Several hundred records were released by the Central Intelligence Agency on May 23 1997, on its involvement in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état.[1]
They reflected Truman administration feeling that the government of Arbenz, elected in 1950, would continue a process of socio-economic reforms that the CIA disdainfully refers to in its memoranda as "an intensely nationalistic program of progress colored by the touchy, anti-foreign inferiority complex of the 'Banana Republic.'"
Between 1954 and 1990, human rights groups estimate, the repressive operatives of successive US-sponsored military regimes murdered more than 200,000 civilians, with another 100,000 "disappeared."[2]
Although most high-level US officials recognized that a hostile government in Guatemala by itself did not constitute a direct security threat to the United States, they viewed events there in the context of the growing Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union and feared Guatemala could reduce the influence of US corporations (such as United Fruit) in the region, and thus reduce US influence.
CIA and IC reports tended to reinforce the view that Guatemala and the Arbenz regime were rapidly falling under the sway of socialism. DCI Walter Bedell Smith believed the situation called for action. Their assessment was that without help, the Guatemalan opposition would remain inept, disorganized and efficient. The anti-communist elements -- the Catholic hierarchy, landowners, business interests, the railway workers union, university students and the army were prepared to prevent socialism, but apart from the US they had little outside support.
The CIA interest in Guatemala was in creating an authoritarian government in Guatemala in place of its functioning democracy for the sole purpose of protecting US corporate interests.[3]
Other US officials, especially in the US Department of State, urged a more cautious approach. The Bureau of Inter-American Affairs,for example, did not want to present 'the spectacle of the elephant shaking with alarm before the mouse.' It wanted a policy of firm persuasion with the withholding of virtually all cooperative assistance, and the concluding of military defense assistance pacts, with El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras. Although the Department of State position became the official public US policy, the CIA assessment…had support within the Truman administration as well."[4]
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The first CIA effort to overthrow the Guatemalan president--a CIA collaboration with Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza to support a disgruntled general named Carlos Castillo Armas and codenamed Operation PBFORTUNE--was authorized by President Truman in 1952. As early as February of that year, CIA Headquarters began generating memos with subject titles such as "Guatemalan Communist Personnel to be disposed of during Military Operations," outlining categories of persons to be neutralized "through Executive Action"--murder--or through imprisonment and exile.[1]
Following a visit to Washington by Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza in April 1952, in which Somoza boasted that if provided arms, he and Guatemalan exile Carlos Castillo Armas could overthrow Arbenz, President Harry Truman asked DCI Smith to investigate the possibility…" After seeing the report of an agent sent to investigate, Smith approved a proposal to supply Castillo Armas with arms and $225,000 and that Nicaragua and Honduras provide air cover. PBFORTUNE was approved on 9 September 1952, but was terminated a month later when Smith learned it had become known. The idea of assassinations were mentioned, but only at a general level.[4]
In 1953, the CIA continued to try to influence Guatemalan policy and explore disposing of key adversaries…As psychological warfare, the CIA Guatemala City station sent "death notice" cards to all leading communists. The one-month campaigns in April and June produced no apparent results.[1]
The National Security Council and President Eisenhower approved a covert action against Arbenz in August 1953. It carried a $2.7 million budget for "psychological warfare and political action" and "subversion," among the other components of a small paramilitary war.[1]
PBSUCCESS, authorized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was the codename for the CIA's first covert operation in Latin America, carried out in Guatemala. The purpose of the operation was to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala. The U.S. began to worry about the growth of Communism there, due to Jacobo Arbenz's policies. In fact, before the authorization of the president, the CIA had already begun sending out memos, regarding the threat and the spread of communism.[5] By recruiting a Guatemalan military force the CIA's operation succeeded in eliminating the democratic government and replacing it with a military junta headed by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas.
A U.S. State Department report released in 2003 states that social unrest within Guatemala and Arbenz's alleged Communist ties were the reason the CIA first drew up a contingency plan to oust Arbenz, entitled Operation PBFORTUNE. The plan was drafted in 1951, before the U.S.-based United Fruit Company's landholdings had been expropriated.
The CIA's own declassified analysis is generally consistent, although differing in detail with the above. Training for the new PBSUCCESS plan included preparation of a briefing plan for assassinations,separate from the NSC plan.
Dissident leaders urged the "violent disposal" of an opponent, as psychological warfare, but the CIA chief of the temporary covert action base, LINCOLN, cautioned that they only wanted to destroy effectiveness; "we do not mean to kill the man…scare not kill."
Castillo Armas' CIA-supported force entered Guatemala on June 16. Arbenz sought asylum on 27 June, and 120 other Arbenz officials were given safe passage out of the country. There is no evidence of executions. "Discussion of whether to assassinate Guatemalans…took place in a historical era quite different from the present. In the documents, however, was an unsigned, undated technical discussion of assassination.[1]
Soviet Communism had earned a reputation of using whatever means were expedient to advance Moscow's interests internationally…American officials and the public regarded foreign Communist parties as Soviet pawns and as threatening to US security interest. The public perception was that the Soviets were intent on world hegemony -- which the Soviets believed of the US.
The political and consequent social instability created in Guatemala 6 years later resulted in a very long civil war and its consequent, destructive impact upon the society, the economy, human rights and the culture of Guatemala. According to author Kate Doyle, the CIA-sponsored military coup in 1954 was "the poison arrow that pierced the heart of Guatemala's young democracy."[6]
President Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to invade Guatemala with private military contractors.[7] In support of this, CIA Director William Raborn was tasked with finding evidence to support the President's belief that Guatemala was a Cuban puppet state. Raborn was unsuccessful in finding such evidence.
CIA begins to train police and military of Guatemala.[7]
1954-95. U.S. Undercover agents have worked for decades inside a Guatemalan army unit that has tortured and killed thousands of Guatemalan citizens, per the Nation weekly magazine. "working out of the U.S. Embassy and living in safe houses and hotels, agents work through an elite group of Guatemalan officers who are secretly paid by CIA and implicated personally in numerous political crimes and assassinations unit known as G-2 and its secret collaboration with CIA were described by U.S. and Guatemalan operatives and confirmed by three former Guatemalan heads of state. Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, Guatemalan officer implicated in murders of guerrilla leader Efrain Bamaca Velasquez — husband of an American lawyer — and rancher Michael Devine discussed in an interview how intelligence agency advises and helps run G-2. He said agents came to Central American country often to train G-2 men and he described attending CIA sessions at G-2 bases on "contra-subversion" tactics and "how to manage factors of power" to "fortify democracy" the Nation quoted U.S. and Guatemalan intelligence sources as saying at least three recent G-2 chiefs have been on CIA payroll — General Edgar Godoy Gatan, Colonel Otto Perez Molina and General Francisco Ortega Menaldo. `It would be embarrassing if you ever had a roll call of everybody in Guatemalan army who ever collected a CIA paycheck, report quoted Colonel George Hooker, U.S. DIA chief in Guatemala from 1985 to 1989, as saying. Human rights group Amnesty International has said Guatemalan army killed more than 110,000 civilians since 1978 with G-2 and another unit called Archivo known as main death squads.[8]
1988-91. CIA station chief in Guatemala from 1988 to 1991 was a Cuban American. He had about 20 officers with a budget of about $5 million a year and an equal or greater sum for "liaison" with Guatemalan military. His job included placing and keeping senior Guatemalan officers on his payroll. Among them was Alpirez, who recruited others for CIA. Alpirez's intelligence unit spied on Guatemalans and is accused by human rights groups of assassinations. CIA also gave Guatemalan army information on the guerrillas.[9]
In 1993 the CIA helped in overthrowing Jorge Serrano Elías who attempted a self-coup and had suspended the constitution, dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court, and imposed censorship. He was replaced by Ramiro de León Carpio.[10]
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