Harold C Funk
cc:
189 Heads of Nations
To: the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery and 24 United States, Chinese and European News Services.
To: the Cabinet of the Province of Manitoba, Canada
To: 42 Members of the United States Senate and Speaker of the House of Representatives
To: the Canadian Military Chief of Staff
To: the Commissioner of the Canadian R.C.M.P.
To: the Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police
To: the City of Ottawa
Mailto:
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A Timeline of CIA Atrocities
US Backed brutal dictators
1. Saddam Hussein of Iraq (1979 - 1990 when they had a "tiff")
General Augusto Pinochet of Chile (1973 - 1990)
Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran (1953 - 1979)
General Suharto of Indonesia (1965 - 199
www.muhajabah.com: CIA torture
Alex Jones Presents Infowars.com. Fight the New World Order. Torture Archive.htm
www.infowars.com
www.swordofjustice.tv
BBC News: 'School of Americas' New image for US 'torture school'
A controversial US military school accused of being a training ground for dictators, torturers and assassins....from January (2000), the school will be known as the 'Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation'.....scores of other former students are accused of torturing political prisoners, leading death squads and taking part in other human rights violations....."This movement has not been fooled by the name change," said Roy Bourgeois, founder of the School of America's watch activist group.
Quotation by Amnesty International USA's Executive Director Dr. William F. Schulz responds.
In 1996, the US Department of Defense disclosed evidence that the school had used manuals from 1982 to 1991 that advocated torture, blackmail, beatings and executions. ....SOA is only one small part of a vast and complex network of US programs for training foreign military and police forces that is often shrouded in secrecy; currently, approximately 275 known US military schools and installations in the US provide such training
CIA admits teaching torture techniques in Latin America
techniques were taught during President Ronald Reagan's first term, when his Administration's anti-Communist covert activities relied on the CIA-trained armed forces of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, Nicaraguan Contras, elements of Costa Rica's militarized "civil guard" and, indirectly the armies of Argentina and Panama. These forces killed, illegally detained, tortured and disappeared thousands of suspected "enemies," most of them civilians, during the last decade of the cold war. .....the agency was rocked by public disclosures of another CIA manual that advised Nicaraguan Contras to kidnap and kill elected leftist officials, blackmail citizens and raze entire villages to the ground....
"..the agency is simply out of control'
..hundreds of thousands of people... died brutally at the hands of the Guatemalan and Salvadoran military in the name of U.S. "national security." ....the CIA had a paid agent in Guatemala who was responsible for the 1990 torture and brutal slaying of an American innkeeper (his head was nearly sawed off by a machete) and for the 1992 torture and murder of the husband of Jennifer Harbury, an American citizen.
Representative Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, who disclosed these facts, said "the agency is simply out of control and contains what can only be called a criminal element." But this was not the work of one overzealous agent or one rogue operation. This was, and is, standard operating procedure. In El Salvador and Guatemala and elsewhere around the globe, the "criminal element" is the CIA itself. The CIA organized the death squads in these countries, financed them, equipped them, trained them, and consulted with them on individual cases of torture and assassination. These are the facts. That's what the CIA does. The CIA knows it. The Pentagon knows it. The State Department knows it. The President knows it. Congress knows it. And no one does anything about it.
The Testimony of John Stockwell. Stockwell spent 13 years with the CIA, including serving as a case officer in Africa and Viet Nam. He was commander of the CIA's secret war in Angola in 1975 and 1976.
I had to work with a sadistic police chief. He liked to carve people with
knives in the CIA safe house. When I reported this to my bosses, they said,
...the post is too important to close down...the CIA is running
fifty covert actions, destabilizing further almost one third of the
countries in the world today.....Now ripping apart the economic and social fabric is fairly textbookish.
What we're talking about is going in and deliberately creating conditions
where the farmer can't get his produce to market; where children can't go to
school; where women are terrified, inside their homes as well as outside;
where government administered programs grind to a complete halt; where the
hospitals are treating wounded people, instead of sick people; where
international capital is scared away and the country goes bankrupt.....like a Monopoly game where
everything is owned and nobody can make any progress, the way they erase the
board and start over has been to have big world wars. Erase countries, bomb
cities, and bomb banks, and then start from scratch again. This is not an
option to us now, because of all these 52,000 nuclear weapons.
The Center for Defense Information counts 60 wars that are being fought
in the world today, in which they estimate 5 million people will die
They go into villages. They haul out families. With the children forced to watch, they castrate the father. They peel the skin off his face. They put a grenade in his mouth, and pull the pin. With the children forced to watch, they gang-rape the mother, and slash her breasts off. And sometimes, for variety, they make the parents watch while they do these things to the children.
This is nobody's propaganda !
There have been over a hundred thousand American "Witnesses for Peace" who've gone down there, and they have filmed and photographed and witnessed these atrocities immediately after they've happened, and documented thirteen thousand people killed this way -- mostly women and children.
The CIA was, in fact, forming the police units that are, today, the death squads in El Salvador. The leaders were on the CIA's payroll, trained by the CIA in the United States. We had the public safety program going throughout Central and Latin America for twenty-six years, in which we taught them to break up subversion by interrogating people: interrogation, including torture, the way the CIA taught it.
Dan Mitrione, the exponent of these things, spent seven years in Brazil and three in Uruguay, teaching interrogation; teaching torture. He was supposed to be the master of the business: how to apply the right amount of pain, at just the right times, in order to get the response you want from the individual. They gave them crank generators -- with "U.S.A.I.D." written on the side, so the people even knew where these things came from -- and developed a wire that was strong enough to carry the current and fine enough to fit between the teeth, so you could put one wire between the teeth, and the other in or around the genitals. You could crank, and submit the individual to the greatest amount of pain, supposedly, that the human body can register.
Now, how do you teach torture? Someone can teach you about torture, but sooner or later you have to get involved. You have to lay on your hands and try it yourself. They would pick up guinea pigs off the streets: beggars, and take them in to use in these torture training classes. Of course, the horror of that is, these people wouldn't know why they were being tortured. They couldn't give up. They couldn't say: "I'm sorry! Stop the pain! I'll tell you the names of everybody involved!" All they could do was lie there and scream!
When they would collapse, they would bring in doctors who would shoot them up with Vitamin B and rest them up for the next class. And when they would die, they would mutilate the bodies and throw them out on the streets to terrify the population, so that everybody would be afraid of the police and the Government. This is what the CIA was teaching them to do.
One of the women who was in this program for two years -- tortured in Brazil for TWO YEARS -- testified internationally when she eventually got out. She said the most horrible thing about it, in fact, was that the people doing it were not raving psychopaths. She couldn't break mental contact with them the way you could if they were psychopaths. They were very ordinary people.
She told about being tortured one day: She's on this table, naked in a room full of six men, and they're doing these incredibly painful, degrading things to her body. There's an interruption. The American is called to the telephone, and he's in the next room, and the others take a smoke break. She's lying on this table, and he's saying: "Oh, hi Honey. Yes, I can wrap it up here in another hour or so, and meet you and the kids at the Ambassador's on the way home."
We're just as responsible for these ONE TO THREE MILLION PEOPLE we've slaughtered, and for all the people we've tortured and made miserable, as the Gestapo was for the people that they slaughtered and killed. Genocide is genocide !!
Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, where she teaches Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Evidence, and International Human Rights Law.
In December of last year, the documentary "Massacre in Afghanistan" was aired on German television, to the consternation of the U.S. State Department. It shows interviews with eyewitnesses to the torture and slaughter of 3,000 Taliban POWs, who surrendered to U.S. and allied Afghan forces. The film demonstrates the complicity of the American army command in the killing of these 3,000 men. Some of the prisoners died from suffocation while being transported in closed containers that lacked any ventilation. An Afghan soldier who traveled with the convoy reported he was ordered by an American commander to fire shots into the containers to provide air, knowing he would hit the men inside. One of the drivers recounted the fate of survivors of the transport - dumped in the desert, shot and left to be eaten by dogs, as 30 to 40 American soldiers looked on. ....President George W. Bush marshaled accusations that Saddam Hussein has tortured his people to coerce confessions. Yet in the same speech, Bush sanctioned extrajudicial killings by the United States. He said that more than 3,000 suspected terrorists had been arrested but many others had met a "different fate," so they would no longer cause us problems......According to the (Washington) Post: " (quote) While the U.S. government publicly denounces the use of torture, each of the current national security officials interviewed for this article defended the use of violence against captives as just and necessary." .....A class action filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights in April 2002, alleged that prisoners in the U.S. were beaten into unconsciousness, bloodied, pushed, kicked in the face, teeth loosened, head slammed against the wall, thumbs bent back and called terrorists. Likewise, many foreign nationals who came forward to register recently with the Immigration and Naturalization Service pursuant to Ashcroft's order, reported being forced to sleep standing up, or were hosed down before they went to sleep on cold concrete floors in frigid temperatures, according to the Los Angeles Times. These constitute violations of the Torture Convention.
"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," an official who has supervised the capture of suspects tells the Washington Post..
The CIA has (been) contracting out their interrogation to foreign intelligence agencies known to routinely use torture, said a report published yesterday
he Washington Post paints a harrowing picture of the procedures for extracting information from terrorism suspects at such centres as Diego Garcia, the Indian Ocean island leased from Britain, and Bagram, the large US airbase in Afghanistan.
Inmates at Bagram are kept in painful positions for hours, hooded or made to wear opaque goggles, or bombarded with light, the report says. However, other detainees have faced far worse for not cooperating, being "rendered" to a foreign intelligence service which has no compunction about torture....Reports that there could be abuse of detainees at Diego Garcia could also prove embarrassing for Britain. The Indian Ocean atoll is a British dependency and houses joint US and British air and naval facilities.
"If they know about this, and torture and mistreatment are taking place in Diego Garcia, British officials could also be viewed as taking part in torture," Mr Ross said. ...US laws apparently do not apply at the centres, where CIA agents oversee - or take part in - the interrogations. While the US publicly denounces torture, the Post says each of the 10 serving national security officials interviewed by the paper defended the use of violence against captives.
"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," an official who has supervised the capture of suspects told the newspaper. one official directly involved in rendering captives to foreign hands is quoted as saying: "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them."
3000 Mexican soldiers trained at 17 U.S. military bases including the School of the Americas
A large part of the training offered by this program is provided at the School of the Americas, located at Fort Benning military base in the State of Georgia. This base has been strongly criticized for having had among its 60,000 graduates some who later showed themselves to be distinguished Latin American torturers, murderers and dictators....The non-governmental organization School of the Americas Watch (SOAW), which is fighting for the closure of teh school, informed that "at least 13 of the high-ranking military personnel involved in the conflict (in Chiapas) are graduates" of the School of the Americas, including General Juan Lopez Ortiz, who, according to certain versions, oversaw the offensive against the Zapatista rebels in Ocosingo in January of 1994, after which several people were found executed.
SOAW has also identified, as former students of the school, three of the officers mentioned in the Military Intelligence documents obtained by this weekly last year, in which they mention ties between drug traffickers and high-ranking Army officers (PROCESO 1082): Col. Augusto Moises Garcia Ochoa, Head of the Anti-Drug Intelligence Center, who, according to SOAW data published on the Internet, took a course on Jungle Operations in 1997; Lt. Col. Gerardo Rene Herrera Huizar, who testified against Col. Pablo Castellanos, was at the School of the Americas in 1980 to take a course on Patrol Operations; and General Fernan Perez Casanova, who received visits from Irma Lizzete Ibarra Navejat, the former beauty queen who was murdered last year in Guadalajara, studied counterinsurgency in 1962.
The U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), located at Ft. Benning, Georgia, is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers. In its 50 year history, the SOA has trained 60,000 Latin American troops in commando tactics, military intelligence, psychological operations, and sniper fire. These soldiers are taught to make war against their own people. They have massacred entire villages of women, men, and children.
SOA graduates target grassroots leaders for assassination, torture, rape and intimidation -- especially religious workers, student organizers, and local union leaders. The School’s unstated mission is to silence leaders who organize for the rights of working people and the poor.
SOA "Muscle" Enforces
NAFTA in Mexico
Workers on both sides of the border know that NAFTA is anti-labor. NAFTA puts U.S. jobs in jeopardy and guts the bargaining power of both Latin American and U.S. workers. When transnational corporations can hire Latin American workers for shamefully low wages and get away with inhuman shop conditions, U.S. plants close to chase higher profits in the South. Workers in the U.S. and in Latin America suffer.
Hours after NAFTA went into effect, Mexican indigenous workers rose up to say "NO!" and
they have paid a dear price for their opposition. The Mexican military moved in immediately with troops, helicopters, and artillery. At least 13 of the high level officers who planned the repression campaign trained at the School of the Americas.
The elite few in Mexico and the U.S. who benefit from NAFTA acted quickly to bolster the military "muscle" to silence the opposition. Shortly after the initial uprising, Mexican soldiers began to pour into the School of the Americas for training. Mexico now sends more soldiers to the SOA than any other country.
Unions are "Enemy" Targets
In 1996, the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the SOA up until 1991. These manuals advocated interrogation techniques such as torture, execution, blackmail, and arresting the relatives of those being questioned. Labor organizers were one of the groups singled out in these manuals.
SOA Training Manuals
Advocated targeting those who...
v do "union organizing or recruiting"
pass out "propaganda in favor of the interests of workers"
"sympathize with demonstrations or strikes"
make "accusations that the government has failed ... to meet the basic needs of the people".
United Nations Truth Commission Report
The UN Truth Commission Report on El Salvador, released March 15, 1993, cited over 60 Salvadoran officers for the worst atrocities during that country’s brutal civil war. Over two thirds of those named were alumni of the U.S. Army School of the Americas. For example:
3 of 3 cited for the murder of union leaders
2 of 3 cited for the assassination of Archbishop Romero
10 of 12 cited for the El Mozote massacre of 900 villagers
19 of 26 cited for the massacre of 6 Jesuit priests
Nunca Mas - Never Again
This 1998 report from the Archdiocese of Guatemala chronicles the violence during 36 years of civil war. Numerous military officials cited in the report were SOA graduates. For example:
3 directors of the notorious D-2(G-2) intelligence agency
2 of 3 cited for the murder of anthropologist, Myrna Mack
3 officers cited for cover-up of Michael Devine murder
"This institution costs millions of dollars a year and identifies us with tyranny and oppression."
-- Rep. Joseph Kennedy (MA)
"For 50 years the school has participated in the training of foreign despots and mercenaries operating well outside the bounds of freedom, democracy and decency."
--Veterans for Peace, National Convention Resolution
"...the SOA runs contrary to the very principles of human rights and democracy for which our nation's veterans have sacrificed..."
-- Veterans of Foreign Wars, Santa Cruz chapter, Resolution to Close the SOA
"The School of the Americas was the best place a Latin American military officer could go to launder his drug money...!" Former SOA instructor Major Joseph Blair.
LABOR UNIONS THAT SAY
"CLOSE THE SOA"
AFL-CIO Executive Council
United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America
Washington State Labor Council
King County Labor Council
Pierce County Central Labor Council
Minnesota State AFL-CIO
Southbay Labor Council, San Jose, CA
Pacific NW Regional Council of Carpenters
UBCJA Carpenters #1144 LADS Seattle, WA
Pierce Co. Washington Building and Construction Trades Council
UBCJA Carpenters #470 Tacoma, WA
UBCJA Carpenters #131 Seattle, WA
OPEIU, Officeworkers #8 Seattle, WA
IBEW, Electricians #46 Seattle, WA
IBEW, Electricians #76 Tacoma, WA
ILWU, Longshore #23 Tacoma, WA
UBCJA Carpenters #28 Missoula, Montana
International Union of Bricklayers
& Allied Craftworkers Local #1 Washington
Canadian Auto Workers International
International Longshore and Warehouse Union, International Executive Board
Seattle/King County Building and Construction Trades Council
International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades Local #300, Seattle, WA
AFSCME Local #120, Tacoma, WA
UBCJA Carpenter Local #1849, Pasco, WA
International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, Local #17 WA
American Postal Workers Union, local #172, Miami., Florida
Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council
International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades Local #1982
UBCJA Local Union 2300, Castlegar, B.C., Canada
UBCJA Provicial Council of Carpenters, B.C., Canada
Columbiana County, Ohio AFL-CIO
YoungsTown, Ohio, AFL-CIO
Wisconsin State AFL-CIO
Health Sciences Association, British Columbia
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
Montana State AFL-CIO
United Steel Workers merica Local 9705 Trail, B.C.
United Steel Workers of America Local 480 Trail, B,C,
KUBARK CIA Interrogation manual:
Interrogations conducted under compulsion or duress are especially likely to involve illegality and to entail damaging consequences for KUBARK. Therefore prior Headquarters approval at the KUDOVE level must be obtained for the interrogation of any source against his will and under any of the following circumstances:
1. If bodily harm is to be inflicted.
2. If medical, chemical, or electrical methods or materials are to be used to induce acquiescence.
Mexico, the USA and imperialism
http://flag.blackened.net LINKS
flag.blackened.net LINKS
We cannot have any confidence at all in the UN - July '99
· One thousand Mexican soldiers graduated as "kaibiles" - Jan '99
· Notorious Mexican School of the Americas Graduates - Dec '98
· Mexico now sends greatest number to US Military Schools - Aug '98
· Two US military personnel detained in Chiapas - July '98
· Mexican forces trained in the US - Aug '98
· U.S. Admits Role In Chiapas Conflict - Aug '98
· The Slippery Slope : U.S. Military Moves Into Mexico - Feb '97
· How The U.S. Helps Mexico Eradicate The Zapatista Resistance - 1996
· Sub-Commander Marcos' letter to the people of the U.S
· 3000 Mexican soldiers trained at 17 U.S. military bases
· US Army magazine on Mexico's Other Insurgents
· Declassified pentagon documents on the Zapatista's - May 1997
· The Mexican army is planning to assassinate senior zapatistas with US aid.
· The US plans to give millions of dollars of Military equipment to the Mexican state in 1997.
· US military involvment in Chiapas and Mexico in 1996/97
· A listing of 1990 - 1994 US military aid to the Mexican army
· A leaflet protesting Chase Banks call to eliminate the Zapitistas
· US Army on Law Enforcement and the Mexican Armed Forces - Apr '97
· Suspend US military aid to Mexico - March '97
· Clinton's "interference" in Mexico - From Wounded Knee to Chiapas - Dec '97
Warnings from history
· Torture was taught by CIA - an article on the discovery of CIA torture manuals - '97
· Testimony Reveals US Torture Networks in Guatemala - June 1998
· The US Secret war in El Salvador. Are US special forces active in Mexico also?
· The U.S. Counter Insurgency tradition - June '98
· Still seeing red: the CIA fosters death squads in Colombia - June 1988
· A Tutor to Every Army in Latin America - July '98
· The 1973 Chile Coup - The US Hand - Oct 1988
· CIA's drug confession - Oct 1988
· U.S. aid questioned in Colombian battle - July '99
· Honduras authorities find torture cells, graves at U.S.-built base - Aug '99
· Tough Questions Remain from Former Contra Base - Aug '99
Related useful texts
· School of the Americas - The Ultimate Union Buster
Related pages
· The Mexican governments low intensity war in Chiapas
flag.blackened.net
CIA TORTURE
For the past year we have known that US Special Forces in Afghanistan turned over surrendered combatants to their local allies, who reportedly murdered hundreds of them in captivity. Thousands of others who lay down their weapons were crammed into freezing, filthy, dilapidated cells at Shebergan prison. The United States detains al Qaeda and Taliban captives indefinitely without charge or trial, some imprisoned in secret locations in foreign countries where security services that are known to use torture conduct interrogations on our behalf.....The ... cost is the grave risk such disregard for prisoners invites for US military personnel. If enemy powers adopt these practices, we may expect that American prisoners of war will be held in secret locations, beaten, starved and disoriented. We can expect that hundreds will, like those combatants in Afghanistan, be killed after surrender, and thousands packed into a prison where death from exposure and dysentery are common.
Phoenix Program in Vietnam. U.S. terrorism, torture, and death squads on an industrial scale. Tens of thousands murdered. Hundreds of thousands tortured.
"Phung Hoang [a mythical Vietnamese omnipresent bird of prey] was the FIRST COMPREHENSIVE SYSTEM of rump legality, kidnapping, torture, and assassination ever designed and run by the UNITED STATES. ... Commenced in late 1967 [ironically after the 1967 'Summer of Love' in the USA!], the [CIA] Agency's Phung Hoang lasted in one form or another until the very end of the war [April 1975]."
- - From the book "Our War," by David Harris, 1996, p.100, [bracketed] info, and emphasis, added.
In Vietnam Democrat and Republican U.S. Presidents Johnson and Nixon tried to convince and/or coerce southern Vietnamese to fight for the US-supported pseudo-democracy. The USA ignored the 1954 Geneva Accords between the French and the Vietnamese calling for a free election for President in 1956, because Ho Chi Minh would have won by a landslide in an honest free election. Instead, the USA propped up a brutal dictatorial rigged-election death-squad police-state regime in the South that via the CIA's Phoenix Program (1967-75) rounded up, imprisoned, and brutally tortured hundreds of thousands. It executed tens of thousands summarily without trial, or by death squads and assassination.
*The Memory Hole - Documents from the Phoenix Program.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/phoenix
*1-1971. Winter Soldier Investigation: Table of Contents. Testimony given in Detroit, Michigan, on January 31, 1971, February 1 and 2, 1971.
http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Winter_Soldier/WS_entry.html
*8-2002. CounterPunch. August 25, 2002. Flight of the Phoenix: From Vietnam to Homeland Security. An Open Letter to Maj. Gen. Bruce Lawlor. By Douglas Valentine.
http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine0824.html
*5-2001. Bob Kerrey, The CIA and War Crimes. May 17 2001. Article by Douglas Valentine. This is also a history of US terrorism, death squads, and torture in Vietnam.
http://www.counterpunch.com/valentine.html
*The Phoenix Program, a book by Douglas Valentine, was originally published by The William Morrow Company in 1990, and by Avon Books in 1992, and by iUniverse.com in 2000. It is said to be the only comprehensive account of the CIA's torture and assassination operation in Vietnam. Full text is online in gif image form at:
http://books.iuniverse.com/viewgiftoc.asp?isbn=05950073841
*The following text excerpt (can copy and paste into email, etc.) from The Phoenix Program, by Douglas Valentine, is from Chapter 24: "Transgressions," and deals with the My Lai massacre and the infamous "Tiger Cages."
http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/vietnamgenocide/MyLaiPhoenix.html
*Amazon.com: buying info: The Phoenix Program. Publishers Weekly: "No book to date conveys the hideousness of the Vietnam War as thoroughly as this one." Names names, shows photos, and thoroughly documents the summary Phoenix executions of tens of thousands, and brutal torture of hundreds of thousands. Many reviews. 23 sample pages online in jpg image format. Book covers not only the Phoenix period from 1967-75. For example; sample page 8 has history of joint French and CIA terrorism restarting right after the French retook Vietnam in 1945 back from the Japanese occupation.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595007384/102-5118374-8868902
*Amazon.com: buying info: The Phoenix Program. Publishers Weekly: "No book to date conveys the hideousness of the Vietnam War as thoroughly as this one." Names names, shows photos, and thoroughly documents the summary Phoenix executions of tens of thousands, and brutal torture of hundreds of thousands. Many reviews. 23 sample pages online in jpg image format. Book covers not only the Phoenix period from 1967-75. For example; sample page 8 has history of joint French and CIA terrorism restarting right after the French retook Vietnam in 1945 back from the Japanese occupation.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595007384/102-5118374-8868902
*Douglas Valentine - Books. The Phoenix Program. This 1990 book is reviewed along with other books by Valentine.
http://www.douglasvalentine.com/books.html
*McGehee, ["CIA and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam"], from Newsgroup soc.history.war.vietnam; title supplied by G. Furr
http://www.shss.montclair.edu/english/furr/phoenixmcg.html
*Ralph McGehee: Vietnam's Phoenix Program.
http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/shwv/articles/phoenix.htm
*Last Phoenix A Novel about the CIA's Phoenix Program against the civilians of South Viet Nam.
http://www.alaskaconnect.com/phoenix.html
School of Americas taught torture and murder
the US Defense Department released documents showing that from 1982 to 1991 the US Army School of the Americas (SOA) trained Latin American military officers with US Army intelligence manuals advocating the blackmail, torture and murder of insurgents. ....
The documents consist of a summary of a 1992 Pentagon investigation and four pages of excerpts translated from the manuals, which are in Spanish. The manual entitled Handling Sources says counterintelligence (CI) agents "could cause the arrest of the employee's [informant's] parents, imprison the employee or give him a beating" to coerce cooperation.
The manual on Terrorism and the Urban Guerrilla says, "... another function of CI agents is recommending CI targets for neutralizing. The CI targets can include personalities, installations, organizations, documents and materials ... the personality targets prove to be valuable sources of intelligence. Some examples of these targets are governmental officials, political leaders, and members of the infrastructure." "Neutralizing" is a euphemism for assassination.
U. S. Army School of the Americas
The United States Army School of the Americas, located at Fort Benning, adjacent to Columbus, Georgia, trains commissioned and non-commissioned officers from Latin American militaries. Many of its graduates have returned to their home countries and committed such atrocities as rapes, disappearances, torture, and assassination; they have organized death squads and paramilitaries to counter insurgencies and maintain power. The SOA is accused of including torture in its curriculum, an accusation its defenders deny, although such a torture manual released to the public in 1991. The "Hall of Fame" at the SOA includes dictators and human rights abusers, and a number of guest instructors were invited to the school's faculty after they had committed atrocities.
As a result, there has been an effort, led by Father Roy Bourgeois since 1986 to close the SOA. Concurrently, military leaders say that the school is vital to U. S. foreign policy, any past abuses have been cured, and the school is now a vital source of education in human rights and democracy as a result of which these values of become more widespread in Latin America.
Background
· ** Background on the SOA provides background from supporters and opponents of the school on the mission, history,
Close the School of the Americas
· ** Seven Reasons to Close the School of the Americas expands upon major arguments for closing the school. These reasons are:
o 1. Atrocities committed by SOA graduates
o 2. Curriculum used to teach at the SOA
o 3. SOA selection of honorees and guest instructors AFTER they have committed atrocities
o 4. Alliance of U. S. military with Status Quo military and idealogy
o 5. Identification of the poor, church workers, unions, educators as the "enemy."
o 6. Latin American problems not subject to military solution
o 7. SOA corrupts Americans
o ** School of the Americas Watch maintains a useful page of Frequently Asked Questions about the importance of closing the SOA.
o ** The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer-Observer newspaper has a Ledger-Enquirer-Observer School of Americas Forum
Atrocities
o ** The page Atrocities Associated with Graduates of the School of the Americas identifies and describes these atrocities. The SOA claims that these atrocities were not SOA policy, and that its graduates who committed these atrocities are exceptions rather than characteristic of its graduates.
Curriculum
o ** From 1982-1991 the School of the Americas used 7 U. S. Army intelligence training manuals which advocated various forms of torture.
o ** School of the Americas Watch maintains a critically important section on Manuals used at the SOA including actual text in English of manuals Counter-Intelligence and Handling of Sources.
o ** Arnold J. Oliver of Heidelburg College in Ohio writes a telling letter describing the curriculum's identification of socialism as the enemy. The complete text is on the SOAW website.
Graduates
o ** The School of the Americas Watch maintains a complete list of SOA graduates at their site, with special identification of "Notorious Graduates."
o ** The official School of the Americas Catalog lists by country the 57,712 graduates from the SOA as of January 29, 1998. (This list also appears on the background page.
SOA and Evil
o ** A sermon compares contemporary massacres by School of the Americas graduates to the slaughter of the innocents by the Biblical King Herod: Mary's Three Challenges
Key Opponents of the SOA
The site Opponents of the SOA lists key organizational and individual opponents of the SOA. Organizations which have submitted resolutions or statements to SOA Watch are listed with links to the organization where possible. Key individual opponents of
Location
The U. S. Army School of the Americas is located at Fort Benning, adjacent to Columbus, Georgia. See maps.
Mission
· USARSA's mission is to provide doctrinally sound, relevant military education and training to the nations of Latin America; promote democratic values and respect for human rights; and foster cooperation among multinational military forces. School of the Americas Catalog
· Human Rights and "Democratic Sustainment" courses are prominent in the course descriptions of those courses which are described on line. School of the Americas Catalog
· Latin American soldiers at the SOA are not taught to defend their borders from invasion. They are taught to make war on their own people. Bill McNulty, Opposing the School of the Americas, February 1998
History
· 1946, established in Panama in 1946 with the stated objective of promoting stability in the region.
· As a result of activities by its graduates, School acquired the nickname, "Escuela de Golpes", or "School of Coups".
· 1984. Under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty, School of the Americas forced out of Panama. At that time, President Jorge Illueca of Panama called it "the biggest base for destabilization in Latin America", and a major Panamanian newspaper dubbed it "The School of Assassins". Bill McNulty, Opposing the School of the Americas, February 1998.
· Today the School is located at Fort Benning, Georgia. It trains nearly 2,000 soldiers from Latin America and the Caribbean each year in combat skills such as counterinsurgency operations, military intelligence, sniper fire, commando tactics, and psychological operations.
Graduates
· The official School of the Americas Catalog lists the numbers of graduates from each country as of January 29, 1998:
o Argentina.......................................................................................612
o Barbados...........................................................................................1
o Belize................................................................................................4
o Bolivia.........................................................................................3681
o Brazil.............................................................................................336
o Chile.............................................................................................3182
o Colombia.......................................................................................9171
o Costa Rica.....................................................................................2379
o Cuba.................................................................................................237
o Dominican Republic......................................................................2499
o Ecuador.........................................................................................3373
o El Salvador....................................................................................6583
o Guatemala.....................................................................................1544
o Haiti...................................................................................................49
o Honduras......................................................................................3724
o Mexico...........................................................................................1259
o Nicaragua......................................................................................4318
o Panama.........................................................................................3631
o Paraguay.......................................................................................1011
o Peru...............................................................................................4344
o Uruguay...........................................................................................961
o Venezuela......................................................................................3310
o United States................................................................................1503
o Total ..........................................................................................57,712
· The School of the Americas Watch site provides a complete list of graduates by name, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and provides details of "Notorious Graduates". Those Notorious Graduates who appear in the School of the Americas Hall of Fame, or who have been invited to be instructors at the SOA, are named under Seven Reasons to Close the School of the Americas
· George W. Baldwin writes an account of a Nicaraguan woman who with her family had to flee for their lives to avoid the terrorism of the Contras who were trained and supported by the United States to make war on their own people in Nicaragua. • Share the information with other, making it part of worship, sermons, youth activities, United Methodist Men, United Methodist Women, telling families and friends.
· Murder of Jesuit priests. A 1993 United Nations Truth Commission Report on El Salvador found that SOA graduates were responsible for the Nov. 16, 1989, massacre of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her teenage daughter, as well as the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Source: University of Massachusetts University Reporter,
· News Story on Wooster Students at Washington and Fort Benning SOAW events.
SOA: ISSUES - Drugs
· "The School of the Americas was the best place a Latin American military officer could go to launder his drug money. And we routinely had students at the school who were known human rights abusers, and it didnt make any difference to us."Major Joseph Blair, former Instructor. Major Joseph Blair, SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS An Insider Speaks Out" Order Form from SOAW
History of Efforts to Close School of the Americas
· In 1983, Maryknoll priest Fr. Roy Bourgeois and 10 other peace activists began to investigate the school. Bourgeois is a a Vietnam-era combat veteran who had been kicked out of Bolivia for his work with the poor. In commemmoration of Archbishop Romero, he and two others sneaked on to Fort Benning and blasted the last speech of Archbishop Romero from a boombox to trainees from El Salvador. They were all arrested. Bourgeois was given 18 months in prison. Tom Johnson,
Jennifer Harbury Letters & Information
School of the Americas Bill, 1996
· On Feb 5, 1997, Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy, II, introduced H. R. 611 which calls for the closure of the School of the Americas. The bill cites "some of the worst human rights abusers in our hemisphere, including:
o El Salvador death squad leader Roberto D'Abuisson
o Panamanian dictator and drug dealer Manual Noriega
o Haitian coup leader Raoul Cedras
o 19 Salvadoran soldiers linked to the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter
o Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, Guatemalan officer linked in the deaths of an American innkeeper
o Hector Gramajo, former Guatemalan defense minister found liabile in United States court for abduction, rape, and torture of Sister Dianna Ortiz, a United States citizen.
o Argentinian dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, leader of the "dirty little war: responsible for the deaths of 30 civilians
o Two of the three killers of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador
o Ten of the twelve officers responsible for the murder of 900 civilians in the El Salvadoran village of El Mozote.
o Three of the five officers involved in the 1980 rape and murder of four United States churchwomen in El Salvador.
o Current Status of HR 611 and S980, 1997-1998
Protests and Imprisonment
o The school has been the target of protests since 1989, when activists learned some soldiers linked to the rape, torture and murder of priests and nuns in South America were graduates of the Fort Benning school. School officials say the school specifically teaches its students to honor human rights, and can't be responsible for the few graduates who disregard that training. Wayne Partride, "Judges rule Fort Benning can bar protesters," Opposing the School of the Americas, February 1998
o The official School of the Americas site offers an account of a protest by SOA Watch activist desecrates National Historic Building during Religious Service
o Supreme Court ruling on the issue of impartiality (§ 455(a)) of the judge trying Bourgeous and the Liteky brothers.
o Dick Streb, Roanoke peace activist, goes to jail
o 1998 School of the Americas Vigil: A Personal Narrative, by Jackson H. Day
Congressional Oversight
o The FY 98 Foreign Operations Act requires that the Secretary of Defense must
§ 1. Certify to Congress that "instruction and training provided by the School of the Americas is fully consistent with training and doctrine, particularly with respect to the observance of human rights, provided ...to United States military personnel;
§ 2. Certify to Congressthat the Secretary of State...has developed and issued specific guidelines governing the selection and screening of candidates...
§ 3. Submit to the Committee on Appropriations a report detailing the training activities of the School of the Americas and a general assessment regarding the performance of its graduates during 1996."
On February 12, 1998, the Latin America Working Group, a project of the National Council of Churches, issued an analysis of the Secretary of Defense's School of the Americas Certification Report. LAWG objected to the Secretary's continued certification of the SOA, noting its "severe, ongoing problems in curriculum oversight, few changes in the school's standard curriculum and a complete lack of monitoring of SOA graduates. The LAWG provides excerpts from manuals currently in use at the SOA organized into three categories:
§ "Excerpts, typical of the manuals as a whole [which] recommend that Latin American militaries preemptively infiltrate opposition parties, yough groups, unions, civil society organizations; use children, doctors and clergy as sources; take advantage of humanitarian aid programs; and view legal political campaigning as potentially subversive;"
§ "Excerpts [which] recommend that Latin American militaries institute repressive, controlling measures over the local population, making black lists of suspected civilians, instituting checkpoints, ID cards, curfews and rationing systems, and enforcing measures through arrests and exile. There is absolutely no discussion in any of the manuals about a state of seige or other legal measures that would make such suspension of civil liberties and democratic guarantees lawful."
§ "Excerpts [which] cite as indicators of guerrila control normal civilian activities such as celebrating religious festivals or hosting visitors to a town. if villagers are involved in any kind of protest or simply complain about the government or armed forces, or if they are fearful of sharing intelligence with or being associated with Latin American or U. S. military, they are viewed in these passages as being influenced by guerrilas. Many of the indicators listed are ways civilian population would normally act when afraid of a repressive military."
Eleven SOA Grads Among Chilean Officers Cited in Spanish Human Rights Case" On March 13, 1998, plaintiff lawyers Joan Garces and Manuel Murillo presented a writ to the Central Instruction Tribunal Number 6 of the Audencia Nacional in Spain in which they requested that Judge Manuel Garcia Castellon immediately indict Augusto Pinochet and 30 other high-ranking officials of the Chilean dictatorship for the crimes of genocide, terrorism, torture, and illegal arrest followed by disappearance. Eleven of those military officers are graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas. They include:
§ Ernesto Baeza Michelsen (Comando y Estado Mayor, 1964): Former head of Investigations Police who allegedly chose 50 members of his institution to take part in the action known as Covem, in which 14 people were arrested. Of the 14, one, a journalism student, Eduardo Jara died as a consequence of the torture he received.
§ Humberto Gordon Rubio (Infantry Weapons, Operaciones y Mantenamiento de Radio, Tank Gunnery Course, 1954-1955): Former head of the CNI secret police and also former member of the military Junta.
§ Eduardo Iturriaga Neumann (Basic Airborne Course, 1965): Head of the DINA's international operations. According to testimony by Luz Arce (ex political prisoner arrested by the DINA secret police, who later became a DINA collaborator) Iturriaga and other officers of the DINA used political prisoners that had been tortured into collaborators as secretaries and analysts in their offices.
§ Miguel Krassnoff Marchenko (Containsurgencia Urbana, 1974): Former member of the DINA, known by political prisoners held and tortured at Villa Grimaldi, Tres Alamos and Cuatro Alamos. Implicated in the death by torture of former Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria in 1976. Took part in the assault on the residence of former president Salvador Allende who was deposed by the Army in Sept. 1973. Known for his violent treatment of prisoners.
§ Fernando Laureani Maturana (Combat Arms Orientation, 1971): Former DINA member. Implicated in the 1974 kidnapping and disappearance of brothers Juan Carlos and Jorge Elias Andronico Antequera, Lauriani's was one of the few cases of military crimes to be tried after Pinochet's brutal dictatorship. Unfortunately, Pinochet brought all of his influence to bear and the case was finally handed to a military court, which absolved Lauriani and closed the case.
§ Odlanier Mena (Comando y Estado Mayor, 1970): First head of the CNI secret police. Luz Arce, a political prisoner who was tortured by DINA officials, testified that Mena offered her freedom in exchange for working three years as a spy for the DINA.
§ Guillermo Salinas Torres (Contrainsurgencia Urbana, 1974): Linked to the assassination of Spanish citizen Carmelo Soria.
§ Other SOA graduates that face charges in the Spanish court case include: Pablo Belmar Labbe (Basico/ Orientacion para oficiales, 196
Washington Carrasco Fernandez (Contra-Resistencia, Informacion Militar para Oficiales, 1961) and Rene Patricio Quilhot Palma (Combat Arms Orientation, 1971).
Source: Michael Katz-Lacabe at SOA Watch Continue Additional School of the Americas
Atrocities
Associated with Graduates
of the School of the Americas
·
o
El Salvador Death Squads
El Salvador Death Squads. Cited in H. R. 611, introduced by Congressman Kennedy Feb 5, 1997, calling for the closure of the School of the Americas.
Panamanian Drug Deals
Panamanian drug deals. Cited in H. R. 611, introduced by Congressman Kennedy Feb 5, 1997, calling for the closure of the School of the Americas.
Haiti Coup
Haiti coup. Cited in H. R. 611, introduced by Congressman Kennedy Feb 5, 1997, calling for the closure of the School of the Americas.
Murder of Six Jesuit Priests
November 16, 198, San Salvador, in El Salvador: Six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper and her daughter were assassinated in San Salvador. H. R. 611, introduced by Congressman Kennedy Feb 5, 1997, calling for the closure of the School of the Americas.
Murder of American innkeeper
The death of an American innkeeper in Guatemala. Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, a Guatemalan officer, was linked to it. Cited in H. R. 611, introduced by Congressman Kennedy Feb 5, 1997, calling for the closure of the School of the Americas.
Argentina's "Dirty Little War"
The deaths of 30 civilians as part of the Argentinian "dirty little war". Argentianian dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, a SOA graduate, was found responsible. Cited in H. R. 611, introduced by Congressman Kennedy Feb 5, 1997, calling for the closure of the School of the Americas.
Assassination of Archbishop Romero
March 24, 1980, San Salvador, El Salvador. While celebrating the Eucharist, Archbishop Oscar A. Romero was shot and killed at the altar by a death squad assassin. As Archbishop of San Salvador, Father Romero was a source of strength and hope for the poor and for the oppressed of his country, working with and for them, taking their struggles as his own. Romero wrote and spoke passionately and publicly of the need for Christians to work for justice, frequently faced with threat and danger from those who opposed his ideas. Introduction to Archbishop Romero
Or see Longer biography by Craig Johnson. Two of the three killers were SOA graduates. Cited in H. R. 611, introduced by Congressman Kennedy Feb 5, 1997, calling for the closure of the School of the Americas.
Rape and Murder of Four Churchwomen
Dec 2, 1980, El Salvador. The rape and murder of four United States churchwomen, Roman Catholic nuns Ita Ford, Maura Clark and Dorothy Kazel and layworker Jean Donovan, at a military checkpoint near San Salvador. Source: H. R. 611, introduced by Congressman Kennedy Feb 5, 1997, calling for the closure of the School of the Americas.
Guatemala Death Squads
Early 1980s. Guatemala. Tens of thousands of civilian deaths, 440 rural villages destroyed, one million persons displaced out of a country of nine million. Piet van Lear, A War Called Peace
El Mozote Massacre
December, 1980. El Mozote, El Salvador. U. S. trained Salvadoran battalion massacred 800 men, women and children in El Mozote. Robert Parry, "Lost History: 'Project X' and School of Assassins. The Consortium. Ten of the twelve officers responsible for the murders were SOA graduates. Cited in H. R. 611, introduced by Congressman Kennedy Feb 5, 1997, calling for the closure of the School of the Americas.
Rape and Torture of Sister Dianna Ortiz
1989. Guatemala. Sister Dianna Ortiz, a United States citizen, while working as a missionary, abducted and brutally tortured by Guatemalan security agents. "My back was burned over 100 times with cigarettes. I was gang-raped repeatedly. I was beaten, and I was tortured psychologically, as well--I was lowered into a pit where injured women, children, and men writhed and moaned, and the dead decayed, under swarms of rats. Finally, I was forced to stab another human being. Throughout the ordeal, my Guatemalan torturers said that if I did not cooperate, they would have to communicate with Alejandro. Hector Gramajo, former Guatemalan defense minister, a SOA graduate, was found liable in United States court. Cited in H. R. 611, introduced by Congressman Kennedy Feb 5, 1997, calling for the closure of the School of the Americas.
Colombia Death Squads
1992-1993. Barancabermeja, Colombia. At least 57 people were murdered in and around the city of Barancabermeja. Eyewitnesses have linked these murders to killer networks run by the Colombian navy. The killer networks in turn were created as the result of a 1991 Colombian intelligence reorganization in which a U.S. Defense Department and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) team [beginning in 199
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worked with Colombian military officers. Human Rights Watch Report: Colombia’s Killer Networks--The Military-Paramilitary Partnership
1995, April 6. Sabana de Torres, Colombia. Wilson Jose Caceres. Before dawn, Caceres "set out from his home in Sabana de Torres, a municipality in Colombia’s Magdalena River valley. Caceres, a community leader, founding member of the Sabana de Torres Community Movement, and human rights activist, was a candidate for mayor on the ticket of the Popular Peasant Worker Movement, a local political group. Along with eleven others, Caceres had been included on a death list then reported to be circulated in the name of the Peasant Self-Defense Group of Colombia (Autodefensas Campesinas de Colombia, ACC), a paramilitary group. In Colombia, paramilitary has come to mean a clandestine organization of armed men, which can include active duty and retired military officers, who work in partnership with the security forces. Like Caceres, several of those reportedly named had been active in promoting human rights.... "Despite the threat, Caceres continued his campaign and human rights advocacy, and had volunteered to help contact local people who could give testimony to the Human Rights Watch mission that began our work on this report. Driving his white motorcycle and wearing a red cap, Caceres stopped that afternoon at his family’s farm, where he worked. It was the last time anyone is known to have seen him alive. His cap was later found on the Panamerican highway.... "Wilson Caceres remains missing." Human Rights Watch: Colombia’s Killer Networks--The Military-Paramilitary Partnership
t r u t h o u t - ISSUES - CIA-Backed Team Used Torture in Albania
CIA's drug confession
The CIA, the Contra's and drug smuggling from Latin America.htm
In an historic document released on Oct. 8, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz confirmed long-standing allegations of cocaine trafficking by contra forces -- and disclosed new cases of drug involvement in all areas of the CIA-backed operation. Hitz identified more than 50 contras and contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade.
Hitz also detailed how the Reagan administration protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations which threatened to expose the crimes in the mid-1980s. Reagan officials successfully spun the major media with false assurances that the drug allegations were bogus or wildly exaggerated.
But perhaps most stunning, Hitz published evidence that some drug trafficking and money-laundering tracked directly into Reagan's National Security Council staff where Lt. Col. Oliver L. North oversaw contra operations.
The Consortium -Robert Parry
In Argentina, human rights activists continue to press for the identification of hundreds of children who were stolen from women "disappeared" by the military's Dirty War in the mid-to-late 1970s. Sometimes, the babies were literally ripped from the women's wombs by Caesarian sections before the mothers were sent to their deaths, along with as many as 30,000 other victims.
But the U.S. government continues to conceal its complicity in these crimes, as well as its role in the decades-long orgy of murder, torture and rape against hundreds of thousands of civilians who perished in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration even supported the Argentine military as it trained the Nicaraguan contra rebels in Honduras.
The CIA and Torture,
On the Record
The release of a Central Intelligence Agency guidebook on interrogation would be an important and publicized event in any context, but as it happens, this manual arrives in the public domain at an especially crucial juncture in the long-standing debate over the agency's role and mission. The CIA turns 50 in September of this year, and the circumstances surrounding the January 1997 declassification of this document suggest that the anniversary will be marked by a determined effort by historians, activists, and public officials to reevaluate the conduct of this secretive agency.
This June 1963 document, titled "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation" (KUBARK is a code-word referring to CIA), should be a key piece of evidence in such attempts to assess the agency's operations. The manual, which explores methods of extracting information from resistant sources and advises torture techniques that were not officially renounced until the mid-1980s, provides a fitting departure point from which to launch an investigation of the CIA's role in advancing the scientific basis for brutal questioning methods and promoting their use throughout the world.
These methods have recently come back to haunt the CIA, as a stream of media and official reports has exposed extensive agency assistance to foreign killers. In several countries where U.S. intelligence maintained working relationships with repressive security forces, victims and victimizers have gone on record with accounts of how the United States, though the CIA, has promoted grave human rights abuses. In two of the more prominent recent cases -- the CIA's involvement in Guatemala and Honduras -- pressure from human rights groups and some members of Congress has risen to the point where the agency has been compelled to conduct internal reviews, submit its conduct to the scrutiny of outside investigators, and shed some notorious criminals from its payroll.
In Guatemala, a country that endured decades of dictatorship following the CIA's 1954 operation to overthrow the government of elected president Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, the agency employed until very recently military officers who were responsible for "serious human rights violations such as assassination, extrajudicial execution, torture, or kidnapping while they were [CIA] assets," according to a 1996 report by President Clinton's Intelligence Oversight Board. (1) A March 1997 report by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee confirmed the IOB's findings. (2)
Increased attention was brought to these matters in March 1995 when it was revealed that CIA Guatemalan assets were involved in the murders of American citizen Michael Devine, who ran a back-country inn, and Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, a guerrilla leader married to an American woman, Jennifer Harbury. (3) Fasts and vigils by Harbury and Sister Diana Ortiz, an American nun who was kidnapped, raped and tortured by Guatemalan security forces in 1989, built interest in the issue and prompted White House assurances that the CIA's involvement in Guatemala would be closely examined and that all relevant government documents on the subject would be made public. None of the materials released to date have identified "Alejandro," an American who, according to Ortiz, advised the Guatemalan military team who brutalized her. (4)
The ordeal of Sister Ortiz, whose body bears the scars of 111 cigarette burns inflicted during her detention, was experienced by thousands of Guatemalans during the 1980s, when a massive program of political torture and murder gripped the country. The military and police agencies responsible received continual assistance from the CIA. In April 1995, investigative journalist Allan Nairn reported that the CIA "has systematic links to Guatemalan Army death squad operations that go far beyond the disclosures" of the previous month. According to current and former officials from the United States and Guatemala interviewed by Nairn, "CIA operatives work inside a Guatemalan Army unit [the G-2] that maintains a network of torture centers and has killed thousands of Guatemalan civilians," and "at least three of the recent G-2 chiefs have been paid by the CIA." A former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) official in Guatemala told Nairn the involvement was so extensive that "it would be an embarrassing situation if you ever had a roll call of everybody in the Guatemalan Army who ever collected a CIA paycheck." (5)
At least one government official has gone to bat against the CIA's conduct in Guatemala, despite the risks of doing so. In March of 1995 Richard Nuccio, then a White House aide, shared information with Congress about CIA ties to Guatemalan military officers implicated in the murders of Devine and Bamaca. In retaliation, the CIA successfully lobbied to have Nuccio's security clearance revoked, effectively destroying his eligibility for high government office. As the conflict came to a head, Nuccio said he was "being hounded out of government service by the CIA for telling Congress what it had a right to know." (6)
In late February 1997 Nuccio, who had been moved to a low-level position at the State Department, resigned to return to work as a congressional aide. In a letter to President Clinton announcing his decision to quit, Nuccio wrote that the CIA has employed agents guilty of "systematic human rights violations," and warned that "if you do not take decisive steps to bring the agency under control, far graver damage will result to our democracy than the denial of a clearance to one individual." (7)
Nuccio was not the only job casualty of the CIA's Guatemala controversy. In early March of 1997, the Washington Post reported that as a result of the outcry over the CIA's involvement with Guatemalan rights abusers, the agency conducted an "agent scrub" -- a purge of foreign informants on the CIA payroll with criminal backgrounds -- beginning in 1994. Since then, about 100 informants have been dropped for human rights problems. A disproportionately high number -- about 50 -- were involved in the CIA's operations in Latin America. (
Though the Post report did not identify the countries where the CIA reformed its ranks, the agency's Honduras station was almost certainly the locus of many of the firings. In the early 1980s, the CIA played an instrumental role in setting up a Honduran military intelligence unit, Battalion 316, that wreaked havoc on the human rights front. In a June 1995 investigative series, Baltimore Sun reporters Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson described in detail how the CIA, in concert with Argentine military experts fresh from a decade of "dirty war" against dissidents in their country, instructed Battalion 316 in intelligence matters including surveillance and interrogation. Cohn and Thompson uncovered close CIA ties to the Honduran officers who maintained secret prisons, directed torture sessions, and commanded death squads that killed hundreds of suspected "subversives," including many union and student leaders. (9)
The Sun series is heavily documented, drawing on scores of interviews with former U.S. officials and members and surviving victims of Battalion 316. Cohn and Thompson also tracked the U.S. government paper trail on assistance to the unit, and discovered that secret CIA manuals were consulted in training the Hondurans advanced methods of interrogation. In May of 1994, the Sun filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA seeking release of the documents.
Cohn says the CIA responded to the request with "an awful lot of delay," even though the Sun had provided the names and dates of the manuals. Not until more than two years later, when the Sun threatened legal action, did the CIA release the manuals. (10) One of the documents, titled "Human Resources Exploitation Manual - 1983," summarized the CIA interrogation training given to military personnel from several Latin American countries and repeated many of the psychological torture strategies outlined in the 1963 manual. (In the mid-1980s these tactics were scribbled out in the manual in the aftermath of the scandal over another CIA manual, a primer on psychological operations prepared for the Nicaraguan contras).
Reading the disturbing methods detailed in the manuals, its easy to see why the CIA preferred that the documents remain classified. Documentary disclosures about such agency abuses are all too rare, and the Sun's success with the FOIA is a significant reminder of how persistent investigators can take advantage of the law to shed light on hidden government improprieties.
At the same time, the case illustrates the shortcomings of the FOIA when it comes to potentially scandalous documents like the interrogation manuals. The CIA relinquished the materials because the Sun committed to a legal challenge -- an option not readily available to the average FOIA requester. Only when the agency was confronted with the specter of an embarrassing court battle did the FOIA yield results "as it should for any citizen," observes Cohn.
In evaluating this victory for disclosure, another caveat deserves mention: while most of the 1963 manual is now available to the public, significant portions were censored by the CIA prior to release. For example, 8 of the 42 bibliographical entries are completely deleted, as are 4 of the 50 items on the "Interrogator's Check List." On several pages, discussion of the CIA's policy on the use of forcible detention (which the agency has no legal authority for) are deleted (see pp. 6-8, 43-45, 86). The CIA's public affairs staff also refused this author's request to provide translations of the numerous code-words used in the document, making it difficult to discern the full meaning of passages where these words are used.
Despite these omissions, "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation" contains valuable information on several secret CIA endeavors, including the agency's mind control research. Like the recent media reports on the CIA's ties to murderous security forces, the manual fills significant gaps in the history of U.S. foreign policy. As no previously released document has done, this manual places the CIA's hostile interrogation strategies on the record. The manual was designed to root out the secrets of interogatees, but now that its contents can be widely read, it is the CIA who has many questions to answer.
Bohemian Grove Action network
See links on www.lionofjudahpublications.co.uk
Bohemian Grove Jets
Kissenger arrives at Bohemian Grove
The genocidally criminally insane demon worshippers arrive at Bohemian Grove's local airport
Bohemian Grove Photos Page 1
Bohemian Grove photos Page 2
Above left Bush Sr, centre Richard Cheney, right Evangelical Usuryist of the 'Fed,' Alan Greenspan.
Bohemian Grove Photos Page 3
United States Congressman Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, flew into the Sonoma County Airport Friday afternoon, July 21, 1995. In this photo made with a 400mm. lens, Gingrich can be seen as a small figure waving below the open jet door. A check of the FAA aircraft registry indicated that the plane Gingrich arrived on was registered to United States Tobacco Sales and Marketing Co. Inc., which is a subsidiary of United States Tobacco Co. Inc., a subsidiary of UST Inc.. Their chief products include the Skoal and Copenhagen brands of smokeless tobacco.
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A response by Mars
The Final Solution. The Final Holocaust.
See
The Jewish Messiah.
The 144,000 righteous of the 12/13 tribes if Israel (i.e. the slaves).
The worldwide Holocaust of the non-slaves.
The Seven Servants of the Apocalypse.
The Great and Terrible and Dreadful Day of Reckoning.
The commands and strategy of Final War against the New World Order.
For the global holocaust of all CIA/MI6/Crown/New World Order / Christian / Freemason narco-terrorist collaborators.
Tear out their toungues and hearts. Cast them into the fires of the Final Holocaust.
No mercy on they who deserve none.
Death and Hell shall be their only reward.
They who are the torturers now shall be abandoned by their victims in eternity; the torturers now shall become the tortured in eternity.
They who are the slaves of the servants of Lucifer on earth shall be his slaves in eternity.
What is bound on earth is bound in eternity.
No forgiveness without the penance of war against the religionist and governmentalists.
There is only salvation in the World Revolution of Governmentless Collectivism.
Communism Revolution in this time.
The Final Revolutionary War of Economic Salvation.
Worldwide Holocaust of all Capitalists Now.
Born to Kill. 2003.
The Great Day of Reckoning.
Nowhere to run; nowhere to hide.
Kill or be killed.
Apocalypse Now.
Echelon Keywords: CIA MI6 Mossad Narcotics Terrorism Rape Torture Murder Bush Blair Sharon Apocalypse Armageddon Freemason Freemasonry Mason Usury Drug money laundering Kabbala Cabala Baal Lucifer Illuminati New World Order One World Government United Nations Osama Bin Laden Apocalypse Judgment Day Armageddon Nuclear Biological Chemical War Microwave weapons Earthquake weapons operation paperclip Nazi Nazism Rothschild Federal Reserve Great Day of Reckoning Communism Anarchism Zapatista British Crown CIA terrorism Global Holocaust of all Christians, Kabbalists, Governmentalists The End of Religion The End of Government The End of the Illuminati. The King must die.
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