HUMAN RIGHTS AND AMERICA: LATE COLD WAR

Virtual Truth Commission

1975-1979

1975 Indonesia, with US encouragement, invades Portuguese East Timor. In the light of the Cold War, the left-wing movement in East Timor was feared by Jakarta and seen by the US as an echo of those in southern Africa and of Salvador Allende's government in Chile. "US trained butchers of Timor", The Guardian, London. Cited by The Drudge Report, September 19, 1999.

1976 U. S. Military Interventions: ANGOLA/1976-92/Command operation/CIA assists South African- backed rebels. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1980

1980's. During this decade of wide-open drug-dealing, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests. Source

1980's/ During this decade of contra operations from bases in southern Honduras, the region was effectively closed to narcotics investigations.Source

April 1980, Guatemalan speculator and right-wing activist Roberto Alejos Arzu, who made his plantation available as a training site for participants in the CIA's Bay of Pigs invation in 1961, sponsors trip to Guatemala for top executives of Young Americans for Freedom, the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority, Young Republicans' National Federation, the American Conservative Union, Conservative Digest, Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus and John Laxalt, president of Reagan's campaign organization "Citizens of the Republic" and brother of Reagan campaign chair, Senator Paul Laxalt....before his election Reagan met personally with two leading spokesmen of the Guatemalan right and ...conveyed the details of what one U. S. businessman calls his promised "180 degree turn" in U. S. Policy toward Guatemala...high level Guatemalan officials say that Reagan's assurances may already have led to an increase in the number of death squad assassinations. Allan Nairn, "Reagan Administration's Links to Guatemala's Terrorist Government", Covert Action Quarterly, Summer, 1989

1980. Sources close to the Lucas Garcia regime report that the death squds are staffed and directed by the Guatemalan Army and Polic under the command of President Lucas, Interior Minister Donald Alvarez Ruiz, and a group of top-ranking generals, with the assistance of Lucas' right hand man, Colonel Hector Montalban, and national Chief of Police, Colonel German Chupina. Private businessmen provide the payrolls for the squads, and often assist in "compiling" the lists of troublesome labor, professional and political leaders as well as other suggested victims. Allan Nairn, "Reagan Administration's Links to Guatemala's Terrorist Government",Covert Action Quarterly, Summer, 1989

In the early 1980s, the Guatemalan army unleashed its scorched-earth campaign," a counter-insurgency drive to destroy the Guatemalan guerrilla forces' civilian base of support. By its own count, the army destroyed 440 rural villages. In addition to tens of thousands of civilian deaths, one million people were displaced internally in a country of about nine million. About 200,000 Guatemalans also fled to neighboring Mexico. Some 50,000 of these refugees organized, settled in refugee camps and eventually began to negotiate with the Guatemalan government for group returns to Guatemala. The first such return took place in January of 1993. © 1998, Piet van Lear, A War Called Peace

1980 U. S. Military Interventions: IRAN/1980/Troops, nuclear threat, aborted bombing/Raid to rescue Embassy hostages; 8 troops die in copter-plane crash. Soviets warned not to get involved in revolution. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

Dec 2, 1980, Roman Catholic nuns Ita Ford, Maura Clark and Dorothy Kazel and layworker Jean Donovan murdered in El Salvador. Those ultimately jailed for this included Louis Antonio Colindres Aleman, Salvadoran SOA graduate, as well as Guardsmen Jose Roberto Moreno Canjura and Daniel Canales. All three were released from prison on Tuesday, July 21, 1998, under a new law designed to ease prison overcrowding. Colindres had served almost 18 years of a 30-year sentence. Source: Michael Katz-Lacabe, 22 Jul 1998; e-mail at School of the Americas Watch
1981

1981 -- immediately after President Reagan's election, right wing death squads in El Salvador went on rapage of political slaughter, including rape-murder of 4 American churchwomen. Robert Parry, "Lost History: 'Project X' and School of Assassins. The Consortium (a paid subscriber service)
1981 U. S. Military Interventions: LIBYA/1981/Naval jets/Two Libyan jets shot down in maneuvers. EL SALVADOR/1981-92/Command operation, troops/ Advisors, overflights aid anti-rebel war, soldiers briefly involved in hostage clash; long-term result: 75,000 murdered and destruction of popular movement. NICARAGUA/1981-90/Command operation, naval/CIA directs exile (Contra) invasions, plants harbor mines against revolution; result: 50,000 murdered. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

1981-82 -- Contra War begins in Nicaragua. Jake Sexton, "The Rewards of Responsible Journalism"

Bolivia's "cocaine coup" government of 1980-82 was the first in line filling the contra drug pipeline. But other contra-connected drug operations soon followed, including the Medellin cartel, the Panamanian government, the Honduran military and Miami-based anti-Castro Cubans. The contra-connected cocaine also moved through transshipment points in Costa Rica and El Salvador. [For details, see Robert Parry's Lost History; Cocaine Politics by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall; or Gary Webb's forthcoming book, Dark Alliance.] Robert Parry, "Contra-Cocaine: Evidence of Premeditation" The Consortium for Independent Journalism, a paid subscription service, Volume 3, No 11 (Issue 63) - June 1, 1998.

Varelli, Frank, former FBI informer, infiltrated CISPES, 1981. Told to seduce nun who headed CISPES. Gave information about Americans in America to El Salvador National Guard so they could arrange for actions against Americans in U.S. Interview transcript.

Mid-December 1981. President Reagan authorized CIA support for the contra army. Robert Parry, "Contra-Cocaine: Evidence of Premeditation" The Consortium for Independent Journalism, a paid subscription service, Volume 3, No 11 (Issue 63) - June 1, 1998.

December - U. S. trained Salvadoran battalion massacred 800 men, women and children in El Mozote. Robert Parry, "Lost History: 'Project X' and School of Assassins. The Consortium for Alternative Journalism

1982

"Webb's revelations detail how a group of rich, powerful Nicaraguans set up a massive and unstoppable flow of cocaine into South-Central LA beginning in 1982 in order to help finance the cash-poor, CIA-devised Contra war gainst the Sandinistas. Webb showed how Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes, a former Nicaraguan official with apparent ties to the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency, directed mountains of cocaine... Jill Stewart, "Just Another Big Embarassment Under Shelby", Phoenix New Times.

Feb 11, 1982, Attorney General William French Smith grants an exemption sparing the CIA from a legal requirement to report on drug smuggling by agency assets. This occurred only two months after President Reagan authorized covert CIA support for the Nicaraguan contra army and some eight months before the first known documentary evidence revealing that the contras had started collaborating with drug traffickers. The exemption suggests that the CIA's tolerance of illicit drug smuggling by its clients during the 1980s was official policy anticipated from the outset, not just an unintended consequence followed by an ad hoc cover-up. The exemption had been secretly engineered by CIA Director William J. Casey according to a letter placed into the Congressional Record by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., on May 7, 1998, which establishes that Casey foresaw the legal dilemma which the CIA would encounter should federal law require it to report on illicit narcotics smuggling by its agents. The narcotics exemption is especially noteworthy in contrast to the laundry list of crimes which the CIA was required to disclose.. The CIA's inspector general Frederick P. Hitz confirmed that long-held suspicion in an investigative report issued on Jan. 29, 1998. The Clinton administration quietly rescinded Casey's narcotics exemption in 1995. Robert Parry, "Contra-Cocaine: Evidence of Premeditation" The Consortium for Independent Journalism, a paid subscription service, Volume 3, No 11 (Issue 63) - June 1, 1998.

October 22, 1982. The first publicly known case of contra cocaine shipments appeared in government files in a cable from the CIA's Directorate of Operations. The cable passed on word that U.S. law enforcement agencies were aware of "links between (a U.S. religious organization) and two Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary groups [which] involve an exchange in (the United States) of narcotics for arms." The material in parentheses was inserted by the CIA as part of its declassification of the cable. The name of the religious group remains secret. Robert Parry, "Contra-Cocaine: Evidence of Premeditation" The Consortium for Independent Journalism, a paid subscription service, Volume 3, No 11 (Issue 63) - June 1, 1998.

1982 U. S. Military Interventions: HONDURAS/1982-90/Troops/Maneuvers help build bases near borders. LEBANON/1982-84/Naval, bombing, troops/Marines expel PLO and back Phalangists, Navy bombs and shells Muslim positions. . S. Brian Willson, "Who are the Real Terrorists?", citing several sources including William Blum, Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Monroe, Maine: common Courage Press, 1995

Continued in Section B, 1983-1989

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