumably at Soviet expense—to a num-ber of other countries, such as Vietnam, Libya, and Ethiopia, and that he obtained promises of support from them...

...I think that under the Carter Administration, we had a chance, because we were constantly push-ing, every day pushing the Salvadoran military to improve, every day saying, "No, you can't have these goodies until you accomplish this, accomplish that, ac-complish the other things...

...js: In January, there was a big splash in the newspapers about Nicaraguans landing in force on an El Salvador beach...

...No one in the Guatemalan government has even bothered to deny charges that they deliberately target moderate leaders and kill them in Order to de-stroy any possible bridge between the Left and the Center...

...white: Well,T don't know...

...I think that— js: I mean, considering that it may be in everyone's best interest in the long run...

...js: What is the effect of the militarization of El Salvador policy now...

...Wasn't that just a bunch of nonsense...

...white: Yeah, that word has been used...

...What is your estimate of the influence of Cuba or the Soviet Union as alleged in its conclusions...

...white: Yes, but there's a big difference...

...white: There was hope for that, but as far as I know it didn't happen...

...And conditioned on that, we per-suaded the Salvador military to write and issue a code of conduct for the security forces...

...Their program would be to eliminate all U.S...

...But there's a very great potential for those guerrillas, should they win, to bring the Soviet presence into El Salvador...

...white: You're absolutely right...

...So, I'm suspicious...

...And, of course, when you're so wildly wrong in your analysis, the chance that you'll hit on the right pre-scription to bring about a Solution is very doubtful...

...We began our one-hour talk—wedged into White's grueling schedule ofwriting ar-ticles, giving Speeches, meeting with delega-tionsfrom Central America, and preparing for his own trip to the region—with White's reaction to Enders 's major speech...

...But the United States has taken that Option away from Duarte by refusing to permit negotiations...

...white: The really crucial place where the analogy fits is the inability of the United States Government to face up to what the reality is and come to grips with it...

...I trusted these people to teil me the truth...

...No question about it...

...I think some of the things the White Paper says are probably true, but there aren't any documents which justify the conclusions...

...I'm sure it's a purge...

...But I admit that this was a forlorn attempt...

...training of Salvadorans in the Canal Zone—so-called human rights training...

...In Guatemala, yes, a lot...

...white: It's hard to make that argument stick with anybody who's got a responsi-bility for administering the national secu-rity of the United States...

...I know that there are a number of very worrisome reports about activities going on, both in this country and in Honduras, that I think bear looking at...

...That move turned out to be the open-ing shot in what White now says is a "political purge"—the removal from the Department of any of?cers the Administration identifies with the "traitorous" human rights policies ofthe Carter Administration...

...It seemed to me that if you first got a theoretical base, then you might start getting some kind of military justice...

...But what happened...

...js: So where are we now...

...white: In what it says, the speech repre-sents a positive change...

...If we had, at the beginning of 1980, really made a commitment to nego-tiations and seeking out [Social Democrat Guillermo] Ungo and Company, and bringing in Mexico, West Germany, Venezuela, and others, we could have brought about some sort of common-sense Solution...

...foreign policy on El Salvador...

...I mean, when the Guatemalan military can have everything it wants and be nakedly brutal—even take credit for it...

...ambassador to El Salvador and forced him to retire from the State Department...

...Look, I am—or at least I was—a dis-ciplined Foreign Service officer...

...They tried to take advantage of the confu-sion during the transition period and have seventy-five U.S...

...white: To me it was just an inept and hast-ily thrown together piece of Propaganda...

...I just wanted to keep work-ing in the State Department, pursuing my career...

...Logically, therefore, the Enders speech should have contained a ringing affirmation of our support for Duarte and the Christian Democrats...

...power from the area and counter the United States by bringing in Cuba and perhaps the Soviet Union...

...But the most important thing about the speech is what it does not say...

...It is unheard of for assistant secretaries and deputy assistant secretaries not to receive onward assignments as ambassadors...

...Therefore, the "creeping coup" is going to continue, and in all probability is going to sueeeed, because the far Right has a stranglehold on the economy, and they have a deliberate policy of ceasing economic activity until they get their price...

...The Reagan team has gotten rid of all of them, and in a very shameful and vengeful way...

...But the pressure grew,very great, so I said to them, "Look, I don't ob-ject to your giving them technical training provided they get some really solid training in civilized conduct, you know, that you don't treat Citizens as potential people to be killed, but you treat them as Citizens, people who are supposed to be respected...

...js: The Reagan team seemed to think El Salvador was an easy hit...

...JS: Well, look, without romantieizing the guerrillas at all . . . they just may have earned their revolution at this point, don't you think...

...So what it as-serts in addition to that is wildly off mark...

...They were out to get those guys in the State Department because they had "sold out China...

...Perhaps it was an exaggeration by my sources...

...And so, whatever happened, there was no big battle, and they never captured one Nicaraguan, and no one could even find evidence of a battle...

...The Reagan Administration has rushed in headlong to prove how macho they are...

...I'd just say that there are some reports that really do concern me about what's taking place...

...approval...

...white: Not necessarily...

...js: What do you think of it all now—was it a plant...

...I don't exclude it...

...Mind you— js: Who are we after all these years of silent acquiescence to say they can't have it now just because they've taken the revolutionary road after other avenues were denied them...

...As you know, [Junta President Jose Napoleon] Duarte and the Christian Democrats have been under at-tack from the rightist business forces...

...I don't think the national security argument can be dismissed...

...But as I listen to you, and as time passes, it does begin to take shape...

...But what it does lock us into is a traditional combination that has driven El Salvador into the ground over the last fifty years...

...It amounted to a Pentagon take-over of U.S...

...Nobody elected me to anything...

...They have been shocked by some of the things going on...

...But none of that is proved by the captured docu-ments which served as the basis for the White Paper...

...white: Two members of the Salvadoran government called me the night this was allegedly happening...

...But in meetings, Reagan people are actually us-ing that phrase...

...js: This was the premier document laying down the rationale for U.S...

...js: If there is some blame for that kind of strategy, doesn't the Carter Administration share some of it by its decision to ship arms to the Junta just before it left office...

...military involve-ment in El Salvador, we thought White's views would be usefulfor understanding the past and current Situation there...

...And what each is advocating has little relati?n-ship to what's going on in El Salvador...

...So it was impossible to make the argument in Washington that the guerrillas can get their supplies from Nicaragua but the government we're supporting can't get its supplies from the United States...

...But it said nothing, and I think this seals the fate of the Christian Democrats as an ef-fective reform component in the government of El Salvador...

...white: They even talk about the "traitor-ous" Carter Administration...

...JS: At first, the idea that El Salvador was "another Vietnam" didn't quite fit for me, for several reasons...