CONFESSIONS OF A DEATH SQUAD OFFICER
Nairn, Allan
Confessions of a Death Squad Officer BY ALLAN NAIRN ^ A Salvadoran army officer has come forward with new information about the workings of El Salvador's Death Squads and their links to U.S....
...advisers and instructors at general staffheadquarters...
...advisers...
...It was the treasury police.' " Castro was similarly informed that the 1981 national guard assassinations of four Christian Democratic mayors were carried out at the orders of Colonel Araujo, then commander of the Zacatecoluca brigade, with the approval of the general staff...
...I know both of them well...
...Here he describes the methods used by the army and security forces to choose targets and carry out operations: Q: How were targets chosen...
...involvement in torture training...
...Castro: In these things, everyone goes...
...One day, the American instructor introduced him to Frederic Brugger of the U.S...
...Castro: Yes, we told the people to stay inside or they would suffer likewise...
...From time to time, I had to go in there, and I always found people tied up, gagged...
...He said that we learned in Vietnam that if you hit people and so on, you don't get much out of them, they become resistant...
...the December 1981 massacre at El Mozote, and the 1981 Sheraton Hotel assassinations of peasant leader Rodolfo Viera and U.S...
...Whenever you're going somewhere, make sure you spin them around and you blindfold them, and you never take them on a direct route...
...Castro also says he met with a CIA official in Washington with whom he discussed his own and the general staffs participation in Death Squad assassinations...
...See sidebar, Page 29...
...we pretend to be the Left...
...Also, the rich people—the leading citizens of the community—traditionally have a great deal of input...
...We were close," says Castro of Mejivar...
...He tried it on the individual he was interrogating...
...Castro: We dress in civilian clothes...
...We keep giving him the electric shock, and he just doesn't respond...
...Castro was called away on another assignment and did not participate in the interrogation...
...And apparently that brought them right out of it...
...So we left the meeting at about ten in the morning and I went home...
...Department 5 suddenly started coordinating everything," says Castro...
...Both the army and the treasury police covered up their involvement in the Death Squads, but they employed contrasting disguises...
...As an officer fluent in English—he had taught the language at the Salvadoran military academy—he was detailed to serve as translator for a succession of U.S...
...The killing of civilians, Castro says, is not confined to Death Squad operations...
...Castro speaks openly about his own participation in the killing of unarmed civilians...
...It was three quarters of a page, single spaced, in two rows...
...We went over to the cooperative, which is our PX, and my God, at about one in the afternoon— I'd been told about four hours before that he was in prison—who walks into the cooperative but Lopez Sibrian...
...We all assumed, everyone who was there—because people were very bitter about it after he had left—that it was hush-money...
...Castro's CIA contact in Washington confirmed to him that Mejivar was employed by the Agency, Castro says...
...We were talking about it...
...How would you kill the children...
...It's given orally...
...In military theory, they should be doing the investigation and then they should be relying on actual organized forces to carry out whatever they deem is necessary, but sometimes they don't need them...
...Basically, Department 5 would be responsible for providing the people to carry out the assassination or whatever was needed to be done," Castro says...
...Q: The whole family, including children...
...We leave the trucks far away so as not to be recognized as the army...
...Castro: Shoot them...
...The treasury police started going out at night to eliminate people...
...Do something that will just completely amaze him, and that should bring him out of it.' "So the student went back that day and did it...
...They went out and got people and killed them...
...The soldiers in my company were shocked because a lot of them needed water, but there was a kid lying smack in the water crossing the river...
...Now in the case of Lopez Sibrian, I can only tell you what he said...
...We know all that,' " Castro recalls...
...by Dennis Volman, May 8, 1984), which sparked an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee...
...It's pretty much become the political intelligence apparatus within the general staff...
...Normally, what happens when you find them both is you eliminate everyone...
...According to Castro, Department 5, among other respon*We Always Have a List •••• Ricardo Castro, former Salvadoran army officer, admits to having led several Death Squad operations...
...He was my classmate, so I call him over and go, 'Hey, what's going on, man...
...You tell the troops before they go to bed that at such-and-such a time you'll be woken up and dressed in civilian clothes and you'll be going out on a mission...
...He says he led night-time Death Squad assassination missions during March and April 1981 in the villages of La Lucha, El Polvillo, El Salto, and La Montana, which claimed a total of fourteen civilians...
...We always have a list...
...When they learned something in class, they might go back to their fort that night and practice-try it out...
...There were some women we found...
...His confession marks the first time a Salvadoran military officer is known to have publicly acknowledged personal involvement in Death Squad murders...
...He served as a staff officer at the ministry of defense and was first lieutenant and company commander in the departmental headquarters at Zacatecol-uca...
...Basically, all it is is you come in after patrolling or whatever during the day, and then you're told that at a certain hour you will have to go get up the troops and go do something...
...In August 1982, Castro came to the United States on leave to meet privately with U.S...
...A.N...
...Q: What kind of information was sought...
...Castro: He'd tell it to his local commander...
...They preferred to suffer thirst and not pour that water into their canteen...
...that was all they did...
...Actions were not just to be limited to murders but maybe placing bombs or things of that sort...
...Castro's first-hand contact with one of the suspects lends credibility to the claim that higher level Salvadoran military officers were involved...
...I had gone into town to eat," says Castro, "and I met Pineda Guerra there...
...He was obviously against torture a lot of the time," Castro says...
...He said, 'Nothing you've said so far has surprised me...
...They happen just about every night, or they used to...
...He has grown increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for military victory in El Salvador and has become disenchanted with U.S...
...Most of the students were involved in active interrogations as the course was going on," Castro says...
...Near the end, there were twenty-four women and children captured and they were assassinated right smack in front of me—just one by one, in cold blood...
...It came from the fort...
...Q: And what defined someone as a subversive...
...The American instructor also talked with Department 5 on at least one occasion about assassinating individuals in foreign countries, Castro says...
...Castro: Oh, definitely...
...The Reagan Administration and the government of El Salvador have denied that Death Squad killings are an integral part of Salvadoran military operations...
...The number that Castro says was given to him in 1982 by his Washington CIA contact (703-351-6955) is now answered by the CIA operator, who says the line is no longer in use...
...He said it was $ 15,000.1 didn't count the money...
...Since I had translated in the class and knew something about interrogations, he said they might want me to help...
...He always alleged that the orders had not originated with him, but he never elaborated on that...
...But the soldiers didn't want to kill them...
...In an exclusive interview, Ricardo Castro, thirty-five, a West Point graduate and former company commander in the Salvadoran army, said he worked for the CIA and served as translator for a U.S...
...The treasury police got a place that had been used for supplies and started using it as a prison...
...They began a monthly series of meetings, usually held at the Los Globos restaurant on the Alameda Roosevelt...
...Do something that will just completely amaze him' functioned as the successor to the outlawed ANSESAL, which targeted Death Squad victims until its abolition by the reformist junta in 1979...
...He is a member of the patrols who is an informant and who has turned all these people in...
...I remember very distinctly some students talking about the fact that people were conking out on them, just going limp, as they were administering electric shock...
...Most of the missions that S2 sends you on have to do with civilians—not military...
...What can we do?' When he said that, the American gave a broad smile and said, 'You've got to surprise him...
...authorities on behalf of a group of young Salvadoran officers concerned about corruption and demoralization within the rank and file...
...They've also got a large paramilitary force of people dressed in civilian clothes, and they are capable of acting independently...
...We take weapons that the guerrillas used exclusively, weapons captured from the guerrillas...
...Castro was enlisted by Department 5 to begin engineering work on the jail, but despite the enthusiastic backing of the American adviser, the project was later killed by junta president Jose Napoleon Duarte...
...The targets would be people like individuals in Honduras who are helping what's happening in El Salvador, not combatants but people helping with ammunition or helping to spread the opposition political view abroad...
...We used FPR or FPL [abbreviations of two guerrilla groups]," says Castro...
...Whatever bothers them, if they've got someone who just came into their ranch or their farm and they consider them a bad influence, they just send a messenger to the commander...
...Castro: They were left there...
...officials in the fall of 1980, he says, while serving with the ministry of defense...
...The Death Squad names, like ESA [the secret anti-communist army] and Mano Blanco [white hand] didn't surface as much outside San Salvador or areas where the security forces were operating...
...Give him a jolt...
...They were peasants...
...I remember we found an old lady and a bunch of kids, and I got the order to kill them over the radio...
...And I didn't want to do it myself, so we found an excuse and didn't do it...
...Q: So somebody would say, 'So-and-so is a subversive...
...26 / MARCH 1986 Ricardo Castro (opposite) says Salvadoran soldiers carried out Death Squad killings on orders from the general staff...
...Castro was there, commanding the third company of the Zacatecoluca brigade...
...We might need you.' They had two towns of about 300 people each, and they were interrogating them to see what they knew...
...It was either from the commander, Colonel Araujo, or the executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Mendez, or the S2...
...There was a place with three rooms, and in each room, they had a different prisoner...
...It made sense to take the bodies and throw them in the Rio Lempa...
...When the student told the class, the American said that that was very good and everyone was happy about it...
...Castro: The person responsible for processing information is from Department 2, Military Intelligence, which has a net of informants...
...That was about all we found...
...I remember an operation near San Jose La Montana, an area that was almost completely depopulated...
...The first thing they see, they're in this room, and they never know where they are...
...The American instructor also served as adviser to Major Pineda Guerra, Lieutenant Colonel Rivas, and Department 5, the civic affairs department of the army general staff...
...Castro: Oh, sure...
...it's a big turbulent river, and no one would ever see them again, but they didn't do that...
...Under the pseudonym of Rene Hur-tado, Lara said that torture was discussed in a 1980 U.S...
...It's a disorientation thing...
...Brugger, the CIA deputy chief of station (who was identified as On the final day of the course, Castro says, the class adjourned to the headquarters of the artillery brigade...
...He said, 'Make sure they never know where they are...
...The following month in the province of Morazan, Castro ran into Major Pineda Guerra, the Department 5 officer whom the American instructor had advised...
...labor advisers Michael Hammer and Mark Pearlman, who were killed in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in San Salvador...
...And then they were eliminated, always with machetes...
...Castro: Eliminar...
...Basically, it was going to become like a secret jail, people they didn't want anyone to know they had," recalls Castro...
...After a series of meetings with his Washington CIA contact, he elected not to return...
...On these missions, normally what happens is you find the first few and then after that you start having problems finding people...
...They have information on just about everyone...
...It starts where 2 leaves off...
...interrogation course for security officials at general staff headquarters...
...They'd come out of their houses, and we'd always tell them we were the Left and we're here because you don't want to cooperate with us or whatever...
...That was their only function...
...Q: Have you heard orders like this given...
...In class, they would bring up cases when they were stuck and didn't know what to do...
...I thought you were in jail.' The guy says, 'No man, this is what happens when you've got contacts.' And he pulled out of his pocket a whole bunch of $100 bills and he just kept pulling them out...
...If you've got nametags, cover them up, put mud on them, or whatever...
...such in a July 21, 1981, FBI cable inadvertently declassified in the course of a 1982 Texas immigration case), recruited Castro as an intelligence source...
...he'd always preface the course by bringing out his experience," Castro recalls...
...The course, says Castro, was an intensive seven-hour-per-day month-long seminar involving about seventeen interrogation officers from the national guard, national police, and treasury police intelligence departments...
...I've been ordered myself to do it...
...Castro names his CIA contact in El Salvador as former deputy chief of station Frederic Brugger...
...Castro: About people who are subversives...
...Castro: Exactly, exactly...
...Q: What was done with the bodies...
...Castro claims to have served as translator at precisely such a course...
...Senate Intelligence Committee that interrogation training had indeed been given and that Americans had been "in the vicinity" when interrogations took place, according to a Senator on the committee...
...The CIA confirmed to the U.S...
...The reason this one sticks in my mind is because I felt so awful," Castro says...
...Castro: Normally, that person would be eliminated...
...One course he translated was on interrogation techniques...
...he wrote out the order of operations for people in civilian clothes who the police would later disavow...
...They always interrogate these people with hoods over their heads, and he reported back to the class that as soon as they kind of blanked out—they didn't even close their eyes or anything—he would run up against them and remove his hood...
...They were real prisoners...
...Military Academy at West Point (class of 1973) and then did graduate work at the University of Illinois...
...Castro: Just the fact that someone thought so...
...In his talks with me, Castro spoke publicly for the first time about his experience in the Salvadoran military...
...labor advisers Michael Hammer and Mark Pearlman...
...He said, 'This is what it's like to have contacts up high.' American dollars...
...policy there...
...Another officer had a girl friend who knew this teacher, and she got very upset at him and said, 'I'm not going out with you because you guys killed him.' And he said, 'Well, it wasn't us...
...embassy, who was sitting in on the interrogation class...
...Frederic Brugger, reached overseas at his current assignment, said i'm not going to answer any questions' and hung up the phone...
...Prior to his death in combat in 1981, Mejivar was a frequent leader of national police Death Squad operations, Castro maintains...
...We know about this from experience...
...Then what do you do...
...The individual being interrogated said, 'I've never seen an interrogator like you,' and began to talk...
...Castro also sheds light on other controversies involving the Salvadoran military, including a fall 1981 massacre by the U.S.-trained Atlacatl battalion on the Rio Lempa...
...I've prepared orders for other people, sure...
...Because of objections by some of the soldiers," he says, "plus the fact that resistance got less and less among the population, they started not using the army but using the security forces...
...in others it was counterproductive...
...Wake them up at a time when they're normally sleeping...
...He does not know if such operations took place...
...He was a relative, and we'd talk about it from time to time...
...From what I understood, the Americans just would get the communications system down, and then it would be up to the Salvadorans...
...At one session with Major Pineda Guerra and Lieutenant Colonel Rivas, the American adviser presented architectural plans, annotated in English and apparently drafted in the United States, for a prison to be built at the cavalry regiment headquarters...
...Military personnel assigned to such missions dress in civilian clothes and disguise themselves as left-wing guerrillas or right-wing vigilantes...
...agencies knowingly assisted officers or units involved in Death Squad killings...
...Our modus operandi was different...
...I had leave that day and had lunch with my wife...
...The adviser was working on establishing a better flow of intelligence information among the United States, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras...
...Q: What would be done...
...The security forces pretend to be the Right...
...Though listed as a deserter, Castro says he still considers himself a loyal officer and a staunch anticommunist...
...Castro: It's an order of operations...
...We only killed seven, though...
...What makes that memorable is that attached to the order of operations was a list, a list of people to be eliminated if found...
...Castro: Eliminate civilians...
...There's also Department 5 of the general staff, which works closely with S2...
...Castro: Yes...
...Americans would "definitely not" carry out the actions abroad "but definitely they were very sympathetic," says Castro...
...They took each body to a whole bunch of rivers flowing into the Lempa, most of them very small, and they left one body in each tributary—even kids...
...When one suspect kept conking out from the electric shock, the American told the students, 'You've got to surprise him...
...Q: These are missions to do what...
...It was a planned operation of the treasury police, Gonzales told them...
...The official declined to give Castro his name but provided a private CIA telephone number...
...They can knock someone off all by themselves, or capture them...
...Q: What would you wear and how would you normally proceed...
...Q: They were hacked with machetes...
...Avila, he got nailed...
...According to Castro, Death Squad killings are a highly organized activity of the Salvadoran military, which chooses the targets and gives the assassination orders...
...M Murder at the Sheraton Ricardo Castro provides new information about the still-controversial 1981 murders of peasant leader Rodolfo Viera and U.S...
...I've had them myself...
...it was in the range of eighty meters by forty or fifty...
...Castro began working with U.S...
...The thing is, El Salvador has got a long history of killing people who just don't agree with the official line...
...The American emphasized psychological techniques...
...Castro's disclosures specifically corroborate the account of Gustavo Lara, a former officer of the Salvadoran Treasury Police, who told The Progressive in 1984 about U.S...
...Several of Castro's fellow officers were also employed by the CIA, he says...
...They already know what the mission is...
...There were tears in his eyes when he was sent over to Costa Rica...
...He called me over and he said, 'Look, we've been thinking about you...
...Q: So you were dispatched with the order to eliminate...
...the local commander would relay it to the S2, and then the S3 would write up a mission...
...The Major told me that after the interrogation, they were going to kill them all...
...It was to have twenty-two different isolated cells...
...They make recommendations to the commander, who makes the final decision...
...We paint up our faces to further mask our identity, and then the instructions are not to leave anyone on the list alive...
...Castro's statements on the Death Squads—and especially the U.S...
...The officers took more than an academic interest in the class...
...Q: How was that order given...
...He got the people together...
...When you turn somebody in, part of your obligation is to show us where they are and identify them...
...He attended Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and, under the sponsorship of the Salvadoran armed forces, enrolled in the U.S...
...Pupils would go in and interrogate, and they would bring out the results of their interrogation, and the instructor would say, 'Well, you've done this wrong, you've done this right, you've still got plenty more information on this,' and so on...
...The information goes over to Department 3, Operations...
...You can also disturb their sleep patterns...
...But he heard about the operation a while later, from his mother...
...He said, 'My God, that's where all the subversives are.' He wasn't too happy about it...
...Speaking on the record in a series of tape-recorded discussions, Castro, now seeking asylum in the United States, acknowledged that he personally led Death Squad operations...
...Q: Missions to eliminate people...
...He recalls one incident that occurred on the Rio Lempa during the first days of November 1981, following a sweep by the U.S.-trained Atlacatl battalion...
...A.N...
...The Agency denied, however, that torture was discussed, the Senator says...
...Castro's testimony, however, provides fresh evidence contradicting both denials...
...Allan Nairn, a free-lance writer in New York City, wrote "Behind the Death Squads" in the May 1984 issue of The Progressive...
...Q: Right there in front of their house...
...The American instructor, a tall, white-haired man about sixty, worked out of the Sheraton Hotel annex and identified himself only with a first-name pseudonym...
...Here are his recollections: What came out publicly was that the killing vas done by national guardsmen, ordered by [Lieutenant Isidro] Lopez Si-brian and [Captain Alfonso Eduardo] Avila...
...They weren't on the list, but their husbands were...
...Give him a jolt...
...Why else would someone give him money...
...One day we were told at all the forts that Lopez Sibrian had been taken in by the national guard for having murdered the Americans plus Viera...
...He was among a group of officers in 1979, he says, who received a briefing from the Zacatecoluca commander, Colonel Marco Aurelio Gonzales, describing the assassination of the secretary of a local teachers' union...
...Major Lopez Rivera...
...We usually go in with a person we call the cheneque...
...The elements they deal with—labor leaders and so on—they are capable of doing it all themselves...
...Among them was Captain Mauricio Mejivar Campos, the cousin of Castro's wife...
...In some cases it was applicable...
...I was standing outside with the instructor...
...And when we had enough suspects in a certain area, we'd go out at night and pay them a visit...
...That was their work...
...The American also advised on the use of torture, stressing the importance of being choosy...
...He admitted his own participation in four separate assassination missions, which claimed fourteen lives...
...Born in Panama, the son of the Salvadoran consul, Castro grew up in El Salvador and later came with his family to Washington...
...We would go in and knock on people's houses...
...No one noteworthy...
...Castro: Yeah, like T saw him talking.' Q: And what would happen...
...Returning to El Salvador with a master's degree in engineering, he traveled the countryside supervising construction at rural bases...
...Castro's service as translator for the American adviser has been verified by his former supervisor, Major (now Lieutenant Colonel) Roberto Pineda Guerra, who was reached by phone in El Salvador...
...Here it was, all typed up, very formal...
...Though such activities were commonplace, Castro says, they often aroused misgivings...
...The instructor had done a lot of interrogating in Vietnam...
...They have also denied that the CIA or other U.S...
...official who advised the Salvadoran military on torture techniques and overseas assassinations...
...Q: Let's say you find a man who's on the list together with his family, which isn't on the list...
...He favored selective torture...
...The next thing I know, my mother, who worked with the Panamanian embassy and is very much pro-government, said 'You know, son, these guerrillas, they invent the wildest lies...
...Late in 1981, Castro says, much of the army responsibility for Death Squad operations in Zacatecoluca was shifted to the security forces...
...Something he always said was that they were using him as a scapegoat...
...role—buttress elements of a previous report published in The Progressive ("Behind the Death Squads," May 1984), and a subsequent story in The Christian Science Monitor ("Salvador Death Squads, a CIA Connection...
...They say that in December, 600 civilians were killed in Morazan.' And I thought, 'Oh, shit, I was hoping I'd been dreaming it' because as I later found out, they did go in and kill them after all...
...I can't quite tell you why we didn't proceed against them, but normal operating procedure would have been to eliminate them...
...It's the one that keeps tabs on people such as labor leaders, opposition political leaders...
...Q: When a mission involves eliminating people, what words are used...
Vol. 50 • March 1986 • No. 3
