posted April 25, 2006 05:17 PM              

by William Blum

1999 - "ZMag" -- -The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows:

* making the world safe for American corporations;

* enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress;

* preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model;* extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power."

This in the name of fighting a supposed moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or not.

The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations in this period.

China, 1945-49:

Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of Chiang Kai-shek against the Communists, even though the latter had been a much closer ally of the United States in the world war. The U.S. used defeated Japanese soldiers to fight for its side. The Communists forced Chiang to flee to Taiwan in 1949.

Italy, 1947-48:

Using every trick in the book, the U.S. interfered in the elections to prevent the Communist Party from coming to power legally and fairly. This perversion of democracy was done in the name of "saving democracy" in Italy. The Communists lost. For the next few decades, the CIA, along with American corporations, continued to intervene in Italian elections, pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars and much psychological warfare to block the specter that was haunting Europe.

Greece, 1947-49:

Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of the neo-fascists against the Greek left which had fought the Nazis courageously. The neo-fascists won and instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA created a new internal security agency, KYP. Before long, KYP was carrying out all the endearing practices of secret police everywhere, including systematic torture.

Philippines, 1945-53:

U.S. military fought against leftist forces (Huks) even while the Huks were still fighting against the Japanese invaders. After the war, the U. S. continued its fight against the Huks, defeating them, and then installing a series of puppets as president, culminating in the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

South Korea, 1945-53:

After World War II, the United States suppressed the popular progressive forces in favor of the conservatives who had collaborated with the Japanese. This led to a long era of corrupt, reactionary, and brutal governments.

Albania, 1949-53:

The U.S. and Britain tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the communist government and install a new one that would have been pro-Western and composed largely of monarchists and collaborators with Italian fascists and Nazis.

Germany, 1950s:

The CIA orchestrated a wide-ranging campaign of sabotage, terrorism, dirty tricks, and psychological warfare against East Germany. This was one of the factors which led to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

Iran, 1953:

Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown in a joint U.S./British operation. Mossadegh had been elected to his position by a large majority of parliament, but he had made the fateful mistake of spearheading the movement to nationalize a British-owned oil company, the sole oil company operating in Iran.. The coup restored the Shah to absolute power and began a period of 25 years of repression and torture, with the oil industry being restored to foreign ownership, as follows: Britain and the U.S., each 40 percent, other nations 20 percent.

Guatemala, 1953-1990s:

A CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of death-squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling well over 100,000 victims -indisputably one of the most inhuman chapters of the 20th century. Arbenz had nationalized the U.S. firm, United Fruit Company, which had extremely close ties to the American power elite. As justification for the coup, Washington declared that Guatemala had been on the verge of a Soviet takeover, when in fact the Russians had so little interest in the country that it didn't even maintain diplomatic relations. The real problem in the eyes of Washington, in addition to United Fruit, was the danger of Guatemala's social democracy spreading to other countries in Latin America.

Middle East, 1956-58:

The Eisenhower Doctrine stated that the United States "is prepared to use armed forces to assist" any Middle East country "requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism." The English translation of this was that no one would be allowed to dominate, or have excessive influence over, the middle east and its oil fields except the United States, and that anyone who tried would be, by definition, "Communist." In keeping with this policy, the United States twice attempted to overthrow the Syrian government, staged several shows-of-force in the Mediterranean to intimidate movements opposed to U.S.-supported governments in Jordan and Lebanon, landed 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and conspired to overthrow or assassinate Nasser of Egypt and his troublesome middle-east nationalism.

Indonesia, 1957-58:

Sukarno, like Nasser, was the kind of Third World leader the United States could not abide. He took neutralism in the cold war seriously, making trips to the Soviet Union and China (though to the White House as well). He nationalized many private holdings of the Dutch, the former colonial power. He refused to crack down on the Indonesian Communist Party, which was walking the legal, peaceful road and making impressive gains electorally. Such policies could easily give other Third World leaders "wrong ideas." The CIA began throwing money into the elections, plotted Sukarno's assassination, tried to blackmail him with a phony sex film, and joined forces with dissident military officers to wage a full-scale war against the government. Sukarno survived it all.

British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64:

For 11 years, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain and the United States, went to great lengths to prevent a democratically elected leader from occupying his office. Cheddi Jagan was another Third World leader who tried to remain neutral and independent. He was elected three times. Although a leftist-more so than Sukarno or Arbenz-his policies in office were not revolutionary. But he was still a marked man, for he represented Washington's greatest fear: building a society that might be a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model. Using a wide variety of tactics-from general strikes and disinformation to terrorism and British legalisms, the U. S. and Britain finally forced Jagan out in 1964. John F. Kennedy had given a direct order for his ouster, as, presumably, had Eisenhower.

One of the better-off countries in the region under Jagan, Guyana, by the 1980s, was one of the poorest. Its principal export became people.

Vietnam, 1950-73:

The slippery slope began with siding with the French, the former colonizers and collaborators with the Japanese, against Ho Chi Minh and his followers who had worked closely with the Allied war effort and admired all things American. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of Communist. He had written numerous letters to President Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French and finding a peaceful solution for his country. All his entreaties were ignored. Ho Chi Minh modeled the new Vietnamese declaration of independence on the American, beginning it with "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with ..." But this would count for nothing in Washington. Ho Chi Minh was some kind of Communist.Twenty-three years and more than a million dead, later, the United States withdrew its military forces from Vietnam. Most people say that the U.S. lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, and poisoning the earth and the gene pool for generations, Washington had achieved its main purpose: preventing what might have been the rise of a good development option for Asia. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of communist.

Cambodia, 1955-73:

Prince Sihanouk was yet another leader who did not fancy being an American client. After many years of hostility towards his regime, including assassination plots and the infamous Nixon/Kissinger secret "carpet bombings" of 1969-70, Washington finally overthrew Sihanouk in a coup in 1970. This was all that was needed to impel Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge forces to enter the fray. Five years later, they took power. But five years of American bombing had caused Cambodia's traditional economy to vanish.

The old Cambodia had been destroyed forever.

Incredibly, the Khmer Rouge were to inflict even greater misery on this unhappy land. To add to the irony, the United States supported Pol Pot, militarily and diplomatically, after their subsequent defeat by the Vietnamese.

The Congo/Zaire, 1960-65:

In June 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the Congo's first prime minister after independence from Belgium. But Belgium retained its vast mineral wealth in Katanga province, prominent Eisenhower administration officials had financial ties to the same wealth, and Lumumba, at Independence Day ceremonies before a host of foreign dignitaries, called for the nation's economic as well as its political liberation, and recounted a list of injustices against the natives by the white owners of the country. The man was obviously a "Communist." The poor man was obviously doomed.Eleven days later, Katanga province seceded, in September, Lumumba was dismissed by the president at the instigation of the United States, and in January 1961 he was assassinated at the express request of Dwight Eisenhower. There followed several years of civil conflict and chaos and the rise to power of Mobutu Sese Seko, a man not a stranger to the CIA. Mobutu went on to rule the country for more than 30 years, with a level of corruption and cruelty that shocked even his CIA handlers. The Zairian people lived in abject poverty despite the plentiful natural wealth, while Mobutu became a multibillionaire.

Brazil, 1961-64:

President Joao Goulart was guilty of the usual crimes: He took an independent stand in foreign policy, resuming relations with socialist countries and opposing sanctions against Cuba; his administration passed a law limiting the amount of profits multinationals could transmit outside the country; a subsidiary of ITT was nationalized; he promoted economic and social reforms. And Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was uneasy about Goulart allowing "communists" to hold positions in government agencies. Yet the man was no radical. He was a millionaire land-owner and a Catholic who wore a medal of the Virgin around his neck. That, however, was not enough to save him. In 1964, he was overthrown in a military coup which had deep, covert American involvement. The official Washington line was...yes, it's unfortunate that democracy has been overthrown in Brazil...but, still, the country has been saved from communism.For the next 15 years, all the features of military dictatorship that Latin America has come to know were instituted: Congress was shut down, political opposition was reduced to virtual extinction, habeas corpus for "political crimes" was suspended, criticism of the president was forbidden by law, labor unions were taken over by government interveners, mounting protests were met by police and military firing into crowds, peasants' homes were burned down, priests were brutalized...disappearances, death squads, a remarkable degree and depravity of torture...the government had a name for its program: the "moral rehabilitation" of Brazil.Washington was very pleased. Brazil broke relations with Cuba and became one of the United States' most reliable allies in Latin America.

Dominican Republic, 1963-66:I

n February 1963, Juan Bosch took office as the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic since 1924. Here at last was John F. Kennedy's liberal anti-Communist, to counter the charge that the U.S. supported only military dictatorships. Bosch's government was to be the long sought " showcase of democracy " that would put the lie to Fidel Castro. He was given the grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office.

Bosch was true to his beliefs. He called for land reform, low-rent housing, modest nationalization of business, and foreign investment provided it was not excessively exploitative of the country and other policies making up the program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was likewise serious about civil liberties: Communists, or those labeled as such, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.

A number of American officials and congresspeople expressed their discomfort with Bosch's plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States. Land reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in Washington, the stuff that "creeping socialism" is made of. In several quarters of the U.S. press Bosch was red-baited.

In September, the military boots marched. Bosch was out. The United States, which could discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown, did nothing.

Nineteen months later, a revolt broke out which promised to put the exiled Bosch back into power. The United States sent 23,000 troops to help crush it.

Cuba, 1959 to present:

Fidel Castro came to power at the beginning of 1959. A U.S. National Security Council meeting of March 10, 1959 included on its agenda the feasibility of bringing "another government to power in Cuba." There followed 40 years of terrorist attacks, bombings, full-scale military invasion, sanctions, embargoes, isolation, assassinations...Cuba had carried out The Unforgivable Revolution, a very serious threat of setting a "good example" in Latin America.The saddest part of this is that the world will never know what kind of society Cuba could have produced if left alone, if not constantly under the gun and the threat of invasion, if allowed to relax its control at home. The idealism, the vision, the talent were all there. But we'll never know. And that of course was the idea.

Indonesia, 1965:

A complex series of events, involving a supposed coup attempt, a counter-coup, and perhaps a counter-counter-coup, with American fingerprints apparent at various points, resulted in the ouster from power of Sukarno and his replacement by a military coup led by General Suharto. The massacre that began immediately-of Communists, Communist sympathizers, suspected Communists, suspected Communist sympathizers, and none of the above-was called by the New York Times "one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history." The estimates of the number killed in the course of a few years begin at half a million and go above a million.It was later learned that the U.S. embassy had compiled lists of "Communist" operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres, as many as 5,000 names, and turned them over to the army, which then hunted those persons down and killed them. The Americans would then check off the names of those who had been killed or captured. "It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands," said one U.S. diplomat. "But that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment. "

Chile, 1964-73:

Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for a Washington imperialist. He could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in power-an elected Marxist in power, who honored the constitution, and became increasingly popular. This shook the very foundation stones on which the anti-Communist tower was built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that "communists" can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population.

After sabotaging Allende's electoral endeavor in 1964, and failing to do so in 1970, despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American foreign policy machine left no stone unturned in their attempt to destabilize the Allende government over the next three years, paying particular attention to building up military hostility. Finally, in September 1973, the military overthrew the government, Allende dying in the process.They closed the country to the outside world for a week, while the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sounds of execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture centers opened for business; the subversive books were thrown into bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that "In Chile women wear dresses!"; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men of the world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up their check- books. In the end, more than 3,000 had been executed, thousands more tortured or disappeared.

Greece, 1964-74:

The military coup took place in April 1967, just two days before the campaign for j national elections was to begin, elections which appeared certain to bring the veteran liberal leader George Papandreou back as prime minister. Papandreou had been elected in February 1964 with the only outright majority in the history of modern Greek elections. The successful machinations to unseat him had begun immediately, a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, and the American military and CIA stationed in Greece. The 1967 coup was followed immediately by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, torture, and killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all being done to save the nation from a "Communist takeover." Corrupting and subversive influences in Greek life were to be removed. Among these were miniskirts, long hair, and foreign newspapers; church attendance for the young would be compulsory.It was torture, however, which most indelibly marked the seven-year Greek nightmare. James Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by Amnesty International, wrote in December 1969 that "a conservative estimate would place at not less than two thousand" the number of people tortured, usually in the most gruesome of ways, often with equipment supplied by the United States.

Becket reported the following: Hundreds of prisoners have listened to the little speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who sits behind his desk which displays the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American aid. He tries to show the prisoner the absolute futility of resistance: "You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans."George Papandreou was not any kind of radical. He was a liberal anti-Communist type. But his son Andreas, the heir-apparent, while only a little to the left of his father had not disguised his wish to take Greece out of the Cold War, and had questioned remaining in NATO, or at least as a satellite of the United States.

East Timor, 1975 to present:

In December 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor, which lies at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, and which had proclaimed its independence after Portugal had relinquished control of it. The invasion was launched the day after U. S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia after giving Suharto permission to use American arms, which, under U.S. Iaw, could not be used for aggression. Indonesia was Washington's most valuable tool in Southeast Asia.Amnesty International estimated that by 1989, Indonesian troops, with the aim of forcibly annexing East Timor, had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. The United States consistently supported Indonesia's claim to East Timor (unlike the UN and the EU), and downplayed the slaughter to a remarkable degree, at the same time supplying Indonesia with all the military hardware and training it needed to carry out the job.

Nicaragua, 1978-89:

When the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1978, it was clear to Washington that they might well be that long-dreaded beast-"another Cuba." Under President Carter, attempts to sabotage the revolution took diplomatic and economic forms. Under Reagan, violence was the method of choice. For eight terribly long years, the people of Nicaragua were under attack by Washington's proxy army, the Contras, formed from Somoza's vicious National Guard and other supporters of the dictator. It was all-out war, aiming to destroy the progressive social and economic programs of the government, burning down schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, bombing and strafing. These were Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters." There would be no revolution in Nicaragua.

Grenada, 1979-84:

What would drive the most powerful nation in the world to invade a country of 110,000? Maurice Bishop and his followers had taken power in a 1979 coup, and though their actual policies were not as revolutionary as Castro's, Washington was again driven by its fear of "another Cuba," particularly when public appearances by the Grenadian leaders in other countries of the region met with great enthusiasm.U. S. destabilization tactics against the Bishop government began soon after the coup and continued until 1983, featuring numerous acts of disinformation and dirty tricks. The American invasion in October 1983 met minimal resistance, although the U.S. suffered 135 killed or wounded; there were also some 400 Grenadian casualties, and 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers.

At the end of 1984, a questionable election was held which was won by a man supported by the Reagan administration. One year later, the human rights organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, reported that Grenada's new U.S.-trained police force and counter-insurgency forces had acquired a reputation for brutality, arbitrary arrest, and abuse of authority, and were eroding civil rights.

In April 1989, the government issued a list of more than 80 books which were prohibited from being imported. Four months later, the prime minister suspended parliament to forestall a threatened no-confidence vote resulting from what his critics called "an increasingly authoritarian style."

Libya, 1981-89:

Libya refused to be a proper Middle East client state of Washington. Its leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, was uppity. He would have to be punished. U.S. planes shot down two Libyan planes in what Libya regarded as its air space. The U. S . also dropped bombs on the country, killing at least 40 people, including Qaddafi's daughter. There were other attempts to assassinate the man, operations to overthrow him, a major disinformation campaign, economic sanctions, and blaming Libya for being behind the Pan Am 103 bombing without any good evidence.

Panama, 1989:

Washington's bombers strike again. December 1989, a large tenement barrio in Panama City wiped out, 15,000 people left homeless. Counting several days of ground fighting against Panamanian forces, 500-something dead was the official body count, what the U.S. and the new U.S.-installed Panamanian government admitted to; other sources, with no less evidence, insisted that thousands had died; 3,000-something wounded. Twenty-three Americans dead, 324 wounded.

Question from reporter: "Was it really worth it to send people to their death for this? To get Noriega?"

George Bush: "Every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it."

Manuel Noriega had been an American ally and informant for years until he outlived his usefulness. But getting him was not the only motive for the attack. Bush wanted to send a clear message to the people of Nicaragua, who had an election scheduled in two months, that this might be their fate if they reelected the Sandinistas. Bush also wanted to flex some military muscle to illustrate to Congress the need for a large combat-ready force even after the very recent dissolution of the "Soviet threat." The official explanation for the American ouster was Noriega's drug trafficking, which Washington had known about for years and had not been at all bothered by.

Iraq, 1990s:

Relentless bombing for more than 40 days and nights, against one of the most advanced nations in the Middle East, devastating its ancient and modern capital city; 177 million pounds of bombs falling on the people of Iraq, the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world; depleted uranium weapons incinerating people, causing cancer; blasting chemical and biological weapon storage and oil facilities; poisoning the atmosphere to a degree perhaps never matched anywhere; burying soldiers alive, deliberately; the infrastructure destroyed, with a terrible effect on health; sanctions continued to this day multiplying the health problems; perhaps a million children dead by now from all of these things, even more adults.Iraq was the strongest military power among the Arab states. This may have been their crime. Noam Chomsky has written: "It's been a leading, driving doctrine of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent, indigenous force will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price. "

Afghanistan, 1979-92:

Everyone knows of the unbelievable repression of women in Afghanistan, carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, even before the Taliban. But how many people know that during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a government committed to bringing the incredibly backward nation into the 20th century, including giving women equal rights? What happened, however, is that the United States poured billions of dollars into waging a terrible war against this government, simply because it was supported by the Soviet Union. Prior to this, CIA operations had knowingly increased the probability of a Soviet intervention, which is what occurred. In the end, the United States won, and the women, and the rest of Afghanistan, lost. More than a million dead, three million disabled, five million refugees, in total about half the population.

El Salvador, 1980-92:

El Salvador's dissidents tried to work within the system. But with U.S. support, the government made that impossible, using repeated electoral fraud and murdering hundreds of protesters and strikers. In 1980, the dissidents took to the gun, and civil war.Officially, the U.S. military presence in El Salvador was limited to an advisory capacity. In actuality, military and CIA personnel played a more active role on a continuous basis. About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in helicopter and plane crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat areas, and considerable evidence surfaced of a U.S. role in the ground fighting as well. The war came to an official end in 1992; 75,000 civilian deaths and the U.S. Treasury depleted by six billion dollars. Meaningful social change has been largely thwarted. A handful of the wealthy still own the country, the poor remain as ever, and dissidents still have to fear right-wing death squads.

Haiti, 1987-94:

The U.S. supported the Duvalier family dictatorship for 30 years, then opposed the reformist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Meanwhile, the CIA was working intimately with death squads, torturers, and drug traffickers. With this as background, the Clinton White House found itself in the awkward position of having to pretend-because of all their rhetoric about "democracy"-that they supported Aristide's return to power in Haiti after he had been ousted in a 1991 military coup. After delaying his return for more than two years, Washington finally had its military restore Aristide to office, but only after obliging the priest to guarantee that he would not help the poor at the expense of the rich, and that he would stick closely to free-market economics. This meant that Haiti would continue to be the assembly plant of the Western Hemisphere, with its workers receiving literally starvation wages.

Yugoslavia, 1999:

The United States is bombing the country back to a pre-industrial era. It would like the world to believe that its intervention is motivated only by "humanitarian" impulses. Perhaps the above history of U.S. interventions can help one decide how much weight to place on this claim.

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.

posted April 25, 2006 05:34 PM            

Good try, maybe next time you could post real informatoin from a source other than an Anti-American.

You might also want to include background about the author and the wacknut website that supports his views.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/index.html

Or I can do it for you since you probably want him to be seen as a "credible" source.

William Blum
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William Blum (born 1933) is an American author, and critic of United States foreign policy. A former State Department employee, he left the organization in 1967 due to his opposition to the Vietnam War. In eary 2006, Blum briefly became the subject of widespread media attention when Osama bin Laden issued a public statement in which he quoted Blum and recommended that all Americans read Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower.[1]

From 1972 to 1973 Blum was stationed in Chile, where he reported on the Allende government's "socialist experiment". In the mid-1970s, he worked in London with ex-CIA agent Philip Agee and his associates. Agee wrote a critique of CIA operations in his book Inside the Company: CIA Diary.

In the late 1980s, Blum moved to Los Angeles to work on a documentary on U.S. foreign policy based on his own book Killing Hope. He worked on this together with the filmmaker Oliver Stone but the project ultimately foundered.

Blum was the founder and editor of the Washington Free Press, one of the many newspapers in the loosely organized U.S. underground press in the 1960s and 1970s that opposed the Vietnam War.

In his writing, Blum devotes substantial attention to CIA interventions and assassination plots. Blum describes himself as a socialist and has supported Ralph Nader's presidential campaigns. He currently circulates a monthly newsletter by email called "The Anti-Empire Report".

The Author Who Got A Big Boost From bin Laden
Historian 'Glad' of Mention As Sales of Book Skyrocket

By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 21, 2006; C01

Twenty-four hours after Osama bin Laden told the world that the American people should read the work of a little-known Washington historian, William Blum was still adjusting.

Blum, who at 72 is accustomed to laboring in relative left-wing obscurity, checked his emotions and pronounced himself shocked and, well, pleased.

"This is almost as good as being an Oprah book," he said yesterday between telephone calls from the world media and bites of a bagel. "I'm glad." Overnight, his 2000 work, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower," had become an Osama book.

In gray slacks, plaid shirt and black slippers, Blum padded around his one-bedroom apartment on Connecticut Avenue. A portrait of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the '50s hung on his kitchen wall. Bookshelves bowed under the weight of secret histories of the CIA. The cord on his prehistoric phone let him roam across the living room. He'd already done CNN and MSNBC. A guy from the New York Post knocked on the door to take pictures. The BBC rang, then Reuters and Pacifica Radio stations on both coasts.

From Blum's end of the conversations, you could tell the reporters were expecting him to express some kind of discomfort, remorse, maybe even shame. Blum refused to acknowledge feelings he did not have.

"I was not turned off by such an endorsement," he informed a New York radio station. "I'm not repulsed, and I'm not going to pretend I am." He patiently reiterated the thesis of his foreign-policy critique -- that American interventions abroad create enemies.

You could almost hear the ticking of a stopwatch. These were Blum's 15 American minutes, brought to him by a murderous zealot on the other side of the world who had named him to a kind of Terrorists Book-of-the-Month Club. The CIA duly verified the audiotape from bin Laden, and there it was: Blum had a bona fide book blurb from the evil one.

Now it was time for the soft-spoken, bespectacled radical son of Brooklyn to look thoughtful for the cameras -- "I don't have a good smile" -- and sound pithy for the microphones. Better known in radical circles and on the college lecture circuit than he is among most readers of American history, Blum is a former underground journalist who specializes in sharp critiques of foreign policy. Published by a small outfit in Maine, he also sells his books over the Internet and issues a free monthly e-mail newsletter called the Anti-Empire Report.

What bin Laden said was this, as translated from Arabic by the Associated Press:

"And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book 'Rogue State,' which states in its introduction: 'If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First, I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all.' "

By last night, "Rogue State" shot up from 205,763 to 26 on Amazon.com's index of the most-ordered books.

"I'm calling it the book review of the decade," said Sam Smith, editor of the Progressive Review in Washington and a fan of Blum's work. Smith, too, has blurbed the book ("an especially well-documented encyclopedia of malfeasance") as has Gore Vidal.

Chortled Smith yesterday, "Neither Vidal nor Smith came close to lifting 'Rogue State' into the double digits" on Amazon.

Since Amazon's delivery service, while comprehensive, would not seem to extend to faraway caves, how might bin Laden have gotten his hands on Blum's work?

The author noted "Rogue State" had been published in Arabic in Egypt and Lebanon. And perhaps bin Laden owns the entire Blum canon, because the quote he cited actually is not in "Rogue State," but on the back cover of a collection of Blum essays, "Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire." (That book is languishing on Amazon, while two other books titled "Rogue State" have enjoyed a spike in ranking.)

Blum's exact words? "If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize -- very publicly and very sincerely -- to all the widows and orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism."

Yesterday, he made clear that he deplores the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But he argues, as many other essayists have, that they were an understandable retaliation against U.S. foreign policy. "The thesis in my books and my writing is that anti-American terrorism arises from the behavior of U.S. foreign policy," he said. "It is what the U.S. government does which angers people all over the world."

"I am totally against what they did. But we cannot view that as totally the acts of a bunch of madmen. If we do . . . we will continue making the same mistakes, and the so-called war on terror will be as doomed to fail as the war on drugs."

In a chapter called "Why Do Terrorists Keep Picking on the United States?" Blum lists as possible reasons everything from support of Middle East dictators, including the Shah of Iran and Saudi rulers, to occupying military bases in the region, to favoring the Israelis over the Palestinians.

"I think bin Laden shares that view, and that is why I'm not repulsed by his embrace of my book, because that is one of my major themes," Blum said.

When it is pointed out that terrorists target innocent civilians, which is not U.S. policy, he replies that U.S. tactics in Iraq have led to the deaths of thousands of civilians. "We bomb homes and these people have families, and the U.S. refuses to apologize for these civilian deaths," Blum said. "The absence of concern makes their actions almost equal to a deliberate targeting of civilians."

Until now, the mainstream media have paid virtually no attention to Blum. His books rarely are reviewed. But Noam Chomsky has praised his work, and Blum is right there along with Steve Earle, Jane Fonda and Barbara Ehrenreich as a signer of a full-page ad in the New York Times in the fall of 2002 against the military buildup for war in Iraq.

His publisher, Common Courage Press, yesterday could not provide estimates of his sales. Blum says "Rogue State" and "Killing Hope" together have sold more than 100,000 copies, plus an additional 50,000 in a dozen foreign languages. He said he supports himself with his writing and speaking engagements on college campuses.

The son of Polish immigrants, Blum said he studied accounting in college, then landed a low-level computer-related position at the State Department in the mid-1960s. An anti-communist with dreams of becoming a foreign service officer, he said he became disillusioned by the Vietnam War, so he resigned from State and helped found the Washington Free Press, an underground paper. Separated from his German wife, with whom he said he is on good terms, and the father of a 24-year-old son, he lives alone and writes at home.

"He's an alternative journalist, a researcher type," said Smith, who uses Blum's work as a reference when he wants to find, say, a list of dictators the United States has supported in Latin America and the Middle East. "What Bill Blum has basically done is what a historian does, which is to compile the available record and organize it in a way that is useful."

Blum said his life's mission has been this: "If not ending, at least slowing down the American Empire. At least injuring the beast. It's causing so much suffering around the world."

And if he is happy to accept bin Laden's plug, he certainly doesn't want to meet his terrorist fan.

"If he would contact me," said Blum, "then I would be scared."

posted April 25, 2006 06:17 PM              

quote:

---

each "intervention" is reduced to a simple paragraph.

---

quote:

---

maybe next time you could post real informatoin from a source other than an Anti-American.

---

posted April 25, 2006 06:22 PM            

No, a person does not have to agree at all with the US, but instead of putting forth distorted views concerning the intervention with the intention of purposely perverting the truth is complete BS.

Impressionable idiots then read this crap, without looking into all the facts, but instead memorize and spew forth the perverted diatribe as fact.

It really only makes that person as well as the author look like a person devoid of intellect.

I would be absolutely the same way if some ignoramus posted brief articles that were 100% pro-war.

Brief:

Short in time, duration, length, or extent.
Succinct; concise: a brief account of the incident.
Curt; abrupt.

I don't find anywhere in the dictionary where it states brief must also include a 100% distortion of the truth. So your little jab at "I think that is what they meant by brief" doesn't make sense. Instead you should have said "well, what do you expect, the guy hates America and wants to make a point of slanting every intervention into a huge, horrible situation brought on by America trying to take what isn't theres.....

posted April 25, 2006 07:21 PM              

quote:

---

Impressionable idiots then read this crap, without looking into all the facts, but instead memorize and spew forth the perverted diatribe as fact.

---

quote:

---

Short in time, duration, length, or extent.
Succinct; concise: a brief account of the incident.
Curt; abrupt.

---

Exactly...That's why each entry was around a paragraph long. Because the Title states that this article is a BRIEF history of the US interventions post WWII.

quote:

---

I think that any one that agrees with the gov 100% is right.

---

I didn't say that you thought that. You stated that

quote:

---

maybe next time you could post real informatoin from a source other than an Anti-American.

---

To voice one's opinion is NOT Anti-American. To disagree with the methods one's place of birth's government uses to promote corporate agenda is not Un-American. To dissent is American. The founders would have been shot/hanged had they lost...They were dissenters. Were they subverting the truth? Or stating it?

quote:

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I don't find anywhere in the dictionary where it states brief must also include a 100% distortion of the truth.

---

You are correct, it doesn't. How do you know he was distorting the truth?

posted April 25, 2006 07:32 PM              

He then became one of the founders and editors of the Washington Free Press, the first "alternative" newspaper in the capital.
In 1969, he wrote and published an exposé of the CIA in which was revealed the names and addresses of more than 200 employees of the Agency.
Mr. Blum has been a freelance journalist in the United States, Europe and South America. His stay in Chile in 1972-3, writing about the Allende government's "socialist experiment" and its tragic overthrow in a CIA-designed coup, instilled in him a personal involvement and an even more heightened interest in what his government was doing in various parts of the world.
In the mid-1970's, he worked in London with former CIA officer Philip Agee and his associates on their project of exposing CIA personnel and their misdeeds.
The late 1980s found Mr. Blum living in Los Angeles, teaching and pursuing a career as a screenwriter. Unfortunately, his screenplays all had two (if not three) strikes against them because they dealt with that thing which makes grown men run screaming in Hollywood: ideas and issues. http://www.zmag.org/ForeignPol/aboutblum.htm

From here - http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm - where they have "wacked out Kooky ideas" like:

Instructionals

Foreign Policy and International Relations
By Stephen Shalom
What are the motives of U.S. foreign policy? What are some critical events in the history of U.S. foreign policy and their meaning? This is an introductory overview designed to help users comprehend the big picture, with additional readings for details.

Radical Theory Instructional
By Michael Albert
What are theory, concepts, strategy, etc.? How does one develop a world view or conceptual framework to understand society and history, to develop vision and strategy? These instructional sequences address such questions, developing a conceptual framework typical of the kind many Z writers have.

Economic Vision Instructional
By Michael Albert
What do we want for our economy? This instructional with affiliated readings teaches a methodology for developing economic vision, which could be applied, as well, to other types of social vision, and in the process the instructional also familiarizes the user with participatory economic values and aims. No prior economics training is needed.

Basic Concepts and Tools for
Understanding Political Economy
By Michael Albert
How does a capitalist economy work? What are its class relations? What are some attributes of its main institutions and how do we understand them? This provides an introductory look at capitalism...revealing how it works, what we can expect from it, etc.

Global Economic Crisis Instructional
By Robin Hahnel
Five main sequences and an equal number of additional reading sequences on understanding the current global economic crisis (1999) and also the operations of the global economy in general. This is a very informative and conceptually edifying treatment of material that is often obtuse even to seasoned activists and "scholars," yet it doesn't require any prior economics training.

Institutional Racism Instructional
By Justin Podur
An excellent analysis of institutional racism, ways to dismantle it, and a positive vision for all those concerned with creating an anti-racist world.

Statistics and Logic for the People
By Justin Podur
This course aims to teach the basic skills required for spotting lies. First, an understanding of how arguments work -- logic. Second, one of the best methods of lying and obfuscation ever invented -- statistics. Real examples and choice bits of propaganda will be used and dissected.

posted April 25, 2006 10:38 PM              

He, I and many others have had the privilage of being born in one of, if not the greatest social experiments ever known to man. This is America.

It is our responsibility to take the legacy handed down by our forebears, guard it, and then pass it on to other generations.

I see our liberties being watered down or stripped away by those who swore to uphold those same ideals. All in the name of meaningless jingoistic slogans, and the Almighty profit margin, unlimited, and unsustainable economic growth by paper entities which have the same legal rights as flesh and blood. Entities which have the same psychological makeup as a psychopath.

I see a system entrenched and calcified. Unable to evolve to the will of "We the People". I choose to voice my dissatisfaction with those who are not serving me and do not have my best interests in mind. They are most interested in padding their pockets and job security every 6 years.

I see an oligarchy posing as the voice of "We the people" most of whom hav never gone hungry or wanted for anything in their lives.

I see my hard earned money going to feed a military industrial complex which is, in it's very existance an abhorance to me, whilst starving those services which serve our fellow human beings. Our humanitarian obligations.

I choose to side with those who stood up against despotism when they saw it, and spoke out, inspite of the cost to themselves.

I will not be cowed by petty tyrants, fearmongers, those who spew propaganda and call into question my love of country, to further a twisted agenda of war and destruction which benefits a handful at the expense of many.

Jefferson, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, et. all, are infinately cooler than Bush, Cheney, and Corporate America anyhow.

posted April 25, 2006 11:33 PM              

War and pornography

"I think it's time we held Sukarno's feet to the fire," said Frank Wisner, the CIA's Deputy Director of Plans (covert operations), one day in autumn 1956.{1} Wisner was speaking of the man who had led Indonesia since its struggle for independence from the Dutch following the war. A few months earlier, in May, Sukarno had made an impassioned speech before the US Congress asking for more understanding of the problems and needs of developing nations like his own.{2}
The ensuing American campaign to unseat the flamboyant leader of the fifth most populous nation in the world was to run the gamut from large-scale military maneuvers to seedy sexual intrigue.
The previous year, Sukarno had organized the Bandung Conference as an answer to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the US-created political-military alliance of area states to "contain communism". In the Indonesian city of Bandung, the doctrine of neutralism had been proclaimed as the faith of the underdeveloped world. To the men of the CIA station in Indonesia the conference was heresy, so much so that their thoughts turned toward assassination as a means of sabotaging it.
In 1975, the Senate committee which was investigating the CIA heard testimony that Agency officers stationed in an East Asian country had suggested that an East Asian leader be assassinated "to disrupt an impending Communist [sic] Conference in 1955".{3} (In all likelihood, the leader referred to was either Sukarno or Chou En-lai of China.) But, said the committee, cooler heads prevailed at CIA headquarters in Washington and the suggestion was firmly rejected.
Nevertheless, a plane carrying eight members of the Chinese delegation, a Vietnamese, and two European journalists to the Bandung Conference crashed under mysterious circumstances. The Chinese government claimed that it was an act of sabotage carried out by the US and Taiwan, a misfired effort to murder Chou En-lai. The chartered Air India plane had taken off from Hong Kong on 11 April 1955 and crashed in the South China Sea. Chou En-lai was scheduled to be on another chartered Air India flight a day or two later. The Chinese government, citing what it said were press reports from the Times of India, stated that the crash was caused by two time bombs apparently placed aboard the plane in Hong Kong. A clockwork mechanism was later recovered from the wrecked airliner and the Hong Kong police called it a case of "carefully planned mass murder". Months later, British police in Hong Kong announced that they were seeking a Chinese Nationalist for conspiracy to cause the crash, but that he had fled to Taiwan.{4}
In 1967 a curious little book appeared in India, entitled I Was a CIA Agent in India, by John Discoe Smith, an American. Published by the Communist Party of India, it was based on articles written by Smith for Literaturnaya Gazeta in Moscow after he had defected to the Soviet Union around 1960. Smith, born in Quincy, Mass. in 1926, wrote that he had been a communications technician and code clerk at the US Embassy in New Delhi in 1955, performing tasks for the CIA as well. One of these tasks was to deliver a package to a Chinese Nationalist which Smith later learned, he claimed, contained the two time bombs used to blow up the Air India plane. The veracity of Smith's account cannot be determined, although his employment at the US Embassy in New Delhi from 1954 to 1959 is confirmed by the State Department Biographic Register.{5}
Elsewhere the Senate committee reported that it had "received some evidence of CIA involvement in plans to assassinate President Sukarno of Indonesia", and that the planning had proceeded to the point of identifying an agent whom it was believed might be recruited for the job.{6} (The committee noted that at one time, those at the CIA who were concerned with possible assassinations and appropriate methods were known internally as the "Health Alteration Committee".)
To add to the concern of American leaders, Sukarno had made trips to the Soviet Union and China (though to the White House as well), he had purchased arms from Eastern European countries (but only after being turned down by the United States),{7} he had nationalized many private holdings of the Dutch, and, perhaps most disturbing of all, the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) had made impressive gains electorally and in union-organizing, thus earning an important role in the coalition government.
It was a familiar Third World scenario, and the reaction of Washington policy-makers was equally familiar. Once again, they were unable, or unwilling, to distinguish nationalism from pro-communism, neutralism from wickedness. By any definition of the word, Sukarno was no communist. He was an Indonesian nationalist and a "Sukarnoist" who had crushed the PKI forces in 1948 after the independence struggle had been won.{8} He ran what was largely his own show by granting concessions to both the PKI and the Army, balancing one against the other. As to excluding the PKI, with its more than one million members, from the government, Sukarno declared: "I can't and won't ride a three-legged horse."{9}
To the United States, however, Sukarno's balancing act was too precarious to be left to the vagaries of the Indonesian political process. It mattered not to Washington that the Communist Party was walking the legal, peaceful road, or that there was no particular "crisis" or "chaos" in Indonesia, so favored as an excuse for intervention. Intervention there would be.
It would not be the first. In 1955, during the national election campaign in Indonesia, the CIA had given a million dollars to the Masjumi party, a centrist coalition of Muslim organizations, in a losing bid to thwart Sukarno's Nationalist Party as well as the PKI. According to former CIA officer Joseph Burkholder Smith, the project "provided for complete write-off of the funds, that is, no demand for a detailed accounting of how the funds were spent was required. I could find no clue as to what the Masjumi did with the million dollars."{10}
In 1957, the CIA decided that the situation called for more direct action. It was not difficult to find Indonesian colleagues-in-arms for there already existed a clique of army officers and others who, for personal ambitions and because they disliked the influential position of the PKI, wanted Sukarno out, or at least out of their particular islands. (Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago, consisting of some 3,000 islands.)
The military operation the CIA was opting for was of a scale that necessitated significant assistance from the Pentagon, which could be secured for a political action mission only if approved by the National Security Council's "Special Group" (the small group of top NSC officials who acted in the president's name, to protect him and the country by evaluating proposed covert actions and making certain that the CIA did not go off the deep end; known at other times as the 5412 Committee, the 303 Committee, the 40 Committee, or the Operations Advisory Group).
The manner in which the Agency went about obtaining this approval is a textbook example of how the CIA sometimes determines American foreign policy. Joseph Burkholder Smith, who was in charge of the Agency's Indonesian desk in Washington from mid-1956 to early 1958, has described the process in his memoirs: Instead of first proposing the plan to Washington for approval, where "premature mention ... might get it shot down" ...

we began to feed the State and Defense departments intelligence that no one could deny was a useful contribution to understanding Indonesia. When they had read enough alarming reports, we planned to spring the suggestion we should support the colonels' plans to reduce Sukarno's power. This was a method of operation which became the basis of many of the political action adventures of the 1960s and 1970s. In other words, the statement is false that CIA undertook to intervene in the affairs of countries like Chile only after being ordered to do so by ... the Special Group. ... In many instances, we made the action programs up ourselves after we had collected enough intelligence to make them appear required by the circumstances. Our activity in Indonesia in 1957-1958 was one such instance.{11}

When the Communist Party did well again in local elections held in July, the CIA viewed it as "a great help to us in convincing Washington authorities how serious the Indonesian situation was. The only person who did not seem terribly alarmed at the PKI victories was Ambassador Allison. This was all we needed to convince John Foster Dulles finally that he had the wrong man in Indonesia. The wheels began to turn to remove this last stumbling block in the way of our operation."{12} John Allison, wrote Smith, was not a great admirer of the CIA to begin with. And in early 1958, after less than a year in the post, he was replaced as ambassador by Howard Jones, whose selection "pleased" the CIA Indonesia staff.{13} go to notes
On 30 November 1957, several hand grenades were tossed at Sukarno as he was leaving a school. He escaped injury, but 10 people were killed and 48 children injured. The CIA in Indonesia had no idea who was responsible, but it quickly put out the story that the PKI was behind it "at the suggestion of their Soviet contacts in order to make it appear that Sukarno's opponents were wild and desperate men". As it turned out, the culprits were a Muslim group not associated with the PKI or with the Agency's military plotters.{14}
The issue of Sukarno's supposed hand-in-glove relationship with Communists was pushed at every opportunity. The CIA decided to make capital of reports that a good-looking blonde stewardess had been aboard Sukarno's aircraft everywhere he went during his trip in the Soviet Union and that the same woman had come to Indonesia with Soviet President Kliment Voroshilov and had been seen several times in the company of Sukarno. The idea was that Sukarno's well-known womanizing had trapped him in the spell of a Soviet female agent. He had succumbed to Soviet control, CIA reports implied, as a result of her influence or blackmail, or both. "
This formed the foundation of our flights of fancy," wrote Smith. "We had as a matter of fact, considerable success with this theme. It appeared in the press around the world, and when Round Table, the serious British quarterly of international affairs, came to analyze the Indonesian revolt in its March 1958 issue, it listed Sukarno's being blackmailed by a Soviet female spy as one of the reasons that caused the uprising."
Seemingly, the success of this operation inspired CIA officers in Washington to carry the theme one step further. A substantial effort was made to come up with a pornographic film or at least some still photographs that could pass for Sukarno and his Russian girl friend engaged in "his favorite activity". When scrutiny of available porno films (supplied by the Chief of Police of Los Angeles) failed to turn up a couple who could pass for Sukarno (dark and bald) and a beautiful blonde Russian woman, the CIA undertook to produce its own films, "the very films with which the Soviets were blackmailing Sukarno". The Agency developed a full-face mask of the Indonesian leader which was to be sent to Los Angeles where the police were to pay some porno-film actor to wear it during his big scene. This project resulted in at least some photographs, although they apparently were never used.{15}
Another outcome of the blackmail effort was a film produced for the CIA by Robert Maheu, former FBI agent and intimate of Howard Hughes. Maheu's film starred an actor who resembled Sukarno. The ultimate fate of the film, which was entitled "Happy Days", has not been reported.{16}
In other parts of the world, at other times, the CIA has done better in this line of work, having produced sex films of target subjects caught in flagrante delicto who had been lured to Agency safe-houses by female agents.
In 1960, Col. Truman Smith, US Army Ret., writing in Reader's Digest about the KGB, declared: "It is difficult for most of us to appreciate its menace, as its methods are so debased as to be all but beyond the comprehension of any normal person with a sense of right and wrong." One of the KGB methods the good colonel found so debased was the making of sex films to be used as blackmail. "People depraved enough to employ such methods," he wrote, "find nothing distasteful in more violent methods."{17}
Sex could be used at home as well to further the goals of American foreign policy. Under the cover of the US foreign aid program, at that time called the Economic Cooperation Administration, Indonesian policemen were trained and then recruited to provide information on Soviet, Chinese and PKI activities in their country. Some of the men singled out as good prospects for this work were sent to Washington for special training and to be softened up for recruitment. Like Sukarno, reportedly, these police officers invariably had an obsessive desire to sleep with a white woman. Accordingly, during their stay they were taken to Baltimore's shabby sex district to indulge themselves.{18}

The Special Group's approval of the political action mission was forthcoming in November 1957{19}, and the CIA's paramilitary machine was put into gear. In this undertaking, as in others, the Agency enjoyed the advantage of the United States' far-flung military empire. Headquarters for the operation were established in neighboring Singapore, courtesy of the British; training bases set up in the Philippines; airstrips laid out in various parts of the Pacific to prepare for bomber and transport missions; Indonesians, along with Filipinos, Taiwanese, Americans, and other "soldiers of fortune" were assembled in Okinawa and the Philippines along with vast quantities of arms and equipment.
For this, the CIA's most ambitious military operation to date, tens of thousands of rebels were armed, equipped and trained by the US Army. US Navy submarines, patrolling off the coast of Sumatra, the main island, put over-the-beach parties ashore along with supplies and communications equipment. The US Air Force set up a considerable Air Transport force which air-dropped many thousands of weapons deep into Indonesian territory. And a fleet of 15 B-26 bombers was made available for the conflict after being "sanitized" to ensure that they were "non-attributable" and that all airborne equipment was "deniable".
In the early months of 1958, rebellion began to break out in one part of the Indonesian island chain, then another. CIA pilots took to the air to carry out bombing and strafing missions in support of the rebels. In Washington, Col. Alex Kawilarung, the Indonesian military attachÆ, was persuaded by the Agency to "defect". He soon showed up in Indonesia to take charge of the rebel forces. Yet, as the fighting dragged on into spring, the insurgents proved unable to win decisive victories or take the offensive, although the CIA bombing raids were taking their toll. Sukarno later claimed that on a Sunday morning in April, a plane bombed a ship in the harbor of the island of Ambon -- all those aboard losing their lives -- as well as hitting a church, which demolished the building and killed everyone inside. He stated that 700 casualties had resulted from this single run.
On 15 May, a CIA plane bombed the Ambon marketplace, killing a large number of civilians on their way to church on Ascension Thursday. The Indonesian government had to act to suppress public demonstrations.
Three days later, during another bombing run over Ambon, a CIA pilot, Allen Lawrence Pope, was shot down and captured. Thirty years old, from Perrine, Florida, Pope had flown 55 night missions over Communist lines in Korea for the Air Force. Later he spent two months flying through Communist flak for the CIA to drop supplies to the French at Dien Bien Phu. Now his luck had run out. He was to spend four years as a prisoner in Indonesia before Sukarno acceded to a request from Robert Kennedy for his release.
Pope was captured carrying a set of incriminating documents, including those which established him as a pilot for the US Air Force and the CIA airline CAT. Like all men flying clandestine missions, Pope had gone through an elaborate procedure before taking off to "sanitize" him, as well as his aircraft. But he had apparently smuggled the papers aboard the plane, for he knew that to be captured as an "anonymous, stateless civilian" meant having virtually no legal rights and running the risk of being shot as a spy in accordance with custom. A captured US military man, however, becomes a commodity of value for his captors while he remains alive.
The lndonesian government derived immediate material concessions from the United States as a result of the incident. Whether the Indonesians thereby agreed to keep silent about Pope is not known, but on 27 May the pilot and his documents were presented to the world at a news conference, thus contradicting several recent statements by high American officials.{20} Notable amongst these was President Eisenhower's declaration on 30 April concerning Indonesia: "Our policy is one of careful neutrality and proper deportment all the way through so as not to be taking sides where it is none of our business."{21}
And on 9 May, an editorial in the New York Times had stated:

It is unfortunate that high officials of the Indonesian Government have given further circulation to the false report that the United States Government was sanctioning aid to Indonesia's rebels. The position of the United States Government has been made plain, again and again. Our Secretary of State was emphatic in his declaration that this country would not deviate from a correct neutrality ... the United States is not ready ... to step in to help overthrow a constituted government. Those are the hard facts. Jakarta does not help its case, here, by ignoring them.

With the exposure of Pope and the lack of rebel success in the field, the CIA decided that the light was no longer worth the candle, and began to curtail its support. By the end of June, Indonesian army troops loyal to Sukarno had effectively crushed the dissident military revolt.
The Indonesian leader continued his adroit balancing act between the Communists and the army until 1965, when the latter, likely with the help of the CIA, finally overthrew his regime.

NOTES

return to mid-text
1. Joseph Burkholder Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1976) p. 205.

2. New York Times, 18 May 1956.

3. Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book 4, Final Report of The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (U.S. Senate), April 1976, p. 133.

4. New York Times, 12, 30 April 1955; 3, 4 August 1955; 3 September 1955; 22 November 1967, p. 23.

5. John Discoe Smith, I Was a CIA Agent in India (India, 1967) passim; New York Times, 25 October 1967, p. 17; 22 November, p. 23; 5 December, p. 12; Harry Rositzke, The KGB: The Eyes of Russia (New York, 1981), p. 164.

6. lnterim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, The Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (U.S. Senate), 20 November 1975, p. 4, note.

7. David Wise and Thomas Ross, The Invisible Government (New York, 1965, paperback edition) pp. 149-50.

8. Julie Southwood and Patrick Flanagan, Indonesia: Law, Propaganda and Terror (London, 1983) pp. 26-7.

9. Wise and Ross, p. 148.

10. J.B. Smith, pp. 210-11.

11. Ibid., pp. 228-9.

12. Ibid., p. 240.

13. Ibid., pp. 229, 246.

14. Ibid., p. 243.

15. Sex-blackmail operations: ibid., pp. 238-40, 248. Smith errs somewhat in his comment about Round Table. The article's only (apparent) reference to the Soviet woman is in the comment on p. 133: "Other and more scandalous reasons have been put forward for the President's leaning towards the Communist Party."

16. New York Times, 26 January 1976.

17. Truman Smith, "The Infamous Record of Soviet Espionage", Reader's Digest, August 1960.

18. J.B. Smith, pp. 220-1.

19. Referred to in a memorandum from Allen Dulles to the White House, 7 April 1961; the memo briefly summarizes the main points of the US intervention: Declassified Documents Reference System (Arlington, Va.) released 18 December 1974.

20. The military operation and the Pope affair:
a) Wise and Ross, pp. 145-56.
b) Christopher Robbins, Air America (US, 1979), pp. 88-94.
c) Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, US Air Force, Ret., The Secret Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the World (New York, 1974) pp. 155, 308, 363-6.
d) New York Times, 23 March 1958, p. 2; 19 April; 28 May, p. 9.
e) Sukarno, An Autobiography, as told to Cindy Adams (Hong Kong, 1966) pp. 267-71; first printed in the US in 1965; although a poor piece of writing, the book is worth reading for Sukarno's views on why it is foolish to call him a Communist; how he, as a Third-Worlder who didn't toe the line, was repeatedly snubbed and humiliated by the Eisenhower administration, apart from the intervention; and how American sex magazines contrived to make him look ridiculous.
f) J. B. Smith, pp. 246-7. There appears to be some confusion about the bombing of the church. Smith states that it was Pope who did it on 18 May before being shot down. Either he or other chroniclers have mixed up the events of April and May.

21. Wise and Ross, p. 145.

This is a chapter from Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum
http://www.killinghope.org/

posted April 25, 2006 11:35 PM              

If the Guinness Book of World Records included a category for "cynicism", one could suggest the CIA's creation of "leftist" organizations which condemned poverty, disease, illiteracy, capitalism, and the United States in order to attract committed militants and their money away from legitimate leftist organizations.
The tiny nation of Ecuador in the early 1960s was, as it remains today, a classic of banana-republic underdevelopment; virtually at the bottom of the economic heap in South America; a society in which one percent of the population received an income comparable to United States upper-class standards, while two-thirds of the people had an average family income of about ten dollars per month -- people simply outside the money economy, with little social integration or participation in the national life; a tale told many times in Latin America.
In September 1960, a new government headed by José María Velasco Ibarra came to power. Velasco had won a decisive electoral victory, running on a vaguely liberal, populist, something-for- everyone platform. He was no Fidel Castro, he was not even a socialist, but he earned the wrath of the US State Department and the CIA by his unyielding opposition to the two stated priorities of American policy in Ecuador: breaking relations with Cuba, and clamping down hard on activists of the Communist Party and those to their left.
Over the next three years, in pursuit of those goals, the CIA left as little as possible to chance. A veritable textbook on covert subversion techniques unfolded. In its pages could be found the following, based upon the experiences of Philip Agee, a CIA officer who spent this period in Ecuador.{1}
Almost all political organizations of significance, from the far left to the far right, were infiltrated, often at the highest levels. Amongst other reasons, the left was infiltrated to channel young radicals away from support to Cuba and from anti-Americanism; the right, to instigate and co-ordinate activities along the lines of CIA priorities. If, at a point in time, there was no organization that appeared well-suited to serve a particular need, then one would be created.
Or a new group of "concerned citizens" would appear, fronted with noted personalities, which might place a series of notices in leading newspapers denouncing the penetration of the government by the extreme left and demanding a break with Cuba. Or one of the noted personalities would deliver a speech prepared by the CIA, and then a newspaper editor, or a well-known columnist, would praise it, both gentlemen being on the CIA payroll.
Some of these fronts had an actual existence; for others, even their existence was phoney. On one occasion, the CIA Officer who had created the non-existent "Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Front" was surprised to read in his morning paper that a real organization with that name had been founded. He changed the name of his organization to "Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Action".
Wooing the working class came in for special emphasis. An alphabet-soup of labor organizations, sometimes hardly more than names on stationery, were created, altered, combined, liquidated, and new ones created again, in an almost frenzied attempt to find the right combination to compete with existing left-oriented unions and take national leadership away from them. Union leaders were invited to attend various classes conducted by the CIA in Ecuador or in the United States, all expenses paid, in order to impart to them the dangers of communism to the union movement and to select potential agents.
This effort was not without its irony either. CIA agents would sometimes jealously vie with each other for the best positions in these CIA-created labor organizations; and at times Ecuadorean organizations would meet in "international conferences" with CIA labor fronts from other countries, with almost all of the participants blissfully unaware of who was who or what was what.
In Ecuador, as throughout most of Latin America, the Agency planted phoney anti-communist news items in co-operating newspapers. These items would then be picked up by other CIA stations in Latin America and disseminated through a CIA-owned news agency, a CIA- owned radio station, or through countless journalists being paid on a piece-work basis, in addition to the item being picked up unwittingly by other media, including those in the United States. Anti-communist propaganda and news distortion (often of the most far-fetched variety) written in CIA offices would also appear in Latin American newspapers as unsigned editorials of the papers themselves.
In virtually every department of the Ecuadorean government could be found men occupying positions, high and low, who collaborated with the CIA for money and/or their own particular motivation. At one point, the Agency could count amongst this number the men who were second and third in power in the country.
These government agents would receive the benefits of information obtained by the CIA through electronic eavesdropping or other means, enabling them to gain prestige and promotion, or consolidate their current position in the rough-and-tumble of Ecuadorean politics. A high-ranking minister of leftist tendencies, on the other hand, would be the target of a steady stream of negative propaganda from any or all sources in the CIA arsenal; staged demonstrations against him would further increase the pressure on the president to replace him.
The Postmaster-General, along with other post office employees, all members in good standing of the CIA Payroll Club, regularly sent mail arriving from Cuba and the Soviet bloc to the Agency for its perusal, while customs officials and the Director of Immigration kept the Agency posted on who went to or came from Cuba. When a particularly suitable target returned from Cuba, he would be searched at the airport and documents prepared by the CIA would be "found" on him. These documents, publicized as much as possible, might include instructions on "how to intensify hatred between classes", or some provocative language designed to cause a split in Communist Party ranks. Generally, the documents "verified" the worst fears of the public about communist plans to take over Ecuador under the masterminding of Cuba or the Soviet Union; at the same time, perhaps, implicating an important Ecuadorean leftist whose head the Agency was after. Similar revelations, staged by CIA stations elsewhere in Latin America, would be publicized in Ecuador as a warning that Ecuador was next.
Agency financing of conservative groups in a quasi-religious campaign against Cuba and "atheistic communism" helped to seriously weaken President Velasco's power among the poor, primarily Indians, who had voted overwhelmingly for him, but who were even more deeply committed to their religion. If the CIA wished to know how the president was reacting to this campaign it need only turn to his physician, its agent, Dr. Felipe Ovalle, who would report that his patient was feeling considerable strain as a result.
CIA agents would bomb churches or right-wing organizations and make it appear to be the work of leftists. They would march in left-wing parades displaying signs and shouting slogans of a very provocative anti-military nature, designed to antagonize the armed forces and hasten a coup.
The Agency did not always get away clean with its dirty tricks. During the election campaign, on 19 March 1960, two senior colonels who were the CIA's main liaison agents within the National Police participated in a riot aimed at disrupting a Velasco demonstration. Agency officer Bob Weatherwax was in the forefront directing the police during the riot in which five Velasco supporters were killed and many wounded. When Velasco took office, he had the two colonels arrested and Weatherwax was asked to leave the country.
CIA-supported activities were carried out without the knowledge of the American ambassador. When the Cuban Embassy publicly charged the Agency with involvement in various anti-Cuban activities, the American ambassador issued a statement that "had everyone in the [CIA] station smiling". Stated the ambassador: "The only agents in Ecuador who are paid by the United States are the technicians invited by the Ecuadorean government to contribute to raising the living standards of the Ecuadorean people."
Finally, in November 1961, the military acted. Velasco was forced to resign and was replaced by Vice-President Carlos Julio Arosemana. There were at this time two prime candidates for the vice-presidency. One was the vice-president of the Senate, a CIA agent. The other was the rector of Central University, a political moderate. The day that Congress convened to make their choice, a notice appeared in a morning paper announcing support for the rector by the Communist Party and a militant leftist youth organization. The notice had been placed by a columnist for the newspaper who was the principal propaganda agent for the CIA's Quito station. The rector was compromised rather badly, the denials came too late, and the CIA man won. His Agency salary was increased from $700 to $1,000 a month.
Arosemana soon proved no more acceptable to the CIA than Velasco. All operations continued, particularly the campaign to break relations with Cuba, which Arosemana steadfastly refused to do. The deadlock was broken in March 1962 when a military garrison, led by Col. Aurelio Naranjo, gave Arosemana 72 hours to send the Cubans packing and fire the leftist Minister of Labor. (There is no need to point out here who Naranjo's financial benefactor was.) Arosemana complied with the ultimatum, booting out the Czech and Polish delegations as well at the behest of the new cabinet which had been forced upon him.
At the CIA station in Quito there was a champagne victory celebration. Elsewhere in Ecuador, people angry about the military's domination and desperate about their own lives, took to arms. But on this occasion, like others, it amounted to naught ... a small band of people, poorly armed and trained, infiltrated by agents, their every move known in advance -- confronted by a battalion of paratroopers, superbly armed and trained by the United States. That was in the field. In press reports, the small band grew to hundreds; armed not only to the teeth, but with weapons from "outside the country" (read Cuba), and the whole operation very carefully planned at the Communist Party Congress the month before.
On 11 July 1963 the Presidential Palace in Quito was surrounded by tanks and troops. Arosemana was out, a junta was in. Their first act was to outlaw communism; "communists" and other "extreme" leftists were rounded up and jailed, the arrests campaign being facilitated by data from the CIA's Subversive Control Watch List. (Standard at many Agency stations, this list would include not only the subject's name, but the names and addresses of his relatives and friends and the places he frequented -- anything to aid in tracking him down when the time came.)
Civil liberties were suspended; the 1964 elections canceled; another tale told many times in Latin America.

And during these three years, what were the American people told about this witch's brew of covert actions carried out, supposedly, in their name? Very little, if anything, if the New York Times is any index. Not once during the entire period, up to and including the coup, was any indication given in any article or editorial on Ecuador that the CIA or any other arm of the US government had played any role whatever in any event which had occurred in that country. This is the way the writings read even if one looks back at them with the advantage of knowledge and hindsight and reads between the lines.
There is a solitary exception. Following the coup, we find a tiny announcement on the very bottom of page 20 that Havana radio had accused the United States of instigating the military takeover.{2} The Cuban government had been making public charges about American activities in Ecuador regularly, but this was the first one to make the New York Times. The question must be asked: Why were these charges deemed unworthy of reporting or comment, let alone investigation?

NOTES

1. Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York, 1975) pp. 106-316, passim. Agee's book made him Public Enemy No. One of the CIA. In a review of the book, however, former Agency official Miles Copeland -- while not concealing his distaste for Agee's "betrayal" -- stated that "The book is interesting as an authentic account of how an ordinary American or British `case officer' operates ... As a spy handler in Quito, Montevideo and Mexico City, he has first-hand information ... All of it, just as his publisher claims, is presented `with deadly accuracy'." (The Spectator, London, 11 January 1975, p. 40.)

2. New York Times, 14 July 1963, p. 20. For an interesting and concise discussion of the political leanings of Velasco and Arosemana, see John Gerassi, The Great Fear in Latin America (New York, 1965, revised edition) pp. 141-8.

This is a chapter from Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum

posted April 25, 2006 11:36 PM              

Torture -- as American as apple pie

"The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect."{1}
The words of an instructor in the art of torture. The words of Dan Mitrione, the head of the Office of Public Safety (OPS) mission in Montevideo.
Officially, OPS was a division of the Agency for International Development, but the director of OPS in Washington, Byron Engle, was an old CIA hand. His organization maintained a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often operated abroad under OPS cover, although Mitrione was not one of them.{2}
OPS had been operating formally in Uruguay since 1965, supplying the police with the equipment, the arms, and the training it was created to do. Four years later, when Mitrione arrived, the Uruguayans had a special need for OPS services. The country was in the midst of a long-running economic decline, its once-heralded prosperity and democracy sinking fast toward the level of its South American neighbors. Labor strikes, student demonstrations, and militant street violence had become normal events during the past year; and, most worrisome to the Uruguayan authorities, there were the revolutionaries who called themselves Tupamaros. Perhaps the cleverest, most resourceful and most sophisticated urban guerrillas the world has ever seen, the Tupamaros had a deft touch for capturing the public's imagination with outrageous actions, and winning sympathizers with their Robin Hood philosophy. Their members and secret partisans held key positions in the government, banks, universities, and the professions, as well as in the military and police.
"Unlike other Latin-American guerrilla groups," the New York Times stated in 1970, "the Tupamaros normally avoid bloodshed when possible. They try instead to create embarrassment for the Government and general disorder."{3} A favorite tactic was to raid the files of a private corporation to expose corruption and deceit in high places, or kidnap a prominent figure and try him before a "People's Court". It was heady stuff to choose a public villain whose acts went uncensored by the legislature, the courts and the press, subject him to an informed and uncompromising interrogation, and then publicize the results of the intriguing dialogue. Once they ransacked an exclusive high-class nightclub and scrawled on the walls perhaps their most memorable slogan: O Bailan Todos O No Baila Nadie ... Either everyone dances or no one dances.

Dan Mitrione did not introduce the practice of torturing political prisoners to Uruguay. It had been perpetrated by the police at times from at least the early 1960s. However, in a surprising interview given to a leading Brazilian newspaper in 1970, the former Uruguayan Chief of Police Intelligence, Alejandro Otero, declared that US advisers, and in particular Mitrione, had instituted torture as a more routine measure; to the means of inflicting pain, they had added scientific refinement; and to that a psychology to create despair, such as playing a tape in the next room of women and children screaming and telling the prisoner that it was his family being tortured.{4}
"The violent methods which were beginning to be employed," said Otero, "caused an escalation in Tupamaro activity. Before then their attitude showed that they would use violence only as a last resort."{5}
The newspaper interview greatly upset American officials in South America and Washington. Byron Engle later tried to explain it all away by asserting: "The three Brazilian reporters in Montevideo all denied filing that story. We found out later that it was slipped into the paper by someone in the composing room at the Jornal do Brasil."{6}
Otero had been a willing agent of the CIA, a student at their International Police Services school in Washington, a recipient of their cash over the years, but he was not a torturer. What finally drove him to speak out was perhaps the torture of a woman who, while a Tupamaro sympathizer, was also a friend of his. When she told him that Mitrione had watched and assisted in her torture, Otero complained to him, about this particular incident as well as his general methods of extracting information. The only outcome of the encounter was Otero's demotion.{7}

William Cantrell was a CIA operations officer stationed in Montevideo, ostensibly as a member of the OPS team. In the mid- 1960s he was instrumental in setting up a Department of Information and Intelligence (DII), and providing it with funds and equipment.{8} Some of the equipment, innovated by the CIA's Technical Services Division, was for the purpose of torture, for this was one of the functions carried out by the DII.{9} "
One of the pieces of equipment that was found useful," former New York Times correspondent A. J. Langguth learned, "was a wire so very thin that it could be fitted into the mouth between the teeth and by pressing against the gum increase the electrical charge. And it was through the diplomatic pouch that Mitrione got some of the equipment he needed for interrogations, including these fine wires."{10}
Things got so bad in Mitrione's time that the Uruguayan Senate was compelled to undertake an investigation. After a five-month study, the commission concluded unanimously that torture in Uruguay had become a "normal, frequent and habitual occurrence", inflicted upon Tupamaros as well as others. Among the types of torture the commission's report made reference to were electric shocks to the genitals, electric needles under the fingernails, burning with cigarettes, the slow compression of the testicles, daily use of psychological torture ... "pregnant women were subjected to various brutalities and inhuman treatment" ... "certain women were imprisoned with their very young infants and subjected to the same treatment" ...{11}
Eventually the DII came to serve as a cover for the Escuadrón de la Muerte (Death Squad), composed, as elsewhere in Latin America, primarily of police officers, who bombed and strafed the homes of suspected Tupamaro sympathizers and engaged in assassination and kidnapping. The Death Squad received some of its special explosive material from the Technical Services Division and, in all likelihood, some of the skills employed by its members were acquired from instruction in the United States.{12} Between 1969 and 1973, at least 16 Uruguayan police officers went through an eight-week course at CIA/OPS schools in Washington and Los Fresnos, Texas in the design, manufacture and employment of bombs and incendiary devices.{13} The official OPS explanation for these courses was that policemen needed such training in order to deal with bombs placed by terrorists. There was, however, no instruction in destroying bombs, only in making them; moreover, on at least one reported occasion, the students were not policemen, but members of a private right-wing organization in Chile (see chapter on Chile). Another part of the curriculum which might also have proven to be of value to the Death Squad was the class on Assassination Weapons -- "A discussion of various weapons which may be used by the assassin" is how OPS put it.{14}
Equipment and training of this kind was in addition to that normally provided by OPS: riot helmets, transparent shields, tear gas, gas masks, communication gear, vehicles, police batons, and other devices for restraining crowds. The supply of these tools of the trade was increased in 1968 when public disturbances reached the spark-point, and by 1970 American training in riot-control techniques had been given to about a thousand Uruguayan policemen.{15}

Dan Mitrione had built a soundproofed room in the cellar of his house in Montevideo. In this room he assembled selected Uruguayan police officers to observe a demonstration of torture techniques. Another observer was Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, a Cuban who was with the CIA and worked with Mitrione. Hevia later wrote that the course began with a description of the human anatomy and nervous system ...

Soon things turned unpleasant. As subjects for the first testing they took beggars, known in Uruguay as bichicomes, from the outskirts of Montevideo, as well as a woman apparently from the frontier area with Brazil. There was no interrogation, only a demonstration of the effects of different voltages on the different parts of the human body, as well as demonstrating the use of a drug which induces vomiting -- I don't know why or what for -- and another chemical substance. The four of them died.{16}

In his book Hevia does not say specifically what Mitrione's direct part in all this was, but he later publicly stated that the OPS chief "personally tortured four beggars to death with electric shocks".{17}
On another occasion, Hevia sat with Mitrione in the latter's house, and over a few drinks the American explained to the Cuban his philosophy of interrogation. Mitrione considered it to be an art. First there should be a softening-up period, with the usual beatings and insults. The object is to humiliate the prisoner, to make him realize his helplessness, to cut him off from reality. No questions, only blows and insults. Then, only blows in silence.
Only after this, said Mitrione, is the interrogation. Here no pain should be produced other than that caused by the instrument which is being used. "The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect," was his motto.
During the session you have to keep the subject from losing all hope of life, because this can lead to stubborn resistance. "You must always leave him some hope ... a distant light."
"When you get what you want, and I always get it," Mitrione continued, "it may be good to prolong the session a little to apply another softening-up. Not to extract information now, but only as a political measure, to create a healthy fear of meddling in subversive activities."
The American pointed out that upon receiving a subject the first thing is to determine his physical state, his degree of resistance, by means of a medical examination. "A premature death means a failure by the technician ... It's important to know in advance if we can permit ourselves the luxury of the subject's death."{18}
Not long after this conversation, Manual Hevia disappeared from Montevideo and turned up in Havana. He had been a Cuban agent -- a double agent -- all along.
About half a year later, 31 July 1970 to be exact, Dan Mitrione was kidnapped by the Tupamaros. They did not torture him. They demanded the release of some 150 prisoners in exchange for him. With the determined backing of the Nixon administration, the Uruguayan government refused. On 10 August, Mitrione's dead body was found on the back seat of a stolen car. He had turned 50 on his fifth day as a prisoner.
Back in Mitrione's home town of Richmond, Indiana, Secretary of State William Rogers and President Nixon's son-in-law David Eisenhower attended the funeral for Mitrione, the city's former police chief. Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis came to town to stage a benefit show for Mitrione's family.
And White House spokesman, Ron Ziegler, solemnly stated that "Mr. Mitrione's devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere."{19}
"A perfect man," his widow said.
"A great humanitarian," said his daughter Linda.{20} go to notes

The military's entry into the escalating conflict signaled the beginning of the end for the Tupamaros. By the end of 1972, the curtain was descending on their guerrilla theatre. Six months later, the military was in charge, Congress was dissolved, and everything not prohibited was compulsory. For the next 11 years, Uruguay competed strongly for the honor of being South America's most repressive dictatorship. It had, at one point, the largest number of political prisoners per capita in the world. And, as every human rights organization and former prisoner could testify, each one of them was tortured. "Torture," said an activist priest, "was routine and automatic."{21}
No one was dancing in Uruguay.

In 1981, at the Fourteenth Conference of American Armies, the Uruguayan Army offered a paper in which it defined subversion as "actions, violent or not, with ultimate purposes of a political nature, in all fields of human activity within the internal sphere of a state and whose aims are perceived as not convenient for the overall political system."{22}
The dissident Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano, summed up his country's era of dictatorship thusly: "People were in prison so that prices could be free."{23}
The film "State of Siege" appeared in 1972. It centered around Mitrione and the Tupamaros and depicted a Uruguayan police officer receiving training at a secret bomb school in the United States, though the film strove more to provide a composite picture of the role played by the US in repression throughout Latin America. A scheduled premier showing of the film at the federally-funded John F. Kennedy Arts Center in Washington was canceled. There was already growing public and congressional criticism of this dark side of American foreign policy without adding to it. During the mid-1970s, however, Congress enacted several pieces of legislation which abolished the entire Public Safety Program. In its time, OPS had provided training for more than one million policemen in the Third World. Ten thousand of them had received advance training in the United States. An estimated $150 million worth of equipment had been shipped to police forces abroad.{24} Now, the "export of repression" was to cease.
That was on paper. The reality appears to be somewhat different.
To a large extent, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) simply picked up where OPS had left off. The drug agency was ideally suited for the task, for its agents were already deployed all over Latin America and elsewhere overseas in routine liaison with foreign police forces. The DEA acknowledged in 1975 that 53 "former" employees of the CIA were now on its staff and that there was a close working relationship between the two agencies. The following year, the General Accounting Office reported that DEA agents were engaging in many of the same activities the OPS had been carrying out.
In addition, some training of foreign policemen was transferred to FBI schools in Washington and Quantico, Virginia; the Defense Department continued to supply police-type equipment to military units engaged in internal security operations; and American arms manufacturers were doing a booming business furnishing arms and training to Third World governments. In some countries, contact between these companies and foreign law enforcement officials was facilitated by the US Embassy or military mission. The largest of the arms manufacturers, Smith and Wesson, ran its own Academy in Springfield, Massachusetts, which provided American and foreign "public and industrial security forces with expert training in riot control".{25}
Said Argentine Minister Jose Lopez Rega at the signing of a US-Argentina anti-drug treaty in 1974: "We hope to wipe out the drug traffic in Argentina. We have caught guerrillas after attacks who were high on drugs. The guerrillas are the main drug users in Argentina. Therefore, this anti-drug campaign will automatically be an anti-guerrilla campaign as well."{26}
And in 1981, a former Uruguayan intelligence officer declared that US manuals were being used to teach techniques of torture to his country's military. He said that most of the officers who trained him had attended classes run by the United States in Panama. Among other niceties, the manuals listed 35 nerve points where electrodes could be applied.{27}

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Philip Agee, after he left Ecuador, was stationed in Uruguay from March 1964 to August 1966. His account of CIA activities in Montevideo is further testimony to the amount of international mischief money can buy. Amongst the multifarious dirty tricks pulled off with impunity by Agee and his Agency cohorts, the following constitute an interesting sample:{28}
A Latin American students' conference with a leftist leaning, held in Montevideo, was undermined by promoting the falsehood that it was nothing more than a creature of the Soviet Union -- originated, financed and directed by Moscow. Editorials on this theme authored by the CIA appeared in leading newspapers to which the Agency had daily access. This was followed by publication of a forged letter of a student leader thanking the Soviet cultural attaché for his assistance. A banner headline in one paper proclaimed: "Documents for the Break with Russia", which was indeed the primary purpose of the operation.
An inordinate amount of time, energy and creativity was devoted, with moderate success, to schemes aimed at encouraging the expulsion of an assortment of Russians, East Germans, North Koreans, Czechs, and Cubans from Uruguayan soil, if not the breaking of relations with these countries. In addition to planting disparaging media propaganda, the CIA tried to obtain incriminating information by reading the mail and diplomatic cables to and from these countries, tapping embassy phones, and engaging in sundry bugging and surreptitious entry. The Agency would then prepare "Intelligence" reports, containing enough factual information to be plausible, which then made their way innocently into the hands of officials of influence, up to and including the president of the republic.
Anti-communist indoctrination of secondary-level students was promoted by financing particular school organizations and publications.
A Congress of the People, bringing together a host of community groups, labor organizations, students, government workers, etc., Communist and non-Communist, disturbed the CIA because of the potential for a united front being formed for electoral purposes. Accordingly, newspaper editorials and articles were generated attacking the Congress as a classic Communist takeover/duping tactic and calling upon non-Communists to refrain from participating; and a phoney handbill was circulated in which the Congress called upon the Uruguayan people to launch an insurrectional strike with immediate occupation of their places of work. Thousands of the handbills were handed out, provoking angry denials from the Congress organizers, but, as is usual in such cases, the damage was already done.
The Uruguayan Communist Party planned to host an international conference to express solidarity with Cuba. The CIA merely had to turn to their (paid) friend, the Minister of the Interior, and the conference was banned. When it was shifted to Chile, the CIA station in Santiago performed the same magic.
Uruguay at this time was a haven for political exiles from repressive regimes such as in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. The CIA, through surveillance and infiltration of the exile community, regularly collected information on exiles' activities, associates, etc., to be sent to CIA stations in the exiles' homelands with likely transmission to their governments, which wanted to know what these troublemakers were up to and which did not hesitate to harass them across frontiers.
"Other operations," wrote Agee, "were designed to take control of the streets away from communists and other leftists, and our squads, often with the participation of off-duty policemen, would break up their meetings and generally terrorize them. Torture of communists and other extreme leftists was used in interrogation by our liaison agents in the police."

The monitoring and harassment of Communist diplomatic missions by the CIA, as described above, was standard Agency practice throughout the Western world. This rarely stemmed from anything more than a juvenile cold-war reflex: making life hard for the commies. Looked at from any angle, it was politically and morally pointless. Richard Gott, the Latin America specialist of The Guardian of London, related an anecdote which is relevant:

In January 1967 a group of Brazilians and a Uruguayan asked for political asylum in the Czech embassy in Montevideo, stating that they wished to go to a Socialist country to pursue their revolutionary activities. They were, they said, under constant surveillance and harassment from the Uruguayan police. The Czech ambassador was horrified by their request and threw them out, saying that there was no police persecution in Uruguay. When the revolutionaries camped in his garden the ambassador called the police.{29}

Postscript: In 1998, Eladio Moll, a retired Uruguayan navy rear admiral and former intelligence chief, testifying before a commission of the Uruguayan Chamber of Deputies, stated that during Uruguay's "dirty war" (1972-1983), orders came from the United States to kill captive members of the Tupamaros after interrogating them. "The guidance that was sent from the US," said Moll, "was that what had to be done with the captured guerrillas was to get information, and that afterwards they didn't deserve to live." {30}

NOTES

1. Manuel Hevia Cosculluela, Pasaporte 11333: Ocho Años con la CIA (Havana, 1978), p. 286.

2. A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors (New York, 1978) pp. 48-9, 51 and passim. Langguth was formerly with the New York Times and in 1965 served as Saigon Bureau Chief for the newspaper.

3. New York Times, 1 August 1970.

4. Langguth, pp. 285-7; New York Times, 15 August 1970.

5. Alain Labrousse, The Tupamaros: Urban Guerrillas in Uruguay (Penguin Books, London, 1973, translation from French 1970 edition) p. 103.

6. Langguth, p. 289.

7. Langguth, pp. 232-3, 253-4; Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York, 1975), see index (Otero's relationship to the CIA).

8. Major Carlos Wilson, The Tupamaros: The Unmentionables (Boston, 1974) pp. 106-7; Langguth, p. 236. Agee, p. 478, confirms Cantrell's identity.

9. Langguth, p. 252.

10. Interview of Langguth in the film "On Company Business" (Directed by Allan Francovich), cited in Warner Poelchau, ed., White Paper, Whitewash (New York, 1981) p. 66.

11. Extracts from the report of the Senate Commission of Inquiry into Torture, a document accompanying the film script in State of Siege (Ballantine Books, New York, 1973) pp. 194-6; also see "Death of a Policeman: Unanswered Questions About a Tragedy", Commonweal (Catholic biweekly magazine, New York), 18 September 1970, p. 457; Langguth, p. 249.

12. Death Squad, TSD: Langguth, pp. 245-6, 253.

13. Michael Klare and Nancy Stein, "Police Terrorism in Latin America", NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report (North American Congress on Latin America), January 1974, pp. 19-23, based on State Department documents obtained by Senator James Abourezk in 1973; also see Jack Anderson, Washington Post, 8 October 1973, p. C33; Langguth, pp. 242-3.

14. Klare and Stein, p. 19.

15. New York Times, 25 September 1968, 1 August 1970; Langguth, p. 241.

16. Hevia, p. 284, translated from the Spanish and slightly paraphrased by author; a similar treatment of this and other passages from Hevia can be found in Langguth, pp. 311-13.

17. New York Times, 5 August 1978, p. 3.

18. Mitrione's philosophy: Hevia, pp. 286-7 (see note 16 above).

19. Poelchau, p. 68.

20. Langguth, p. 305.

21. The Guardian (London) 19 October 1984.

22. Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts With Torturers (Penguin Books, 1991) p. 121

23. Ibid., p. 147, said to Weschler by Galeano.

24. Nancy Stein and Michael Klare, "Merchants of Repression", NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report (North American Congress on Latin America), July-August 1976, p. 31.

25. DEA, arms manufacturers, etc.: Stein and Klare, pp. 31-2; New York Times, 23 January 1975, p. 38; 26 January 1975, p 42; Langguth, p. 301.

26. Argentine Commission for Human Rights, Washington, DC: Report entitled "U.S. Narcotics Enforcement Assistance to Latin America", 10 March 1977, reference to a May 1974 press conference in Argentina.

27. San Francisco Chronicle, 2 November 1981.

28. Agee, pp. 325-493, passim.

29. From Gott's Introduction to Labrousse, p. 7.

30. Cable News Network en Español, 23 July 1998; El Diario-La Prensa (New York) 24 July 1998; Clarin (Buenos Aires) 22 July 1998, p. 45

This is a chapter from Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum

posted April 25, 2006 11:38 PM              

"Those who do not believe in the ideology of the United States, shall not be allowed to stay in the United States," declared the American Attorney General, Tom Clark, in January 1948.{1}
In March, the Justice Department, over which Clark presided, determined that Italians who did not believe in the ideology of the United States would not be allowed to emigrate to, or even enter, the United States.
This was but one tactic in a remarkable American campaign to ensure that Italians who did not believe in the ideology of the United States would not be allowed to form a government of a differing ideology in Italy in their election of 1948.
Two years earlier, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), one of the largest in the world, and the Socialist Party (PSI) had together garnered more votes and more seats in the Constituent Assembly election than the Christian Democrats. But the two parties of the left had run separate candidates and thus had to be content with some ministerial posts in a coalition cabinet under a Christian Democrat premier. The results, nonetheless, spoke plainly enough to put the fear of Marx into the Truman administration.
For the 1948 election, scheduled for 18 April, the PCI and PSI united to form the Popular Democratic Front (FDP) and in February won municipal elections in Pescara with a 10 percent increase in their vote over 1946. The Christian Democrats ran a poor second. The prospect of the left winning control of the Italian government loomed larger than ever before. It was at this point that the US began to train its big economic and political guns upon the Italian people. All the good ol' Yankee know-how, all the Madison Avenue savvy in the art of swaying public opinion, all the Hollywood razzmatazz would be brought to bear on the "target market".
Pressing domestic needs in Italy, such as agricultural and economic reform, the absence of which produced abysmal extremes of wealth and poverty, were not to be the issues of the day. The lines of battle would be drawn around the question of "democracy" vs. "communism" (the idea of "capitalism" remaining discreetly to one side). The fact that the Communists had been the single most active anti-fascist group in Italy during the war, undergoing ruthless persecution, while the Christian Democrat government of 1948 and other electoral opponents on the right were riddled through with collaborators, monarchists and plain unreconstructed fascists ... this too would be ignored; indeed, turned around. It was now a matter of Communist "dictatorship" vs. their adversaries' love of "freedom": this was presumed a priori. As one example, a group of American congressmen visited Italy in summer 1947 and casually and arbitrarily concluded that "The country is under great pressure from within and without to veer to the left and adopt a totalitarian-collective national organization."{2}
To make any of this at all credible, the whole picture had to be pushed and squeezed into the frame of The American Way of Life vs. The Soviet Way of Life, a specious proposition which must have come as somewhat of a shock to leftists who regarded themselves as Italian and neither Russian nor American.
In February 1948, after non-Communist ministers in Czechoslovakia had boycotted cabinet meetings over a dispute concerning police hiring practices, the Communist government dissolved the coalition cabinet and took sole power. The Voice of America pointed to this event repeatedly, as a warning to the Italian people of the fate awaiting them if Italy "went Communist" (and used as well by anti-communists for decades afterward as a prime example of communist duplicity). Yet, by all appearances, the Italian Christian Democrat government and the American government had conspired the previous year in an even more blatant usurpation of power.
In January 1947, when Italian Premier Alcide de Gasperi visited Washington at the United States' invitation, his overriding concern was to plead for crucial financial assistance for his war-torn, impoverished country. American officials may have had a different priority. Three days after returning to Italy, de Gasperi unexpectedly dissolved his cabinet, which included several Communists and Socialists. The press reported that many people in Italy believed that de Gasperi's action was related to his visit to the United States and was aimed at decreasing leftist, principally Communist, influence in the government. After two weeks of tortuous delay, the formation of a center or center-right government sought by de Gasperi proved infeasible; the new cabinet still included Communists and Socialists although the left had lost key positions, notably the ministries of foreign affairs and finance.
From this point until May, when de Gasperi's deputy, Ivan Lombardo, led a mission to Washington to renew the request for aid, promised loans were "frozen" by the United States for reasons not very clear. On several occasions during this period the Italian left asserted their belief that the aid was being held up pending the ouster of leftists from the cabinet. The New York Times was moved to note that, "Some observers here feel that a further Leftward swing in Italy would retard aid." As matters turned out, the day Lombardo arrived in Washington, de Gasperi again dissolved his entire cabinet and suggested that the new cabinet would manage without the benefit of leftist members. This was indeed what occurred, and over the ensuing few months, exceedingly generous American financial aid flowed into Italy, in addition to the cancelation of the nation's $1 billion debt to the United States.{3}
At the very same time, France, which was also heavily dependent upon American financial aid, ousted all its Communist ministers as well. In this case there was an immediate rationale: the refusal of the Communist ministers to support Premier Ramadier in a vote of confidence over a wage freeze. Despite this, the ouster was regarded as a "surprise" and considered "bold" in France, and opinion was widespread that American loans were being used, or would be used, to force France to align with the US. Said Ramadier: "A little of our independence is departing from us with each loan we obtain."{4}

As the last month of the 1948 election campaign began, Time magazine pronounced the possible leftist victory to be "the brink of catastrophe".{5}
"It was primarily this fear," William Colby, former Director of the CIA, has written, "that had led to the formation of the Office of Policy Coordination, which gave the CIA the capability to undertake covert political, propaganda, and paramilitary operations in the first place."{6} But covert operations, as far as is known, played a relatively minor role in the American campaign to break the back of the Italian left. It was the very overtness of the endeavor, without any apparent embarrassment, that stamps the whole thing with such uniqueness and arrogance -- one might say swagger. The fortunes of the FDP slid downhill with surprising acceleration in the face of an awesome mobilization of resources such as the following:{7} go to notes

* A massive letter writing campaign from Americans of Italian extraction to their relatives and friends in Italy -- at first written by individuals in their own words or guided by "sample letters" in newspapers, soon expanded to mass-produced, pre- written, postage-paid form letters, cablegrams, "educational circulars", and posters, needing only an address and signature. And -- from a group calling itself The Committee to Aid Democracy in Italy -- half a million picture postcards illustrating the gruesome fate awaiting Italy if it voted for "dictatorship" or "foreign dictatorship". In all, an estimated 10 million pieces of mail were written and distributed by newspapers, radio stations, churches, the American Legion, wealthy individuals, etc.; and business advertisements now included offers to send letters airmail to Italy even if you didn't buy the product. All this with the publicly expressed approval of the Acting Secretary of State and the Post Office which inaugurated special "Freedom Flights" to give greater publicity to the dispatch of the mail to Italy.
The form letters contained messages such as: "A communist victory would ruin Italy. The United States would withdraw aid and a world war would probably result." ... "We implore you not to throw our beautiful Italy into the arms of that cruel despot communism. America hasn't anything against communism in Russia [sic], but why impose it on other people, other lands, in that way putting out the torch of liberty?" ... "If the forces of true democracy should lose in the Italian election, the American Government will not send any more money to Italy and we won't send any more money to you, our relatives."
These were by no means the least sophisticated of the messages. Other themes emphasized were Russian domination of Italy, loss of religion and the church, loss of family life, loss of home and land.
Veteran newsman Howard K. Smith pointed out at the time that "For an Italian peasant a telegram from anywhere is a wondrous thing; and a cable from the terrestrial paradise of America is not lightly to be disregarded."
The letters threatening to cut off gifts may have been equally intimidating. "Such letters," wrote a Christian Democrat official in an Italian newspaper, "struck home in southern Italian and Sicilian villages with the force of lightning." A 1949 poll indicated that 16 percent of Italians claimed relatives in the United States with whom they were in touch; this, apparently, was in addition to friends there.

* The State Department backed up the warnings in the letters by announcing that "If the Communists should win ... there would be no further question of assistance from the United States." The Italian left felt compelled to regularly assure voters that this would not really happen. This, in turn, inspired American officials, including Secretary of State George Marshall, to repeat the threat. (Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.)

* A daily series of direct short-wave broadcasts to Italy backed by the State Department and featuring prominent Americans. (The State Department estimated that there were 1.2 million short-wave receivers in Italy as of 1946.) The Attorney General went on the air and assured the Italian people that the election was a "choice between democracy and communism, between God and godlessness, between order and chaos." William Donovan, the wartime head of the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) warned that "under a communist dictatorship in Italy," many of the "nation's industrial plants would be dismantled and shipped to Russia and millions of Italy's workers would be deported to Russia for forced labor." If this were not enough to impress the Italian listeners, a parade of unknown but passionate refugees from Eastern Europe went before the microphone to recount horror stories of life behind "The Iron Curtain".

* Several commercial radio stations broadcast to Italy special services held in American Catholic churches to pray for the Pope in "this, his most critical hour". On one station, during an entire week, hundreds of Italian-Americans from all walks of life delivered one-minute messages to Italy which were relayed through the short-wave station. Station WOV in New York invited Italian war brides to transcribe a personal message to their families back home. The station then mailed the recordings to Italy.

* Voice of America daily broadcasts into Italy were sharply increased, highlighting news of American assistance or gestures of friendship to Italy. A sky-full of show-biz stars, including Frank Sinatra and Gary Cooper, recorded a series of radio programs designed to win friends and influence the vote in Italy. Five broadcasts of Italian-American housewives were aired, and Italian-Americans with some leftist credentials were also enlisted for the cause. Labor leader Luigi Antonini called upon Italians to "smash the Muscovite fifth column" which "follows the orders of the ferocious Moscow tyranny," or else Italy would become an "enemy totalitarian country".
To counter Communist charges in Italy that negroes in the United States were denied opportunities, the VOA broadcast the story of a negro couple who had made a fortune in the junk business and built a hospital for their people in Oklahoma City. (It should be remembered that in 1948 American negroes had not yet reached the status of second-class citizens.)

* Italian radio stations carried a one-hour show from Hollywood put on to raise money for the orphans of Italian pilots who had died in the war. (It was not reported if the same was done for the orphans of German pilots.)

* American officials in Italy widely distributed leaflets extolling US economic aid and staged exhibitions among low-income groups. The US Information Service presented an exhibition on "The Worker in America" and made extensive use of documentary and feature films to sell the American way of life. It was estimated that in the period immediately preceding the election more than five million Italians each week saw American documentaries. The 1939 Hollywood film "Ninotchka", which satirized life in Russia, was singled out as a particularly effective feature film. It was shown throughout working-class areas and the Communists made several determined efforts to prevent its presentation. After the election, a pro-Communist worker was reported as saying that "What licked us was `Ninotchka'."

* The Justice Department served notice that Italians who joined the Communist Party would be denied that dream of so many Italians, emigration to America. The State Department then ruled that any Italians known to have voted for the Communists would not be allowed to even enter the terrestrial paradise. (A Department telegram to a New York politico read: "Voting Communist appears to constitute affiliation with Communist Party within meaning of Immigration Law and therefore would require exclusion from United States.") It was urged that this information be emphasized in letters to Italy.

* President Truman accused the Soviet Union of plotting the subjugation of Western Europe and called for universal military training in the United States and a resumption of military conscription to forestall "threatened communist control and police-state rule". During the campaign, American and British warships were frequently found anchored off Italian ports. Time, in an edition widely displayed and commented upon in Italy shortly before the election, gave its approval to the sentiment that "The U.S. should make it clear that it will use force, if necessary, to prevent Italy from going Communist."{8}

* The United States and Italy signed a ten-year treaty of "friendship, commerce and navigation". This was the first treaty of its kind entered into by the US since the war, a point emphasized for Italian consumption.

* A "Friendship Train" toured the United States gathering gifts and then traveled round Italy distributing them. The train was painted red, white and blue, and bore large signs expressing the friendship of American citizens toward the people of Italy.

* The United States government stated that it favored Italian trusteeship over some of its former African colonies, such as Ethiopia and Libya, a wholly unrealistic proposal that could never come to pass in the post-war world. (The Soviet Union made a similar proposal.)

* The US, Great Britain and France maneuvered the Soviet Union into vetoing, for the third time, a motion that Italy be admitted to the United Nations. (The first time, the Russians had expressed their opposition on the grounds that a peace treaty with Italy had not been signed. After the signing in 1947, they said they would accept the proposal if other World War II enemies, such as Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania were also made members.)

* The same three allied nations proposed to the Soviet Union that negotiations take place with a view to returning Trieste to Italy. Formerly the principal Italian port on the Adriatic coast, bordering Yugoslavia, Trieste had been made a "free city" under the terms of the peace treaty. The approval of the Soviet Union was necessary to alter the treaty, and the Western proposal was designed to put the Russians on the spot. The Italian people had an intense sentimental attachment to Trieste, and if the Russians rejected the proposal it could seriously embarrass the Italian Communists. A Soviet acceptance, however, would antagonize their Yugoslav allies. The US prodded the Russians for a response, but none was forthcoming. From the Soviet point of view, the most obvious and safest path to follow would have been to delay their answer until after the election. Yet they chose to announce their rejection of the proposal only five days before the vote, thus hammering another nail into the FDP coffin.

* A "Manifesto of peace to freedom-loving Italians", calling upon them to reject Communism, was sent to Premier de Gasperi. Its signatories included two former US Secretaries of State, a former Assistant Secretary of State, a former Attorney General, a former Supreme Court Justice, a former Governor of New York, the former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and many other prominent personages. This message was, presumably, suitably publicized throughout Italy, a task easy in the extreme inasmuch as an estimated 82 percent of Italian newspapers were in the hands of those unsympathetic to the leftist bloc.

* More than 200 American labor leaders of Italian origin held a conference, out of which came a cable sent to 23 daily newspapers throughout Italy similarly urging thumbs down on the Reds. At the same time, the Italian-American Labor Council contributed $50,000 to anti-Communist labor organizations in Italy. The CIA was already secretly subsidizing such trade unions to counteract the influence of leftist unions,{9} but this was standard Agency practice independent of electoral considerations. (According to a former CIA officer, when, in 1945, the Communists came very near to gaining control of labor unions, first in Sicily, then in all Italy and southern France, co-operation between the OSS and the Mafia successfully stemmed the tide.){10}

* The CIA, by its own later admission, gave $1 million to Italian "center parties", a king's ransom in Italy 1948{11}, although another report places the figure at $10 million. The Agency also forged documents and letters purported to come from the PCI which were designed to put the party in a bad light and discredit its leaders; anonymous books and magazine articles funded by the CIA told in vivid detail about supposed communist activities in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; pamphlets dealt with PCI candidates' sex and personal lives as well as smearing them with the fascist and/or anti-church brush.{12}

* An American group featuring noted Italian-American musicians traveled to Rome to present a series of concerts.

* President Truman chose a month before the election as the time to transfer 29 merchant ships to the Italian government as a "gesture of friendship and confidence in a democratic Italy". (These were Italian vessels seized during the war and others to replace those seized and lost.)

* Four days later, the House Appropriations Committee acted swiftly to approve $18.7 million in additional "interim aid" funds for Italy.

* Two weeks later, the United States gave Italy $4.3 million as the first payment on wages due to 60,000 former Italian war prisoners in the US who had worked "voluntarily" for the Allied cause. This was a revision of the peace treaty which stipulated that the Italian government was liable for such payments.

* Six days before election day, the State Department made it public that Italy would soon receive $31 million in gold in return for gold looted by the Nazis. (The fact that only a few years earlier Italy had been the "enemy" fighting alongside the Nazis was now but a dim memory.)

* Two days later, the US government authorized two further large shipments of food to Italy, one for $8 million worth of grains. A number of the aid ships, upon their arrival in Italy during the election campaign, had been unloaded amid ceremony and a speech by the American ambassador.
A poster prominent in Italy read: "The bread that we eat -- 40 per cent Italian flour -- 60 per cent American flour sent free of charge." The poster neglected to mention whether the savings were passed on to the consumer or served to line the pockets of the baking companies.

* Four days before election day, the American Commission for the Restoration of Italian Monuments, Inc. announced an additional series of grants to the Italian Ministry of Fine Arts.

* April 15 was designated "Free Italy Day" by the American Sympathizers for a Free Italy with nation-wide observances to be held.

* The American ambassador, James Clement Dunn, traveled constantly throughout Italy pointing out to the population "on every possible occasion what American aid has meant to them and their country". At the last unloading of food, Dunn declared that the American people were saving Italy from starvation, chaos and possible domination from outside. His speeches usually received wide coverage in the non-left press. By contrast, the Italian government prohibited several of its own ambassadors abroad from returning home to campaign for the FDP.

In his historic speech of 12 March 1947, which came to be known as "The Truman Doctrine", the president had proclaimed:

I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.{13}

It scarcely needs to be emphasized how hypocritical this promise proved to be, but the voices which spoke out in the United States against their government's crusade in Italy were few and barely audible above the roar. The Italian-American Committee for Free Elections in Italy held a rally to denounce the propaganda blitz, declaring that "Thousands of Americans of Italian origin feel deeply humiliated by the continuous flow of suggestions, advice and pressure put on the Italians, as though they were unable to decide for themselves whom to elect."{14}
The Progressive Party also went on record, stating: "As Americans we repudiate our Government's threat to cut off food from Italy unless the election results please us. Hungry children must not go unfed because their parents do not vote as ordered from abroad."{15} The party's candidate for president in 1948 was Henry Wallace, the former vice-president who was an outspoken advocate of genuine detente with the Soviet Union. History did not provide the opportunity to observe what the reaction would have been -- amongst those who saw nothing wrong with what the United States was doing in Italy -- if a similar campaign had been launched by the Soviet Union or the Italian left in the United States on behalf of Wallace.

Though some Italians must have been convinced at times that Stalin himself was the FDP's principal candidate, the actual Soviet intervention in the election hardly merited a single headline. The American press engaged in speculation that the Russians were pouring substantial sums of money into the Communist Party's coffers. However, a survey carried out by the Italian bureau of the United Press revealed that the anti-Communist parties spent 7½ times as much as the FDP on all forms of propaganda, the Christian Democrats alone spending four times as much.{16} As for other Soviet actions, Howard K. Smith presented this observation:

The Russians tried to respond with a few feeble gestures for a while -- some Italian war prisoners were released; some newsprint was sent to Italy and offered to all parties for their campaign. But there was no way of resisting what amounted to a tidal wave.
There is evidence that the Russians found the show getting too rough for them and actually became apprehensive of what the American and British reaction to a Communist victory at the polls might be. (Russia's concern about conflict with the West was also expressed within a month of the Italian elections in one of the celebrated Cominform letters to Tito, accusing the Yugoslavs of trying to involve the Soviets with the Western powers when "it should have been known ... that the U.S.S.R. after such a heavy war could not start a new one".){17}

The evidence Smith was alluding to was the Soviet rejection of the Trieste proposal. By its timing, reported the New York Times, "the unexpected procedure caused some observers to conclude that the Russians had thrown the Italian Communist Party overboard."{18} The party's newspaper had a difficult time dealing with the story. Washington did as well, for it undermined the fundamental premise of the Italian campaign: that the Italian Communist Party and the Soviet Union were indistinguishable as to ends and means; that if you buy the one, you get the other as well. Thus the suggestion was put forth that perhaps the Soviet rejection was only a tactic to demonstrate that the US could not keep its promise on Trieste. But the Soviet announcement had not been accompanied by any such propaganda message, and it would not explain why the Russians had waited several weeks until near the crucial end to deliver its body blow to their Italian comrades. In any event, the United States could only come out smelling a lot sweeter than the Russians.
When the Broadway show had ended its engagement in Italy, the Christian Democrats stood as the clear winner with 48 percent of the vote. The leftist coalition had been humiliated with a totally unexpected polling of but 31 percent. It had been a crusade of the kind which Aneurin Bevan had ascribed to the Tories: "The whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century," the British Labour leader wrote, "is being deployed to enable wealth to persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power."

NOTES -- ITALY 1947-1948 return to mid-text

1. Addressing the Cathedral Club of Brooklyn, 15 January 1948; cited in David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1979), p. 15.

2. Robert T. Holt and Robert W. van de Velde, Strategic Psychological Operations and American Foreign Policy (University of Chicago Press, 1960) p. 169.

3. Dissolving the cabinet: New York Times, 21 January 1947, p. 5; 26 January, p. 31; 3 February, p. 1; 5 May, p. 13; 13 May; 14 May; 29 May, p.3; 2 June, p. 24.

4. New York Times, 5 May 1947, p. 1; 11 May, IV, p. 5; 14 May, pp. 14 and 24; 17 May, p. 8; 18 May, IV, p. 4; 20 May, p. 2; Howard K. Smith, The State of Europe (London, 1950), p. 151 (includes Ramadier quote; similar quote in New York Times, 20 May).

5. Time, 22 March 1948, p. 35.

6. William Colby, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York, 1978), p. 109.

7. Except where otherwise indicated, the items in the succeeding list are derived from the following:
a) New York Times, 16 March to 18 April 1948, passim;
b) Howard K. Smith, pp. 198-219;
c) William E. Daugherty and Morris Janowitz, A Psychological Warfare Casebook (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1958), pp. 319-26;
d) Holt and van de Velde, pp. 159-205;
e) E. Edda Martinez and Edward A. Suchman, "Letters from America and the 1948 Elections in Italy", The Public Opinion Quarterly (Princeton University), Spring 1950, pp. 111-25.

8. Cited in Smith, p. 202, no date of issue given.

9. Tom Braden, "I'm Glad the CIA is `Immoral'", Saturday Evening Post, 20 May 1967; Braden had been a high-ranking CIA officer.

10. Miles Copeland, Without Cloak and Dagger (New York, 1974), pp. 235-6; also published as The Real Spy World.

11. CIA memorandum to the Forty Committee (National Security Council), presented to the Select Committee on Intelligence, US House of Representatives (The Pike Committee) during closed hearings held in 1975. The bulk of the committee's report which contained this memorandum was leaked to the press in February 1976 and first appeared in book form as CIA -- The Pike Report (Nottingham, England, 1977). The memorandum appears on pp. 204-5 of this book. (See also: Notes: Iraq.)

12. Stephen Goode, The CIA (Franklin Watts, Inc., New York, 1982), p. 45; William R. Corson, The Armies of Ignorance: The Rise of the American Intelligence Empire (The Dial Press, New York, 1977) pp. 298-9. Corson had an extensive career in military intelligence and was Staff Secretary of the President's Special Group Joint DOD-CIA Committee on Counterinsurgency R & D.

13. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1947 (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1963) pp. 178-9.

14. New York Times, 8 April 1948.

15. Ibid., 12 April 1948.

16. Smith, p. 200.

17. Ibid., p. 202.

18. New York Times, 15 April 1948.

This is a chapter from Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum

posted April 25, 2006 11:41 PM              

Indians tell harrowing stories of village raids in which
their homes have been burned, men tortured hideously and
killed, women raped, and scarce crops destroyed. It is
Guatemala's final solution to insurgency: only mass
slaughter of the Indians will prevent them joining a mass
uprising.{1}

This newspaper item appeared in 1983. Very similar stories have
appeared many times in the world press since 1966, for
Guatemala's "final solution" has been going on rather longer than
the more publicized one of the Nazis.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the misery of the
mainly-Indian peasants and urban poor of Guatemala who make up
three-quarters of the population of this beautiful land so
favored by American tourists. The particulars of their existence
derived from the literature of this period sketch a caricature of
human life. In a climate where everything grows, very few escape
the daily ache of hunger or the progressive malnutrition ...
almost half the children die before the age of five ... the
leading cause of death in the country is gastro-enteritis.
Highly toxic pesticides sprayed indiscriminately by airplanes, at
times directly onto the heads of peasants, leave a trail of
poisoning and death ... public health services in rural areas are
virtually non-existent ... the same for public education ...
near-total illiteracy. A few hundred families possess almost all
the arable land ... thousands of families without land, without
work, jammed together in communities of cardboard and tin houses,
with no running water or electricity, a sea of mud during the
rainy season, sharing their bathing and toilet with the animal
kingdom. Men on coffee plantations earning 20 cents or 50 cents
a day, living in circumstances closely resembling concentration
camps ... looked upon by other Guatemalans more as beasts of
burden than humans. A large plantation to sell, reads the
advertisement, "with 200 hectares and 300 Indians" ... this, then
was what remained of the ancient Mayas, whom the American
archeologist Sylvanus Morely had called the most splendid
indigenous people on the planet.{2}
The worst was yet to come.
We have seen how, in 1954, Guatemala's last reform
government, the legally-elected regime of Jacobo Arbenz, was
overthrown by the United States. And how, in 1960, nationalist
elements of the Guatemalan military who were committed to
slightly opening the door to change were summarily crushed by the
CIA. Before long, the ever-accumulating discontent again issued
forth in a desperate lunge for alleviation -- this time in the
form of a guerrilla movement -- only to be thrown back by a
Guatemalan-American operation reminiscent of the Spanish
conquistadores in its barbarity.
In the early years of the 1960s, the guerilla movement, with
several military officers of the abortive 1960 uprising prominent
amongst the leadership, was slowly finding its way: organizing
peasant support in the countryside, attacking an army outpost to
gather arms, staging a kidnapping or bank robbery to raise money,
trying to avoid direct armed clashes with the Guatemalan
military.
Recruitment amongst the peasants was painfully slow and
difficult; people so drained by the daily struggle to remain
alive have little left from which to draw courage; people so
downtrodden scarcely believe they have the right to resist, much
less can they entertain thoughts of success; as fervent
Catholics, they tend to believe that their misery is a punishment
from God for sinning.
Some of the guerrilla leaders flirted with Communist Party
and Trotskyist ideas and groups, falling prey to the usual
factional splits and arguments. Eventually, no ideology or
sentiment dominated the movement more than a commitment to the
desperately needed program of land reform aborted by the 1954
coup, a simple desire for a more equitable society, and
nationalist pride vis-à-vis the United States. New
York Times, correspondent Alan Howard, after interviewing
guerrilla leader Luis Turcios, wrote:

Though he has suddenly found himself in a position of
political leadership, Turcios is essentially a soldier
fighting for a new code of honor. If he has an alter
ego, it would not be Lenin or Mao or even Castro, whose
works he has read and admires, but Augusto Sandino, the
Nicaraguan general who fought the U.S. Marines sent to
Nicaragua during the Coolidge and Hoover Administrations.{3}

In March 1962, thousands of demonstrators took to the
streets in protest against the economic policies, the deep-rooted
corruption, and the electoral fraud of the government of General
Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes. Initiated by students, the
demonstrations soon picked up support from worker and peasant
groups. Police and military forces eventually broke the back of
the protests, but not before a series of violent confrontations
and a general strike had taken place.
The American military mission in Guatemala, permanently
stationed there, saw and heard in this, as in the burgeoning
guerrilla movement, only the omnipresent "communist threat". As
US military equipment flowed in, American advisers began to prod
a less-alarmed and less-than-aggressive Guatemalan army to take
appropriate measures. In May the United States established a
base designed specifically for counter-insurgency training. (The
Pentagon prefers the term "counter-insurgency" to
"counter-revolutionary" because of the latter's awkward
implications.) Set up in the northeast province of Izabal,
which, together with adjacent Zacapa province, constituted the area of
heaviest guerrilla support, the installation was directed by a
team of US Special Forces (Green Berets) of Puerto Rican and Mexican
descent to make the North American presence less conspicuous.
The staff of the base was augmented by 15 Guatemalan officers trained
in counter-insurgency at the US School of the Americas at Fort
Gulick in the Panama Canal Zone.{4}
American counter-insurgency strategy is typically based on a
carrot-and-stick philosophy. Accordingly, while the Guatemalan
military were being taught techniques of ambush, booby-traps,
jungle survival and search-and-destroy warfare, and provided with
aircraft and pilot training, a program of "civil action" was
begun in the northeast area: some wells were built, medicines
distributed, school lunches provided etc., as well as promises of
other benefits made, all aimed at stealing a bit of the
guerrillas' thunder and reducing the peasants' motivation for
furnishing support to them; and with the added bonus of allowing
American personnel to reconnoitre guerrilla territory under a
non-military cover. Land reform, overwhelmingly the most
pressing need in rural Guatemala, was not on the agenda.
As matters were to materialize, the attempt at "winning the
hearts and minds" of the peasants proved to be as futile in
Guatemala as it was in southeast Asia. When all the academic
papers on "social systems engineering" were in, and all the
counter-insurgency studies of the RAND Corporation and the other
think-tanks were said and done, the recourse was to terror:
unadulterated, dependable terror. Guerrillas, peasants,
students, labor leaders, and professional people were jailed or
killed by the hundreds to put a halt, albeit temporarily, to the
demands for reform.{5}
The worst was yet to come.

In March 1963, General Ydigoras, who had been elected in 1958 for
a six-year term, was overthrown in a coup by Col. Enrique Peralta
Azurdia. Veteran Latin American correspondent Georgie Anne Geyer
later reported that "Top sources within the Kennedy
administration have revealed the U.S. instigated and supported
the 1963 coup." Already in disfavor with Washington due to
several incidents, Ydigoras apparently sealed his fate by
allowing the return to Guatemala of Juan José
Arévalo who had led a reform government before Arbenz and still had a
strong following. Ydigoras was planning to step down in 1964,
thus leaving the door open to an election and, like the Guatemalan
army, Washington, including President Kennedy personally,
believed that a free election would reinstate Arévalo to
power in a government bent upon the same kind of reforms and
independent foreign policy that had led the United States to
overthrow Arbenz.{6} Arévalo was the author of a book
called The Shark and the Sardines in which he pictured the US as
trying to dominate Latin America. But he had also publicly
denounced Castro as "a danger to the continent, a menace".{7}
The tone of the Peralta administration was characterized by
one of its first acts: the murder of eight political and trade
union leaders, accomplished by driving over them with rock-laden
trucks.{8} Repressive and brutal as Peralta was, during his
three years in power US military advisers felt that the
government and the Guatemalan army still did not appreciate
sufficiently the threat posed by the guerrillas, still were
strangers to the world of unconventional warfare and the
systematic methods needed to wipe out the guerrillas once and for
all; despite American urging, the army rarely made forays into
the hills.
Peralta, moreover, turned out to be somewhat of a
nationalist who resented the excessive influence of the United
States in Guatemala, particularly in his own sphere, the
military. He refused insistent American offers of Green Beret
troops trained in guerrilla warfare to fight the rebels,
preferring to rely on his own men, and he restricted the number
of Guatemalan officers permitted to participate in American
training programs abroad.
Thus it was that the United States gave its clear and firm
backing to a civilian, one Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro, in the
election held in March 1966. Mendez won what passes for an
election in Guatemala and granted the Americans the free hand
they had been chafing at the bit for. He served another
important function for the United States: as a civilian, and one
with genuine liberal credentials, Mendez could be pointed to by
the Johnson administration as a response to human rights critics
at home.
However, whatever social conscience Julio Cesar Mendez may
have harbored deep within, he was largely a captive of the
Guatemalan army, and his administration far exceeded Peralta's in
its cruelty. Yet the army did not trust this former law school
professor -- in the rarefied atmosphere of Guatemala, some
military men regarded him as a communist -- and on at least two
occasions, the United States had to intervene to stifle a coup
attempt against him.
Within days after Mendez took office in July, US Col. John
D. Webber, Jr. arrived in Guatemala to take command of the
American military mission. Time magazine later described
his role:

Webber immediately expanded counterinsurgency training
within Guatemala's 5,000-man army, brought in U.S. Jeeps,
trucks, communications equipment and helicopters to give
the army more firepower and mobility, and breathed new
life into the army's civic-action program. Towards the
end of 1966 the army was able to launch a major drive
against the guerrilla strongholds ... To aid in the drive,
the army also hired and armed local bands of "civilian
collaborators" licensed to kill peasants whom they
considered guerrillas or "potential" guerrillas. There
were those who doubted the wisdom of encouraging such
measures in violence-prone Guatemala, but Webber was not
among them. "That's the way this country is," he said.
"The communists are using everything they have including
terror. And it must be met."{9}

The last was for home consumption. There was never any
comparison between the two sides as to the quantity and cruelty
of their terror, as well as in the choice of targets; with rare
exceptions, the left attacked only legitimate political and
military enemies, clear and culpable symbols of their foe; and
they did not torture, nor take vengeance against the families of
their enemies.
Two of the left's victims were John Webber himself and the
US naval attaché, assassinated in January 1968. A bulletin
later issued by a guerrilla group stated that the assassinations
had "brought to justice the Yanqui officers who were teaching
tactics to the Guatemalan army for its war against the
people".{10}
In the period October 1966 to March 1968, Amnesty
International estimated, somewhere between 3,000 and 8,000
Guatemalans were killed by the police, the military, right-wing
"death squads" (often the police or military in civilian clothes,
carrying out atrocities too bloody for the government to claim
credit for), and assorted groups of civilian anti-communist
vigilantes. By 1972, the number of their victims was estimated
at 13,000. Four years later the count exceeded 20,000, murdered
or disappeared without a trace.
Anyone attempting to organize a union or other undertaking
to improve the lot of the peasants, or simply suspected of being
in support of the guerrillas, was subject ... unknown armed men
broke into their homes and dragged them away to unknown places
... their tortured or mutilated or burned bodies found buried in
a mass grave, or floating in plastic bags in a lake or river, or
lying beside the road, hands tied behind the back ... bodies
dropped into the Pacific from airplanes. In the Gual n
area, it was said, no one fished any more; too many corpses were
caught in the nets ... decapitated corpses, or castrated, or
pins stuck in the eyes ... a village rounded up, suspected of
supplying the guerrillas with men or food or information, all
adult males takenaway in front of their families, never to be
seen again ... or everyone massacred, the village bulldozed
over to cover the traces ... seldom were the victims actual
members of a guerrilla band.
One method of torture consisted of putting a hood filled
with insecticide over the head of the victim; there was also
electric shock -- to the genital area is the most effective; in
those days it was administered by using military field telephones
hooked up to small generators; the United States supplied the
equipment and the instructions for use to several countries,
including South Vietnam where the large-scale counter-insurgency
operation was producing new methods and devices for extracting
information from uncooperative prisoners; some of these
techniques were finding their way to Latin America.{11}
The Green Berets taught their Guatemalan trainees various
methods of "interrogation", but they were not solely classroom
warriors. Their presence in the countryside was reported
frequently, accompanying Guatemalan soldiers into battle areas;
the line separating the advisory role from the combat role is
often a matter of public relations.
Thomas and Marjorie Melville, American Catholic missionaries
in Guatemala from the mid-1950s until the end of 1967, have
written that Col. Webber "made no secret of the fact that it was
his idea and at his instigation that the technique of
counter-terror had been implemented by the Guatemalan Army in the
Zacapa and Izabal areas."{12} The Melvilles wrote also of Major
Bernard Westfall of Iowa City who:

perished in September 1967 in the crash of a Guatemalan
Air Force jet that he was piloting alone. The official
notices stated that the US airman was "testing" the
aeroplane. That statement may have been true, but it is
also true that it was a common and public topic of
conversation at Guatemala's La Aurora air base that the
Major often "tested" Guatemalan aircraft in strafing and
bombing runs against guerrilla encampments in the
Northeastern territory.{13}

F-51(D) fighter planes modified by the United States for use
against guerrillas in Guatemala ... after modification, the
planes are capable of patrolling for five hours over a limited
area ... equipped with six .50-calibre machine guns and wing
mountings for bombs, napalm and 5-inch air-to-ground rockets.{14}
The napalm falls on villages, on precious crops, on people ...
American pilots take off from Panama, deliver loads of napalm on
targets suspected of being guerrilla refuges, and return to
Panama{15} ... the napalm explodes like fireworks and a mass of
brilliant red foam spreads over the land, incinerating all that
falls in its way, cedars and pines are burned down to the roots,
animals grilled, the earth scorched ... the guerrillas will not
have this place for a sanctuary any longer, nor will they or
anyone else derive food from it ... halfway around the world in
Vietnam, there is an instant replay.
In Vietnam they were called "free-fire zones"; in
Guatemala, "zonas libres": "Large areas of the country have been
declared off limits and then subjected to heavy bombing.
Reconnaissance planes using advanced photographic techniques fly
over suspected guerrilla country and jet planes, assigned to
specific areas, can be called in within minutes to kill anything
that moves on the ground."{16}

"The military guys who do this are like serial killers. If
Jeffrey Dahmer had been in Guatemala, he would be a general by
now." ... In Guatemala City, right-wing terrorists machine-gunned
people and houses in full light of day ... journalists, lawyers,
students, teachers, trade unionists, members of opposition
parties, anyone who helped or expressed sympathy for the rebel
cause, anyone with a vaguely-leftist political association or a
moderate criticism of government policy ... relatives of the
victims, guilty of kinship ... common criminals, eliminated to
purify the society, taken from jails and shot. "See a Communist,
kill a Communist", the slogan of the New Anticommunist
Organization ... an informer with hooded face accompanies the
police along a city street or into the countryside, pointing
people out: who shall live and who shall die ... "this one's a
son of a ***** " ... "that one ... " Men found dead with their
eyes gouged out, their testicles in their mouth, without hands or
tongues, women with breasts cut off ... there is rarely a witness
to a killing, even when people are dragged from their homes at
high noon and executed in the street ... a relative will choose
exile rather than take the matter to the authorities ... the
government joins the family in mourning the victim ...{17}
One of the death squads, Mano Blanca (White Hand), sent a
death warning to a student leader. Former American Maryknoll
priest Blase Bonpane has written:

I went alone to visit the head of the Mano Blanca and asked
him why he was going to kill this lad. At first he denied
sending the letter, but after a bit of discussion with him
and his first assistant, the assistant said, "Well, I know
he's a Communist and so we're going to kill him."
"How do you know?" I asked.
He said, "I know he's a Communist because I heard him say
he would give his life for the poor."{18}

Mano Blanca distributed leaflets in residential areas
suggesting that doors of left-wingers be marked with a black
cross.{19}

In November 1967, when the American ambassador, John Gordon Mein,
presented the Guatemalan armed forces with new armored vehicles,
grenade launchers, training and radio equipment, and several
HU-1B jet powered helicopters, he publicly stated:

These articles, especially the helicopters, are not easy
to obtain at this time since they are being utilized by
our forces in defense of the cause of liberty in other
parts of the world [i.e., southeast Asia]. But liberty
must be defended wherever it is threatened and that
liberty is now being threatened in Guatemala.{20}

In August 1968, a young French woman, Michele Kirk, shot herself
in Guatemala City as the police came to her room to make
"inquiries". In her notebook Michele had written:

It is hard to find the words to express the state of
putrefaction that exists in Guatemala, and the permanent
terror in which the inhabitants live. Every day bodies
are pulled out of the Motagua River, riddled with bullets
and partially eaten by fish. Every day men are kidnapped
right in the street by unidentified people in cars, armed
to the teeth, with no intervention by the police patrols.{21}

The US Agency for International Development (AID), its Office of
Public Safety (OPS), and the Alliance for Progress were all there
to lend a helping hand. These organizations with their
reassuring names all contributed to a program to greatly expand
the size of Guatemala's national police force and develop it into
a professionalized body skilled at counteracting urban disorder.
Senior police officers and technicians were sent for training at
the Inter-American Police Academy in Panama, replaced in 1964 by
the International Police Academy in Washington, at a Federal
School in Los Fresnos, Texas (where they were taught how to
construct and use a variety of explosive devices - see Uruguay
chapter), and other educational establishments, their instructors
often being CIA officers operating under OPS cover. This was
also the case with OPS officers stationed in Guatemala to advise
local police commands and provide in-country training for
rank-and-file policemen. At times, these American officers
participated directly in interrogating political prisoners, took
part in polygraph operations, and accompanied the police on
anti-drug patrols.
Additionally, the Guatemala City police force was completely
supplied with radio patrol cars and a radio communications
network, and funds were provided to build a national police
academy and pay for salaries, uniforms, weapons, and riot-control
equipment.
The glue which held this package together was the standard
OPS classroom tutelage, similar to that given the military, which
imparted the insight that "communists", primarily of the Cuban
variety, were behind all the unrest in Guatemala; the students
were further advised to "stay out of politics"; that is, support
whatever pro-US regime happens to be in power.
Also standard was the advice to use "minimum force" and to
cultivate good community relations. But the behavior of the
police and military students in practice was so far removed from
this that continued American involvement with these forces over a
period of decades makes this advice appear to be little more than
a self-serving statement for the record, the familiar
bureaucratic maxim: Cover your ass.{22}
According to AID, by 1970, over 30,000 Guatemalan police
personnel had received OPS training in Guatemala alone, one of
the largest OPS programs in Latin America.{23}
"At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from
top to bottom with CIA people," disclosed John Gilligan, Director
of AID during the Carter administration. "The idea was to plant
operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government,
volunteer, religious, every kind."{24}

By the end of 1968, the counter-insurgency campaign had all but
wiped out the guerrilla movement by thwarting the rebels' ability
to operate openly and casually in rural areas as they had been
accustomed to, and, through sheer terrorization of villagers,
isolating the guerrillas from their bases of support in the
countryside.
It had been an unequal match. By Pentagon standards it had
been a "limited" war, due to the absence of a large and overt US
combat force. At the same time, this had provided the American
media and public with the illusion of their country's
non-involvement. However, as one observer has noted: "In the
lexicon of counterrevolutionaries, these wars are "limited" only
in their consequences for the intervening power. For the people and
country under assault, they are total."{25}
Not until 1976 did another serious guerrilla movement arise,
the Guatemalan Army of the Poor (EGP) by name. Meanwhile, others
vented their frustration through urban warfare in the face of
government violence, which reached a new high during 1970 and
1971 under a "state of siege" imposed by the president, Col.
Carlos Arana Osorio. Arana, who had been close to the US
military since serving as Guatemalan military attach‚ in
Washington, and then as commander of the counter-insurgency
operation in Zacapa (where his commitment to his work earned him
the title of "the butcher of Zacapa"), decreed to himself
virtually unlimited power to curb opposition of any stripe.{26}
Amnesty International later stated that Guatemalan sources,
including the Committee of the Relatives of Disappeared Persons,
claimed that over 7,000 persons disappeared or were found dead in
these two years. "Foreign diplomats in Guatemala City," reported
Le Monde in 1971, "believe that for every political
assassination by left-wing revolutionaries fifteen murders are
committed by right-wing fanatics."{27}
During a curfew so draconian that even ambulances, doctors
and fire engines reportedly were forbidden outside ... as
American police cars and paddy wagons patrolled the streets day
and night ... and American helicopters buzzed overhead ... the
United States saw fit to provide further technical assistance and
equipment to initiate a reorganization of Arana's police forces
to make them yet more efficient.{28}

"In response to a question [from a congressional investigator in
1971] as to what he conceived his job to be, a member of the US
Military Group (MILGP) in Guatemala replied instantly that it was
to make the Guatemalan Armed Forces as efficient as possible.
The next question as to why this was in the interest of the
United States was followed by a long silence while he reflected
on a point which had apparently never occurred to him."{29}

As for the wretched of Guatemala's earth ... in 1976 a major
earthquake shook the land, taking over 20,000 lives, largely of
the poor whose houses were the first to crumble ... the story was
reported of the American church relief worker who arrived to help
the victims; he was shocked at their appearance and their living
conditions; then he was informed that he was not in the
earthquake area, that what he was seeing was normal.{30}
"The level of pesticide spraying is the highest in the
world," reported the New York Times in 1977, "and little
concern is shown for the people who live near the cotton fields"
... 30 or 40 people a day are treated for pesticide poisoning in
season, death can come within hours, or a longer lasting liver
malfunction ... the amounts of DDT in mothers' milk in Guatemala
are the highest in the Western world. "It's very simple,"
explained a cotton planter, "more insecticide means more cotton,
fewer insects mean higher profits." In an attack, guerrillas
destroyed 22 crop-duster planes; the planes were quickly replaced
thanks to the genius of American industry{31} ... and all the
pesticide you could ever want, from Monsanto Chemical Company of
St. Louis and Guatemala City.
During the Carter presidency, in response to human-rights
abuses in Guatemala and other countries, several pieces of
congressional legislation were passed which attempted to curtail
military and economic aid to those nations. In the years
preceding, similar prohibitions regarding aid to Guatemala had
been enacted into law. The efficacy of these laws can be
measured by their number. In any event, the embargoes were never
meant to be more than partial, and Guatemala also received
weapons and military equipment from Israel, at least part of
which was covertly underwritten by Washington.{32}
As further camouflage, some of the training of Guatemala's
security forces was reportedly maintained by transferring it to
clandestine sites in Chile and Argentina.{33}

Testimony of an Indian woman:

My name is Rigoberta Menchú Tum. I am a representative of the
"Vincente Menchú" [her father] Revolutionary Christians ... On
9 December 1979, my 16-year-old brother Patrocino was captured
and tortured for several days and then taken with twenty other
young men to the square in Chajul ... An officer of [President]
Lucas Garcia's army of murderers ordered the prisoners to be
paraded in a line. Then he started to insult and threaten the
inhabitants of the village, who were forced to come out of
their houses to witness the event. I was with my mother, and
we saw Patrocino; he had had his tongue cut out and his toes
cut off. The officer jackal made a speech. Every time he
paused the soldiers beat the Indian prisoners.
When he finished his ranting, the bodies of my brother and the
other prisoners were swollen, bloody, unrecognizable. It was
monstrous, but they were still alive.
They were thrown on the ground and drenched with gasoline.
The soldiers set fire to the wretched bodies with torches
and the captain laughed like a hyena and forced the inhabitants
of Chajul to watch. This was his objective -- that they should
be terrified and witness the punishment given to the
"guerrillas".{34}

In 1992, Rigoberta Menchú Tum was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize.

Testimony of Fred Sherwood (CIA pilot during the overthrow of the
Arbenz government in 1954 who settled in Guatemala and became
president of the American Chamber of Commerce), speaking in
Guatemala, September 1980:

Why should we be worried about the death squads? They're
bumping off the commies, our enemies. I'd give them more
power. Hell, I'd get some cartridges if I could, and
everyone else would too ... Why should we criticize them?
The death squad -- I'm for it ... **** ! There's no
question, we can't wait 'til Reagan gets in. We hope
Carter falls in the ocean real quick ... We all feel that
he [Reagan] is our saviour.{35}

The Movement for National Liberation (MLN) was a prominent
political party. It was the principal party in the Arana regime.
An excerpt from a radio broadcast in 1980 by the head of the
party, Mario Sandoval Alarcon ...

I admit that the MLN is the party of organized violence.
Organized violence is vigor, just as organized color is
scenery and organized sound is harmony. There is nothing
wrong with organized violence; it is vigor, and the
MLN is a vigorous movement.{36}

Mario Sandoval Alarcon and former president Arana ("the
butcher of Zacapa") "spent inaugural week mingling with the stars
of the Reagan inner circle", reported syndicated columnist Jack
Anderson. Sandoval, who had worked closely with the CIA in the
overthrow of Arbenz, announced that he had met with Reagan
defense and foreign-policy advisers even before the election.
Right-wing Guatemalan leaders were elated by Reagan's victory.
They looked forward to a resumption of the hand-in-glove
relationship between American and Guatemalan security teams and
businessmen which had existed before Carter took office.{37}
Before that could take place, however, the Reagan
administration first had to soften the attitude of Congress about
this thing called human rights. In March 1981, two months after
Reagan's inaugural, Secretary of State Alexander Haig told a
congressional committee that there was a Soviet "hit list ... for
the ultimate takeover of Central America". It was a "four phased
operation" of which the first part had been the "seizure of
Nicaragua". "Next," warned Haig, "is El Salvador, to be followed
by Honduras and Guatemala."{38}
This was the kind of intelligence information which one
would expect to derive from a captured secret document or KGB
defector. But neither one of these was produced or mentioned,
nor did any of the assembled congressmen presume to raise the
matter.
Two months later, General Vernon Walters, former Deputy
Director of the CIA, on a visit to Guatemala as Haig's special
emissary, was moved to proclaim that the United States hoped to
help the Guatemalan government defend "peace and liberty".{39}
During this period, Guatemalan security forces, official and
unofficial, massacred at least 2,000 peasants (accompanied by the
usual syndrome of torture, mutilation and decapitation),
destroyed several villages, assassinated 76 officials of the
opposition Christian Democratic Party, scores of trade unionists,
and at least six catholic priests.{40}
19 August 1981 ... unidentified gunmen occupy the town of
San Miguel Acatan, force the Mayor to give them a list of all
those who had contributed funds for the building of a school,
pick out 15 from the list (including three of the Mayor's
children), make them dig their own graves and shoot them.{41}
In December, Ronald Reagan finally spoke out against
government repression. He denounced Poland for crushing by
"brute force, the stirrings of liberty ... Our Government and
those of our allies, have expressed moral revulsion at the
police-state tactics of Poland's oppressors."{42}
Using the loopholes in the congressional legislation, both
real and loosely interpreted, the Reagan administration, in its
first two years, chipped away at the spirit of the embargo: $3.1
million of jeeps and trucks, $4 million of helicopter spare
parts, $6.3 million of other military supplies.{43} These were
amongst the publicly announced aid shipments; what was
transpiring covertly can only be guessed at in light of certain
disclosures: Jack Anderson revealed in August 1981 that the
United States was using Cuban exiles to train security forces in
Guatemala; in this operation, Anderson wrote, the CIA had
arranged "for secret training in the finer points of
assassination".{44} The following year, it was reported that the
Green Berets had been instructing Guatemalan Army officers for
over two years in the finer points of warfare.{45} And in 1983,
we learned that in the previous two years Guatemala's Air Force
helicopter fleet had somehow increased from eight to 27, all of
them American made, and that Guatemalan officers were once again
being trained at the US School of the Americas in Panama.{46}
In March 1982, a coup put General Efrain Rios Montt,
a "born-again Christian" in power. A month later, the Reagan
administration announced that it perceived signs of an
improvement in the state of human rights in the country and took
the occasion to justify a shipment of military aid.{47} On the
first of July, Rios Montt announced a state of siege. It
was to last more than eight months. In his first six months in
power, 2,600 Indians and peasants were massacred, while during his
17-month reign, more than 400 villages were brutally wiped off
the map.{48} In December 1982, Ronald Reagan, also a Christian, went
to see for himself. After meeting with R¡os Montt, Reagan,
referring to the allegations of extensive human-rights abuses,
declared that the Guatemalan leader was receiving "a bad
deal."{49}

Statement by the Guatemalan Army of the Poor, made in 1981 (by
which time the toll of people murdered by the government since
1954 had reached at least the 60,000 mark, and the sons of
one-time death-squad members were now killing the sons of the
Indians killed by their fathers):

The Guatemalan revolution is entering its third decade.
Ever since the government of Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown
in 1954, the majority of the Guatemalan people have been
seeking a way to move the country towards solving the
same problems which were present then and have only
worsened over time.
The counterrevolution, put in motion by the U.S. Government
and those domestic sectors committed to retaining every
single one of their privileges, dispersed and disorganized
the popular and democratic forces. However, it did not
resolve any of the problems which had first given rise to
demands for economic, social and political change. These
demands have been raised again and again in the last quarter
century, by any means that seemed appropriate at the time,
and have received each time the same repressive response as in
1954.{50}

Statement by Father Thomas Melville, 1968:

Having come to the conclusion that the actual state of violence,
composed of the malnutrition, ignorance, sickness and hunger of the
vast majority of the Guatemalan population, is the direct result of a
capitalist system that makes the defenseless Indian compete against
the powerful and well-armed landowner, my brother [Father Arthur
Melville] and I decided not to be silent accomplices of the mass
murder that this system generates.
We began teaching the Indians that no one will defend their
rights, if they do not defend themselves. If the government and
oligarchy are using arms to maintain them in their position of
misery, then they have the obligation to take up arms and defend
their God-given right to be men. We were accused of being
communists along with the people who listened to us, and were
asked to leave the country by our religious superiors and the
U.S. ambassador [John Gordon Mein]. We did so.
But I say here that I am a communist only if Christ was a
communist. I did what I did and will continue to do so because
of the teachings of Christ and not because of Marx or Lenin.
And I say here too, that we are many more than the hierarchy
and the U.S. government think. When the fight breaks out more
in the open, let the world know that we do it not for Russia,
not for China, nor any other country, but for Guatemala. Our
response to the present situation is not because we have read
either Marx or Lenin, but because we have read the New
Testament.{51}

Postscript, a small sample:

1988: Guatemala continues to suffer the worst record of
human-rights abuses in Latin America, stated the Council on
Hemispheric Affairs in its annual report on human rights in the
Western Hemisphere.{52}
1990: Guatemalan soldiers at the army base in Santiago
Atitl n opened fire on unarmed townspeople carrying white
flags, killing 14 and wounding 24. The people had come with
their mayor to speak to the military commander about repeated
harassment from the soldiers.{53}
1990: "The United States, said to be disillusioned because
of persistent corruption in the government of President Vinicio
Cerezo Arevalo, is reportedly turning to Guatemala's military to
promote economic and political stability ... even though the
military is blamed for human rights abuses and is believed to be
involved in drug trafficking."{54}
This was reported in May. In June, a prominent American
businessman living in Guatemala, Michael DeVine, was kidnapped
and nearly beheaded by the Guatemalan military after he
apparently stumbled upon the military's drug trafficking and/or
other contraband activities. The Bush administration, in a show
of public anger over the killing, cut off military aid to
Guatemala, but, we later learned, secretly allowed the CIA to
provide millions of dollars to the military government to make up
for the loss. The annual payments of $5 to $7 million apparently
continued into the Clinton administration.
1992: In March, Guatemalan guerrilla leader, Efrain Bamaca
Velasquez, was captured and disappeared. For the next three
years, his American wife, attorney Jennifer Harbury, waged an
impassioned international campaign -- including public fasts in
Guatemala City (nearly to death) and in Washington -- to pressure
the Guatemalan and American governments for information about her
husband's fate. Both governments insisted that they knew
nothing. Finally, in March 1995, Rep. Robert Torricelli of the
House Intelligence Committee revealed that Bamaca had been
tortured and executed the same year of his capture, and that he,
as well as DeVine, had been murdered on the orders of Col. Julio
Roberto Alpírez, who had been on the CIA payroll for
several years. (Alpírez thus becoming another illustrious
graduate of Fort Benning's School of the Americas). The facts
surrounding these cases were known early on by the CIA, and by
officials at the State Department and National Security Council
at least a few months before the disclosure. Toricelli's
announcement prompted several other Americans to come forward
with tales of murder, rape or torture of themselves or a relation
at the hands of the Guatemalan military. Sister Dianna Ortiz,
a nun, related how, in 1989, she was kidnapped, burned with
cigarettes, raped repeatedly, and lowered into a pit full of
corpses and rats. A fair-skinned man who spoke with an American
accent seemed to be in charge, she said.{55}

NOTES

The details of the events and issues touched upon in this chapter
through 1968 were derived primarily from the following sources:
a) Thomas and Marjorie Melville, Guatemala -- Another Vietnam?
(Great Britain, 1971) Chapters 9 to 16; particularly for the
conditions of the poor, and US activities in Guatemala. Published
in the United States the same year in a slightly different form
as Guatemala: The Politics of Land Ownership.
b) Eduardo Galeano, Guatemala, Occupied Country (Mexico, 1967;
English translation: New York, 1969) passim; for the politics of
the guerrillas and the nature of the right-wing terror; Galeano
was a Uruguayan journalist who spent some time with the guerrillas.
c) Susanne Jonas and David Tobis, editors, Guatemala (Berkeley,
California, 1974) passim; particularly "The Vietnamization of
Guatemala: U.S. Counter-insurgency Programs" pp. 193-203, by
Howard Sharckman; published by the North American Congress on Latin
America (NACLA, New York and Berkeley).
d) Amnesty International, Guatemala (London, 1976) passim; for
statistics about the victims of the terror. Other AI reports
issued in the 1970s about Guatemala contain comparable
information.
e) Richard Gott, Rural Guerrillas in Latin America (Great
Britain, 1973, revised edition) Chapters 2 to 8; for the
politics of the guerrillas.

1. The Guardian (London), 22 December 1983, p. 5.

2. The plight of the poor: a montage compiled from the sources
cited herein.

3. New York Times Magazine, 26 June 1966, p. 8.

4. US counter-insurgency base: El Imparcial (Guatemala City
conservative newspaper) 17 May 1962 and 4 January 1963, cited in
Melville, pp. 163-4.

5. Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The
Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (New York, 1982),
p. 242.

6. Georgie Anne Geyer: Miami Herald, 24 December 1966. Also see:
New York Herald Tribune, 7 April 1963, article by Bert Quint,
section 2, p. 1; Schlesinger and Kinzer, pp. 236-44.

7. Galeano, p. 55.

8. Ibid., pp. 55-6.

9. Time, 26 January 1968, p. 23.

10. Ibid.

11. Atrocities and torture: compiled from the sources cited
herein; also see A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors (New York, 1978)
pp. 139, 193 for US involvement with the use of the field
telephones for torture in Brazil.

12. Melville, p. 292.

13. Ibid., p. 291.

14. Washington Post, 27 January 1968, p. A4, testimony of Rev.
Blase Bonpane, an American Maryknoll priest in Guatemala at the
time.

15. Panama: revealed in September 1967 by Guatemalan
Vice-President Clemente Marroquin Rojas in an interview with the
international news agency Interpress Service (IPS), reported in
Latin America, 15 September 1967, p. 159, a weekly published in
London. Eduardo Galeano, p. 70, reports a personal conversation
he had with Marroquin Rojas in which the vice-president related
the same story. Marroquin Rojas was strongly anti-communist, but
he apparently resented the casual way in which the American planes
violated Guatemalan sovereignty.

16. Norman Diamond, "Why They Shoot Americans", The Nation (New
York), 5 February 1968. The title of the article refers to the
shooting of John Webber.

17. Opening quotation: Clyde Snow, forensic anthropologist, cited
in Covert Action Quarterly, spring 1994, No. 48, p. 32.
Right-wing terrorism: compiled from the sources cited herein.

18. Washington Post, 4 February 1968, p. B1. The historic
dialogue in Latin America between Christianity and Marxism, begun
in the 1970s, can be traced in large measure to priests and nuns
like Bonpane and the Melvilles and their experiences in Guatemala
in the 1950s and 60s.

19. Galeano, p. 63.

20. El Imparcial (Guatemala City), 10 November 1967, cited in
Melville, p. 289.

21. Richard Gott, in the Foreword to the Melvilles' book, p. 8.

22. AID, OPS, Alliance for Progress:

a) "Guatemala and the Dominican Republic", a Staff Memorandum
prepared for the US Senate Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere
Affairs, Committee on Foreign Relations, 30 December 1971, p. 6;
b) Jonas and Tobis, pp. 199-200;
c) Galeano, pp. 72-3;
d) Michael Klare, War Without End (Random House, New York, 1972)
pp. 241-69, for discussion of the OPS curriculum and philosophy;
e) Langguth, pp. 242-3 and elsewhere, for discussion of OPS
practices, including its involvement with torture; the author
confines his study primarily to Brazil and Uruguay, but it
applies to Guatemala as well;
f) CounterSpy magazine (Washington), November 1980-January 1981,
pp. 54-5, lists the names of almost 300 Guatemalan police
officers who received training in the United States from 1963 to 1974;
g) Michael Klare and Nancy Stein, "Police Terrorism in Latin
America", NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report (North American
Congress on Latin America, New York), January 1974, pp. 19-23,
based on State Department documents obtained by Senator James
Abourezk in 1973;
h) Jack Anderson, Washington Post, 8 October 1973, p. C33.

23. AID figure cited in Jenny Pearce, Under the Eagle: U.S.
Intervention in Central America and the Caribbean (Latin American
Bureau, London, updated edition 1982) p. 67.

24. George Cotter, "Spies, strings and missionaries", The
Christian Century (Chicago), 25 March 1981, p. 321.

25. Eqbal Ahmad, "The Theory and Fallacies of Counter-insurgency",
The Nation (New York), 2 August 1972, p. 73.

26. Relationship of Arana to US military: Joseph Goulden, "A Real
Good Relationship", The Nation (New York), 1 June 1970, p. 646;
Norman Gall, "Guatemalan Slaughter", N.Y. Review of Books, 20 May
1971, pp. 13-17.

27. Le Monde Weekly (English edition), 17 February 1971, p. 3.

28. New York Times, 27 December 1970, p. 2; New York Times
Magazine, 13 June 1971, p. 72.

29. US Senate Staff Memorandum, op. cit.

30. New York Times, 18 February 1976.

31. Ibid., 9 November 1977, p. 2.

32. Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, Jane Hunter, The
Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in
the Reagan Era (South End Press, Boston, 1987), chapter V,
passim; The Guardian (London), 9 December 1983; CounterSpy, op. cit.,
p. 53, citing Elias Barahona y Barahona, former press secretary
at the Guatemalan Ministry of the Interior who had infiltrated
the government for the EGP.

33. CounterSpy, op. cit. (Barahona) p. 53.

34. Pearce, p. 278; a book was published later which transcribed
Mench£'s own account of her life, in which she recounts many
more atrocities of the Guatemalan military: Elisabeth Burgos-Debray,
ed., I ... Rigoberta Mench£: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (London,
1984, English translation).

35. Pearce, p. 176; Sherwood's role in 1954: Schlesinger and
Kinzer, pp. 116, 122, 128. His statement is partially quoted in
Penny Lernoux, In Banks We Trust (Doubleday, New York, 1984), p.
238, citing CBS News Special, 20 March 1982: "Update: Central
America in Revolt".

36. Washington Post, 22 February 1981, p. C7, column by Jack
Anderson; Anderson refers only to an "official spokesman" of the
MLN; the identity of the speaker as Sandoval comes from other
places -- see, e.g., The Guardian (London), 2 March 1984.

37. Washington Post, ibid. For a discussion of the many ties
between American conservatives and the Guatemalan power
structure, see the report of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs
(Washington), by Allan Nairn in 1981.

38. New York Times, 19 March 1981, p. 10.

39. Washington Post, 14 May 1981, p. A16.

40. Ibid.; New York Times, 18 May 1981, p. 18; Report issued by
the Washington Office on Latin America (a respected human-rights
lobby which has worked in liaison with the State Department's
human-rights section), 4 September 1981.

41. Washington Office on Latin America report, op. cit.
Presumably it was the traditional right-wing fear of the poor
being educated which lay behind this incident.

42. New York Times, 28 December 1981.

43. Ibid., 21 June 1981; 25 April 1982; The Guardian (London), 10
January 1983.

44. San Francisco Chronicle, 27 August 1981, p. 57.

45. Washington Post, 21 October 1982, p. A1.

46. The Guardian (London), 10 January 1983; 17 May 1983.

47. New York Times, 25 April 1982. p. 1.

48. Ibid., 12 October 1982, p. 3 (deaths, citing Amnesty
International); Los Angeles Times, 20 July 1994, p. 11 (villages,
citing "human rights organizations"). For the gruesome details
of death squads, disappearances, and torture in Guatemala during the
early 1980s, see Guatemala: A Government Program of Political
Murder (Amnesty International, London, 1981) and Massive
Extrajudicial Executions in Rural Areas Under the Government of
General Efra¡n R¡os Montt (AI, July 1982).

49. New York Times, 6 December 1982, p. 14.

50. Contemporary Marxism (San Francisco), No. 3, Summer 1981.

51. The National Catholic Reporter (Kansas City, Missouri
weekly), 31 January 1968.

52. Los Angeles Times, 25 December 1988.

53. Occurred on 2 December 1990; Report, Summer 1991, from
Witness for Peace, Washington, a religious-oriented human-rights
organization concerned with Central America.

54. Los Angeles Times, 7 May 1990.

55. DeVine and Bamaca cases: New York Times, 23 March 1995, p.
1; 24 March, p. 3; 30 March, p. 1; Los Angeles Times, 23 March 1995,
p. 7; 24 March, p. 4; 31 March, p. 4; 2 April, p. M2; Time
magazine, 10 April 1995, p. 43.

This is a chapter from Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum

posted April 25, 2006 11:44 PM              

Teaching communists what democracy is all about

For American anti-communist cold-warriors, for Bulgarian anti-communist cold-warriors, it couldn't have looked more promising.
The cold war was over. The forces of Western Civilization, Capitalism and Goodness had won. The Soviet Union was on the verge of falling apart. The Communist Party of Bulgaria was in disgrace. Its dictatorial leader of 35 years was being prosecuted for abuses of power. The party had changed its name, but that wouldn't fool anybody. And the country was holding its first multiparty election in 45 years.
Then, the communists proceeded to win the election.
For the anti-communists the pain was unbearable. Surely some monstrous cosmic mistake had been made, a mistake which should not be allowed to stand. It should not, and it would not.

Washington had expressed its interest early. In February, Secretary of State James Baker became the most senior American official to visit Bulgaria since World War II. His official schedule said he was in Bulgaria to "meet with opposition leaders as well as Government officials". Usually, the New York Times noted, "it is listed the other way around". Baker became deeply involved in his talks with the opposition about political strategies and how to organize for an election. He also addressed a street rally organized by opposition groups, praising and encouraging the crowd. On the State Department profile of Bulgaria handed to reporters traveling with Baker, under the heading "Type of Government", was written "In transition".{1}
In May, three weeks before election day, a row broke out over assertions by the leader of the main opposition group. Petar Beron, secretary of the Union of Democratic Forces, a coalition of 16 parties and movements, said that during UDF's visits to Europe and the United States, many politicians pledged that they would not provide financial assistance to a socialist Bulgaria. This would apply even if the Bulgarian Socialist Party -- the renamed Communist Party -- won the elections fairly. Beron stated that:

Western leaders want lasting contacts with governments which are building Western-style democracy and economies. The British Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, was particularly categorical. He said he was drawing up a declaration to go before the European Community to refuse help for the remaining socialist governments in Eastern Europe.{2}

Meanwhile, the National Endowment for Democracy, Washington's specially created stand-in for the CIA (see Nicaragua chapter), with funding in this case primarily from the Agency for International Development, was pouring some $2 million into Bulgaria to influence the outcome of the election, a process the NED calls promoting democracy. This was equivalent to a foreign power injecting more than $50 million into an American electoral campaign. One major recipient of this largesse was the newspaper of the opposition Union of Democratic Forces, Demokratzia, which received $233,000 of newsprint, "to allow it to increase its size and circulation for the period leading up to the national elections". The UDF itself received another $615,000 of American taxpayer money for "infrastructure support and party training" ... "material and technical support" ... and "post-electoral assistance for the UDF's party building program".{3}
The United States made little attempt to mask its partisanship. On June 9, the day before election day, the US ambassador to Bulgaria, Sol Polansky, appeared on the platform of a UDF rally.{4} Polansky, whose early government career involved intelligence research, was a man who had had more than a passing acquaintance with the CIA. Moreover, several days earlier, the State Department had taken the unusual step of publicly criticizing the Bulgarian government for what it called the inequitable distribution of resources for news outlets, especially newsprint for opposition newspapers, as if this was not a fact of life for genuine opposition forces in the United States and every other country in the world. The Bulgarian government responded that the opposition had received newsprint and access to the broadcast outlets in accordance with an agreement between the parties, adding that many of the Socialist Party's advantages, especially its financial reserves, resulted from the party's membership of one million, about a ninth of Bulgaria's population. The government had further provided the printing plant to publish the UDF newspaper and had given the opposition coalition the building from which to run its operations.{5}
The Socialists' lead in the polls in the face of a crumbling economy perplexed the UDF, but the Bulgarian Socialist Party drew most of its support from among pensioners, farm-workers, and the industrial workforce, together representing well over half the voting population.{6} These sectors tended to associate the BSP with stability, and the party capitalized on this, pointing to the disastrous results -- particularly the unemployment and inflation -- of "shock therapy" free enterprise in Russia.{7} Although the three main parties all proposed moving toward a market economy, the Socialists insisted that the changes had to be carefully controlled. How this would be manifested in practice if the BSP were in charge and had to live in an extremely capitalist world, could not be predicted. What was certain, however, was that there was no way a party named "Socialist", née "Communist", recently married to the Soviet Union, could win the trust and support of the West.
As it turned out after the second round of voting, the Socialists had won about 47 percent of the vote and 211 seats in the 400-seat parliament (the Grand National Assembly), to the UDF's 36 percent and 144 seats. Immediately following the first round, the opposition took to the streets with accusations of fraud, chanting "Socialist Mafia!" and "We won't work for the Reds!" However, the European election observers had contrary views. "The results ... will reflect the will of the people," said the leader of a British observer delegation. "If I wanted to fix an election, it would be easier to do it in England than in Bulgaria."
"If the opposition denounces the results as manipulated, it doesn't fit in with what we've seen," a Council of Europe delegate declared.
Another West European observer rejected the opposition claims as "sour grapes".{8}
"Utter rot" was the term chosen by a conservative English MP to describe allegations of serious fraud. He asserted that "The conduct of the poll was scrupulously fair. There were just minor incidents that were exaggerated."
"The opposition appear to be rather bad losers," concluded one Western diplomat.{9}
These opinions were shared by the many hundreds of observers, diplomats and parliamentarians from Western Europe. Nonetheless, most of the American observers were not very happy, saying that fear and intimidation arising from "the legacy of 45 years of totalitarian rule" had produced "psychological" pressures on Bulgarian voters. "Off the record, I have real problems with this," said one of the Americans. Asked if his team's report would have been as critical had the opposition won, he replied: "That's a good question."{10}
Members of the British parliamentary observer group dismissed reports that voting was marred by intimidation and other malpractices. Most complaints were either "trivial" or impossible to substantiate, they said. "When we asked where intimidation had taken place, it was always in the next village," said Lord Tordoff.{11}
Before the election, Socialist Prime Minister Lukanov had called for a coalition with opposition parties if his Bulgarian Socialist Party won the election. "The new government," he said, "needs the broadest possible measure of public support if we are to carry through the necessary changes."{12} Now victorious, he repeated the call for a coalition. But the UDF rejected the offer.{13} There were, however, elements within the BSP which were equally opposed to a coalition.
The opposition refused to accept the outcome of the voting. They were at war with the government. Street demonstrations became a daily occurrence as UDF supporters, backed by large numbers of students, built barricades and blocked traffic, and students launched a wave of strikes and sit-ins. Many of the students were acting as part of the Federation of Independent Student Societies (or Associations), which had been formed before the election. The chairman of the student group, Aptanas Kirchev, asserted that the organization had documentation on electoral abuses which would shortly be made public. But this does not appear to have taken place.{14}
The student movements were amongst the recipients of National Endowment for Democracy grants, to the tune of $100,000 "to provide infrastructure support to the Federation of Independent Student Associations of Bulgaria to improve its outreach capacity in preparation for the national elections". The students received "faxes, video and copying equipment, loudspeakers, printing equipment and low-cost printing techniques", as well as the help of various Polish advisers, American legal advisers, and other experts -- the best that NED money could buy.{15}
The first victory for the protest movement came on 6 July, less than a month after the election, when President Mladenov was forced to resign after a week of protests -- including a hunger strike outside of Parliament -- over his actions during an anti- governmental demonstration the previous December. His resignation came after the UDF released a videotape showing Mladenov talking to his colleagues and appearing to say: "Shouldn't we bring in the tanks?" Said a UDF official of the resignation, "We are rather happy about all this. It has thrown the Socialists into chaos."{16}
The demonstrations, the protests, the agitation continued on a daily basis during July. A "City of Freedom" consisting of more than 60 tents was set up in the center of Sofia, occupied by people who said they would stay there until all senior Bulgarian politicians who served under the old communist regime were removed. When they were denied what they considered adequate access to the media, the protesters added to their demands the resignation of the head of Bulgarian television.{17} At one point, a huge ceremonial pyre was built in the street in which text books from the communist era were burnt, as well as party cards and flags.{18} go to notes
The next head to fall was that of the interior minister, Atanas Smerdjiev, who resigned in a dispute over the extent to which the questioning of former dictator Todor Zhivkov should be public or behind closed doors. The Bulgarian people indeed had a lot to protest about; primarily a rapidly declining standard of living and a government without a president which seemed paralyzed and unable to enact desperately-needed reforms. But the question posed by some MPs -- as thousands of hostile demonstrators surrounded the parliament building during the Smerdjiev affair -- was "Are we going to be dictated to by the street?" "The problem," said Prime Minister Lukanov, "is whether parliament is a sovereign body or whether we are going to be forced to make decisions under pressure." His car was attacked as he left the building.{19} Finally, on 1 August the head of the UDF, Zhelyu Zhelev, was elected unopposed by Parliament as the new president.
A few weeks later, another demand of the protesters was met. The government began to remove communist symbols, such as red stars and hammer-and-sickles, from buildings in Sofia. Yet, two days later, the headquarters of the Socialist Party was set afire as 10,000 people swarmed around it. Many of them broke into the building and ransacked it before it wound up a gutted and charred shell.{20}
The protest movement in Bulgaria was beginning to feel and smell like the general strike in British Guiana to topple Cheddi Jagan in 1962, and the campaign to undermine Salvador Allende in Chile in the early '70s -- both operations of the CIA -- where as soon as one demand was met, newer ones were raised, putting the government virtually under siege, hoping it would over-react, and making normal governing impossible. In Bulgaria, women demonstrated by banging pots and pans to signify the lack of food in the shops,{21} just as women had dramatically done in Chile, and in Jamaica and Nicaragua as well, where the CIA had also financed anti-government demonstrations.
In British Guiana, the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade had come down from the US to spread the gospel and money, and similar groups had set up shop in Jamaica. In Bulgaria in August, representatives of the Free Congress Foundation, an American right-wing organization with lots of money and lots of anti-communist and religious ideology, met with about one-third of the opposition members in Parliament and President Zhelev's chief political adviser. Zhelev himself visited the FCF's Washington office the following month. The FCF -- which has received money from the National Endowment for Democracy at times -- had visited the Soviet Union and most of the Eastern European countries in 1989 and 1990, imparting good ol' American know-how in electoral and political techniques and for shaping public policy, as well as holding seminars on the multiple charms of free enterprise. It is not known whether any of the students were aware of the fact that one of the FCF's chief Eastern European program directors, Laszlo Pasztor, was a man with genuine Nazi credentials.{22}
By October, a group of American financial experts and economists, under the auspices of the US Chamber of Commerce, had drawn up a detailed plan for transforming Bulgaria into a supply-side free-market economy, complete with timetables for implementing the plan. President Zhelev said he was confident the Bulgarian government would accept virtually all the recommendations, even though the BSP held a majority in Parliament. "They will be eager to proceed," he said, "because otherwise the government will fall."{23}
Witnesses and police claimed that Konstantin Trenchev, a fierce anti-communist who was a senior figure in the UDF and the leader of the Podkrepa independent trade union, had called on a group of hardcore demonstrators to storm the BSP building during the fire. He had also called for the dissolution of Parliament and presidential rule, "tantamount to a coup d'etat" declared the Socialist Party. Trenchev went into hiding.{24}
Trenchev's Podkrepa union was also being financed by the NED -- $327 thousand had been allocated "to provide material and technical support to Bulgaria's independent trade union movement Podkrepa" and "to help Podkrepa organize a voter education campaign for the local elections". There were computers and fax machines, and there were advisers to help the union "get organized and gain strength", according to Podkrepa's vice president. The assistance had reached Podkrepa via the Free Trade Union Institute,{25} set up by the AFL-CIO in 1977 as the successor to the Free Trade Union Committee, which had been formed in the 1940s to combat left-wing trade unionism in Europe. Both the FTUC and the FTUI had long had an intimate relationship with the CIA.{26}
In the first week of November, several hundred students occupied Sofia University once again, demanding now the prosecution, not merely the removal, of leading figures in the former communist regime, as well as the nationalization of the Socialist Party's assets. The prime minister's rule was shaky. Lukanov had threatened to step down unless he gained opposition support in Parliament for his program of economic reform. The UDF, on the other hand, was now demanding that it be allowed to dominate a new coalition government, taking the premiership and most key portfolios. Although open to a coalition, the BSP would not agree to surrender the prime minister's position; the other cabinet posts, however, were open to negotiation.{27}
The movement to topple Lukanov was accelerating. Thousands marched and called for his resignation. University students held rallies, sit-ins, strikes and protest fasts, now demanding the publication of the names of all former secret police informers in the university. They proclaimed their complete distrust in the ability of the government to cope with Bulgaria's political and economic crisis, and called for "an end to one-party rule", a strange request in light of the desire of Lukanov to form a coalition government.{28} In June The Guardian of London had described Lukanov as "Bulgaria's impressive Prime minister ... a skilled politician who impresses business executives, bankers and conservative Western politicians, while maintaining popular support at home, even among the opposition."{29}
On the 23rd of November, Lukanov (barely) survived a no- confidence motion, leading the UDF to storm out of Parliament, announcing that they would not return for "an indefinite period". Three days later, the Podkrepa labor organization instituted a "general strike", albeit not with a majority of the nation's workers.{30}
Meanwhile, the student protests continued, although some of their demands had already been partly met. The Socialist Party had agreed to restore to the state 57 percent of its assets, corresponding to subsidies received from the state budget under the previous regime. And the former party leader, Todor Zhivkov, was already facing trial.
Some opposition leaders were not happy with the seemingly boundless student protest movement. UDF leader Petar Beron urged that since Bulgaria had embarked on the road to parliamentary democracy, the students should give democracy a chance and not resort to sit-ins. And a UDF MP added that "The socialists should leave the political arena in a legal manner. They should not be forced into doing it through revolution." Student leaders dismissed these remarks out of hand.{31}
The end for Andrei Lukanov came on 29 November, as the strike spread to members of the media, and thousands of doctors, nurses and teachers staged demonstrations. He announced that since his proposed economic program had not received the broad support he had asked for, he had decided that it was "useless to continue in office". A caretaker coalition would be set up that would lead to new general elections.{32}
Throughout the period of protest and turmoil, the United States continued to give financial assistance to various opposition forces and "whispered advice on how to apply pressure to the elected leaders". The vice president of the Podkrepa union, referring to American diplomats, said: "They wanted to help us and have helped with advice and strategy." This solidarity gave rise to hopes of future American aid. Konstantin Trenchev, the head of Podkrepa, apparently out of hiding now, confirmed that opposition activists had been assured of more US assistance if they managed to wrest power from the former communists.{33}
These hopes may have had as much to do with naiveté as with American support for the UDF. The Bulgarians, like other Eastern Europeans and Soviet citizens, had led very sheltered political and intellectual lives. In 1990, their ideological sophistication was scarcely above the equation: if the communist government was bad, it must have been all bad; if it was all bad, its principal enemy must have been all good. They believed such things as: American government leaders could not stay in office if they lied to the people, and that reports of homelessness and the absence of national health insurance in the United States were just "communist propaganda".
However, the new American ambassador, H. Kenneth Hill, said that Washington officials had made it clear to Bulgarian politicians that future aid depended on democratic reform and development of an economic recovery plan acceptable to Western lenders, the same terms laid down all over Eastern Europe.
The Bulgarian Socialists, while not doubting Washington's commitment to exporting capitalism, did complain that the United States had at times violated democratic principles in working against the leadership chosen by the Bulgarian people. One reform- minded Socialist government official contended that Americans had reacted to his party's victory as if it represented a failure of US policy. "The U.S. government people have not been the most clean, moral defenders of democracy here," he said. "What cannot be done at home can be gotten away with in this dark, backward Balkan state."{34}
In the years since, the Bulgarian people, particularly the students, may have learned something, as the country has gone through the now-familiar pattern of freely-rising prices, the scrapping of subsidies on basic goods and utilities, shortages of all kinds, and IMF and World Bank demands to tighten the belts even further. Politically, there's been chaos. The UDF came to power in the next elections (with the BSP a very close second) but, due to the failing economy, lost a confidence vote in Parliament, saw its entire cabinet resign, then the vice president, who warned that the nation was heading for dictatorship. Finally, in July 1993, protesters prevented the president from entering his office for a month and demanded his resignation.
By 1994, we could read in the Los Angeles Times, by their most anti-communist foreign correspondent:

Living conditions are so much worse in the reform era that Bulgarians look back fondly on communism's "good old days," when the hand of the state crushed personal freedom but ensured that people were housed, employed and had enough to eat.{35}

But for Washington policy makers, the important thing, the ideological bottom line, was that the Bulgarian Socialist Party could not, and would not, be given the chance to prove that a democratic, socialist-oriented mixed economy could succeed in Eastern Europe while the capitalist model was failing all around it.
Nor, apparently, would it be allowed in nearby Albania. On 31 March 1991, a Communist government won overwhelming endorsement in elections there. This was followed immediately by two months of widespread unrest, including street demonstrations and a general strike lasting three weeks, which finally led to the collapse of the new regime by June.{36} The National Endowment for Democracy had been there also, providing $80,000 to the labor movement and $23,000 "to support party training and civic education programs".{37}

NOTES return to mid-text

1. New York Times, 11 February 1990, p. 20.

2. The Guardian (London), 21 May 1990, p. 6.

3. National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, D.C., Annual Report, 1990 (October 1, 1989 - September 30, 1990), pp. 23-4. The NED grants also included $111 thousand for an international election observation team.

4. Los Angeles Times, 3 December 1990, p. 13.

5. New York Times, 6 June 1990, p. 10; 11 February 1990, p. 20.

6. The Guardian (London), 9 June 1990, p. 6.

7. Luan Troxel, "Socialist Persistence in the Bulgarian Elections of 1990-1991", East European Quarterly (Boulder, CO), January 1993, pp. 412-14.

8. Los Angeles Times, 12 June 1990.

9. The Guardian (London), 12 June 1990, p. 7.

10. Los Angeles Times, 12 June 1990; The Times (London), 12 June 1990, p. 15; The Guardian (London), 12 June 1990, p. 7.

11. The Times (London), 20 June 1990, p. 10.

12. The Guardian (London), 28 May 1990, p. 6.

13. The Times (London), 20 June 1990, p. 10.

14. The Times Higher Educational Supplement (London), 29 June 1990, p. 11.

15. NED Annual Report, 1990, op. cit., pp. 6-7, 23.

16. The Times (London), 7 July 1990, p. 11.

17. The Times Higher Educational Supplement (London), 13 July 1990, p. 9.

18. The Guardian (London), 12 July 1990, p. 10; The Times (London), 20 July 1990, p. 10.

19. The Times (London), 28 July 1990, p. 8; 30 July, p. 6.

20. Ibid., 27 August 1990, p. 8.

21. The Times Higher Education Supplement (London), 14 December 1990, p. 8.

22. Russ Bellant and Louis Wolf, "The Free Congress Foundation Goes East", Covert Action Information Bulletin, Fall 1990, No. 35, pp. 29-32, based substantially on Free Congress Foundation publications.

23. New York Times, 9 October 1990, p. D20.

24. The Guardian (London), 29, 30 August 1990, both p. 8.

25. NED Annual Report, 1990, op. cit., p. 23; Los Angeles Times, 3 December 1990, p. 13.

26. Howard Frazier, editor, Uncloaking the CIA (The Free Press/Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, 1978) pp. 241-8.

27. The Guardian (London), 7 November 1990, p. 10.

28. The Times Higher Educational Supplement (London), 16 November 1990, p. 11.

29. The Guardian (London), 9 June 1990, p. 6.

30. The Times (London), 24 November 1990, p. 10; 27 November, p. 16.

31. The Times Higher Educational Supplement (London), 30 November 1990, p. 8.

32. The Guardian (London), 30 November 1990, p. 9; The Times (London), 30 November 1990, p. 10.

33. Los Angeles Times, 3 December 1990, p. 13.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid., 6 February 1994, article by Carol J. Williams.

36. Ibid., 13 June 1991, p. 14.

37. National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, D.C., Annual Report, 1991 (October 1, 1990 - September 30, 1991), p. 42.

This is a chapter from Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum

posted April 25, 2006 11:53 PM              

His followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces
of women who refused to wear the veil. CIA and State Department
officials I have spoken with call him "scary," "vicious," "a fascist,"
"definite dictatorship material".{1}

This did not prevent the United States government from showering the man with large amounts of aid to fight against the Soviet- supported government of Afghanistan. His name was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. He was the head of the Islamic Party and he hated the United States almost as much as he hated the Russians. His followers screamed "Death to America" along with "Death to the Soviet Union", only the Russians were not showering him with large amounts of aid.{2}
The United States began supporting Afghan Islamic fundamentalists in 1979 despite the fact that in February of that year some of them had kidnapped the American ambassador in the capital city of Kabul, leading to his death in the rescue attempt. The support continued even after their brother Islamic fundamentalists in next-door Iran seized the US Embassy in Teheran in November and held 55 Americans hostage for over a year. Hekmatyar and his colleagues were, after all, in battle against the Soviet Evil Empire; he was thus an important member of those forces Ronald Reagan called "freedom fighters".

On 27 April 1978, a coup staged by the People's Democratic Party (PDP) overthrew the government of Mohammad Daoud. Daoud, five years earlier, had overthrown the monarchy and established a republic, although he himself was a member of the royal family. He had been supported by the left in this endeavor, but it turned out that Daoud's royal blood was thicker than his progressive water. When the Daoud regime had a PDP leader killed, arrested the rest of the leadership, and purged hundreds of suspected party sympathizers from government posts, the PDP, aided by its supporters in the army, revolted and took power.
Afghanistan was a backward nation: a life expectancy of about 40, infant mortality of at least 25 percent, absolutely primitive sanitation, widespread malnutrition, illiteracy of more than 90 percent, very few highways, not one mile of railway, most people living in nomadic tribes or as impoverished farmers in mud villages, identifying more with ethnic groups than with a larger political concept, a life scarcely different from many centuries earlier.
Reform with a socialist bent was the new government's ambition: land reform (while still retaining private property), controls on prices and profits, and strengthening of the public sector, as well as separation of church and state, eradication of illiteracy, legalization of trade unions, and the emancipation of women in a land almost entirely Muslim.
Afghanistan's thousand-mile border with the Soviet Union had always produced a special relationship. Even while it was a monarchy, the country had been under the strong influence of its powerful northern neighbor which had long been its largest trading partner, aid donor, and military supplier. But the country had never been gobbled up by the Soviets, a fact that perhaps lends credence to the oft-repeated Soviet claim that their hegemony over Eastern Europe was only to create a buffer between themselves and the frequently-invading West.
Nevertheless, for decades Washington and the Shah of Iran tried to pressure and bribe Afghanistan in order to roll back Russian influence in the country. During the Daoud regime, Iran, encouraged by the United States, sought to replace the Soviet Union as Kabul's biggest donor with a $2 billion economic aid agreement, and urged Afghanistan to join the Regional Cooperation for Development, which consisted of Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. (This organization was attacked by the Soviet Union and its friends in Afghanistan as being a "branch of CENTO" the 1950s regional security pact that was part of the US policy of "containment" of the Soviet Union.) At the same time, Iran's infamous secret police, SAVAK, was busy fingering suspected Communist sympathizers in the Afghan government and military. In September 1975, prodded by Iran which was conditioning its aid on such policies, Daoud dismissed 40 Soviet-trained military officers and moved to reduce future Afghan dependence on officer training in the USSR by initiating training arrangements with India and Egypt. Most important, in Soviet eyes, Daoud gradually broke off his alliance with the PDP, announcing that he would start his own party and ban all other political activity under a projected new constitution.{3}
Selig Harrison, the Washington Post's South Asia specialist, wrote an article in 1979 entitled "The Shah, Not the Kremlin, Touched off Afghan Coup", concluding:

The Communist takeover in Kabul [April 1978] came about when it did,
and in the way that it did, because the Shah disturbed the tenuous
equilibrium that had existed in Afghanistan between the Soviet
Union and the West for nearly three decades. In Iranian and American
eyes, Teheran's offensive was merely designed to make Kabul more
truly nonaligned, but it went far beyond that. Given the unusually
long frontier with Afghanistan, the Soviet Union would clearly go to
great lengths to prevent Kabul from moving once again toward a
pro-western stance.{4}

When the Shah was overthrown in January 1979, the United States lost its chief ally and outpost in the Soviet-border region, as well as its military installations and electronic monitoring stations aimed at the Soviet Union. Washington's cold warriors could only eye Afghanistan even more covetously than before.
After the April revolution, the new government under President Noor Mohammed Taraki declared a commitment to Islam within a secular state, and to non-alignment in foreign affairs. It maintained that the coup had not been foreign inspired, that it was not a "Communist takeover", and that they were not "Communists" but rather nationalists and revolutionaries. (No official or traditional Communist Party had ever existed in Afghanistan.){5} But because of its radical reform program, its class-struggle and anti-imperialist-type rhetoric, its support of all the usual suspects (Cuba, North Korea, etc.), its signing of a friends hip treaty and other cooperative agreements with the Soviet Union, and an increased presence in the country of Soviet civilian and military advisers (though probably less than the US had in Iran at the time), it was labeled "communist" by the world's media and by its domestic opponents.
Whether or not the new government in Afghanistan should properly have been called communist, whether or not it made any difference what it was called, the lines were now drawn for political, military, and propaganda battle: a jihad (holy war) between fundamentalist Muslims and "godless atheistic communists"; Afghan nationalism vs. a "Soviet-run" government; large landowners, tribal chiefs, businessmen, the extended royal family, and others vs. the government's economic reforms. Said the new prime minister about this elite, who were needed to keep the country running, "every effort will be made to attract them. But we want to re-educate them in such a manner that they should think about the people, and not, as previously, just about themselves -- to have a good house and a nice car while other people die of hunger."{6}
The Afghan government was trying to drag the country into the 20th century. In May 1979, British political scientist Fred Halliday observed that "probably more has changed in the countryside over the last year than in the two centuries since the state was established." Peasant debts to landlords had been canceled, the system of usury (by which peasants, who were forced to borrow money against future crops, were left in perpetual debt to money-lenders) was abolished, and hundreds of schools and medical clinics were being built in the countryside. Halliday also reported that a substantial land-redistribution program was underway, with many of the 200,000 rural families scheduled to receive land under this reform already having done so. But this last claim must be approached with caution. Revolutionary land reform is always an extremely complex and precarious undertaking even under the best of conditions, and ultra-backward, tradition-bound Afghanistan in the midst of nascent civil war hardly offered the best of conditions for social experiments.
The reforms also encroached into the sensitive area of Islamic subjugation of women by outlawing child marriage and the giving of a woman in marriage in exchange for money or commodities, and teaching women to read, at a time when certain Islamic sectors were openly calling for the reinforcement of purdah, the seclusion of women from public observation. Halliday noted that the People's Democratic Party saw the Soviet Union as the only realistic source of support for the long-overdue modernization.{7} The illiterate Afghan peasant's ethnic cousins across the border in the Soviet Union were, after all, often university graduates and professionals.
The argument of the Moujahedeen ("holy warriors") rebels that the "communist" government would curtail their religious freedom was never borne out in practice. A year and a half after the change in government, the conservative British magazine The Economist reported that "no restrictions had been imposed on religious practice".{8} Earlier, the New York Times stated that the religious issue "is being used by some Afghans who actually object more to President Taraki's plans for land reforms and other changes in this feudal society."{9} Many of the Muslim clergy were in fact rich landowners.{10} The rebels, concluded a BBC reporter who spent four months with them, are "fighting to retain their feudal system and stop the Kabul government's left-wing reforms which [are] considered anti-Islamic".{11}
The two other nations which shared a long border with Afghanistan, and were closely allied to the United States, expressed their fears of the new government. To the west, Iran, still under the Shah, worried about "threats to oil-passage routes in the Persian Gulf". Pakistan, to t he south, spoke of "threats from a hostile and expansionist Afghanistan"{12} A former US ambassador to Afghanistan saw it as part of a "gradually closing pincer movement aimed at Iran and the oil regions of the Middle East."{13} None of these alleged fears turned out to have any substance or evidence to back them up, but to the anti-communist mind this might prove only that the Russians and their Afghan puppets had been stopped in time.
Two months after the April 1978 coup, an alliance formed by a number of conservative Islamic factions was waging guerrilla war against the government.{14} By spring 1979, fighting was taking place on many fronts, and the State Department was cautioning the Soviet Union that its advisers in Afghanistan should not interfere militarily in the civil strife. One such warning in the summer by State Department spokesman Hodding Carter was another of those Washington monuments to chutzpah: "We expect the principle of nonintervention to be respected by all parties in the area, including the Soviet Union."{15} This while the Soviets were charging the CIA with arming Afghan exiles in Pakistan; and the Afghanistan government was accusing Pakistan and Iran of also aiding the guerrillas and even of crossing the border to take part in the fighting. Pakistan had recently taken its own sharp turn toward strict Muslim orthodoxy, which the Afghan government deplored as "fanatic";{16} while in January, Iran had established a Muslim state after overthrowing the Shah. (As opposed to the Afghan fundamentalist freedom fighters, the Iranian Islamic fundamentalists were regularly described in the West as terrorists, ultra-conservatives, and anti-democratic.)
A "favorite tactic" of the Afghan freedom fighters was "to torture victims [often Russians] by first cutting off their noses, ears, and genitals, then removing one slice of skin after another", producing "a slow, very painful death".{17} The Moujahedeen also killed a Canadian tourist and six West Germans, including two children, and a U.S. military attaché was dragged from his car and beaten; all due to the rebels' apparent inability to distinguish Russians from other Europeans.{18}
In March 1979, Taraki went to Moscow to press the Soviets to send ground troops to help the Afghan army put down the Moujahedeen. He was promised military assistance, but ground troops could not be committed. Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin told the Afghan leader:

The entry of our troops into Afghanistan would outrage the international
community, triggering a string of extremely negative consequences in
many different areas. Our common enemies are just waiting for the moment
when Soviet troops appear in Afghanistan. This will give them the excuse
they need to send armed bands into the country.{19}

In September, the question became completely academic for Noor Mohammed Taraki, for he was ousted (and his death soon announced) in an intra-party struggle and replaced by his own deputy prime minister, Hafizullah Amin. Although Taraki had sometimes been heavy-handed in implementing the reform program, and had created opposition even amongst the intended beneficiaries, he turned out to be a moderate compared to Amin who tried to institute social change by riding roughshod over tradition and tribal and ethnic autonomy.
The Kremlin was unhappy with Amin. The fact that he had been involved in the overthrow and death of the much-favored Taraki was bad enough. But the Soviets also regarded him as thoroughly unsuitable for the task that was Moscow's sine qua non: preventing an anti-communist Islamic state for arising in Afghanistan. Amin gave reform an exceedingly bad name. The KGB station in Kabul, in pressing for Amin's removal, stated that his usurpation of power would lead to "harsh repressions and, as a reaction, the activation and consolidation of the opposition"{20} Moreover, as we shall see, the Soviets were highly suspicious a bout Amin's ideological convictions.
Thus it was, that what in March had been unthinkable, in December became a reality. Soviet troops began to arrive in Afghanistan around the 8th of the month -- to what extent at Amin's request or with his approval, and, consequently, whether to call the action an "invasion" or not, has been the subject of much discussion and controversy.
On the 23rd the Washington Post commented "There was no charge [by the State Department] that the Soviets have invaded Afghanistan, since the troops apparently were invited"{21} However, at a meeting with Soviet-bloc ambassadors in October, Amin's foreign minister had openly criticized the Soviet Union for interfering in Afghan affairs. Amin himself insisted that Moscow replace its ambassador.{22} Yet, on 26 December, while the main body of Soviet troops was arriving in Afghanistan, Amin gave "a relaxed interview" to an Arab journalist. "The Soviets," he said, "supply my country with economic and military aid, but at the same time they respect our independence and our sovereignty. They do not interfere in our domestic affairs." He also spoke approvingly of the USSR's willingness to accept his veto on military bases.{23}
The very next day, a Soviet military force stormed the presidential palace and shot Amin dead.{24}
He was replaced by Babrak Karmal, who had been vice president and deputy prime minister in the 1978 revolutionary government.
Moscow denied any part in Amin's death, though they didn't pretend to be sorry about it, as Brezhnev made clear:

The actions of the aggressors against Afghanistan were facilitated
by Amin who, on seizing power, started cruelly repressing broad
sections of Afghan society, party and military cadres, members of
the intelligentsia and of the Moslem clergy, that is, the very
sections on which the April revolution relied. And the people
under the leadership of the People's Democratic Party, headed by
Babrak Karmal, rose against Amin's tyranny and put an end to it.
Now in Washington and some other capitals they are mourning Amin.
This exposes their hypocrisy with particular clarity. Where were
these mourners when Amin was conducting mass repressions, when
he forcibly removed and unlawfully killed Taraki, the founder of
the new Afghan state?{25}

After Amin's ouster and execution, the public thronged the streets in "a holiday spirit". "If Karmal could have overthrown Amin without the Russians," observed a Western diplomat, "he would have been seen as a hero of the people."{26} The Soviet government and press repeatedly referred to Amin as a "CIA agent", a charge which was greeted with great skepticism in the United States and elsewhere.{27} However, enough circumstantial evidence supporting the charge exists so that it perhaps should not be dismissed entirely out of hand.
During the late 1950s and early 60s, Ami n had attended Columbia University Teachers College and the University of Wisconsin.{28} This was a heyday period for the CIA -- using impressive bribes and threats -- to regularly try to recruit foreign students in the United States to act as agents for them when they returned home. During this period, at least one president of the Afghanistan Students Association (ASA), Zia H. Noorzay, was working with the CIA in the United States and later became president of the Afghanistan state treasury. One of the Afghan students whom Noorzay and the CIA tried in vain to recruit, Abdul Latif Hotaki, declared in 1967 that a good number of the key officials in the Afghanistan government who studied in the United States "are either CIA trained or indoctrinated. Some are cabinet level people."{29} It has been reported that in 1963 Amin became head of the ASA, but this has not been corroborated.{30} However, it is known that the ASA received part of its funding from the Asia Foundation, the CIA's principal front in Asia for many years, and that at one time Amin was associated with this organization.{31}
In September 1979, the month that Amin took power, the American chargé d'affaires in Kabul, Bruce Amstutz, began to hold friendly meetings with him to reassure him that he need not worry about his unhappy Soviet allies as long as the US maintained a strong presence in Afghanistan. The strategy may have worked, for later in the month, Amin made a special appeal to Amstutz for improved relations with the United States. Two days later in New York, the Afghan Foreign Minister quietly expressed the same sentiments to State Department officials. And at the end of October, the US Embassy in Kabul reported that Amin was "painfully aware of the exiled leadership the Soviets [were] keeping on the shelf" (a reference to Karmal who was living in Czechoslovakia).{32} Under normal circumstances, the Amin-US meetings might be regarded as routine and innocent diplomatic contact, but these were hardly normal circumstances -- the Afghan government was engaged in a civil war, and the United States was supporting the other side.
Moreover, it can be said that Amin, by his ruthlessness, was doing just what an American agent would be expected to do: discrediting the People's Democratic Party, the party's reforms, the idea of socialism or communism, and the Soviet Union, all associated in one package. Amin also conducted purges in the army officer corps which seriously undermined the army's combat capabilities.
But why would Amin, if he were actually plotting with the Americans, request Soviet military forces on several occasions? The main reason appears to be that he was being pressed to do so by high levels of the PDP and he had to comply for the sake of appearances. Babrak Karmal has suggested other, more Machiavellian, scenarios.{33}
The Carter administration jumped on the issue of the Soviet "invasion" and soon launched a campaign of righteous indignation, imposing what President Carter called "penalties" -- from halting the delivery of grain to the Soviet Union to keeping the US team out of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
The Russians countered that the US was enraged by the intervention because Washington had been plotting to turn the country into an American base to replace the loss of Iran.{34}
Unsurprisingly, on this seemingly clear-cut anti-communist issue, the American public and media easily fell in line with the president. The Wall Street Journal called for a "military" reaction, the establishment of US bases in the Middle East, "reinstatement of draft registration", development of a new missile, and giving the CIA more leeway, adding: "Clearly we ought to keep open the chance of covert aid to Afghan rebels."{35} The last, whether the newspaper knew it or not, had actually been going on for some time.
For some period prior to the Soviet invasion, the CIA had been beaming radio propaganda into Afghanistan and cultivating alliances with exiled Afghan guerrilla leaders by donating medicine and communications equipment.{36}
US foreign service officers had been meeting with Moujahedeen leaders to determine their needs at least as early as April 1979.{37}
And in July, President Carter had signed a "finding" to aid the rebels covertly, which led to the United States providing them with cash, weapons, equipment and supplies, and engaging in propaganda and other psychological operations in Afghanistan on their behalf. {38}
Intervention in the Afghan civil war by the United States, Iran, Pakistan, China and others gave the Russians grave concern about who was going to wield power next door. They consistently cited these "aggressive imperialist forces" to rationalize their own intervention into Afghanistan, which was the first time Soviet ground troops had engaged in military action anywhere in the world outside its post-World War II Eastern European borders. The potential establishment of an anti-communist Islamic state on the borders of the Soviet Union's own republics in Soviet Central Asia that were home to some 40 million Muslims could not be regarded with equanimity by the Kremlin any more than Washington could be unruffled about a communist takeover in Mexico.
As we have seen repeatedly, the United States did not limit its defense perimeter to its immediate neighbors, or even to Western Europe, but to the entire globe. President Carter declared that the Persian Gulf area was "now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan", that this area was synonymous with US interests, and that the United States would "defend" it against any threat by all means necessary. He called the Soviet action "the greatest threat to peace since the Second World War", a statement that required overlooking a great deal of post-war history. But 1980 was an election year.
Brezhnev, on the other hand, declared that "the national interests or security of the United States of America and other states are in no way affected by the events in Afghanistan. All attempts to portray matters otherwise are sheer nonsense."{39}
The Carter administration was equally dismissive of Soviet concerns. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski later stated that "the issue was not what might have been Brezhnev's subjective motives in going into Afghanistan but the objective consequences of a Soviet military presence so much closer to the Persian Gulf."{40}
The stage was now set for 12 long years of the most horrific kind of warfare, a daily atrocity for the vast majority of the Afghan people who never asked for or wanted this war. But the Soviet Union was determined that its borders must be unthreatening. The Afghan government was committed to its goal of a secular, reformed Afghanistan. And the United States was intent upon making this the Soviets' Vietnam, slowly bleeding as the Americans had.
At the same time, American policymakers could not fail to understand -- though they dared not say it publicly and explicitly -- that support of the Moujahedeen (many of whom carried pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini with them) could lead to a fundamentalist Islamic state being established in Afghanistan every bit as repressive as in next-door Iran, which in the 1980s was Public Enemy Number One in America. Neither could the word "terrorist" cross the lips of Washington officials in speaking of their new allies/clients, though these same people shot down civilian airliners and planted bombs at the airport. In 1986, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whose emotional invectives against "terrorists" were second to none, welcomed Abdul Haq, an Afghan rebel leader who admitted that he had ordered the planting of a bomb at Kabul airport in 1984 which killed at least 28 people. Such, then, were the scruples of cold-war anti-communists in late 20th century. As Anastasio Somoza had been "our son of a ***** ", the Moujahedeen were now "our fanatic terrorists".
At the beginning there had been some thought given to the morality of the policy. "The question here," a senior official in the Carter administration said, "was whether it was morally acceptable that, in order to keep the Soviets off balance, which was the reason for the operation, it was permissible to use other lives for our geopolitical interests."{42}
But such sentiments could not survive. Afghanistan was a cold-warrior's dream: The CIA and the Pentagon, finally, had one of their proxy armies in direct confrontation with the forces of the Evil Empire. There was no price too high to pay for this Super Nintendo game, neither the hundreds of thousands of Afghan lives, nor the destruction of Afghan society, nor three billion (sic) dollars of American taxpayer money poured into a bottomless hole, much of it going only to make a few Afghans and Pakistanis rich. Congress was equally enthused -- without even the moral uncertainty that made them cautious about arming the Nicaraguan contras -- and became a veritable bipartisan horn of plenty as it allocated more and more money for the effort each year. Rep. Charles Wilson of Texas expressed a not-atypical sentiment of official Washington when he declared:

There were 58,000 dead in Vietnam and we owe the Russians one ...
I have a slight obsession with it, because of Vietnam. I thought
the Soviets ought to get a dose of it ... I've been of the opinion
that this money was better spent to hurt our adversaries than other
money in the Defense Department budget.{43}

The CIA became the grand coordinator: purchasing or arranging the manufacture of Soviet-style weapons from Egypt, China, Poland, Israel and elsewhere, or supplying their own; arranging for military training by Americans, Egyptians, Chinese and Iranians; hitting up Middle-Eastern countries for donations, notably Saudi Arabia which gave many hundreds of millions of dollars in aid each year, totaling probably more than a billion; pressuring and bribing Pakistan -- with whom recent American relations had been very poor -- to rent out its country as a military staging area and sanctuary; putting the Pakistani Director of Military Operations, Brigadier Mian Mohammad Afzal, onto the CIA payroll to ensure Pakistani cooperation.{44} Military and economic aid which had been cut off would be restored, Pakistan was told by the United States, if they would join the great crusade. Only a month before the Soviet intervention, anti-American mobs had burned and ransacked the US embassy in Islamabad and American cultural centers in two other Pakistani cities.{45}
The American ambassador in Libya reported that Muammar Qaddafi was sending the rebels $250,000 as well, but this, presumably, w as not at the request of the CIA.{46}
Washington left it to the Pakistanis to decide which of the various Afghan guerrilla groups should be the beneficiaries of much of this largesse. As one observer put it: "According to conventional wisdom at the time, the United States would not repeat the mistake of Vietnam -- micro-managing a war in a culture it did not understand."{47}
Not everyone in Pakistan was bought out. The independent Islamabad daily newspaper, The Muslim, more than once accused the United States of being ready to "fight to the last Afghan" ... "We are not flattered to be termed a `frontline state' by Washington." ... "Washington does not seem to be in any mood to seek an early settlement of a war whose benefits it is reaping at no cost of American manpower."{48}
It's not actually clear whether there was any loss of American lives in the war. On several occasions in the late '80s, the Kabul government announced that Americans had been killed in the fighting,{49} and in 1985 a London newspaper reported that some two dozen American Black Muslims were in Afghanistan, fighting alongside the Moujahedeen in a jihad that a fundamentalist interpretation of the Koran says all believers in Islam must do at least once in their lives.{50} Several of the Black Muslims returned to the United States after being wounded.

Soviet aggression ... Soviet invasion ... Soviet swallowing up another innocent state as part of their plan to conquer the world, or at least the Middle East ... this was the predominant and lasting lesson taught by Washington official pronouncements and the mainstream US media about the war, and the sum total of knowledge for the average American, although Afghanistan had retained its independence during 60 years of living in peace next door to the Soviet Union. Zbigniew Brzezinski, albeit unrelentingly anti-Soviet, repeatedly speaks of the fact of Afghanistan's "neutrality" in his memoirs.{51} The country had been neutral even during the Second World War.
One would have to look long and hard at the information and rhetoric offered to the American public following the Soviet intervention to derive even a hint that the civil war was essentially a struggle over deep-seated social reform; while an actual discussion of the issue was virtually non-existent. Prior to the intervention, one could get a taste of this, such as the following from the New York Times:

Land reform attempts undermined their village chiefs. Portraits of
Lenin threatened their religious leaders. But it was the Kabul
revolutionary Government's granting of new rights to women that
pushed orthodox Moslem men in the Pashtoon villages of eastern
Afghanistan into picking up their guns. ... "The government said our
women had to attend meetings and our children had to go to schools.
This threatens our religion. We had to fight" ... "The government
imposed various ordinances allowing women freedom to marry anyone
they chose without their parents' consent."{52}

Throughout the 1980s, the Karmal, and then the Najibullah regimes, despite the exigencies of the war, pursued a program of modernization and broadening of their base: bringing electricity to villages, along with health clinics, a measure of land reform, and literacy; releasing numerous prisoners unlawfully incarcerated by Amin; bringing mullahs and other non-party people into the government; trying to carry it all out with moderation and sensitivity instead of confronting the traditional structures head on; reiterating its commitment to Islam, rebuilding and constructing mosques, exempting land owned by religious dignitaries and their institutions from land reform; trying, in short, to avoid the gross mistakes of the Amin government with its rush to force changes down people's throats.{53} Selig Harrison, writing in 1988, stated:

The Afghan Communists see themselves as nationalists and modernizers ...
They rationalize their collaboration with the Russians as the only way
available to consolidate their revolution in the face of foreign
"interference". ... the commitment of the Communists to rapid
modernization enables them to win a grudging tolerance from many
members of the modern-minded middle class, who feel trapped between
two fires: the Russians and fanatic Muslims opposed to social reforms.{54}

The program of the Kabul government eventually encouraged many volunteers to take up arms in its name. But it was a decidedly uphill fight, for it was relatively easy for the native anti-reformists and their foreign backers to convince large numbers of ordinary peasants that the government had ill intentions by blurring the distinction between the present government and its detested and dogmatic predecessor, particularly since the government was fond of stressing the continuity of the April 1978 revolution.{55} One thing the peasants, as well as the anti-reformists, were undoubtedly not told of was the US connection to the selfsame detested predecessor, Hafizullah Amin.
Another problem faced by the Kabul government in winning the hearts and minds of the people was of course the continuing Soviet armed presence, although it must be remembered that Islamic opposition to the leftist government began well before the Soviet forces arrived; indeed, the most militant of the Moujahedeen leaders, Hekmatyar, had led a serious uprising against the previous (non-leftist) government as well, in 1975, declaring that a "godless, communist-dominated regime" ruled in Kabul.{56}
As long as Soviet troops remained, the conflict in Afghanistan could be presented to the American mind as little more than a battle between Russian invaders and Afghanistan resistance/freedom fighters; as if the Afghanistan army and government didn't exist, or certainly not with a large following of people who favored reforms and didn't want to live under a fundamentalist Islamic government, probably a majority of the population.
"Maybe the people really don't like us, either," said Mohammed Hakim, Mayor of Kabul, a general in the Afghan army who was trained in the 1970s at military bases in the United States, and who thought that America was "the best country", "but they like us better than the extremists. This is what the Western countries do not understand. We only hope that Mr. Bush and the people of the United States take a good look at us. They think we are very fanatic Communists, that we are not human beings. We are not fanatics. We are not even Communists."{57}
They were in the American media. Any official of the Afghan government, or the government as a whole, was typically referred to, a priori, as "Communist", or "Marxist", or "pro-Communist", or "pro-Marxist", etc., without explanation or definition. Najibullah, who took over when Karmal stepped down in 1986, was confirmed in his position in 1987 under a new Islamized constitution that was stripped of all socialist rhetoric and brimming with references to Islam and the holy Koran. "This is not a socialist revolutionary country," he said in his acceptance speech. "We do not want to build a Communist society."{58}
Could the United States see beyond cold war ideology and consider the needs of the Afghan people? In August 1979, three months before the Soviet intervention, a classified State Department Report stated:

the United States's larger interests ... would be served by the
demise of the Taraki-Amin regime, despite whatever setbacks this
might mean for future social and economic reforms in Afghanistan.
... the overthrow of the D.R.A. [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan]
would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that
the Soviets' view of the socialist course of history as being
inevitable is not accurate.{59}

Repeatedly, in the 1980s, as earlier, the Soviet Union contended that no solution to the conflict could be found until the United States and other nations ceased their support of the Moujahedeen. The United States, in turn, insisted that the Soviets must first withdraw their troops from Afghanistan.
Finally, after several years of UN-supported negotiations, an accord was signed in Geneva on 14 April 1988, under which the Kremlin committed itself to begin pulling out its estimated 115,000 troops on 15 May, and to complete the process by 15 February of the next year. Afghanistan, said Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, had become "a bleeding wound".
In February, after the last Soviet forces had left Afghanistan, Gorbachev urged the United States to support an embargo on arms shipments into Afghanistan and a cease-fire between the two warring sides. Both proposals were turned down by the new Bush administration, which claimed that the Afghan government had been left with a massive stockpile of military equipment. It is unclear why Washington felt that the rebels who had fought the government to a standstill despite the powerful presence of the Soviet armed forces with all their equipment, would now be at a dangerous disadvantage with the Russians gone. The key to the American response may lie in the State Department statement of the prior week that the United States believed that the Kabul government on its own would not last more than six months.{60}
By raising the question of an arms gap (whether it was for real or not), Washington was assuring the continuation of the arms race in Afghanistan -- a microcosm of the cold war. At the same time, the Bush administration called upon the Soviets to support "an independent, nonaligned Afghanistan", although this was precisely what the United States had worked for decades to thwart.
Two days later, President Najibullah criticized the American rejection of Gorbachev's proposal, offering to return the Soviet weapons if the rebels agreed to lay down their weapons and negotiate. There was no reported response to this offer from the US, or from the rebels, who in the past had refused such offers.
It would appear that Washington was thinking longer term than cease-fires and negotiations. On the same day as Najibullah's offer, the United States announced that it had delivered 500,000 made-in-America textbooks to Afghanistan which were being used to teach Grades one through four. The books, which "critics say bordered on propaganda", told of the rebels' fight against the Soviet Union and contained drawings of guerrillas killing Russian soldiers.{61} Since the beginning of the war, the Moujahedeen had reserved its worst treatment for Russians. Washington possessed confirmed reports that the rebels had drugged and tortured 50 to 200 Soviet prisoners and imprisoned them like animals in cages, "living lives of indescribable horror".{62} Another account, by a reporter from the conservative Far Eastern Economic Review, relates that:

One [Soviet] group was killed, skinned and hung up in a butcher's
shop. One captive found himself the centre of attraction in a game of
buzkashi, that rough and tumble form of Afghan polo in which a
headless goat is usually the ball. The captive was used instead.
Alive. He was literally torn to pieces.{63}

Meanwhile, much to the surprise of the United States and everyone else, the Kabul government showed no sign of collapsing. The good news for Washington was that since the Soviet troops were gone (though some military advisers remained), the "cost-benefit ratio" had improved,{64} the cost being measured entirely in non-American deaths and suffering, as the rebels regularly exploded car bombs and sent rockets smashing into residential areas of Kabul, and destroyed government-built schools and clinics and murdered literacy teachers (just as the US-backed Nicaraguan contras had been doing on the other side of the world, and for the same reason: these were symbols of governmental benevolence).
The death and destruction caused by the Soviets and their Afghan allies was also extensive, such as the many bombings of villages. But individual atrocity stories must be approached with caution, for, as we have seen repeatedly, the propensity and the ability of the CIA to disseminate anti-communist disinformation -- often of the most far-fetched variety -- was virtually unlimited. With the Soviet Union the direct adversary, the creativity lamp must have burning all night at Langley.
Amnesty International, with its usual careful collection methods, reported in the mid-'80s on the frequent use of torture and arbitrary detention by the authorities in Kabul.{65} But what are we to make, for example, of the report, without attribution, by syndicated columnist Jack Anderson -- who had ties to the American Afghan lobby -- that Soviet troops often marched into unfriendly villages in Afghanistan and "massacred every man, woman and child"?{66} Or the New York Times recounting a story told them by an Afghan citizen of how Afghan soldiers had intentionally blinded five children with pieces of metal and then strangled them, as a government supporter he was with just laughed. To the newspaper's credit, it added that "There is no way of confirming this story. It is possible that the man who told it was acting and trying to discredit the regime here. His eyes, however, looked like they had seen horror."{67} Or a US congressman's charge in 1985 that the Soviets had used booby-trapped toys to maim Afghan children,{68} the identical story told before about leftists elsewhere in the world during the cold war, and repeated again in 1987 by CBS News, with pictures. The New York Post later reported the claim of a BBC producer that the bomb-toy had been created for the CBS cameraman.{69}
Then there was the Afghan Mercy Fund, ostensibly a relief agency, but primarily in the propaganda business, which reported that the Soviets had burned a baby alive, that they were disguising mines as candy bars and leaving other mines disguised as butterflies to also attract children. The butterfly mines, it turned out, were copies of a US-designed mine used in the Vietnam war.{70}
There was also the shooting down of a Pakistan fighter plane over Afghanistan in May 1987 that was reported by Pakistan and Washington -- knowing with certainty that their claim was untrue -- to be the result of a Soviet-made missile. It turned out that the plane had been shot down by a companion Pakistani plane in error.{71}
Throughout the early and mid-'80s, the Reagan administration declared that the Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan -- the so-called "yellow rain" -- and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone, (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information). Secretary of State Alexander Haig was a prime dispenser of such stories, and President Reagan himself denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches.{72} The "yellow rain", it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead. Then, in 1987, it was disclosed that the Reagan administration had made its accusations even though government scientists at the time had been unable to confirm any of them, and considered the evidence to be flimsy and misleading.{73} Even more suspicious: the major scientific studies that later examined Washington's claims spoke only of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand; no mention at all was made of Afghanistan. It was as if the administration -- perhaps honestly mistaken at first about Indochina -- had added Afghanistan to the list with full knowledge of the falsity of its allegation.
Such disinformation campaigns are often designed to serve a domestic political need. Consider Senator Robert Dole's contribution to the discussion when he spoke in 1980 on the floor of Congress of "convincing evidence" he had been provided "that the Soviets had developed a chemical capability that extends far beyond our greatest fears ... [a gas that] is unaffected by ... our gas masks and leaves our military defenseless." He then added: "To even suggest a leveling off of defense spending for our nation by the Carter administration at such a critical time in our history is unfathomable."{74} And in March 1982, when the Reagan administration made its claim about the 3,042 Afghan deaths, the New York Times noted that: "President Reagan has just decided that the United States will resume production of chemical weapons and has asked for a substantial increase in the military budget for such weapons."{75}
The money needed to extend American propaganda campaigns internationally flowed from the congressional horn of plenty as smoothly as for military desires -- $500,000 in one moment's flow to train Afghan journalists to use television, radio and newspapers to advance their cause.{76}
It should be noted that in June 1980, before any of the "yellow rain" charges had been made against the Soviet Union, the Kabul government had accused the rebels and their foreign backers of employing poison gas, citing an incident in which 500 pupils and teachers at several secondary schools had been poisoned with noxious gases; none were reported to have died.{77}

One reason victory continued to elude the Moujahedeen was that they were terribly split by centuries-old ethnic and tribal divisions, as well as the relatively recent rise of Islamic fundamentalism in conflict with more traditional, but still orthodox, Islam. The differences often led to violence. In one incident, in 1989, seven top Moujahedeen commanders and more than 20 other rebels were murdered by a rival guerrilla group. This was neither the first nor the last of such occurrences.{78} By April 1990, 14 months after the Soviet withdrawal, the Los Angeles Times described the state of the rebels thusly:

they have in recent weeks killed more of their own than the enemy. ...
Rival resistance commanders have been gunned down gangland-style here
in the border town of Peshawar [Pakistan], the staging area for the
war. There are persistent reports of large- scale political killings
in the refugee camps ... A recent execution ... had as much to do
with drugs as with politics. ... Other commanders, in Afghanistan and
in the border camps, are simply refusing to fight. They say privately
that they prefer [Afghan President] Najibullah to the hard-line
Moujahedeen fundamentalists led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.{79}

The rebel cause was also corrupted by the huge amounts of arms flooding in. Investigative reporter Tim Weiner reported the following:

The CIA's pipeline leaked. It leaked badly. It spilled huge quantities
of weapons all over one of the world's most anarchic areas. First the
Pakistani armed forces took what they wanted from the weapons shipments.
Then corrupt Afghan guerrilla leaders stole and sold hundreds of millions
of dollars' worth of anti-aircraft guns, missiles, rocket-propelled
grenades, AK-47 automatic rifles, ammunition and mines from the CIA's
arsenal. Some of the weapons fell into the hands of criminal gangs,
heroin kingpins and the most radical faction of the Iranian military. ...
While their troops eked out hard lives in Afghanistan's mountains and
deserts, the guerrillas' political leaders maintained fine villas in
Peshawar and fleets of vehicles at their command. The CIA kept silent as
the Afghan politicos converted the Agency's weapons into cash.{80}

Amongst the weapons the Moujahedeen sold to the Iranians were highly sophisticated Stinger heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles, with which the rebels had shot down many hundreds of Soviet military aircraft, as well as at least eight passenger planes. On 8 October 1987, Revolutionary Guards on an Iranian gunboat fired one of the Stingers at American helicopters patrolling the Persian Gulf, but missed their target.{81}
Earlier the same year, the CIA told Congress that at least 20 percent of its military aid to the Moujahedeen had been skimmed off by the rebels and Pakistani officials. Columnist Jack Anderson stated at the same time that his conservative estimate was that the diversion was around 60 percent, while one rebel leader told Anderson's assistant on his visit to the border that he doubted that even 25 percent of the arms got through. By other accounts, as little as 20 percent was making it the intended recipients. If indeed there was a deficiency of arms available to the Moujahedeen compared to the government forces, as George Bush implied, this was clearly a major reason for it. Yet the CIA and other administration officials simply looked upon it as part of doing business in that part of the world.{82}
Like many other CIA clients, the rebels were financed as well through drug trafficking, and the Agency was apparently as little concerned about it as ever as long as it kept their boys happy Moujahedeen commanders inside Afghanistan personally controlled huge fields of opium poppies, the raw material from which heroin is refined. CIA-supplied trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport some of the opium to the numerous laboratories along the Afghan-Pakistan border, whence many tons of heroin were processed with the cooperation of the Pakistani military. The output provided an estimated one-third to one-half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe. US officials admitted in 1990 that they had failed to investigate or take action against t he drug operation because of a desire not to offend their Pakistani and Afghan allies.{83} In 1993, an official of the US Drug Enforcement Administration called Afghanistan the new Colombia of the drug world.{84}

The war, with all its torment, continued until the spring of 1992, three years after the last Soviet troops had gone. An agreement on ending the arms supply, which had been reached between the United States and the Soviet Union, was now in effect. The two superpowers had abandoned the war. The Soviet Union no longer existed. And the Afghan people could count more than a million dead, three million disabled, and five million made refugees, in total about half the population.
At the same time, a UN-brokered truce was to transfer power to a transitional coalition government pending elections. But this was not to be. The Kabul government, amidst food riots and army revolts, virtually disintegrated, and the guerrillas stormed into t he capital and established the first Islamic regime in Afghanistan since it had become a separate and independent country in the mid-18th century.
A key event in the downfall of the government was the eleventh-hour defection to the guerrillas of General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum, who previously had been referred to in the US media as a "Communist general", now metamorphosed into an "ex-Communist general"
The Moujahedeen had won. Now they turned against each other with all their fury. Rockets and artillery shells wiped out entire neighborhoods in Kabul. By August at least 1,500 people had been killed or wounded, mostly civilians. (By 1994, the body count in this second civil war would reach 10,000.) Of all the rebel leaders, none was less compromising or more insistent upon a military solution than Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
Robert Neumann, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan, observed at this time:

Hekmatyar is a nut, an extremist and a very violent man. He was built
up by the Pakistanis. Unfortunately, our government went along with
the Pakistanis. We were supplying the money and the weapons but they
[Pakistani officials] were making the policy.

Washington was now very concerned that Hekmatyar would take power. Ironically, they were afraid that if he did, his brand of extremism would spread to and destabilize the former Soviet republics of large Moslem populations, the same fear which had been one of the motivations behind the Soviets intervening in the civil war in the first place.{85} It was to the forces of Hekmatyar that the "Communist general" Dostum eventually aligned himself.
Suleiman Layeq, a leftist and a poet, and the fallen regime's "ideologue", watched from his window as the Moujahedeen swarmed through the city, claiming building after building. "Without exception," he said of them, "they follow the way of the fundamentalist aims and goals of Islam. And it is not Islam. It is a kind of theory against civilization -- against modern civilization."{86}
Even before taking power, the Moujahedeen had banned all non-Muslim groups. Now more of the new law was laid down: All alcohol was banned in the Islamic republic; women could not venture out in the streets without veils, and violations would be punished by floggings, amputations and public executions. And this from the more "moderate" Islamics, not Hekmatyar. By September, the first public hangings were carried out. Before a cheering crowd of 10,000 people, three men were hung. They had been tried behind closed doors, and no one would say what crimes they had committed.{87}
In February 1993, a group of Middle Easterners blew up the World Trade Center in New York City. Most of them were veterans of the Moujahedeen. Other veterans were carrying out assassinations in Cairo, bombings in Bombay, and bloody uprisings in the mountains of Kashmir.
This, then, was the power and the glory of President Reagan's "freedom fighters", who had become yet more anti-American in recent years, many of them backing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf conflict of 1990-91. Surely even Ronald Reagan and George Bush would have preferred the company of "communist" reformers like President Noor Mohammed Taraki, Mayor Mohammed Hakim or poet Suleiman Layeq.
But the Soviet Union had bled. They had bled profusely. For the United States it had also been a holy war.

NOTES

1. Tim Weiner, Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget (Warner Books, New York, 1990), p. 149.

2. Ibid., pp. 149-50.

3. a) Selig Harrison, "The Shah, Not the Kremlin, Touched off Afghan Coup", Washington Post, 13 May 1979, p. C1; contains other examples of the Shah/US campaign.
b) Hannah Negaran, "Afghanistan: A Marxist Regime in a Muslim Society", Current History (Philadelphia), April 1979, p. 173.
c) New York Times, 3 February 1975, p. 4.
d) For a brief summary, from the Soviet point of view, of the West's attempts to lure Afghanistan into its fold during the 1950s and 60s, see The Truth About Afghanistan: Documents, Facts, Eyewitness Reports (Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow, 1981, second edition) pp. 60-65.
e) Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Waging Peace, 1956-1961 (New York, 1965) pp. 493, 495, 498 discusses his concern about Soviet influence in Afghanistan.

4. Selig Harrison, op. cit.

5. New York Times, 4 May 1978, p. 11; Louis Dupree, "A Communist Label is Unjustified", letter to New York Times, 20 May 1978, p. 18. Dupree had been an anthropologist who lived in Afghanistan for many years; he was also at one time a consultant to the U.S. National Security Council, and an activist, both in Pakistan and in the United States, against the leftist Afghan government, which declared him persona non grata in 1978.

6. New York Times Magazine, 4 June 1978, p. 52 (prime minister's quote).

7. New York Times, 18 May 1979, p. 29, article by Fred Halliday, a Fellow at the liberal Transnational Institute, Amsterdam, and author of several books on South Asia.

8. The Economist (London), 11 September 1979, p. 44.

9. New York Times, 13 April 1979, p. 8.

10. Newsweek, 16 April 1979, p. 64.

11. CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 31 December 1979, p. S-13, cited in CounterSpy magazine (Washington, DC), No. 4-2, Spring 1980, p. 36, article by Konrad Ege.

12. New York Times, 16 June 1978, p. 11

13. Robert Neumann, in Washington Review of Strategic and International Studies, July 1978, p. 117.

14. New York Times, 1 July 1978, p. 4.

15 San Francisco Chronicle, 4 August 1979, p. 9.

16. New York Times, 24 March 1979, p. 4; 13 April 1979, p. 8.

17. Washington Post, 11 May 1979, p. 23. U.S. intelligence officials confirmed that Islamic rebels killed Soviet male and female civilians and mutilated their bodies, New York Times, 13 April 1979, p. 8.

18. New York Times, 11 September 1979, p. 12.

19. Washington Post, 15 November 1992, p. 32, from the official minutes of the conversation, amongst declassified Politburo documents obtained by the newspaper.

20. Ibid., citing an article published in 1992 by the former KGB deputy station chief in Kabul.

21. Ibid., 23 December 1979, p. A8.

22. Selig Harrison, "Did Moscow Fear An Afghan Tito?", New York Times, 13 January 1980, p. E23.

23. The Sunday Times (London), 6 January 1980, reporting the interview with Amin by the newspaper Al Sharq Al Awast ("The Middle East") published in London and Mecca.

24. Washington Post, 15 November 1992, p. 32, citing a "recent" account in the Moscow newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

25. The Truth About Afghanistan, op. cit., p. 15, taken from Pravda, 13 January 1980.

26. The Times (London), 5 January 1980.

27. New York Times, 15 January 1980, p. 6. The newspaper stated that the CIA-accusations appeared to have been dropped by the Soviets at this time, perhaps because they were embarrassed by the incredulous reaction to it from around the world. But it was soon picked up again, conceivably in reaction to the Times' story.

28. Phillip Bonosky, Washington's Secret War Against Afghanistan (International Publishers, New York, 1985), pp. 33-4. The Washington Post, 23 December 1979, p. A8, also mentions Amin being a student at Columbia teachers college.

29. "How the CIA turns foreign students into traitors", Ramparts magazine (San Francisco), April 1967, pp. 23-4. This was a month after the magazine printed its famous exposé of the extensive CIA connection to the National Student Association, the leading organization of American students.

30. Bonosky, p. 34. When I spoke to Mr. Bonosky in 1994 about this claim, he said that he couldn't remember its source, but that it may have been something he was informed of in Afghanistan when he was there in 1981.

31. Charles G. Cogan, "Partners in Time: The CIA and Afghanistan since 1979", World Policy Journal (New York), Summer 1993, p. 76. Cogan was chief of the Near East and South Asia Division of the CIA's Directorate of Operations (Clandestine Services) from 1979 to 1984. He refers to Amin's connection to the Asia Foundation as "some sort of loose association", and says nothing further about it, but given his past position, Cogan may well know more than he's willing to reveal about a key point of the Afghanistan question, or else the article was censored by the CIA when Cogan submitted it for review, which he would have had to do.

32. Classified State Department cables, 11, 22, 23, 27, 29 September 1979, 28, 30 October 1979, among the documents found in the takeover of the US Embassy in Teheran on 4 November 1979 and gradually published in many volumes over the following years under the title: Documents from the Den of Espionage; hereafter referred to as "Embassy Documents". The cables referred to in this note come from vol. 30. These embassy documents and those which follow are cited in Covert Action Information Bulletin, No. 30, Summer 1988, article by Steve Galster, pp. 52-4. Except where quotations are used, the language summarizing the documents' content is that of Galster. Amin's party knew of these covert activities long before the documents were published. On 16 January 1980, a PDP spokesperson told the Afghan News Agency (Bakhtar): "In September 1979, Amin began preparing the ground for a rapprochement with the United States. He conducted confidential meetings with U.S. officials, sent emissaries to the United States, conveyed his personal oral messages to President Carter." (cited in Bonosky, p. 52)

33. Interview with Karmal in World Marxist Review (Toronto), April 1980, p. 36.

34. New York Times, 2 January 1980, p. 1.

35. Wall Street Journal, 7 January 1980, p. 12.

36. Weiner, p.145

37. Amongst the "Embassy Documents", op. cit., vol. 29, p. 99: Classified Department of State cable, 14 May 1979, refers to a previous meeting with a rebel leader in Islamabad on 23 April 1979.

38. Robert Gates (former CIA director), From the Shadows (NY, 1996) p.146

39. Truth About Afghanistan, op. cit., pp. 16-17.

40. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981 (New York, 1983) p. 430.

41. The Guardian (London), 5 March 1986.

42. Washington Post, 13 January 1985, p. A30. The unnamed official may have been CIA Director Stansfield Turner who is quoted as saying something very similar in Weiner pp. 146-7.

43. Ibid.

44. Amongst the "Embassy Documents", op. cit.: Classified CIA Field Report, 30 October 1979, vol. 30.

45. New York Times, 22 November 1979, p. 1.

46. Weiner, p. 146

47. John Balbach, former staff director of the Congressional Task Force on Afghanistan, article in the Los Angeles Times, 22 August 1993.

48. Cited in The Guardian (London), 28 December 1983 and 16 January 1987, p. 19.

49. Los Angeles Times, 17 October 1988, 13 March 1989, 16 March 1989.

50. The Daily Telegraph (London), 5 August 1985.

51. Brzezinski, p. 356, mentioned three times on this one page alone.

52. New York Times, 9 February 1980, p. 3; though written after the Soviet invasion, the article refers to April 1979.

53. For a discussion of some of these and related matters, see Selig Harrison, "Afghanistan: Soviet Intervention, Afghan Resistance, and the American Role" in Michael Klare and Peter Kornbluh, eds., Low Intensity Warfare: Counterinsurgency, Proinsurgency, and Antiterrorism in the Eighties (Pantheon Books, New York, 1988) pp. 188-190.

54. Ibid., p. 188; the portion about the middle class was attributed by Harrison to an article by German journalist Andreas Kohlschutter of Die Zeit.
55. For a fuller discussion of these matters see the three articles in The Guardian of London by their chief foreign correspondent Jonathan Steele, 17-19 March 1986.

56. Lawrence Lifschultz, "The not-so-new rebellion", Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong), 30 January 1981, p. 32.

57. Los Angeles Times, 22 April 1989, pp. 12-13.

58. Ibid., 1 December 1987, p. 8.

59. Amongst the "Embassy Documents", op. cit., vol. 30 -- Department of State Report, 16 August 1979.

60. Los Angeles Times, 17 February 1989, p. 8.

61. Najibullah, textbooks: Ibid., 18 February 1989, p. 18.

62. Washington Post, 13 January 1985, p. A30. The article speaks of 70 Russian prisoners "living lives of indescribable horror"; it appears, although it's not certain, that they are included in the 50 to 200 figure given earlier in the article.

63. John Fullerton, The Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan (London, 1984).

64. Los Angeles Times, 28 July 1989.

65. Amnesty International, Torture in the Eighties (London, 1984), Afghanistan chapter.

66. Jack Anderson column, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 May 1987. For his, and many other persons', ties to the Afghan lobby, see Sayid Khybar, "The Afghani Contra Lobby", Covert Action Information Bulletin, No. 30, Summer 1988, p. 65.

67. New York Times, 11 September 1979, p. 12.

68. Washington Post, 13 January 1985, p. A30.

69. Cited by Extra! (published by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, New York, October/November 1989), p. 1, referring to a series of articles in the New York Post beginning 27 September 1989.

70. Mary Williams Walsh, "Strained Mercy", The Progressive magazine (Madison, Wisconsin) May 1990, pp. 23-6. Walsh, as the Wall Street Journal's principal correspondent in South and Southeast Asia, had covered Afghanistan The Journal refused to print this article, which led to her resignation

71. San Francisco Chronicle, 20 July 1987.

72. New York Times, 9 March 1982, p. 1; 23 March 1982, pp. 1, 14; The Guardian (London) 3 November 1983, 29 March 1984; Washington Post, 30 May 1986.

73. Julian Robinson, et al, "Yellow Rain: The Story Collapses", Foreign Policy magazine, Fall 1987, pp. 100-117; New York Times, 31 August 1987, p. 14.

74. Congressional Record, 6 June 1980, pp. S13582-3.

75. New York Times, 29 March 1982, p. 1.

76. San Francisco Chronicle, 16 September 1985, p. 9.

77. The Truth About Afghanistan, op. cit., pp. 85, 89, with a photo of the alleged victims lying on the ground and another photo of an American chemical grenade.

78. Los Angeles Times, 28 July 1989.

79. Ibid., 30 April 1990, pp. 1 and 9.

80. Weiner, pp. 150, 152.

81. Weiner, p. 151; Los Angeles Times, 26 May 1988. Shooting down passenger planes: New York Times, 26 September 1984, p. 9; 11 April 1988, p. 1.

82. San Francisco Chronicle, Jack Anderson's columns: 29 April and 2 May 1987; 13 July 1987; Time magazine, 9 December 1985; Washington Post, 13 January 1985, p. A30.

83.Drugs, the Moujahedeen and the CIA:
a) Weiner, pp. 151-2;
b) New York Times, 18 June 1986;
c) William Vornberger, "Afghan Rebels and Drugs", Covert Action Information Bulletin, No. 28, Summer 1987, pp. 11-12;
d) Los Angeles Times, 4 November 1989, p. 14;
e) Washington Post, 13 May 1990, p. 1.

84. Los Angeles Times, 22 August 1993.

85. Hekmatyar, Neumann: Ibid., 21 April 1992.

86. Ibid., 24 May 1992.

87. Ibid., 4 January, 24 May, 8 September, 1992.

This is a chapter from Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II by William Blum

Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski about how
the US provoked the Soviet Union into invading
Afghanistan and starting the whole mess

Le Nouvel Observateur (France), Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76*

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his
memoirs [From the Shadows], that American intelligence services
began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan six months before the
Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national
security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a
role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history,
CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say,
after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the
reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise:
Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the
first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet
regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the
president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid
was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Question: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action.
But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and
looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to
intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they
would.

Question: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting
that they intended to fight against secret involvement of the
United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them.
However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything
today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea.
It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and
you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially
crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, in substance: We
now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.
Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war
unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about
the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Question: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic
fundamentalists, having given arms and advice to future
terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The
Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up
Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the
cold war?**

Question: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated:
Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in
regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam.
Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or
emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5
billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi
Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism,
Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more
than what unites the Christian countries.

* There are at least two editions of this magazine; with the
perhaps sole exception of the Library of Congress, the version
sent to the United States is shorter than the French version, and
the Brzezinski interview was not included in the shorter version.

** It should be noted that there is no demonstrable connection
between the Afghanistan war and the breakup of the Soviet Union
and its satellites.

This interview was translated from the French by William Blum,
Author of "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions
Since World War II" and "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only
Superpower".

posted April 25, 2006 11:59 PM              

The U.S. bombing of Iraq, June 26, 1993, in retaliation for an alleged Iraqi plot to assassinate former president George Bush, "was essential," said President Clinton, "to send a message to those who engage in state-sponsored terrorism ... and to affirm the expectation of civilized behavior among nations." *

Following is a list of prominent foreign individuals whose assassination (or planning for same) the United States has been involved in since the end of the Second World War. The list does not include several assassinations in various parts of the world carried out by anti-Castro Cubans employed by the CIA and headquartered in the United States.

1949 - Kim Koo, Korean opposition leader

1950s - CIA/Neo-Nazi hit list of more than 200 political figures in West Germany
to be "put out of the way" in the event of a Soviet invasion

1950s - Chou En-lai, Prime minister of China, several attempts on his life

1950s, 1962 - Sukarno, President of Indonesia

1951 - Kim Il Sung, Premier of North Korea

1953 - Mohammed Mossadegh, Prime Minister of Iran

1950s (mid) - Claro M. Recto, Philippines opposition leader

1955 - Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India

1957 - Gamal Abdul Nasser, President of Egypt

1959, 1963, 1969 - Norodom Sihanouk, leader of Cambodia

1960 - Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem, leader of Iraq

1950s-70s - José Figueres, President of Costa Rica, two attempts on his life

1961 - Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, leader of Haiti

1961 - Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo (Zaire)

1961 - Gen. Rafael Trujillo, leader of Dominican Republic

1963 - Ngo Dinh Diem, President of South Vietnam

1960s-70s - Fidel Castro, President of Cuba, many attempts on his life

1960s - Raúl Castro, high official in government of Cuba

1965 - Francisco Caamaño, Dominican Republic opposition leader

1965-6 - Charles de Gaulle, President of France

1967 - Che Guevara, Cuban leader

1970 - Salvador Allende, President of Chile

1970 - Gen. Rene Schneider, Commander-in-Chief of Army, Chile

1970s, 1981 - General Omar Torrijos, leader of Panama

1972 - General Manuel Noriega, Chief of Panama Intelligence

1975 - Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire

1976 - Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica

1980-1986 - Muammar Qaddafi, leader of Libya, several plots and attempts upon his life

1982 - Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of Iran

1983 - Gen. Ahmed Dlimi, Moroccan Army commander

1983 - Miguel d'Escoto, Foreign Minister of Nicaragua

1984 - The nine comandantes of the Sandinista National Directorate

1985 - Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, Lebanese Shiite leader (80 people killed in the attempt)

1991 - Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq

1993 - Mohamed Farah Aideed, prominent clan leader of Somalia

1998, 2001-2 - Osama bin Laden, leading Islamic militant

1999 - Slobodan Milosevic, President of Yugoslavia

2002 - Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Afghan Islamic leader and warlord

2003 - Saddam Hussein and his two sons

* Washington Post, June 27, 1993

Taken from Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
by William Blum

posted April 26, 2006 12:12 AM            

Question, would you?

posted April 26, 2006 12:21 AM              

Here's the specific link.

http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/blum.htm

The rest came from here: www.killinghope.org

If I haven't on any other posts, it wasn't on purpose, just an oversight.

posted April 26, 2006 07:19 AM              

BTW, the Corporate Mafia - CIA BlackOps who run the foreign policy today also have a lot of American blood on their hands.

The most interesting case is of a scientist named FRANK OLSON.
http://www.serendipity.li/cia/olson2.htm

<<Frank's son, Eric, believes ... his father was murdered ... to "protect" the American people from the knowledge that their own government had taken up and extended Nazi experiments on mind control, psychological torture and chemical warfare — and that it was conducting these experiments as the Nazis did, on unwilling subjects, on captives and "expendables," even to the point of "termination". >>

This knowledge is vital.

posted April 26, 2006 09:13 AM              

My problem with Blum and others of his ilk is their tendency to behave like myopic, over-bearing, single minded a$$holes. Just like the CIA type monsters they claim to hate! His exploits in Allende's Chile say alot.

posted April 26, 2006 01:57 PM            

Goatgirl,
So if one takes all these sources (which is so easy to do) lists them in their bibiliography and makes appropriate footnotes, does that mean it is truthful?

How many people here have written a thesis or indepth research report?

Guess what, it is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo easy to add anything under the sun into your bibiolography. Basically, ANY freaking thing you look at you can add to the list - whether you source it or not.

As far as the articles (which incidently have discredited your argument because YOU TOOK THEM FROM HIS WEBSITE AGAIN USING HIM AS YOUR DEFENSE WHEN HE IS BEING QUESTIONED)- Again.. one sided, blow hard diatribes.

Jwhop asked you a question. Now, does this mean you will spend another hour clogging up the thread with posts that still don't address the factual data? (Actually, jwhop she can't because it is from Blums website, other books and the bib at the book of his books)

I could care less if people speak out against Bush. That is where you get us Republican's wrong. I do CARE about a Anti-American posting crap on the board and I will call it as I see it EVERY time. See, this is where you are showing your true hateful colors - where did I say your Anti-American crap offended me because you put down George Bush? How can my post even TOUCH that aspect when you posted myths concerning the "history" of US interventions from 1945 to 1999 (Unless you think Bush as a baby has some sort of mental influence over history LOL)...

Oh yeah, here is another point for you and your USA hating friends. When you post about situation and use one source, which has already been questioned as being valid, like using a lie to explain a lie, you don't then "USE THAT SOURCE as fact to back up what you are trying to say".

Case in point; You quoted work from Blum. Blum ethics and stance on American is being questioned. So to defend him and your attack on America you quote HIM.

Find other sources, stop plagerizing his crap.

That would be like someone stating the Bible is 100% truthful and someone else saying "Then prove it with other sources" and the person uses quotes and documentation FROM THE BIBLE to support the BIBLE is real. LOL...

posted April 26, 2006 02:04 PM            

Fluoridization, ELF waves, subliminal ads, assassinations... they all add up.

Yeah... and maybe you and some of the other "CIA, USA, BUSH" haters are the actual perpetuators of some kind of conspiracy whose goal it is to turn the civilized countries into anarchy so that you and your alien hinchmen can take over while turning humans in to energy producing bags of goo (ALA Matrix).

I find that just as believable as your inconsitant conspiracy theories involving numerous governments, civilians, corporations etc... which would ALL have to band together in order to pull the biggest stretch of wool over our eyes. Yet, somehow only a few people, educated and none, somehow have the superhuman gift of being able to see what the masses don't.

Do you know that that is called? When someone believes they alone or in a small group see what other's cannot due to some other wordly or special power? Psychologically prone to a Saviour / Martyr syndrome. Basically, crazy.

posted April 27, 2006 10:34 AM              

I don't want your pity dear. YOu can keep it.

posted April 27, 2006 10:39 AM              

The following is a partial list of U.S. military interventions from 1890 to 2003. This guide does not include:

* mobilizations of the National Guard
* offshore shows of naval strength
* reinforcements of embassy personnel
* the use of non-Defense Department personnel (such as the Drug Enforcement Administration)
* military exercises
* non-combat mobilizations (such as replacing postal strikers)
* the permanent stationing of armed forces
* covert actions where the U.S. did not play a command and control role
* the use of small hostage rescue units
* most uses of proxy troops
* U.S. piloting of foreign warplanes
* foreign disaster assistance
* military training and advisory programs not involving direct combat
* civic action programs
* and many other military activities.

Among sources used, beside news reports, are the Congressional Record (23 June 1969), 180 Landings by the U.S. Marine Corp History Division, Ege & Makhijani in Counterspy (July-Aug, 1982), "Instances of Use of United States Forces Abroad, 1798-1993" by Ellen C. Collier of the Library of Congress Congressional Research Service, and Ellsberg in Protest & Survive.

Here's the list: http://www.neravt.com/left/invade.htm
Zoltan Grossman is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire (Box 4004, Eau Claire, WI 54701 USA). His peace writings can be seen at http://www.uwec.edu/grossmzc/peace.html and he can be reached at zoltan@igc.org .

Sometimes They Tell the Truth:

"The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist -- McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."

-- Thomas Friedman, "A Manifesto for the Fast World", New York Times Magazine, March 28, 1999

"We have 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population. . . In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will allow us to maintain this position of disparity. We should cease to talk about the raising of the living standards, human rights, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."

-- George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning of the U.S. Dept. of State, 1948

"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933 by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

posted April 27, 2006 10:43 AM              

COMMON THEMES

Some common themes can be seen in many of these U.S. military interventions.

First, they were explained to the U.S. public as defending the lives and rights of civilian populations. Yet the military tactics employed often left behind massive civilian "collateral damage." War planners made little distinction between rebels and the civilians who lived in rebel zones of control, or between military assets and civilian infrastructure, such as train lines, water plants, agricultural factories, medicine supplies, etc. The U.S. public always believe that in the next war, new military technologies will avoid civilian casualties on the other side. Yet when the inevitable civilian deaths occur, they are always explained away as "accidental" or "unavoidable."

Second, although nearly all the post-World War II interventions were carried out in the name of "freedom" and "democracy," nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-U.S. elites. Whether in Vietnam, Central America, or the Persian Gulf, the U.S. was not defending "freedom" but an ideological agenda (such as defending capitalism) or an economic agenda (such as protecting oil company investments). In the few cases when U.S. military forces toppled a dictatorship--such as in Grenada or Panama--they did so in a way that prevented the country's people from overthrowing their own dictator first, and installing a new democratic government more to their liking.

Third, the U.S. always attacked violence by its opponents as "terrorism," "atrocities against civilians," or "ethnic cleansing," but minimized or defended the same actions by the U.S. or its allies. If a country has the right to "end" a state that trains or harbors terrorists, would Cuba or Nicaragua have had the right to launch defensive bombing raids on U.S. targets to take out exile terrorists? Washington's double standard maintains that an U.S. ally's action by definition "defensive," but that an enemy's retaliation is by definition "offensive."

Fourth, the U.S. often portrays itself as a neutral peacekeeper, with nothing but the purest humanitarian motives. After deploying forces in a country, however, it quickly divides the country or region into "friends" and "foes," and takes one side against another. This strategy tends to enflame rather than dampen a war or civil conflict, as shown in the cases of Somalia and Bosnia, and deepens resentment of the U.S. role.

Fifth, U.S. military intervention is often counterproductive even if one accepts U.S. goals and rationales. Rather than solving the root political or economic roots of the conflict, it tends to polarize factions and further destabilize the country. The same countries tend to reappear again and again on the list of 20th century interventions.

Sixth, U.S. demonization of an enemy leader, or military action against him, tends to strengthen rather than weaken his hold on power. Take the list of current regimes most singled out for U.S. attack, and put it alongside of the list of regimes that have had the longest hold on power, and you will find they have the same names. Qaddafi, Castro, Saddam, Kim, and others may have faced greater internal criticism if they could not portray themselves as Davids standing up to the American Goliath, and (accurately) blaming many of their countries' internal problems on U.S. economic sanctions.

One of the most dangerous ideas of the 20th century was that "people like us" could not commit atrocities against civilians.

* German and Japanese citizens believed it, but their militaries slaughtered millions of people.
* British and French citizens believed it, but their militaries fought brutal colonial wars in Africa and Asia.
* Russian citizens believed it, but their armies murdered civilians in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere.
* Israeli citizens believed it, but their army mowed down Palestinians and Lebanese.
* Arabs believed it, but suicide bombers and hijackers targeted U.S. and Israeli civilians.
* U.S. citizens believed it, but their military killed hundreds of thousands in Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere.

Every country, every ethnicity, every religion, contains within it the capability for extreme violence. Every group contains a faction that is intolerant of other groups, and actively seeks to exclude or even kill them. War fever tends to encourage the intolerant faction, but the faction only succeeds in its goals if the rest of the group acquiesces or remains silent. The attacks of September 11 were not only a test for U.S. citizens attitudes' toward minority ethnic/racial groups in their own country, but a test for our relationship with the rest of the world. We must begin not by lashing out at civilians in Muslim countries, but by taking responsibility for our own history and our own actions, and how they have fed the cycle of violence.

posted April 27, 2006 10:45 AM              

This site introduces the first organizations formed to oppose U.S. territorial and economic imperialism and makes available many of the otherwise hard-to-find documents they produced. Among them is a large collection of anti-imperialist literature. Much of it was written by authors whose works are still appreciated and studied today but whose roles in the anti-imperialist movement are not widely known. Other literary responses, like the numerous newspaper and magazine verses written in response to Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden," are restored here from near-total obscurity. These writings, and the many pro- and anti-imperialist political cartoons scattered throughout the site, represent part of the important cultural response to imperialism. Organizational platforms, speeches, and pamphlets might clearly state the political issues involved, but the cultural expressions give us our best indications of the extent to which the debate about imperialism influenced U.S. society as a whole.