Subject: [AFIB] Reagan & Guatemala's Death Files
Date: Thu, 27 May 1999 16:34:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tom Burghardt 
To: 41500390@3web.net

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|| * --  SPECIAL  -- *    May 27, 1999    * --  EDITION  -- * ||
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                       * SPECIAL EDITION *

                              * * *

                       * THE CONSORTIUM *
                   For Independent Journalism
               Web: http://www.consortiumnews.com
                       Tel: (703) 920-1580
                    E-mail: ifmagazine@aol.com
                         - 26 May 1999 -

                              -----
_________________________________________________________________

                 REAGAN & GUATEMALA'S DEATH FILES
_________________________________________________________________

                         By Robert Parry
            http://www.consortiumnews.com/052699a1.html

                              * * *

     Ronald Reagan's election in November 1980 set off
celebrations in the well-to-do communities of Central America.

     After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the
region's anticommunist hard-liners were thrilled that they had
someone in the White House who understood their problems.

     The oligarchs and the generals had good reason for the
optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of
right-wing regimes that engaged in bloody counterinsurgency
campaigns against leftist enemies.

     In the late 1970s, when Carter's human rights coordinator,
Pat Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its "dirty war"
-- tens of thousands of "disappearances," tortures and murders --
then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should "walk a
mile in the moccasins" of the Argentine generals before
criticizing them.

     Despite his aw shucks style, Reagan found virtually every
anticommunist action justified, no matter how brutal. From his
eight years in the White House, there is no historical indication
that he was troubled by the bloodbath and even genocide that
occurred in Central America during his presidency, while he was
shipping hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to the
implicated forces.

     The death toll was staggering -- an estimated 70,000 or more
political killings in El Salvador, possibly 20,000 slain from the
contra war in Nicaragua, about 200 political "disappearances" in
Honduras and some 100,000 people eliminated during a resurgence
of political violence in Guatemala.

     The one consistent element in these slaughters was the
overarching Cold War rationalization, emanating in large part
from Ronald Reagan's White House.

     Yet, as the world community moves to punish war crimes in
the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, no substantive discussion has
occurred in the United States about facing up to this horrendous
record of the 1980s.

     Rather than a debate about Reagan as a potential war
criminal, the ailing ex-president is honored as a conservative
icon with his name attached to Washington National Airport and
with an active legislative push to have his face carved into
Mount Rushmore.

     When the national news media does briefly acknowledge the
barbarities of the 1980s in Central America, it is in the context
of one-day stories about the little countries bravely facing up
to their violent pasts.

     At times, the CIA is fingered abstractly as a bad supporting
actor in the violent dramas. But never does the national press
lay blame on individual American officials.

     The grisly reality of Central America was most recently
revisited on Feb. 25 when a Guatemalan truth commission issued a
report on the staggering human rights crimes that occurred during
a 34-year civil war.

     The Historical Clarification Commission, an independent
human rights body, estimated that the conflict claimed the lives
of some 200,000 people with the most savage bloodletting
occurring in the 1980s.

     Based on a review of about 20 percent of the dead, the panel
blamed the army for 93 percent of the killings and leftist
guerrillas for three percent. Four percent were listed as
unresolved.

     The report documented that in the 1980s, the army committed
626 massacres against Mayan villages. "The massacres that
eliminated entire Mayan villages...are neither perfidious
allegations nor figments of the imagination, but an authentic
chapter in Guatemala's history," the commission concluded.

     The army "completely exterminated Mayan communities,
destroyed their livestock and crops," the report said. In the
north, the report termed the slaughter a "genocide." [WP, Feb.
26, 1999]

     Besides carrying out murder and "disappearances," the army
routinely engaged in torture and rape. "The rape of women, during
torture or before being murdered, was a common practice" by the
military and paramilitary forces, the report found.

     The report added that the "government of the United States,
through various agencies including the CIA, provided direct and
indirect support for some [of these] state operations." The
report concluded that the U.S. government also gave money and
training to a Guatemalan military that committed "acts of
genocide" against the Mayans.

     "Believing that the ends justified everything, the military
and the state security forces blindly pursued the anticommunist
struggle, without respect for any legal principles or the most
elemental ethical and religious values, and in this way,
completely lost any semblance of human morals," said the
commission chairman, Christian Tomuschat, a German jurist.

     "Within the framework of the counterinsurgency operations
carried out between 1981 and 1983, in certain regions of the
country agents of the Guatemalan state committed acts of genocide
against groups of the Mayan people," he added. [NYT, Feb. 26,
1999]

     The report did not single out culpable individuals either in
Guatemala or the United States. But the American official most
directly responsible for renewing U.S. military aid to Guatemala
and encouraging its government during the 1980s was President
Reagan.

REAGAN VS. HUMAN RIGHTS

     After his election, Reagan pushed aggressively to overturn
an arms embargo imposed on Guatemala by President Carter because
of the military's wretched human rights record.

     Reagan saw bolstering the Guatemalan army as part of a
regional response to growing leftist insurgencies. Reagan pitched
the conflicts as Moscow's machinations for surrounding and
conquering the United States.

     The president's chief concern about the recurring reports of
human rights atrocities was to attack and discredit the
information. Sometimes personally and sometimes through
surrogates, Reagan denigrated the human rights investigators and
journalists who disclosed the slaughters.

     Typical of these attacks was an analysis prepared by
Reagan's appointees at the U.S. embassy in Guatemala. The paper
was among those recently released by the Clinton administration
to assist the Guatemalan truth commission's investigation.

     Dated Oct. 22, 1982, the analysis concluded "that a
concerted disinformation campaign is being waged in the U.S.
against the Guatemalan government by groups supporting the
communist insurgency in Guatemala."

     The report claimed that "conscientious human rights and
church organizations," including Amnesty International, had been
duped by the communists and "may not fully appreciate that they
are being utilized."

     "The campaign's object is simple: to deny the Guatemalan
army the weapons and equipment needed from the U.S. to defeat the
guerrillas," the analysis declared.

     "If those promoting such disinformation can convince the
Congress, through the usual opinion-makers -- the media, church
and human rights groups -- that the present GOG [government of
Guatemala] is guilty of gross human rights violations they know
that the Congress will refuse Guatemala the military assistance
it needs.

     "Those backing the communist insurgency are betting on an
application, or rather misapplication, of human rights policy so
as to damage the GOG and assist themselves."

     Reagan personally picked up this theme of a falsely accused
Guatemalan military. During a swing through Latin America, Reagan
discounted the mounting reports of hundreds of Maya villages
being eradicated.

     On Dec. 4, 1982, after meeting with Guatemala's dictator,
Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, Reagan hailed the general as "totally
dedicated to democracy." Reagan declared that Rios Montt's
government had been "getting a bum rap."

     But the newly declassified U.S. government records reveal
that Reagan's praise -- and the embassy analysis -- flew in the
face of corroborated accounts from U.S. intelligence.

     Based on its own internal documents, the Reagan
administration knew that the Guatemalan military indeed was
engaged in a scorched-earth campaign against the Mayans.

     According to these "secret" cables, the CIA was confirming
Guatemalan government massacres in 1981-82 even as Reagan was
moving to loosen the military aid ban.

     In April 1981, a secret CIA cable described a massacre at
Cocob, near Nebaj in the Ixil Indian territory. On April 17,
1981, government troops attacked the area believed to support
leftist guerrillas, the cable said.

     According to a CIA source, "the social population appeared
to fully support the guerrillas" and "the soldiers were forced to
fire at anything that moved." The CIA cable added that "the
Guatemalan authorities admitted that 'many civilians' were killed
in Cocob, many of whom undoubtedly were non-combatants."

     Despite the CIA account and other similar reports, Reagan
permitted Guatemala's army to buy $3.2 million in military trucks
and jeeps in June 1981. To permit the sale, Reagan removed the
vehicles from a list of military equipment that was covered by
the human rights embargo.

     Apparently confident of Reagan's sympathies, the Guatemalan
government continued its political repression without apology.

     According to a State Department cable on Oct. 5, 1981,
Guatemalan leaders met with Reagan's roving ambassador, retired
Gen. Vernon Walters, and left no doubt about their plans.
Guatemala's military leader, Gen. Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia,
"made clear that his government will continue as before -- that
the repression will continue. He reiterated his belief that the
repression is working and that the guerrilla threat will be
successfully routed."

     Human rights groups saw the same picture. The Inter-American
Human Rights Commission released a report on Oct. 15, 1981,
blaming the Guatemalan government for "thousands of illegal
executions." [WP, Oct. 16, 1981]

     But the Reagan administration was set on whitewashing the
ugly scene. A State Department "white paper," released in
December 1981, blamed the violence on leftist "extremist groups"
and their "terrorist methods" prompted and supported by Cuba's
Fidel Castro.

     Yet, even as these rationalizations were presented to the
American people, U.S. agencies continued to pick up clear
evidence of government-sponsored massacres.

     One CIA report in February 1982 described an army sweep
through the so-called Ixil Triangle in central El Quiche
province.

     "The commanding officers of the units involved have been
instructed to destroy all towns and villages which are
cooperating with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor [known as the
EGP] and eliminate all sources of resistance," the report stated.

     "Since the operation began, several villages have been
burned to the ground, and a large number of guerrillas and
collaborators have been killed."

     The CIA report explained the army's modus operandi: "When an
army patrol meets resistance and takes fire from a town or
village, it is assumed that the entire town is hostile and it is
subsequently destroyed."

     When the army encountered an empty village, it was "assumed
to have been supporting the EGP, and it is destroyed. There are
hundreds, possibly thousands of refugees in the hills with no
homes to return to. ..."

     "The army high command is highly pleased with the initial
results of the sweep operation, and believes that it will be
successful in destroying the major EGP support area and will be
able to drive the EGP out of the Ixil Triangle. ... The well
documented belief by the army that the entire Ixil Indian
population is pro-EGP has created a situation in which the army
can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and
non-combatants alike."

     In March 1982, Gen. Rios Montt seized power. An avowed
fundamentalist Christian, he immediately impressed Washington.
Reagan hailed Rios Montt as "a man of great personal integrity."

     By July 1982, however, Rios Montt had begun a new scorched-
earth campaign called his "rifles and beans" policy. The slogan
meant that pacified Indians would get "beans," while all others
could expect to be the target of army "rifles."

     In October, he secretly gave carte blanche to the feared
"Archivos" intelligence unit to expand "death squad" operations.
Based at the Presidential Palace, the "Archivos" masterminded
many of Guatemala's most notorious assassinations.

     The U.S. embassy was soon hearing more accounts of the army
conducting Indian massacres. On Oct, 21, 1982, one cable
described how three embassy officers tried to check out some of
these reports but ran into bad weather and canceled the
inspection.

     Still, this cable put the best possible spin on the
situation. Though unable to check out the massacre reports, the
embassy officials did "reach the conclusion that the army is
completely up front about allowing us to check alleged massacre
sites and to speak with whomever we wish."

     The next day, the embassy fired off its analysis that the
Guatemalan government was the victim of a communist-inspired
"disinformation campaign," a claim embraced by Reagan with his
"bum rap" comment in December.

     On Jan. 7, 1983, Reagan lifted the ban on military aid to
Guatemala and authorized the sale of $6 million in military
hardware. Approval covered spare parts for UH-1H helicopters and
A-37 aircraft used in counterinsurgency operations.

     Radios, batteries and battery charges were also in package.
State Department spokesman John Hughes said political violence in
the cities had "declined dramatically" and that rural conditions
had improved too.

     In February 1983, however, a secret CIA cable noted a rise
in "suspect right-wing violence" with kidnappings of students and
teachers. Bodies of victims were appearing in ditches and
gullies.

     CIA sources traced these political murders to Rios Montt's
order to the "Archivos" in October to "apprehend, hold,
interrogate and dispose of suspected guerrillas as they saw fit."

     Despite these grisly facts on the ground, the annual State
Department human rights survey praised the supposedly improved
human rights situation in Guatemala. "The overall conduct of the
armed forces had improved by late in the year" 1982, the report
stated.

     A different picture -- far closer to the secret information
held by the U.S. government -- was coming from independent human
rights investigators. On March 17, 1983, Americas Watch
representatives condemned the Guatemalan army for human rights
atrocities against the Indian population.

     New York attorney Stephen L. Kass said these findings
included proof that the government carried out "virtually
indiscriminate murder of men, women and children of any farm
regarded by the army as possibly supportive of guerrilla
insurgents."

     Rural women suspected of guerrilla sympathies were raped
before execution, Kass said. Children were "thrown into burning
homes. They are thrown in the air and speared with bayonets. We
heard many, many stories of children being picked up by the
ankles and swung against poles so their heads are destroyed."
[AP, March 17, 1983]

     Publicly, however, senior Reagan officials continued to put
on a happy face. On June 12, 1983, special envoy Richard B. Stone
praised "positive changes" in Rios Montt's government.

     But Rios Montt's vengeful Christian fundamentalism was
hurtling out of control, even by Guatemalan standards. In August
1983, Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores seized power in another coup.

     Despite the power shift, Guatemalan security forces
continued to act with impunity.

     When three Guatemalans working for the U.S. Agency for
International Development were slain in November 1983, U.S.
Ambassador Frederic Chapin suspected that "Archivos" hit squads
were sending a message to the United States to back off even the
mild pressure for human rights improvements.

     In late November, in a brief show of displeasure, the
administration postponed the sale of $2 million in helicopter
spare parts. The next month, however, Reagan sent the spare
parts.

     In 1984, Reagan succeeded, too, in pressuring Congress to
approve $300,000 in military training for the Guatemalan army.

     By mid-1984, Chapin, who had grown bitter about the army's
stubborn brutality, was gone, replaced by a far-right political
appointee named Alberto Piedra, who was all for increased
military assistance to Guatemala.

     In January 1985, Americas Watch issued a report observing
that Reagan's State Department "is apparently more concerned with
improving Guatemala's image than in improving its human rights."

     According to the newly declassified U.S. records, the
Guatemalan reality included torture out of the Middle Ages. A
Defense Intelligence Agency cable reported that the Guatemalan
military used an air base in Retalhuleu during the mid-1980s as a
center for coordinating the counterinsurgency campaign in
southwest Guatemala.

     At the base, pits were filled with water to hold captured
suspects. "Reportedly there were cages over the pits and the
water level was such that the individuals held within them were
forced to hold on to the bars in order to keep their heads above
water and avoid drowning," the DIA report stated. Later, the pits
were filled with concrete to eliminate the evidence.

     The Guatemalan military used the Pacific Ocean as another
dumping spot for political victims, according to the DIA report.
Bodies of insurgents tortured to death and of live prisoners
marked for "disappearance" were loaded on planes that flew out
over the ocean where the soldiers would shove the victims into
the water.

     The history of the Retalhuleu death camp was uncovered by
accident in the early 1990s, the DIA reported on April 11, 1994.
A Guatemalan officer wanted to let soldiers cultivate their own
vegetables on a corner of the base.

     But the officer was taken aside and told to drop the request
"because the locations he had wanted to cultivate were burial
sites that had been used by the D-2 [military intelligence]
during the mid-eighties."

HISTORY FALSIFIED

     Guatemala, of course, was not the only Central American
country where Reagan and his administration supported brutal
counterinsurgency operations -- and then sought to cover up the
bloody facts.

     Reagan's falsification of the historical record was a
hallmark of the conflicts in El Salvaodor and Nicaragua as well.
In one case, Reagan personally lashed out at an individual human
rights investigator named Reed Brody, a New York lawyer who had
collected affidavits from more than 100 witnesses to atrocities
carried out by the U.S.-supported contras in Nicaragua.

     Angered by the revelations about his pet "freedom-fighters,"
Reagan denounced Brody in a speech on April 15, 1985. The
president called Brody "one of dictator [Daniel] Ortega's
supporters, a sympathizer who has openly embraced Sandinismo."

     Privately, Reagan had a far more accurate understanding of
the true nature of the contras. At one point in the contra war,
Reagan turned to CIA official Duane Clarridge and demanded that
the contras be used to destroy some Soviet-supplied helicopters
that had arrived in Nicaragua.

     In his memoirs, Clarridge recalled that "President Reagan
pulled me aside and asked, 'Dewey, can't you get those vandals of
yours to do this job.'" [See Clarridge's A Spy for All Seasons.]

     To conceal the truth about the war crimes of Central
America, Reagan also authorized a systematic program of
distorting information and intimidating American journalists.

     Called "public diplomacy," the project was run by a CIA
propaganda veteran, Walter Raymond Jr., who was assigned to the
National Security Council staff. The explicit goal of the
operation was to manage U.S. "perceptions" of the wars in Central
America.

     The project's key operatives developed propaganda "themes,"
selected "hot buttons" to excite the American people, cultivated
pliable journalists who would cooperate and bullied reporters who
wouldn't go along.

     The best-known attacks were directed against New York Times
correspondent Raymond Bonner for disclosing Salvadoran army
massacres of civilians, including the slaughter of more than 800
men, women and children in El Mozote in December 1981.

     But Bonner was not alone. Reagan's operatives pressured
scores of reporters and their editors in an ultimately successful
campaign to minimize information about these human rights crimes
reaching the American people. [For details, see Robert Parry's
Lost History.]

     The tamed reporters, in turn, gave the administration a far
freer hand to pursue its anticommunist operations throughout
Central America.

     Despite the tens of thousands of civilian deaths and
now-corroborated accounts of massacres and genocide, not a single
senior military officer in Central America was held accountable
for the bloodshed.

     The U.S. officials who sponsored and encouraged these war
crimes not only escaped any legal judgment, but remained highly
respected figures in Washington. Reagan has been honored as few
recent presidents have.

     The journalists who played along by playing down the
atrocities -- the likes of Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer --
saw their careers skyrocket, while those who told the truth
suffered severe consequences.

     Given that history, it was not surprising that the
Guatemalan truth report was treated as a one-day story.

     The major American newspapers did cover the findings. The
New York Times made it the lead story. The Washington Post played
it inside on page A19. Both cited the troubling role of the CIA
and other U.S. government agencies in the Guatemalan tragedy. But
no U.S. official was held accountable by name.

     On March 1, 1999, a strange Washington Post editorial
addressed the findings, but did not confront them. One of its
principal points seemed to be that President Carter's military
aid cut-off to Guatemala was to blame.

     The editorial argued that the arms embargo removed "what
minimal restraint even a feeble American presence supplied." The
editorial made no reference to the 1980s and added only a mild
criticism of "the CIA [because it] still bars the public from the
full documentation."

     Then, with no apparent sense of irony, the editorial ended
by stating: "We need our own truth commission."

     During a visit to Central America, on March 10, President
Clinton apologized for the past U.S. support of right-wing
regimes in Guatemala.

     "For the United States, it is important that I state clearly
that support for military forces and intelligence units which
engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the
United States must not repeat that mistake," Clinton said. [WP,
March 11, 1999]

     But the sketchy apology appears to be all the Central
Americans can expect from El Norte.

     Back in Washington, Ronald Reagan remains a respected icon,
not a disgraced war criminal. His name is still honored, attached
to National Airport and a new federal building. A current GOP
congressional initiative would chisel his face into Mount
Rushmore.

     Meanwhile, in the Balkans and in Africa, the United States
is sponsoring international tribunals to arrest and to try human
rights violators -- and their political patrons -- for war
crimes.

     Copyright 1999 The Consortium.

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