From SomeUnknownUSHistory :
Ralph Walter McGehee CIA from 1952 to 1977
Ralph McGehee was a CIA officer from 1952 and 1977 and he says of his experience, "... the CIA is the covert action arm of the Presidency. Most of its money, manpower, and energy go into covert operations that, as we have seen over the years, include backing dictators and overthrowing democratically elected governments. ….The CIA uses disinformation, much of it aimed at the US public, to mold opinion. … But the major weapon in its arsenal of disinformation is the "intelligence" it feeds to policymakers. Instead of gathering genuine intelligence that could serve as the basis for reasonable policies, the CIA often ends up distorting reality, creating out of whole cloth "intelligence" to justify policies that have already been decided upon. Policymakers then leak this "intelligence" to the media to deceive us all and gain our support."
CIA Station in West Berlin was the center of CIA operations against Eastern Europe. The German Branch of the European Division was the Agency's largest single country component.
In 1949, the mainland fell to the People Republic of China, and the Chinese Nationalist forces and camp followers were evacuated to Taiwan by the American Navy. The CIA started building a secret army in Laos and in Burma thru the Vietnam war years. Pilots hired by the CIA flew supply and bombing missions in CIA-owned planes in support of the secret army. Expenditures by the US to assist this army amounted to at least $300 million a year. Forty or 50 CIA officers ran this operation, aided by 17,000 Thai mercenaries.
In August 1952 this Taiwanese army invaded Yunnan, reaching into the province up to 60 miles. Once again the peasants did not rise up as predicted, and the army was driven out. General Li Mi gave up attempts to defeat China.
In1950 the CIA established a large front company structure on Taiwan known as Western Enterprises with a CIA airlines, Civil Air Transport. The 200-man CIA front company Sea Supply Company is set up in Thailand. Air America and Air Asia airlines, along with the CIA's holding company, the Pacific Corporation, employed more than 10,000 people.
In September 1965 newly hired CIA officer, Ralph McGehee, began work in Bangkok. At the time Thailand was supposedly a constitutional monarchy, but in fact was more a military dictatorship. McGehee said, "For the most part we got our intelligence directly from the leaders themselves or our liaison counterparts, who never, never reported derogatory(any) information about the regime." He is referring to all the information about the drug trafficking going on among by the US supported dictators in the golden triangle.
McGehee said, "As in Iran, Vietnam, Latin America, and other areas of the world, we only wanted intelligence that told us our policies were correct. We did not want to know that the U.S.-backed dictators brutalized their people and that those people were angry."
"To avoid hearing such news, the Agency did not allow its case officers to maintain direct contact with the general population. We sent case officers-only a few of whom knew the native language -on two-year tours. The case officers worked with the English-speaking members of the society's elite, never with the grubby working class. Although more than 80 percent of the Thai population are farmers, in 30 years there the Agency virtually never wrote an intelligence report based on an interview with a farmer ... Instead it wrote reports on the problems government leaders-dictators were having with the rebellious people. If a language-qualified officer did develop contacts with the working classes and began getting information from them, he was immediately labeled derisively as having "gone native" and was soon on his way back to the States."
"CIA intelligence was showing that the PRC/ China planned to act in a responsible way and that its goals to a large extent paralleled with the US. The leaders of the CIA realized that if they disseminated this fact, it might stimulate some government leaders to question the CIA's insistence that China deserved to be on the top of its operational target list." (Deadly Deceits CIA Support of Death Squads 1953 to 1994by Ralph McGehee, 1999, p. 169)
In 1950 the CIA in a joint operation with the British also organized efforts to overthrow the Enver Hoxha government of Albania.
In 1951, CIA's personnel strength jumped from 584 to 1531.
Following Colonel Lansdale's successes in the Philippines, the Agency in 1954 sent him to South Vietnam to help create the Diem regime.
In Indonesia in 1958, Agency B-26 bombers supported rebel units in the Celebes fighting to overthrow the government of President Achmed Sukarno, something that was not accomplished on this attempt but was achieved in 1965 by another Agency operation.
In 1956 the CIA helped in the establishment of Buro de Represion Actividades Comunistas (BRAC), the police force of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. BRAC became famous for its brutal methods of torture.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who ordered Soviet forces into Budapest, Hungary on November 4, 1956 which resulted in up to 32,000 people were killed, more than 170,000 fled the country.
In 1957 the CIA began working with Israeli intelligence to penetrate the independent states of Black Africa. Since that time it has spent at least $80 million on such operations.
In 1959, the CIA began instigating the Tibetans to fight the Chinese.
CIA psychological operations (psy-ops) targeting of Americans
Facts, themes, editorial outlines, model essays were sent out to third world stations to be reworked for local consumption." books the most important weapon of strategic (long-range) propaganda. Altogether from 1947 until the end of 1967, the CIA produced, subsidized, or sponsored well over 1,000 books. Approximately 20 percent of them were written in English. Many of them were published by cultural organizations backed by the CIA. It maintained liaison relationships with about 50 American journalists or U.S. media organizations. An uncensored portion of the final report of the Church Committee said: "They [the 50] are part of a network of several hundred foreign
Individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence foreign opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of foreign newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets.
Domestic "fallout"-a story that filters into U.S. media from abroad-was a deliberate result of these operations in newspapers, magazines, TV, and book publishing. At least two proprietary news services that the CIA maintained in Europe had U.S. subscribers. The larger of the two was subscribed to by more than 30 U.S. newspapers. The CIA and the Media," Carl Bemstein wrote that more than 400 American journalists had secretly carried out assignments for the Agency, from gathering intelligence to serving as go-betweens with spies.
Published by the CIA were the books, Indonesia-1965: The Coup that Backfired by the CIA and Viet Cong, by Douglas Pike.
Planting a weapons shipment in Vietnam in February 1965 to prove outside support to the Viet Cong was another classic CIA disinformation operation. As noted earlier, after a staged firefight the shipment was "discovered," and the American press and the International Control Commission were called in to see the "proof." That event was picked up and replayed in a State Department White Paper. Immediately after the White Paper was published, President Johnson sent Marines into Vietnam. The U.S. military apparently believed the Agency disinformation and began patrolling off the shores of South Vietnam, looking for other shipments.
Robert Parry reported the first breaking stories about Iran-Contra for Associated Press that were largely ignored by the press and congress, then moving to Newsweek he witnessed a retraction of a true story for political reasons. In 'Fooling America: A Talk by Robert Parry' he said, "The people who succeeded and did well were those who didn't stand up, who didn't write the big stories, who looked the other way when history was happening in front of them, and went along either consciously or just by cowardice with the deception of the American people."
Mockingbird was an immense financial undertaking with funds flowing from the CIA largely through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) founded by Tom Braden with Pat Buchanon of CNN's Crossfire.
Pressure from the IMF, World Bank, and US government to deregulate and privatize, the media, communication, and new technology resulted in a global commercial media system dominated by a small number of super-powerful transnational media corporations (mostly US based), working to advance the cause of global markets and the CIA agenda.
Then there are two articles called "A Timeline of CIA Atrocities" and "The Origins of the Overclass" by Steve Kangas that are very informative although from a more liberal perspective. Steve will not be writing anymore articles as he is no longer with us, having unfortunately met his untimely death that was 'apparently' from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. If you read about him on his web page that is still available, you will see that he did not seem like a person who was suffering from deep depression.
CNN aired "Valley of Death" in June of 1998 and Time magazine (both owned by Time-Warner) ran a story about a secret mission called Operation Tailwind and the activities of SOG, Studies and Observations Group, a secret elite commando unit of the Army's Special Forces that used lethal nerve gas (sarin), on a mission to Laos designed to kill American defectors. Suddenly the network was awash in denials and the story was hushed up, as usual.
CIA operating inside the USA
In1950s It expanded its operations with universities until some 5,000 American academics were doing its bidding by identifying and recruiting American students and identifying 200 to 300 future CIA agents from among the thousands of foreign students who come to the United States each year. The Agency had hundreds of teachers and graduate students on more than 100 campuses who worked for it secretly in recruiting, writing propaganda, and running covert operations.
Thomas W. Braden, former head of the Agency's division of international organizations, which had extensive facilities in the United States, stated that by 1953 the CIA was operating or influencing international organizations in every field where Communist fronts had seized the initiative and in some where they had not yet begun to operate. He also said that in 1951 or 1952 he gave Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers $50,000 in CIA funds to support anti-Communist labor unions.
Following the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, Cuban exiles were directed and paid by CIA agents to compile secret files on and watch over other Cubans and Americans "who associated with individuals under surveillance." By the late 1960s such activities were being supported by the CIA in several key American cities, including Los Angeles, New York, and San Juan. It was estimated that at the height of these activities, roughly 150 informants were on the payroll of a Cuban "counterintelligence" office located in Florida.
E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent, stated that in 1964 during his tenure with the CIA's domestic operations division he was ordered to arrange for the pick-up, on a daily basis, of "any and all information" that might be available at Senator Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign headquarters. Hunt said that the documents obtained about Goldwater were delivered to Chester L. Cooper, a White House aide who had worked for the CIA.
In 1966, 1969, and 1971, the CIA conducted three separate domestic break-ins into the premises occupied by CIA employees or ex-employees. All three entries were made, according to the CIA, because it believed that security concerns warranted such actions
Following the revelation in 1967 that the CIA had subsidized the National Student Association (NSA), it was disclosed that the CIA had funded other labor, business, church, university, and cultural organizations through a variety of foundation conduits. It was estimated that at least $12.4 million had been secretly spent in this manner by the CIA.
The Directorate for Operations' illegal domestic projects recruited, briefed, trained, and indoctrinated young American university students and used them to infiltrate leftist organizations on U.S. campuses. In what is called a "dangle operation," the students were to build up leftist credentials at home, so that when they were sent overseas by the Agency they would appear to foreign Communist parties to be genuinely leftist-good bait. These parties then might recruit them or confide in them. While building their leftist credentials in the United States, these young students were asked by John to gather information on U.S. Ieftist organizations-an activity then expressly forbidden by law.
The CIA investigated domestic political groups as much as five years before the initiation of CHAOS, that Operation CHAOS collected information on prominent Americans including Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Bella Abzug, and Ronald Dellums, that CHAOS information was preserved and continued to be used after the termination of CHAOS in 1974, that the program was for several years assigned highest operational priority, ranking with intelligence collection on the Soviet Union and China...." According to William Colby, the CIA's office of security "inserted 10 agents into dissident organizations operating in the Washington, D.C., area" in 1967 in order to collect "information relating to plans for demonstrations, pickets, protests, or break-ins that might endanger CIA personnel, facilities, and information."
The CIA "recruited or inserted about a dozen individuals into American dissident circles" in order to secure "access to foreign circles." It was believed that in this manner these individuals would "establish their credentials for operations abroad." In the course of their work some of these individuals "submitted reports on the activities of the American dissidents with whom they were in contact." This information was kept in CIA files and reported to the FBI.
In 1971 and 1972 the CIA employed physical surveillance against "five Americans who were not CIA employees," The Washington Post reported. This was done because the CIA had "clear indications" that the five were receiving classified information "without authorization." It was hoped that the surveillance would "identify the sources of the leaks." A secret Senate memorandum indicated that three of the five subjects were columnist Jack Anderson, Washington Post reporter Michael Getler, and author Victor Marchetti.
In 1971 and 1972 the Agency secretly provided training to about 12 county and city police forces in the United States on the detection of wire taps, the organization of intelligence files, and the handling of explosives. The training program, involving less than 50 policemen, was reported to have included representatives from the police forces of New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Fairfax County, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland.
The following is Ralph W. McGehee's work on CIA support to death squads.
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Angola: Death Squads
Prior to 1960, Africa had been included in the CIA's European or Middle Eastern Division. In that year it became a separate division. Stations sprang up all over the continent. Between 1959 and 1963 the number of CIA stations in Africa increased by 55.5%.
In Angola in 1960 the CIA recruited Holden Roberto, the leader of one of the Angolan groups. In 1975 the CIA supported two factions in the civil war in Angola against the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), spending millions of dollars on ammunition, air support, and mercenaries.
By 1975 the CIA was secretly collaborating with the South African government in the Angolan civil war.
Congo:
In the early 1960s the CIA became involved in the political struggle in the Congo. In 1960 the CIA planned to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese leader, and in fact worked with the African dissidents who murdered him in 1961. The CIA paid cash to selected Congolese politicians and gave arms to the supporters of Joseph Mobutu and Cyril Adoula. Eventually the CIA sent mercenaries and paramilitary experts to aid the new government. In 1964, CIA B-26 airplanes were being flown in the Congo on a regular basis by Cuban-exile pilots who were under CIA contract. Those pilots and planes carried out bombing missions against areas held by rebel forces.
In 1988 Amnesty International reported that UNITA, backed by the U.S., engaged in extra-judicial executions of high-ranking political rivals and ill-treatment of prisoners. (Washington Post, 3/14/1989, A20) South Africa: Watch List
In South Africa the CIA worked closely with BOSS, the South African secret police. A tip from a paid CIA informant led to 1962 arrest of Nelson Mandela leader of the African National Congress. A CIA officer claimed "we have turned Mandela over to the South African security branch." (Washington Post, 6/11/1990, A18)
South Africa: Death Squads
From 1980 to 1990 the Apartheid's fiercest warriors in 1980s were South Africa's army special forces, police force known as Koevoet (crowbar), and Portuguese-speaking "buffalo" battalion who ran a campaign of assassination and sabotage against the African National Congress. (Newsweek, 9/14/1992, p. 45 and South African Death Squad Plot: A Missing Piece to a Puzzle the Media Won't Solve, by Jane Hunter. Extra, 11/1992, p. 26)
From 1991-1992, 75 COSATU (labor union) members were killed by security forces. Many other attacks. (Briarpatch magazine(Canada), 10/1992, pp. 55-6)
Turkey: Watch List
A coup was carried out in 1971 by counter-guerrilla, the CIA, the Turkey military and Turkish military intelligence (MIT). CIA was solely interested in protecting American interests. CIA assisted MIT in 1960 to 1969 in drafting plans for mass arrests of opposition figures similar to the pattern followed in Thailand, Indonesia and Greece. In single night generals ordered 4000 professors, students, teachers and retired officers arrested who were tortured.
The drug trafficking was a major industry in Turkey, as it is today. (Counterspy, 4/1982, p. 25) Greece: Watch List
In 1967, after CIA-backed coup, the army and police seized almost 10,000 prisoners, mostly left-wing militants, though political leaders of all shades taken including prime minister Kanelopoulos and members of his Cabinet, trade union members, journalists, writers, etc. The lists had been provided by the sympathizers in the police and the secret service. Final lists kept up to date by COL George Ladas. (Strategy of Terror (Unpublished manuscript). Tompkins, P., pp. 13-8) Egypt: terrorist? Watch List
In 1993, two teams from CIA and FBI went to Peshawar, Pakistan to check information given them by Egyptian intelligence services. Egyptians reported terrorist groups based in Peshawar belong to "Arab Afghans" with ties to fundamentalist Muslims in U.S. On request by CIA and others, 100 expulsions occurred April 10, 1993. (Intelligence Newsletter, 4/29/1993, pp. 1,5) Syria: Watch List
The Syrian Army was defeated by the Israeli Army in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. After the war and on March 30, 1949, Husni Za'im lead the first military coup in the history of Syria and shattered the country's fragile democratic rule. The CIA guaranteed that once firmly in power, the US would give de facto recognition to the new government in a few days and would pointed out targets to be seized. The CIA provided a list of all politicians who might be able to rally resistance. (The Game Player, Copeland, M.,1989, p. 94) Following CIA coup of March 1949, a CIA officer reported over "400 Commies" arrested. (Middle East Journal 57)
Iran: Watch List
From 1953-1964, a US Army colonel working for CIA under cover of military attaché worked to organize and train intelligence organization for Shah, training them on domestic security and interrogation. CIA station chiefs were in regular contact with Shah and had a working level liaison relationship with SAVAK and exchanged intelligence. (Security relations between the United States and Iran, 1953-1978, Gasiorowski, M.J., 1990, pp. 255-56)
During Shah's reign, thousands people killed. Many killed at Shah's directive. In 1983, the CIA gave the Iranian government the identities of 200 leftists who were then executed. (The Nation, 12/13/1986, p. 660 and Witness, Rafizadeh, M., 1987, p. 134)
In 1982, Vladimir Kuzichkin, a senior KGB officer in Tehran, defected to the British. The CIA had a sharing agreement with MI6 and became privy to contents of two trunks full of documents. From those documents CIA prepared name lists of more than 100 people, mostly Iranians, working as secret agents in Iran for the USSR. Casey allowed this list be handed to the Iranians — who executed them. (Casey, Persico, J.,1991, p. 301) In 1983, the CIA gave the Khomeni government a list of Soviet KGB agents operating in Iran. Two hundred suspects were executed, 18 Soviet diplomats expelled. (Washington Post, 1/13/1987, A1,8)
Iraq: Watch List
In 1963, CIA supplied black lists of communists to Baath party group that led coup so that communists could be rounded up and eliminated. (Dangerous Liaison, Cockburn, A. and Cockburn, L., 1991, p. 130) Israel: Death Squads
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir headed a special hit squad during his ten years in Mossad. Shamir headed the assassination unit from 1955-1964 that carried out attacks on perceived enemies and suspected Nazi war criminals. Shamir recruited former members of the Stern Gang. (Washington Times, 7/4/1992, A8)
In January 1992, Israeli army launched all-out offensive to end "Red Intifadeh." Undercover units "Arabized" produced a rash of deaths under controversial circumstances leading to claims commando units are death squads. Since Intifadeh began in 1987 775 Palestinians were killed. (How Israeli Commandos Are Waging an Undercover War In Occupied Territories, Time 8/31/1992, pp. 49-50
Israeli army had discharged commander of undercover unit for issuing orders to shoot at Palestine activists. Unit code-named Samson has had three commanders fired or placed on trial within three years. More than 30 Palestinians killed this year by undercover troops, who usually dress as Arabs. (Washington Post, 8/26/1992, A14)
In 1981 Leo Gleser, "co-owner" of International Security and Defense Systems (ISDS) — a leading Israeli "security" firm identified repeatedly as an Israeli entity — began building Battalion 316, a unit of Honduran military intelligence . Honduran General Walter Lopez Reyes who C-I-C Honduran armed forces 1984-86, said "we had Israeli advisers in Special Forces.. (Israeli Foreign Affairs, 4/1989, p. 1,4 and 2/1987, 5/1987, /1987, 2/1988, 3/1989)
From 1986-1991, Israel trained members of Inkatha hit squads aimed at African National Congress (South Africa), a disillusioned former leader of Zulu organization has revealed. (Israeli Foreign Affairs, 2/20/1992, p. 3)
Europe: Watch List
From 1945-1992, the CIA conducted Operation Gladio. First scandal was discovery of assassination teams in 1952 linked to a right-wing political organization in Hesse, Germany. They prepared list of German politicians who might cooperate with Soviets (Gladio, BBC 1992 — Timewatch pp. 19-20) Norway: Watch List
The OSS/CIA operation Gladio was formed in 1947 and was in operation till 1990 was used to keep track of communists and became part of intelligence service. Norwegian branch exposed in 1978, when an arms cache discovered. (Statewatch, June 1994, p. 12) Georgia: Watch List
In 1993, a CIA officer Woodruff worked for two months as CIA's Tbilisi station chief posing as a State Department regional-affairs officer. He helped upgrade Georgian intelligence service and to monitor factional struggle. (Newsweek 8/23/1993, p. 18) Germany: Watch List
From 1952-1991. CIA's stay-behind program (operation Gladio) caused scandal in 1952 when West German police discovered CIA working with a 2,000-member fascist youth group led by former Nazis. Group had a black list of people to be liquidated in case of conflict with the USSR. (Lembke case, The Nation, 4/6/1992, p. 446)
Central America: Death Squads
From 1979-1987, according to Americas Watch, civilian non combatant deaths by government forces in Nicaragua might reach 300, most Miskito Indians, and 40-50,000 Salvadoran citizens were killed by death squads and government forces during same years and still higher numbers in Guatemala. (The Culture of Terrorism, Chomsky, N., 1988, p. 101)
From 1981-1987, the death toll under Pres. Reagan in El Salvador passed 50,000, in Guatemala it may approach 100,000.and in Nicaragua 11,000 civilians killed by 1968. The death toll in region was 150,000 or more. (The Culture of Terrorism, Chomsky, N., 1988, p. 29 and On Dominoes, Death Squads, and Democracy, Harpers and The Dilemmas of National Security, Harpers, 6/1984, p35)
From 1982-1984, Admiral Bobby Inman complained that the CIA was hiring murderers to conduct operations in Central America and the Middle East and eventually Inman resigned. Oyster: the Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Toohey, B., and Pinwill, W., 1990, pp. 215-6) Cuba: Watch List
From 1955-1957, Allen Dulles pressed Batista to establish with CIA help, a bureau for the repression of communist activities. (Gentleman Spy: the Life of Allen Dulles, Grose, P., 1994, p. 412)
Jeane Kirkpatrick, a strong supporter of the Domino Theory, warned that Cuba was the "launch pad for communist subversion of the region". Despite her views, Reagan refused to take military action against Cuba but he did order the invasion of Grenada in October, 1983 http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8800 Cuba: Death Squads
From 1956-1995 the CIA was at war against Cuba. In 1956, CIA established in Cuba the infamous Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities, BRAC — secret police that became well known for torture and assassination of Batista's political opponents. (Unclassified W/1994-1995 16-17) Dominican Republic: Watch List
In 1965, the CIA composed list of 55 communist ringleaders of projected takeover of government. (Free Agent, Crozier, B., 1993, p. 58)
Dominican Republic: Death Squads
In 1965, 18 public safety program advisers, with of whom were CIA helped the Dominican. police organized La Banda, a death squad. (Cry of the People, Lernoux, P., 1982, p. 187) Haiti: Subversive Watch List
From 1986-1993, the CIA funded the national intelligence service (SIN) under guise of fighting narcotics — but SIN never produced drug intelligence and used CIA money for political operations. Sin involved in spying on so-called subversive groups that were peaceful people who were for change. The CIA used distorted data to discredit Aristide. ( NACLA (Magazine re Latin America), 2/1994, p. 35)
From 1990-1994, Emannuel Constant was the leader of Haiti's FRAPH hit squad, worked for CIA and U.S. intelligence helped launch FRAPH, Haiti's dreaded attaches that were paid for by a US Government-funded project that maintains sensitive files on Haiti's poor. (The Nation, 10/24/1994, 458)
Seven chief attaches arranged killings. Four of the seven worked for Centers for Development and Health (CDS), funded by USAID. One was Gros Sergo, and other was Fritz Joseph who chief FRAPH recruiter in Cite Soleil. Two others are Marc Arthur and Gors Fanfan. CDS files track every family in Cite Soleil. The Nation, 10/24/1994, p. 461
Haiti: Death Squads
In Haiti, CIA admitted Lt. General Raoul Cedras and other high-ranking officials "were on its payroll and are helping organize violent repression in Haiti. CIA personnel requested transfers 1960- 1967 in protest of CIA officer Nestor Sanchez's working so closely with death squads. (The Iran-Contra Connection, Marshall, J., Scott P.D., and Hunter, J. 1987, p. 294)
CIA officer(s) were assigned from 1973-1975 to coordination with the Ton-Ton Macoute, "Baby Doc" Duvalier's private death squad. (Covert Action Information Bulletin (Quarterly), 9/1980, p. 16)
From 1985-1993, the CIA created an intelligence service in Haiti, the National Intelligence Service, (SIN) to fight cocaine trade, but unit became an instrument of political terror whose officers engaged in drug traffic, killings and torture. (New York Times, 11/14/1993 pp. 1,12)
From 1990-19 94. Emannuel Constant, leader of Haiti's FRAPH hit squad said his handler was Colonel Patrick Collins, DIA attache in Haiti, and later claimed another U. S. official urged him to form FRAPH. Collins. Constant was working for the CIA at SIN while it attacked the poor. (The Nation, 10/24/1994, p. 458)
From 1991-1994, Haitian paramilitary chief Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, head of Haiti's notorious FRAPH, secretly provided information to the CIA while his group killed people. Constant paid by CIA for giving intelligence officers information about Aristide beginning shortly after Aristide ousted in 9/1991 coup. The 7,000-man army and its paramilitary assistants killed at least 3,000 and probably over 4,000 people, tortured thousands, and created tens of thousands of refugees and 300,000 internally displaced people. (Covert Action Information Bulletin (Quarterly), Winter 1994/1995, pp. 7-13)
Puerto Rico: Watch List
The FBI created "subversive" lists with names of more than 150,000 "independentistas" who often find themselves thrown out of work. FBI agents organized and trained death squads within the Puerto Rican police department (NACLA 8/1990, p. 5)
Puerto Rico: Death Squads
The Puerto Rican Senate in 1978 started an investigation of a secret police death squad, the Defenders of Democracy. The Senate got a sworn statement from attorney Ignacio Rivera Cordero, who a former CIA officer. After leaving the CIA, Rivera served as the attorney for a key member of Defenders of Democracy who became an FBI informant, Lt. Julio Cesar Andrades. Andrades had headed an FBI-trained "special arrest unit" of the Puerto Rican police. After Andrades began to cooperate with the FBI, he helped federal agents recover the weapons and uniforms that had been supplied to the Defenders of Democracy by the US marshals office. The FBI received detailed information on the group's activities and kept a file on one of its targets - an independista murdered in 1984.
Under the banner of counterterrorism, the secret police "turned into terrorists," Rivera said they targeted members of the independence movement, or independistas. "There are two or three independistas who simply vanished from the face of the Earth, and I'm pretty sure this group killed them."
The Senate investigators have determined that the Defenders of Democracy was one of several secret police groups that flourished in Puerto Rico between 1977 and 1984, under the administration of Governor Carlos Romero Barcelo. The governor , the police and the FBI strongly opposed the independence movement, which included legally constituted political parties and a small radical underground with a violent history, Sen. Rigau and government investigators said. The investigation has shown that the policemen planted scores of bombs at federal installations on the island in the late 1970s in an attempt to inflate the fear of nationalist terrorists. The bombs "were placed by the police, and the FBI had knowledge of them."
The Senate investigators also have information that: In 1977 and 1978, at Gov. Romero's behest, the FBI trained the Puerto Rican police in counterinsurgency skills and SWAT team tactics. In 1978, the trainees were given a training manual paid for by the Justice Department that stated: "Nothing less than the death of a terrorist will keep him from repeating his act." It is unclear whether the department reviewed the manual, which was produced by a private agency. In May 1978, a secret "internal defense plan" signed by Gov. Romero called for "the elimination or neutralization of insurgent leadership and infrastructure," a copy of the plan shows.
In 1978 two young nationalists were murdered by secret police. Andrades headed a special unit and helped cover up the murders, concealed a murder weapon - and then joined the Defenders of Democracy. This murder was covered up for six years and from 1978 to 1983, the San Juan office of the FBI declined to investigate the case, Justice Department records show.
FBI director William S. Sessions apologized formally for that FBI inaction in a 1990 letter to the Puerto Rican Senate. Sessions said the FBI "erred in not pursuing an independent investigation" of these murders.
In late 1983, under pressure from the Puerto Rican Senate, the FBI reopened the case. Ten police officers eventually were convicted on federal perjury charges in the cover-up. Eight were convicted of murder in local courts. Andrades was granted immunity and became a federally protected witness in the United States. (Puerto Rico's Death Squad Requiem on Cerro Maravilla: the Police Murders in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Government Cover-up, by Manuel Suarez and Progressive, 12/1988, pp. 40-42)
Guatemala: Watch List
The Guatemalan President, Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, successor to Castillo-Armas, had permitted the CIA to use his country for its training camp for Cuban exiles. In November 1960 a rebellion broke out in Guatemala. The CIA secretly came to the aid of Fuentes and sent in B-26 bombers against the rebels. The insurgency was crushed and Fuentes remained in power.
John E. Peurifoy was dispatched to Guatemala as US ambassador. In 1953, the CIA set into motion an operation to overthrow the government of Guatemala, which was then led by Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz had been working on land reform, giving United Fruit company unused land to poor farmers. Peurifoy was also fundamental in re-organizing the subsequent juntas, resulting in the junta of Carlos Castillo Armas. Armas was later declared president of Guatemala In 1954, at CIA behest, Castillo Armas created a committee and issued decree that established death penalty for crimes including labor union activities. Committee was given authority declare anyone communist with no right of defense or appeal. By 11/21/1954 committee had some 72,000 persons on file and aiming to list 200,000. (Bitter Fruit, Schlesinger, S., & Kinzer, S. (1983). , p. 221
The U.S. Ambassador John E. Peurifoy gave "black" lists of radical opponents to be eliminated to Armas's government. The military continued up to at least 1979 to use a list of 72,000 proscribed opponents, drawn up first in 1954. (NACLA (magazine re Latin America) 2/1983, p. 13 and NACLA 2/1983, p 4).
After Armas made president, labor code forgotten and worker organizers began disappearing from United Fruit plantations. (The Old Boys, Hersh, B., 1992, p. 353)
In 1954, after Arbenz resigned, US Ambassador John E. Peurifoy, gave Guatemalan army's chief of staff a list of "communists" to be shot
From 1981-1989, Israeli Knesset member General Peled said in Central America Israel is the "dirty work" contractor for U.S. The helped the Guatemala regime when Congress blocked Reagan administration. Israeli firm Tadiran (then partly U.S.-owned) supplied Guatemalan military with computerized intelligence system to track potential subversives. Those on computer list had an excellent chance of being "disappeared." It was "an archive and computer file on journalists, students, leaders, leftists, politicians and so on." Computer system making up death lists. (Dangerous Liaison, Cockburn, A. & Cockburn, L., 1991., p. 219)
From 1988-1991, 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 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 guerrillas. (New York Times, 4/2/1995, A11)
Guatemala: Death Squads
From 1953-1984, the CIA has been bankrolling a man reported to be behind right-wing terror in Central America, Mario Sandoval Alarcon, former Vice President of Guatemala. By mid-1960s Sandoval emerged as head of the organization. The White Hand or La Mano Blanco (aka the hand white) was responsible for as many as 8000 deaths in the 1960s plus more in the 1970s. Sandoval was a pillar of the World Anti-communist League. (Jack Anderson, Washington Post, 1/30/1984 and Jack Anderson column Links Reported Among Latin Death Squads, Washington Post, 1/12/1984, N. VA., p. 15)
Police trained by USAID public safety program murdered or disappeared 15,000 people. (Cry of the People, Lernoux, P.,1982, p. 186)
US Colonel Hooker, former DIA chief for Guatemala, says, "it would be an embarrassing situation if you ever had a roll call of everybody in Guatemalan army who ever collected a CIA paycheck." Hooker says CIA payroll is so large that it encompasses most of Army's top decision-makers. (CIA death squads by Allan Nairn. The Nation, 4/17/1995)
One of American agents who worked with Guatemalan intelligence (G-2) was Randy Capister. He has been involved in similar operations with army of neighboring El Salvador. A weapons expert known as Joe Jacarino [possibly a CIA officer], has operated through out Caribbean, and has accompanied G-2 units on missions into rural zones. Celerino Castillo, a former agent of DEA who dealt with G-2 and CIA in Guatemala. During mid-1980s G-2 officers were paid by Jack McCavitt, then CIA station chief. CIA "technical assistance" includes communications gear, computers and special firearms, as well as collaborative use of CIA-owned helicopters that are flown out of piper hangar at La Aurora civilian airport and from a separate US Air facility. Guatemalan army has, since 1978, killed more than 110,000 civilians. G-2 and a smaller, affiliated death squad called Archivo (archives) have long been openly known in Guatemala as the brain of the terror state. With a contingent of more than 2,000 agents and with sub-units in local army bases, G-2 coordinates torture, assassination and disappearance of dissidents. (CIA Death Squads by Allan Nairn, The Nation, 4/17/1995)
Colonel Alpirez was also a well-paid agent for CIA and a murderer, a U.S. Congressman says. Alpirez has been linked to the murder of Michael Devine, an American innkeeper who lived and worked in the Guatemalan jungle, and the torture and killing of Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, a leftist guerrilla who was the husband of Jennifer Harbury.
Human rights groups say from 1960 to 1990 at least 40,000 Guatemalans "disappeared. Most were poor Indians. (Washington Times,8/5/1992, p. A9)
From 1985-1995, there were bombings against military-reformist Christian Democratic Party (DCG) of then President Vinicio Cerezo to topple Cerezo, who perceived as being too soft on rebels. By 1995 there were more than 150,000 victims of this US "government program of political murder" (The Nation, 3/5/1990, cover, p. 308)
Member of House Intelligence Committee, Robert G. Torricelli (D- NJ.) said, in letter to President Clinton, that a Guatemalan military officer who ordered killings of an American citizen and a guerrilla leader married to a North American lawyer was a paid agent of CIA. CIA knew of killings, but concealed its knowledge for years. Another member of House Intelligence Committee confirmed Torricelli's claims. Torricelli wrote in letter to President that the "Direct involvement of CIA in the murder of these individuals leads me to the extraordinary conclusion that the agency is simply out of control and that it contains what can only be labeled a criminal element." (New York Times, 3/23/1995)
CIA has assigned its inspector General, Fred Hitz, to investigate. CIA station chief in Switzerland, who held a top position at Department of Operations (DO) Latin American Division from 1990 to 1992, is now being questioned, as is Jack Devine, who headed division from January 1983 until last October. He was appointed Associate Deputy Director of Operations in October after John MacGaffin was removed from that post for secretly giving an award to a senior operative who had just been disciplined in Ames case. Devine's successor is a woman, first to direct a DO division. She is in her 50s, was previously station chief in El Salvador, and is said by officials outside CIA to be very forthcoming about case. (Intelligence /a computerized intelligence newsletter published in France, 3/27/1995, p. 30)
1991-1994: US counterinsurgency experts Caesar Sereseres served as a consultant to RAND Corporation and State Department's Office of Policy Planning. Colonel George Minas served as military attache in Guatemala in early 1980s. Both encouraged population control such as Vietnam-style military-controlled strategic hamlets and civilian defense patrols. (Covert Action Information Bulletin (Quarterly), Spring 1994, pp. 28-33)
El Salvador: Subversive control Watch List
From 1980-1989, On TV D'Aubuisson, using military intelligence files, denounced teachers, labor leaders, union organizers and politicians. Within days their mutilated bodies found. Washington had identified most leaders of death squads as members Salvadoran security forces with ties to D'Aubuisson. (Washington Post op-ed by Douglas Farah, 2/23/1992, p. C4)
From 1982-1984, the US maintained official relationships with Salvadoran security establishment appearing to acquiesce in the death squad activities. No evidence U.S. personnel participated in forcible interrogations. The US did pass "tactical" information to alert the incumbent government of future combat acts by insurgent forces. Information on persons passed was only in highly unusual cases. (Senate Intelligence Committee, October 5, 1984, pp. 11-13)
El Salvador: Death Squads
In 1961-1979, vigilante organization called Democratic National Organization (Orden) created early 1960s. (The Morass, White, R.A., 1984 , p. 133
From 1961-1984, during the Kennedy administration, agents of the US set up two security organizations that killed thousands of peasants and suspected leftists over the next 15 years. In 1984 the CIA, in violation US law (the Bolen Amendment) , continued to provide training, support, and intelligence to security forces involved in death squads.
Over the years the CIA and US Special Forces organized the rural paramilitary and intelligence net designed to use terror. The elite presidential intelligence service that gathered files on Salvadoran dissidents and gave that information to the death squads; recruited General Jose Alberto Medrano, the founder of the death squads and trained security forces in the use of investigative techniques, weapons, explosives, and interrogation with "instruction in methods of physical and psychological torture." Medrano was (is?) a CIA contract agent. (The Progressive, 5/1984, pp. 20-29)
In 1963, US sent 10 Army Special Forces personnel to El Salvador to help General Medrano set up first paramilitary death squad in that country. These green berets carried out political assassinations in coordination with Salvadoran military. Now there is compelling evidence to show that for over 30 years, members of US military and CIA have helped organize, train, and fund death squad activity in El Salvador. (Covert Action Information Bulletin - Quarterly, Summer 1990, p. 51)
In 1968, Free Labor Development (AIFLD) the international arm of the AFL-CIO in the western hemisphere creates Salvadoran Communal Union (UCS). By 1973 UCS seen as too progressive and AIFLD officially expelled. With failing pro-government union efforts, AIFLD was called back to control UCS in 1979. (AIFLD in Central America, Barry, T., and Preusch, D., 1986, p. 34) From 1979-1988, death squads were recruiting members under cover of boy scouts. Boys operated as a death squad known as Regalados Armed Forces (FAR). They murdered union officials, student leaders and teachers accused of being guerrilla sympathizers.Herman Torres, a death squad member, learned of the scout's role. In 1982, the constituent assembly, the top legislative body was turned into a center for death squads. Another death squad was called the secret anti-communist army (ESA). Perez Linares boasted he killed Archbishop Romero on 3/24/1980. Catholic Church's human rights office reported 1991 the death squad killings in first half of 1988 double the number in 1987. (Mother Jones, 1/1989, pp. 10-16)
From 1980-1984, Colonel Roberto Santivanez, former chief of the Salvadoran Army's special military intelligence unit charged thatRoberto D'Aubuisson was the principal organizer of the death squads, along with Colonel Nicolas Carranza, the head of the country's Treasury Police. He said Carranza also serves as a paid CIA informer. Other reports said Carranza received $90,000 a year for providing intelligence to the CIA. (Washington Post, 4/1/1984)
Roberto D'Aubuisson attended conferences of World Anti-Communist League. He established the Arena political party with assistance of US new right leaders. (Inside the League, Anderson, J. L. and Anderson, S.,1986).
From 1980-1984, former US Ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White, said the Reagan administration covered up information that Roberto D'Aubuisson ordered the killing of Archbishop Romero. (Washington Post, 2/3/1984, 2/7/1984)
From 1981-1983, Colonel Nicolas Carranza, leader of Salvador's infamous Treasury Police, oversaw the government reign of terror in which 800 people were killed each month. Carranza received $90,000 a year from the CIA from 1979-84 Reportedly living in Kentucky. The Nation, 6/5/1988, p. 780
On November 18, 2005, a Memphis jury held Colonel Carranza—the former Vice-Minister of Defense for first brigade intelligence unit army troops —liable for crimes against humanity, torture and extrajudicial killing. Carranza was ordered to pay $6 million in damages. The verdict represents the first time that a U.S. jury in a contested case has found a commander liable for crimes against humanity. Carranza appealed the verdict to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
On March 17, 2009 the Sixth Circuit upheld the jury verdict. In May 2009, Carranza petitioned for cert with the U.S. Supreme Court. His petition was denied. On May 28th, 2009, Carranza filed a cert petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the principle of comity in customary international law requires the U.S. to recognize the Salvadoran amnesty law and waive jurisdiction. http://www.cja.org/section.php?id=73 From 1981-1988, the CIA and military advisers have helped organize, trained, financed and advised Salvadoran army and intelligence units engaged in death squad activities and torture. Many of 50,000 Salvadorans killed in 1981-1985 were attributable to death squad activity. (National Reporter, Winter 1986, p. 19, The Nation, 5/8/1989, p. 625, Christian Science Monitor, 5/8/1984, p. 1, and The CIA A Forgotten History, Blum, W., 1986, pp. 321, 327
In 1987, Central American death squads were reported operating in the Los Angeles area. (NACLA /magazine re Latin America/, 6/1987, pp. 4-5)
The Union Guerrilla Blanca (white warriors union) was headed by D'Aubuisson, who trained at International Police Academy. D'Aubuisson claims close ties CIA. Former ambassador White called D'Aubuisson a "psychopathic killer." (Covert Action Information Bulletin(Quarterly), 4/1981, p. 14)
In 1989 CIA routinely pays expenses of the Salvadoran Army's first brigade intelligence troops for intelligence operations. U.S. has about 55 advisers in Salvador. (Washington Post, 10/27/1989, A1,26)
Tom Gerard, a former San Francisco police officer said he worked for CIA and would expose CIA's support of death squads. Gerard said he began working for CIA in 1982 and quit in 1985 because he could not tolerate what he saw. Gerard said there is proof CIA directly involved in training and support of torture and death squads in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala during mid 1980s. San Francisco police seized several photos showing CIA agents attending interrogations or posing with death squad members. (Washington Times, 4/28/1993, A 6)
Declassified documents regarding 32 cases from 1980-1989 that were investigated by a United Nations appointed Truth Commission on El Salvador, reveal US officials were fully aware of Salvadoran military and political leaders' complicity in crimes ranging from massacre of more than 700 peasants at El Mozote in 1981 to murder of six Jesuit priests in 1989, and thousands of atrocities in between. (Lies of our Time 3/1994, pp. 6-9)
Findings in 67-page study ordered by Secretary of State Christopher., "glosses over...the lies, half-truths and evasions that we came to expect from the State Department during that period." Sen. Leahy said. Sen. Dodd said "report is sloppy, anemic and basically a whitewash..." (Washington Times, 7/16/1993, A12 and Washington Post, 7/16/1993, A16)
Thousands of pages of intelligence reports shows every U.S. diplomat, military officer, and intelligence operative who worked with El Salvador's military and political leaders in 1980s knew most of those involved in organizing death squads. State Department officials lied to Congress. Intelligence reports detailed precise information on murder, kidnapping, and coup plots, and death squad funding, involving people like VP Francisco Merino and Arena candidate Armando Calderon Sol. From 1980-1993, at least 63,000 Salvadoran civilians were killed. (The Nation, 11/29/1993, p. 645)
In 1994, the CIA supported right-wing killers in El Salvador, Nicaraguan Contras and Haiti. (Washington Post, 10/16/1994, C1,2) Costa Rica: Watch List
Pres. Reagan also appointed Jeane Kirkpatrick as the United States ambassador to the United Nations in 1981. Within months of taking office, Kirkpatrick accused Costa Rica, the most stable democracy in Central America, of communist subversion. President Carazo Odio responded by accusing Kirkpatrick of spreading lies about his country.
Although she was a member of the Democratic Party she continued to hold extreme right-wing views. In response to the campaigns of George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy, Kirkpatrick helped establish the Coalition for a Democratic Majority. Kirkpatrick later stated that the purpose of this organization was to "reclaim the party from its anti-war, anti-growth and anti-business activists". Kirkpatrick supported the nomination of Henry Jackson as the 1976 Democratic candidate. She was appalled when Jimmy Carter won the nomination. Over the next few years she emerged as Carter's main critics. Kirkpatrick argued strongly against the president's emphasis on civil rights. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8800 Honduras: Death Squads
The US ambassador to Honduras, Jack Binns was appointed by President Jimmy Carter and Binns made numerous complaints about human rights abuses by the Honduran military under the government of Policarpo Paz GarcÃa. In 1981, following the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, Binns was replaced by John D. Negroponte. From 1981 to 1985 as Negroponte was ambassador, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million a year, and the US began to maintain a significant presence in Honduras. Negroponte was aware that serious violations of human rights were carried out by the Honduran government, but despite this did not recommend ending U.S. military aid to the country. Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, on September 14, 2001, as reported in theCongressional Record, aired his suspicions. He stated cables show that Mr. Negroponte worked closely with William J. Casey on the Reagan administration's anti-Communist offensive in Central America. He helped word a secret 1983 presidential "finding" authorizing support for the Contras and met regularly with Honduran military officials to win and retain their backing for the covert action. From 1982-1986, Major Ricardo Zuniga told congressional staffers about the Honduran Army's Battalion 316 that was established with the knowledge and assistance of the U.S. Embassy. By 1984 more than 200 Honduran teachers, students, labor leaders, and opposition politicians had been murdered. The CIA had knowledge of the killings. Zuniga was killed in 9/1985, most likely by the right wing Honduran military. The 3/16th Bn was a special counterinsurgency force which many considered a kind of death squad, was formed in 1980. (NACLA2/1988, p. 15, Mother Jones, 4/1987, p. 48, and New York Times, 5/2/1987)
General G. Alvarez Martinez was CIA-Contra point man in Honduras, had death squad operation run by Ricardo Lau. Alvarez was godfather to new CIA Chief of Station's daughter., From 1980-1983 Gen. Gustavo Alvarez, formerly head of police was the general running entire armed forces. Alvarez had organized military intelligence Battalion. Argentina sent 15-20 officers to work with Alvarez, Senior officer Osvaldo Riveiro and the Contras. (Everybody Has His Own Gringo, Garvin, G.,1992, .p. 41 and The Iran-Contra Connection,Marshall, J., Scott P.D., and Hunter, J., 1987, pp. 78-9).
A Contra commander with the FDN admitted he helped organize a death squad in Honduras with the approval and cooperation of the CIA. Honduran government agreed to host the death squad and provide it with cover, since the group would kill Honduran dissidents at the government's request. The commander admitted he participated in assassinations. CIA "Colonel Raymond" congratulated the squad. (The Progressive, 8/1986, p. 25)
Honduran army investigators report that Contras have been involved in death-squad killings in Honduras. At least 18 Hondurans and an unknown number of Salvadorans and Nicaraguans have been killed by the Contras. (Washington Post, 1/15/1985, A12)
Honduran special prosecutor for human rights asking the U.S. to turn over classified information on Ambassadors John Negroponte and Chris Arcos and several CIA agents connected to the disappearance of dissidents in the 1980s. (AP, 6/13/1995)
Alvarez was forced into exile in Miami and became paid consultant to Pentagon writing study on low-intensity conflict. The members of 3-16 still remained in positions of power in the Honduran government. Congressional intelligence committee in 1988 looked into CIA's role with 3-16, but findings never published. (Op-ed by Anne Manuel, Washington Post, 11/28/1993, C5)
Alvarez's forces murdered upwards of 500 people. He was ousted as Honduras's dictator in 1984 and became special consultant to RAND Corporation. Eleven senior officers who are believed to have been involved with Battalion 316 were convicted on charges of kidnapping, torturing and attempting to murder six students in 1982. Officers include one general, nine colonels, and one captain. (AP, 7/25/1995 and Lies of our Time, 3/1994, pp. 3-5)
During Contra war Honduran military intelligence officers received double salaries, from CIA and Colombian drug cartels. They took advantage of using Honduran airstrips for transiting cocaine under cover of war effort. Israelis also trained Honduran death squads. (Dangerous Liaison, Cockburn, A. and Cockburn, L., 1991, p. 225)
CIA and Contras accused of running Honduran death squads, killing over 200. CIA officials "looked the other way" when people disappeared. Violence tapered off after ouster of CIA backed military commander Alvarez. Ricardo Lau was running Contra intelligence, also death squads. (The Iran-Contra Connection, Marshall, J., Scott P.D., and Hunter, J., 1987, pp. 132-3) From 1981-1987, Florencio Caballero served as a torturer and a member of a death squad. He was trained in Houston, Texas by the CIA and he said he was responsible for the torture and slaying of 120 Honduran and other Latin American citizens. The CIA taught him and 24 other people in an army intelligence unit for six months in interrogation. psychological methods — to study fears and weaknesses of a prisoner, make him stand up, don't let him sleep, keep him naked and isolated, put rats and cockroaches in his cell, give him bad food, throw cold water on him, change the temperature. (Washington Post, 6/8/1988, B3)
A survivor tells that she was kicked, had freezing water pored on her, and given electric shocks. The CIA worked closely with the Honduran military while the military tortured and killed dissidents during the 1980s, human rights groups said.
"At least nine Argentine military (officers), supported by the CIA, trained many Honduran officers to prevent communism from entering Honduras," said Leo Valladares of the government's human rights commission. The Baltimore Sun reported that CIA and the State Department collaborated with a secret Honduran military. Bertha Oliva, head of committee of relatives of the disappeared, claimed CIA knew of disappearances by Honduran security forces and that "the U.S. Embassy had absolute power in this country."
In order to keep up public support for Reagan administration's war efforts in Central America, U.S. officials misled congress and the public about Honduran military abuses. Collaboration was revealed in classified documents and in interviews with US and Honduran participants. Among those interviewed by the Sun were three former Battalion 316 torturers who acknowledged their crimes and detailed the battalion's close relationship with CIA. (Baltimore Sun, 6/15/1995)
Jose Isaias Vilorio, an intelligence officer and Honduran former death squad member, was shot dead on 1 January 1988. Isaias was to testify before Inter-American Court on Human Rights (New York Times, 20 January 1988).
Human rights leader and legislator Miguel Pavon was killed on 14 January 1988 after testifying before Inter-American Court. Also killed was Moises Landaverde, a teacher who was riding in Pavon's car at the time of attack. (Intelligence Parapolitics, 3/1988, p. 12)
Tatum stated he would be tasked by Bush Sr. from 1989 -1993 to "neutralize" the following people; Honduras's death squads leader,General Gustavo Alverez was killed in 1989, the President of a third world country in 1989, and Enrique Bermudez, the Contra leader and overseer of the cocaine kitchens, was killed in 1991. Tatum did not disclose who the third world President was.
Amiram Nir represented Israeli interests until his assassination in 1988 by an "Archer" team or Pegasus unit led by American Chip Tatum - at the request of high level Israeli individuals. He was a former Israeli agent was scheduled to testify to the Senate subcommittee and it was feared he would reveal the truth. Nir (cover name Pat Weber) died when his aircraft was shot down with missiles from the helicopter. Tatum alleges that he was working for the US National Security Council (NSC) as a member of the Operational Sub-group (OSG-3) (aka "alignment group" (translated: assassination team), a division authorized by President Reagan per National Security Decision Directive Number 3 (NSDD-30). Tatum stated that in 1992 was tasked to kill Ross Parot, but he refused to kill an American and that day he decided to leave the black operations unit.
Tatum states that the Pegasus unit has through the years spied on political leaders and financiers around the world. There is (was) a huge database on everyone. If, during our active time, a member of Pegasus was intimidated or placed before a Senate committee or something like that, they could simply pull out this file and intimidate that politician into backing off. And that "was" done. http://www.leopoldreport.com/Pegasus.html Panama: Watch List
In 1989 and 1990, US says 90 prisoners who were held in Panama. Most of those detained had been picked up by US forces based on wanted lists compiled by US and Panamanian authorities. (Washington Post, 1/19/1990, A16)
Mexico: Death Squads
The Mexican Federal Security Directorate (DFS) like many Western-hemisphere intelligence organizations was creation of and worked with the CIA from 1957. DFS has state of the art computer and records systems. The CIA able to keep tabs on all embassies in Mexico City with the help of DFS and they worked closely with US in the suppression of leftists and political parties. In early 1970s, a right-wing death squad, Brigada Blanca, killed hundreds, probably thousands of Mexican students and political activists. Zacaris Osorio Cruz, testified in Canada that he was a member of death squad from 1977 to1982. He said he was a member of a team that killed between 60-150 people. (Penthouse, 12/1989)
From 1977 to 1989, the US looked the other way when Miguel Nassar Haro (aka Nazar Haro; or Nasar Haro), head of DFS used his infallible (interrogation) techniques on behalf American agencies and while he carried out hundreds, perhaps thousands of political executions of Mexican leftists and political dissidents. (DFS administering drug traffic, Penthouse, 12/1989) Peter K. Nuñez, a former US Attorney for San Diego, California stated that in about 1982, Miguel Nassar Haro was under investigation by the Justice Department for participating in a car theft ring and his office had sufficient information to charge him. However when Nuñez tried to arrest and prosecute Haro the "intelligence agencies" in Washington began to meddle in the case and they even pressured him not to pursue the investigations.
The CIA considered Nassar Haro "the most important source in Mexico and Central America" for the U.S. espionage services.
Haro is still a fugitive and the US should still request Hero's extradited because the statute of limitations would not apply because Nassar Haro had already been processed.
Also even without a US extradition proceeding to stand trial in the US, the Mexican justice system could try Nassar Haro for crimes committed in the US. Article 4 of the Federal Penal Code of Mexico states that crimes committed abroad by a Mexican will be punishable in Mexico, if the accused is now in Mexico and if the accused has yet to be tried abroad.
The Mexican Federal Security Directorate is no long in operation in Mexico. (FEB. 23, 2004)
Nicaragua: Watch List
Joseph Adams, a former Marine intelligence officer, who served as chief of security for Aldolfo Calero, helped maintain a list of civilians marked for assassination when Contra forces entered Nicaragua. The Progressive, 3/1987, p. 24
Nicaragua: Death Squads
Enrique Bermudez, a Contra leader, said that that Contra raids on economic targets from 1983 to 1989 into northern Nicaragua, particularly coffee plantations and farming cooperatives, any resistance brought brutal retribution. Commandantes in field authorized to select those to die. Bermudez ordered prisoners to have throats cut rather than waste bullets. (Disposable Patriot, Terrell, J., and Martz, R., 1992, p. 149)
The CIA-funded Puebla Institute in 1991 circulated false reports about Nicaraguan Sandinistas death squad, stating this information came from the UN and OAS. (Unclassified, 9/1992, p. 14)
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South America: Watch List
From 1970 to 1979, the US Legal attaché to Buenos Aires, FBI agent Robert Scherrer, sent cable to D.C. describing operation Condor. Correspondence has been found between Paraguayan ministers and US Army Colonel Robert Thierry, who was serving as "public administration adviser," who supervised formation of the technical police. Letters from FBI agent Scherrer advising Paraguayan police about targets. CIA also worked with Paraguayans. (The case of Eugenio Berios, Covert Action Information Bulletin (Quarterly) 12, 57, 8, 9)
South America: Death Squads
AIFLD collected detailed information about Latin American labor leaders under pretext surveys necessary for USAID-financed worker's housing projects. AIFLD able obtain personal and political history union members, with address and photos. Given CIA role in Chile, Uruguay and Brazil coups, among others, it probable this information passed to military regimes and their secret police. (Cry of the People, Lernoux, P., 1982, pp. 212, 220 and 238)
In 1960, "target" black lists were maintained by all the Western Hemisphere Division stations of the CIA in case local government asks for assistance in preventive detention of dangerous persons. (Inside the Company: CIA Diary, Agee, P., 1975, p. 114)
The CIA organizes right wing terrorist organizations that attack and assassinate leftist politicians and others without implicating foreign governments. Groups include "La Mano Blanco" and "Ojo Por Ojo" (Guatemala), "La Banda" (Dominican republic), and "Death Squad" (Brazil). (Counterspy, 3/1973, p. 4)
The CIA trained assassination groups such as Halcones in Mexico, the Mano Blanca in Guatemala, and the Escuadron de la Muerte in Brazil. (NACLA, 8/1974, p. 11)
From 1953-1984, the activities of the death squads, formed under CIA sponsorship in 1954 were loosely controlled by an international organization known as La Mano Blanco (the White Hand). The front group for this death squad was the Latin American Anti-communist Federation, the Latin American affiliate of the World Anti-communist League. (Jack Anderson, Washington Post, 1/13/1984)
Terrorist groups created in most countries such as "La Mano Blanco did so without implicating police or military. CIA was implicated in attempts to organize the right into terrorist organizations. (Counterspy, 1973, p. 4)
In December 1992 a Paraguayan judge found documentary history in a police station of decades of repression and US cooperation with Paraguay and other regional dictatorships. Archives detail fates of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Latin Americans secretly kidnapped by right-wing regimes of the 1970s. The documents revealed that from 1970-1992 there was a conspiracy (Operation Condor) among security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay to kill people without regard to borders.
There documents confirmed the arrests and killings of politicians and exchange of prisoners with Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. South American repression killed 50,000, disappeared 30,000 — the majority in Argentina and 400,000 imprisoned. US gave inspiration, financing and technical assistance for this repression. The CIA's technical services division (TSD), provided electrical torture equipment. (Covert Action Information Bulletin /Quarterly/, Fall 1994, pp. 7-13)
In 1976, an Argentinean told the FBI legal attaché Scherrer in Santiago, that Operation Condor was a growing program among military intelligence services of some Latin American countries designed to locate and eliminate one another's fugitive terrorists and exiled dissidents. Also ambitious leader of Chilean DINA were trying to institutionalize process. (Labyrinth, Branch, T. and Proper, E., 1983, p. 123
President, Ronald Reagan, appointed Michael Deaver as Deputy White House Chief of Staff under James Baker III. He took up his post in January 1981. On 19th March, 1981, Reagan asked Congress to lift the embargo on arms sales to Argentina. General Roberto Viola, one of the junta members responsible for the death squads, was invited to Washington. In return, the Argentine government agreed to expand its support and training for the Contras. "Aid and training were provided to the Contras through the Argentinean defense forces in exchange for other forms of aid from the U.S. to Argentina." (The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA, by John Ranelagh)
Reagan had more difficulty persuading Congress to provide arms to Guatemala. During a 4th May, 1981, session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, it was announced that the Guatemalan death squads had murdered 76 leaders of the moderate Christian Democratic Party including its leader, Alberto Fuentes Mohr. "When Congress balked at certifying that Guatemala was not violating human rights, the administration acted unilaterally, by simply taking the items Guatemala wanted off the restricted list." (Iran-Contra Connection, by Peter Dale Scott)
In early 1981, Leopoldo Galtieri visited the United States and was warmly received by members of the Ronald Reagan administration. Richard V. Allen, who Reagan had appointed as his National Security Advisor, described Galtiera as a "majestic general." With the help of the CIA, Galtieri overthrew President Roberto Viola in December 1981. Galtieri attempted to improve the economy by cutting public spending and selling off government-owned industries. He also imposed a pay freeze. These policies were unpopular and demonstrations took place demanding a return to democracy.
In April, 1982, Galtieri's forces invaded the weakly-defended British Falkland Islands and he declared the "Malvinas" a province of Argentina. The anti-junta demonstrations were replaced by patriotic demonstrations in support of Galtieri. "Only hours after the 1982 invasion of the Falklands she notoriously attended as guest of honor a reception at the Argentine Embassy in Washington. She then went on television to assert that if the islands rightly belonged to Argentina its action could not be considered as "armed aggression". (The Times)
British Guiana:
The "CIA funded strikes and riots that crippled Guiana in 1962 and 1963, and led to overthrow of People's Progressive Party and they funneled its secret payments that placed Forbes Bumham in power through the AFL-CIO and AFSCME." (Center for National Security Studies)
Bolivia: Death Squads
Between October 1966-1968 Amnesty International reported between 3,000 and 8,000 people killed by death squads. (The CIA A Forgotten History, by William Blum, 1986, p. 264)
In 1991, a death squad known as "Black Hand" shot twelve people on 24 November 1991. Killings were part of group's aim to eliminate "undesirable" elements from society. Victims included police officers, prostitutes and homosexuals. (Washington Post, 11/25/1991, A2)
Bolivia: Watch List
In 1975, the CIA plotting with the Bolivian interior ministry to harass progressive bishops, and to arrest and expel foreign priests and nuns. CIA was particularly helpful in supplying names of US and other foreign missionaries. (The Nation, 5/22/1976, p. 624)
In 1975, the CIA provided government data on priests who were politically progressive. (The CIA A Forgotten History, William Blum, 1986, p. 259) Brazil: Watch List
In Brazil, the CIA funded unsuccessful candidates in opposition to President Joao Goulart, who had moved to expropriate International Telephone and Telegraph subsidiaries and maintain relations with Cuba. The CIA then orchestrated, continued the report, "anti-government operations by labor, military, and middle-class groups, including courses in 'labor affairs' in Washington, D.C." The resultant coup in 1964 established a military dictatorship in power.
In 1962-64, the Institute of Research and Social Studies (IPES) with assistance from private US sources published booklets and pamphlets and distributed hundreds of articles to newspapers. In 1963 alone it distributed 182,144 books. It underwrote lectures, financed students' trips to the US, sponsored leadership training programs for 2,600 businessmen, students, and workers, and subsidized organizations of women, students, and workers.
In late 1962 IPES member Philip Siekman in Sao Paulo organized vigilante cells to counter leftists. The vigilantes armed themselves, made hand-grenades. IPES hired retired military to exert influence on those in active service. From 1962-1964 IPES, by its own estimate, spent between $200,000 and $300,000 on an intelligence net of retired military. The "research group" of retired military circulated a chart that identified communist groups and leaders. (United States Penetration of Brazil, Black, J.K., 1977, p. 85)
Brazil: Death Squads
In 1965, death squads formed to bolster Brazil's national intelligence service and counterinsurgency efforts. US AID (and presumably the CIA) knew of and supported police participation in death squad activity. Death squads and torture began appear after the 1964 CIA-backed coup. (Hidden Terrors, Langguth, A.J., 1978, p. 121, The CIA A Forgotten History, William Blum, 1986, p. 190 andCounterspy 5/6 1979, p. 10)) Brazilian and Uruguayan death squads closely linked and have shared training. CIA on at least two occasions coordinated meetings between countries' death squads. (Counterspy 5/6 1979, p. 1)
Chile: Watch List
In 1964 the CIA, with the cooperation of the Agency for International Development and the State Department, secretly funneled up to $20 million into Chile to aid Eduardo Frei in his successful bid to defeat Salvador Allende for the Presidency. Failing to block Allende's election to the Presidency in 1970, the CIA directed a destabilization campaign of economic and political warfare which led to the 1973 military coup that toppled Allende.
From 1970-1973, the CIA station collecting the kind of information that would be essential for a military dictatorship after a coup: lists of civilians to be arrested, those to be protected and government installations occupied at once. (Atlantic, 12/1982, p. 58, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades, Corn, D., 1994, p. 251 and Chile, CIA Big Business, Sergeyev, F.F., 198, p. 163)
In late 1971-19 72, the CIA adopted more active stance re military penetration program including effort to subsidize anti-government news pamphlet directed at armed services, compilation arrest lists and its deception operation. CIA received intelligence reports on coup planning throughout July, August and September 73. (U.S. Congress, Church Committee Report, 1976, v 7, p. 39)
The American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) the international arm of the AFL-CIO in the western hemisphere was financed through the USAID. Chilean graduates of AIFLD, as well as CIA-created unions, organized CIA-financed strikes which participated in Allende's overthrow. In 1973 AIFLD graduates provided the Chile's secret police (DINA), with thousands of names of fellow unionists who were subsequently imprisoned and tortured and executed. (Counterspy 4/1981, p. 13 and The CIA A Forgotten History, Blum, W.,1986, 240) After 1973 coup in Chile, US embassy intelligence people gave their files on the Chilean and foreign left to the junta's military intelligence service (SIM). (NACLA a magazine re Latin America, 8/74, p. 28).
In 1973, allegedly the US military mission and the CIA were involved in the preparation lists of nearly 20,000 middle-level leaders of people's organizations, scheduled to be assassinated from the morning of the coup on. These lists were of some 3,000 high-level directors to be arrested. Lists detailed: name, address, age, profession, marital status, and closest personal friends. From late June on plotters began to finalize lists of extremists, political leaders, Marxist journalists, agents of international communism, and any and all persons participating with any vigor in neighborhood, communal, union, or national organization. The Pentagon had been asked to get the CIA to give the Chilean army lists of Chileans linked to socialist countries. Names sorted into two groups: persons not publicly known but who important in leftist organizations; and, well-known people in important positions. There were 20,000 people listed in first group and 3,000 in second. Second group to be jailed, and the first to be killed. (The Murder of Allende, Sandford, R.R., 1975, pp. 195-196 and The CIA A Forgotten History, Blum, W., 1986, p. 194) Right wing Cuban exiles called "Gusanos" who were paid and trained by CIA and "Chilean Gestapo" DINA. Gusanos regularly engage in terrorism against Cuba and Latin American and Caribbean countries. Tactics include blowing up airplanes, embassies, fishing boats, and kidnappings. Gusanos connected with police of other right wing governments such as Venezuela. Certain gusano operations were directed by CIA; Other unilateral operations of DINA. (Counterspy, 12/1976, p. 10) Columbia: Watch List
Luis Moreno, an employee of State Department, has bragged he helped Colombian army create a database of subversives, terrorists and drug dealers." His superior in overseeing INS for Southeastern U.S., is Gunther Wagner, former Nazi soldier and a key member of now-defunct Office of Public Safety (OPS), an AID project which helped train counterinsurgents and terrorism in dozens of countries. Wagner worked in Vietnam as part of Operation Phoenix and in Nicaragua where he helped train National Guard. Article also details massacres in Indonesia. (Haiti Information, 4/23/1994, pp. 3 and 4)
Columbia: Death Squads
The Colombian anti-guerrilla death squad MAS (aka "Death to Kidnappers") was founded in December 1981 by members of Medellin cartel, Cali cartel, and Colombian military. (Cocaine Politics, Scott, P. and Marshall, J., 1991, p. 261).
Amnesty International called Colombia in 1993and 1994 one of worst "killing fields" and the US was an accomplice. William F. Schultz, executive director for the US, told a news conference that using the fight against drugs was a pretext. About 20,000 people were killed since 1986 in one of Latin America's most "stable democracies." Only 2 percent of the political killings were related to drug trafficking and whereas 70 percent were due to the Colombian paramilitary or military. The US was probably a collaborator and much of US aid for counternarcotics was diverted to the "killing fields." The Amnesty International report said human meat is sold on black market and politicians gunned down along with children, homosexuals, and drug addicts. The US was supporting these (death squads) because of Colombia's strategic position. No one was safe and people were killed for body parts. (Washington Times, 3/16/1994, p. a15)
Ecuador: Subversive control Watch List
Beginning in 1961 the CIA conducted operations to bring down the regime of President Jose Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador after he refused to sever diplomatic relations with Cuba. Ibarra was overthrown in November 1961. His successor, Carlos Julio Arosemena, soon fell out of favor with the United States and once again the CIA used destabilizing tactics to overthrow his government in July 1963.
In 1962, with CIA contract agents from Social Christian party, the CIA will form five squads composed of five men for investigative work on subversive control watch list. (Inside the Company: CIA Diary, Agee, P., 1975, pp. 240, 247)
In 1963, the CIA maintained what was called the lynx list, aka the subversive control watch list. This was a file that might have from 50 to 500 names. People on the list were supposed to be the most important left-wing activists whose arrest we might effect through the local government. Would include place and date of birth, wife's name, where they worked, and biological data on the whole family, including schools the children attended, etc. In Ecuador the CIA paid teams to collect and maintain this type information. (White Paper Whitewash Agee, 1981, p. 55) Paraguay: Watch List
The Paraguayan government expelled an author and released a document supplied by the US Embassy. The document, marked secret, includes the author among a list of Paraguayans said to have visited the USSR bloc. (Washington Post 2/5/1983, A1,21) Peru
During the mid-1960s the CIA secretly aided the government of Peru in its fight against rebel guerrilla forces. They flew in arms and other equipment and Peruvian troops were trained by personnel of the special operations division of the CIA as well as by US Army Green Beret instructors.
Uruguay: Watch List
In Uruguay, the CIA manipulated politics throughout the 1960s, pressuring the government to accept an USAID police training mission which provided cover for CIA officers. Their job was to secretly finance and train local police and intelligence services.
CIA agent was associated with death squads with every CIA station maintaining a subversive black list of most important left wing activists, and the names of other family members and friends. (On Company Business, TV transcript, Frankovich, A., 1980, 5/9/1980, pp. 51-3)
Uruguay has national voter registration that is an effective identity card system and this information was given to the CIA station. (CID-361)
Uruguay: Death Squads
From 1970 to 1972, a CIA operations officer used the cover as a USAID public safety advisor and helped set up the Department of Information and Intelligence (DII). DII served as a cover for death squad. (Counterspy, 5/1979, p. 10) USAID official Dan Mitrione was kidnapped and after ten days in captivity, he was executed on August 10, 1970 by Uruguayan guerillas, the Tupamaros. Mitrione was a former police officer who arrived in Uruguay in 1969 to provide logistical and technical support to the Uruguayan police as director of the U.S Agency for International Development's Office of Public Safety.
Suspecting Mitrione of training security forces to torture detainees during the government's aggressive counter-insurgency campaign, the Tupamaros kidnapped him and demanded the release of 150 political prisoners in return for his life — a demand that was immediately rebuffed by then Uruguayan president Jorge Pacheco.
In one of the nine cables former US Secretary of State William Rodgers, he wrote that he "assumed that the Government of Uruguay has considered use of threat to kill (a Tupamaros leader Raúl) Sendic and other key MLN prisoners if Mitrione is killed." Rodgers told then-Ambassador Charles Adair that "If this has not been considered, you should raise it with GOU [Government of Uruguay] at once."
Adair cabled back to Rodgers a reply from Uruguayan's Foreign Minister that "his type of government did not permit such action." However, Adair added that the Foreign Minister "understood that through indirect means, a threat was made to these prisoners that members of the `Escuadrón de Muerte' (Death Squad) would take action against the prisoners' relatives if Mitrione were killed."
Mitrione's death escalated the Uruguayan government's campaign against the MLN-Tupamaros and other leftist guerilla organizations as well as students, union leaders, and political opposition, eventually leading to the country's 1973 civil-military coup and twelve years of dictatorship. According to Amnesty International, at least 134 Uruguayans were disappeared and thousands detained and tortured in the period between 1973 and 1985.
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Indonesia: Watch List
President Sukarno was the leader of his country's struggle for independence from the Netherlands and was Indonesia's first President from 1945 to 1967. In February 1942, Imperial Japan invaded the Dutch East Indies quickly defeating Dutch forces. Sukarno accepted an agreement from a Japanese general to organize and pacify the Indonesians into supporting the Japanese war efforts. He was one of the "foremost collaborationist leaders." The Japanese recruited millions of people, particularly from Java, to work as forced labor. They were forced to build railways, airfields, and other facilities for the Japanese within Indonesia and as far away as Burma. Additionally, the Japanese requisitioned rice and other food produced from Indonesian peasants to supply their own troops, while forcing the peasantry to cultivate castor oil plants to be used as aviation fuel and lubricants. Since his first visit to Beijing in 1956, Sukarno has began in the 1950s to increase his ties to the People's Republic of China and the communist bloc in general. He also began to accept increasing amounts of Soviet bloc military aid. By early 1960s, Soviet bloc provided more aid to Indonesia than to any other non-communist country, while Soviet military aid to Indonesia was only equaled by aid provided to Cuba. To counter-balance the power of the military, Sukarno in 1960 started to rely on the support of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). The CIA had long sought to unseat President Sukarno: by funding an opposition political party in the mid-1950s, sponsoring a massive military overthrow attempt in the mid-1958, planning his assassination in 1961, and by rigging intelligence to inflame official U.S. concerns in order to win approval for planned covert actions. The CIA's International Organizations Division (IOD) implemented and coordinated its extensive covert operations. The division's activities created or assisted international organizations for youth, students, teachers, workers, veterans, journalists, and jurists. The CIA used, and continues to use, the various labor, student, and other suborned organizations not only for intelligence and propaganda purposes, but also to participate in elections and paramilitary operations and to assist in overthrowing governments. At the same time, the CIA manipulates their organizational publications for covert propaganda goals. The labor unions the CIA creates and subsidizes, in their more virulent stages, provide strong-arm goon squads who burn buildings, threaten and beat up opponents, pose as groups of the opposition to discredit them, terrorize and control labor meetings, and participate in coups.
From 1963 to 1965, US trained trade unionist spies laid groundwork for a coup and massacre of leftists by gathering intelligence on leftist unionists.
In September and October of 1965, the murder of six top military officers during a coup attempt provided a pretext for destroying theIndonesian Communist Party (PKI) and removing Sukarno. Surviving officers-principally General Suharto, rallied the army and defeated the coup, ultimately unseating Sukarno. (Counterspy, Winter 1979, p. 27)
In 1965 and 1966, "U.S. officials' (black) lists aided Indonesian blood bath in '60s." U.S. officials supplied the names of thousands of members of PKI to the Indonesian army that was hunting them down and killing them. Robert J. Martens, a former member of the embassy's political section said, "it really was a big help to the (Indonesian) army.... They probably killed a lot of people..." Martens headed an embassy group of state Department and CIA officials that spent two years compiling the black lists. He said he delivered them to an army intermediary. The lists were a detailed who's who of the leadership of the PKI and included names of provincial, city and other local PKI members and leaders of mass organizations. Ambassador Marshall Green, his deputy Jack Lydman, and political section chief Edward Masters admitted approving the release of the names. Indonesian Army officer, Tirta Kentjana Adhyatman, confirmed that he had met with Martens and received lists of thousands of names...given to Pres. Sukarno's HQs.
According to former CIA deputy chief of station in Jakarta, Joseph Lazarsky, after Indonesian citizens were captured and killed, the Suharto's HQs informed him. "We were getting a good account in Jakarta of who was being picked up,"..."the army had a 'shooting list' of about 4,000 to 5,000 people." Lazarsky said the check-off work was also carried out at CIA's intelligence directorate in D.C. By end of January 1966, "the checked off names were so numerous the CIA analysts in Washington concluded the PKI leadership had been destroyed." (Washington Post, 5/21/1990, A5 and The Nation, 7/9/1990, p. 43)
Indonesia: Death Squads
In 1965 and 1966, Indonesian generals approached US for equipment "to arm Moslem and nationalist youths for use in central Java against the PKI." Washington responded by supplying covert aid, dispatched as "medicines." Washington Post, 6/13/1990, A 22
From 1965-1985, the CIA and State Department officials provided name lists to Indonesian army that killed from 250,000 to a million people. Death squads roam at will, killing subversives, suspected criminals by thousands. (The CIA A Forgotten History, Blum, W., 1986, p. 221and The Progressive, 7/10/1990, p. 9) East Timor: Death Squads
From 1975-1976, the role of US and their Australian collaborators in East Timor is another example of support for genocide. Carter and Ford administrations have been accomplices in the massacre of anywhere between one-in-ten and one-in-two Timorese. (Counterspy, Spring 1980, p. 19) Japanese during World War II, whose occupation spawned a resistance movement that resulted in the deaths of 60,000 Timorese, or 13 percent of the entire population.
By 1975, the leading political force in East Timor was Fretilin (the Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor), which had established strong grassroots support throughout the countryside with progressive policies aimed at improving the lives of the peasantry. In January 1975, Fretilin formed an alliance with the other main political grouping, the UDT (Timorese Democratic Union), and local elections were held under the supervision of the Portuguese parliament's Decolonization Committee.
Fretilin forces were pushed deep into the countryside, and Indonesian president Suharto declared East Timor's annexation by Indonesia in July 1976. By November of that year, relief agencies in East Timor estimated that an extraordinary 100,000 Timorese had been killed since the Indonesian invasion less than a year earlier.
What followed was a protracted guerrilla war by Fretilin forces, who eventually succeeded in establishing control over about half the remaining Timorese population. Indonesian "counterinsurgency" strategies reached a genocidal scale, causing widespread starvation. Indeed, Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman argued in their 1980 book, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, that the Indonesian assault resulted in killing about a third of the Timorese population. Western governments and media were resolutely focused on the atrocities committed by the communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia/Kampuchea.
The major share of responsibility for the genocide in East Timor since 1975 rests with the Indonesian military. On August 18, 2000, the People's Consultative Assembly in Jakarta issued a blanket amnesty for all human-rights abuses committed by the armed forces, in Indonesia as well as in East Timor. "Top serving and retired officers ... put enormous pressure on politicians to pass the decree banning retroactive prosecution of human rights cases ... The ban effectively rules out charges against senior officers, because Indonesia's criminal code does not recognize culpability by those in command.
Cambodia: Watch List
Aided by CIA, in1970 Cambodian secret police fed blacklists of targeted Vietnamese to Khmer Serai and Khmer Kampuchea Krom. (Mass killings of Vietnamese, The Phoenix Program, Valentine, D., 1990, p. 328)
Cambodia: Death Squads
From 1980-1990, the US indirectly supported the Khmer Rouge ( U.S. comforting mass murderers, Washington Post, 5/7/1990, A10 editorial) Thailand/Laos:
In the early 1950s the CIA's creation and support of the Police Aerial Reconnaissance Unit (PARU) in Thailand was a model for paramilitary operations.General Edward Lansdale's 1961 memorandum on unconventional warfare explained: "The PARU has a mission of undertaking clandestine operations in denied areas. Ninety-nine PARU personnel were introduced covertly to assist the Meos or Hmong in operations in Laos. This was a special police unit supported by CIA with a being strength of 300 that increased to 550 as rapidly as possible. There are presently thirteen PARU teams, totaling 99 men, operating with the Meo guerrillas in Laos." The CIA recruited those Hmong mountain tribesmen and used PARU to lead them in fighting the Communist Pathet Lao forces.
CIA officer Sam Adams captured document from the Viet Cong high command showing that the VC controlled six million people He had been the sole CIA analyst responsible for counting the number of armed communists in South Vietnam. The CIA hierarchy finally allowed him to try to persuade the U.S. military that their estimates of the number of armed communists in South Vietnam were ridiculously low. Adams had a long and unsuccessful battle trying to stop the CIA from issuing false, low estimates of number of armed communists in South Vietnam. His battles earned him 30 threats of firing and finally in disgust, he quit.
The reports proved exactly what the designers of US policy in Vietnam refused to see or hear-that we had lost the war years before. To support their specious position, CIA leaders had to suppress the facts contained in the reports that contradicted it and had to make certain that neither I nor anyone else within the CIA could ever gather such information again.
(Deadly Deceits CIA Support of Death Squads 1953 to 1994 by Ralph McGehee, 1999)
Thailand: Death Squads
From 1973-1976 the CIA was collaborating with a variety of Thai security agencies to kill "subversive (left wing) elements" within the Thai population. Right wing (anti-socialist) students with police support had over 100,000 members including government employees, soldiers, policemen, etc. This group received support and assistance from the internal security command where CIA had a presence. The Red Guars implicated in numerous bombings, killings, shooting and harassment of labor leaders, peasant leaders, etc. (Indochina Resource Center Study, 1/1977 and Counterspy, Summer 1980, p. 14)
Over 10,000 students, professors, political figures, labor and farm leaders arrested after a 1976 coup and US military aid increased. New junta used CIA-trained forces to crush student demonstrators during coup. Two right-wing terrorist squads suspected for assassinations were tied directly to CIA operations. The number of assassinations by right wingers soared in April 1976 during parliamentary elections. (Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, v9 #3, 9/1977, p. 2) and International Terrorism and the CIA, Syrokonski. , 1983, p. 117-118)
Philippines: Death Squads
Philippines. Article From 1969 to 1983, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos' land reform programs failed and he approved creation of "Monkees" a group used to intimidate and even murder Marcos' rivals. From 1965 to 1986, the Marcos lead government was noted for massive authoritarian corruption, despotism, nepotism, political repression, and human rights violations. He declared martial law from 1972 to 1981 and looted billions of dollars from the Filipino treasury. (In Our Image, Karnow, S., 1989, p. 378 and Death Squads in the Philippines, by Doug Cunningham, Covert Action Information Bulletin (Quarterly), Winter 1988 pp. 22-3) In the Philippines 1,166 persons were killed from 1972 to 1983. Human rights groups say most of victims were opponents of President Marcos. (Washington Post, 4/12/1984, A21)
In March 1986, Pres. Reagan signed a finding increasing CIA involvement in Philippine counterinsurgency operations. The new President Aquino government was allegedly perpetrating a purge of opposition, carried out by more than 50 death squads. Ramsey Clark, who investigated death squad activity in 1987, wrote that "the victims of vigilante violence are overwhelmingly poor farmers, workers, slum dwellers, and others who are pushing for significant land reform, wage increases and protection workers' rights, as well as those who oppose US military bases." Upsurge in death squad activities are coincident with increased CIA aid and was preceded by visit to Philippines by Maj. Gen. John Singlaub. (The Nation, 9/19/1987, pp. 259-60 and Vigilante Terror: A report of CIA-inspired death squads in the Philippines. National Reporter, Fall 1987, pp. 24-31) In 1986, the US supported psychological operations, vigilante and death squads. Asian-American Free Labor Institute operations in1985 spent up to $4 million on organizational efforts, the money coming from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). (US Sponsored Low Intensity Conflict in the Philippines, Bello, W., 1987)
Vietnam: Watch List
From 1965 to 1968, the US and government of Vietnam created a black list of active NLF for assassination. Operation Phoenix (called Phung Hoang by Vietnamese) generates 300,000 political prisoners in South Vietnam. After 1968, US advisors worked with their South Vietnam intelligence counterparts (Counterspy, May 1973, p. 22 and Counterspy, 5/1973, p. 21)
From 1965 to 1970, U.S. and Saigon intelligence services maintained an active list of Viet Cong cadre marked for assassination. Phoenix program in 1969 called for "neutralizing" 1800 a month. About one third of Viet Cong targeted for arrest had been summarily killed. Security committees established in provincial interrogation centers to determine fate of Viet Cong suspects, outside of judicial controls. Green Berets and Navy Seals were the most common recruits for Phoenix program. Green Beret Detachment B-57 provided administrative cover for other intelligence units.
Project Cherry was an operation tasked to assassinate Cambodian officials suspected of collaborating with North Vietnamese and KGB. Another was Project Oak which targeted South Vietnamese suspected collaborators. These projects were controlled by Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities, which worked with CIA outside of General Abrams's control. (A Murder In Wartime, Stein. J., 1992, pp. 360-1)
South Vietnamese who appeared on black lists could be tortured, detained for two years without trial or killed. Until 1970, only the DIA, FBI and CIA in Saigon were using computers to build their blacklist, not the South Vietnamese. (The Phoenix Program, Valentine, D., 1990, pp. 13 and 259)
Vietnam: Death Squads
Counter-terror teams (aka Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRU) made up of six or dozen men carried out carefully planned forays, capturing or killing identified communists. The CIA created a program of hunter-killer teams. Counter Terror (CT) program changed its name to the Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs). CIA contact agents recruited, organized, supplied, and directly paid CT teams, whose function was to use . . . techniques of terror-assassination, abuses, kidnappings and intimidation-against the Viet Cong leadership." According to Colby's own testimony in 1971 before a congressional committee, 20,587 suspected Vietcong were killed under Phoenix in its first two and a half years. Figures provided by the South Vietnamese government credit Phoenix with 40,994 VC kills. The term hunter-killer teams is also linked to US assassination teams that hunted down US soldiers who had gone AWOL in Vietnam and I is is my guess it was a secret operation to cover up the fact that a lot of US soldiers were defecting to the North Vietnamese and/or going AWOL, aka "going native." (Deadly Deceits: CIA Support of Death Squads 1953 to 1994 by Ralph McGehee and The Counterinsurgency Era, Blaufarb, D.S., 1977, .pp. 210-11)
From 1960 to 1993, Montagnards were recruited in early 1960s by Special Forces to fight Viet Cong. They did not surrender until 1992, when they yielded weapons to UN forces in Cambodia and brought to U.S. In October 1961 Paul Campbell, a SF Sergeant, was sent by CIA to recruit Montagnards. They form village security, but soon being used for long-range reconnaissance and in highly mobile strike forces that hunted Viet Cong for weeks at a time. (We killed many Vietnamese, Article by W. Booth, Washington Post, 12/27/1993)
William E. Colby on July 19, 1971, before Senate Subcommittee testified that CIA's Operation Phoenix had killed 21,587 Vietnamese citizens between January 1968 and May 1971. (Counterspy, December 1978, p. 6)
On December 4, 1981, in Executive Order 12333 entitled "United States Intelligence Activities," the President gave the CIA the right to conduct its illegal operations in the United States, and on April 2, 1982, in Executive Order 12356 entitled "National Security Information," he limited the public's access to government documents, thereby increasing the CIA's ability to hide from public scrutiny.
