Guatemalan Civil War - US Involvement

US Involvement

The "dirty little conflicts" of our time are not pretty, but they are critical to Western security, and if we abrogate our ability to engage in low-level conflict, we lose our capability to...maintain a world order compatible with our national interests and security. The plain fact is that the United States is at war, and in wartime the only thing that counts is winning..

— --Fighting Terrorism and "Dirty Little Wars," Dr Neil C. Livingstone, Air University Review, 1984

From the time of the CIA-backed 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état onward through the duration of the civil war, the United States maintained close inter-military relations with both military and civilian governments in Guatemala. For decades, the United States government trained, financed and overhauled the Guatemalan military and security forces. During the civil war, at least 1,552 Guatemalan military officers are verified to have been trained at the United States Army School of the Americas. Close US allies such as Israel and Argentina also sold weapons and provided military training to Guatemala. Additionally, declassified US documents and CIA memos relating to the conflict show that the United States was aware of the Guatemalan military's excesses against civilians during the period in which it was aiding the Guatemalan government. The UN sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification concluded that "The United States demonstrated that it was willing to provide support for strong military regimes in its strategic backyard. In the case of Guatemala, military assistance was directed towards reinforcing the national intelligence apparatus and for training the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques, key factors which had significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation." General Robert Porter, Commander in Chief of the United States Southern Command, summarized the purpose of this support in Congress in 1968, saying that United States military assistance and AID Public Safety projects in Latin America were "an insurance policy protecting our vast private investment in an area of tremendous trade and strategic value to our country."

Charles Maechling Jr., who led U.S. counterinsurgency and internal defense planning from 1961 to 1966, explains that the administration modified the role of the armed forces in Latin America from "hemispheric defense" to "internal security." In 1962, Washington's policy shifted to "direct complicity" in their atrocities to U.S. support for "the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads." The U.S. AID Public Safety program formed security forces to "lend assistance, in cases of emergency, to the owners or administrators of estates, haciendas, agricultural lands, forests and all rural properties . . . observe all activity that tends to inflame passions among the peasant masses or in the rural communities and, when necessary, repress through licit means any disorder that should occur." The U.S. State Department added that the police "first detect discontent among people" and "should serve as one of the major means by which the government assures itself of acceptance by the majority." An effective security force can often deter civil unrest. "Should they not be prepared to do this, 'major surgery' may be required...to redress those threats." U.S. strategy, overall, was preventive counter-subversion. Addressing AID Public Safety graduates in 1965, General Maxwell Taylor, President Kennedy's military and counterterror adviser, said:

In dealing with urban discontent and political unrest...the military has proved less than effective. The outstanding lesson is that we should never let another Vietnam-type situation arise again. We were too late in recognizing the extent of the subversive threat. We appreciate now that every young, emerging country must be constantly on the alert, watching for those symptoms which, if allowed to develop unrestrained, may eventually grow into a disastrous situation such as that in South Vietnam. We have learned the need for a strong police force and a strong police intelligence organization to assist in identifying early the symptoms of an incipient subversive situation.

— --The U.S. Military Apparatus, 1972

The U.S. Military Mission was largely instrumental in introducing and implementing the use of para-militarism by the Guatemalan army and security forces. U.S. Army Colonel John Webber referred to it "a technique of counter-terror." U.S. Army journals and counter-terror experts outlined the basic premise of this strategy as "the tactic of intimidating, kidnapping, or assassinating carefully selected members of the opposition in a manner that will reap the maximum psychological benefit," the objective being, "to frighten everyone from collaborating with the guerrilla movement."

During the civil war, the CIA collaborated with the Guatemalan D-2, the primary directorate of military intelligence. The CIA's collaboration with D-2 was described by U.S. and Guatemalan operatives, and was confirmed by former Guatemalan heads of state. Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, a Guatemalan officer and CIA operative implicated in murders of guerrilla leader Efrain Bamaca Velasquez and Michael Devine discussed in an interview how the CIA advised and helped to run D-2. He claimed that U.S. agents trained D-2 men. Alpirez described attending CIA sessions at D-2 bases on "contra-subversion" tactics and "how to manage factors of power" to "fortify democracy." The CIA also helped to provide "technical assistance" including communications equipment, computers and special firearms, as well as collaborative use of CIA-owned helicopters that were flown out of a piper hangar at La Aurora civilian airport and from a separate U.S. Air facility. The CIA also supplied the Guatemalan army and D-2 with "civil material assistance," which included medical supplies, Vietnam-era metal jeep parts, compasses and walkie talkies. CIA collaboration with D-2 ended in 1995.

Throughout the conflict, the United States trained Guatemalan military personnel both domestically and at foreign military establishments. The U.S. Army Project X training program instructed allied Latin American armed forces to suppress dissent and assassinate political opponents. The Project X manuals were "in fact a guide for the conduct of clandestine operations" against political adversaries calling for social reform. Some of the material used until 1991 included manuals on "Agent Handling" and "Counterintelligence," which "provided training regarding the use of sodiopentathol compound in interrogation, abduction of adversary family members to influence the adversary, prioritization of adversary personalities for abduction, exile, physical beatings and execution." The manual suggests the creation of inventories of families and their assets to keep tabs on the population. One of the lessons described "a general introduction to censorship to include reference to Armed Forces Censorship...and National Censorship." Students are warned of the dangers of the electoral process. Guerrillas, "can resort to subversion of the government by means of elections," it said. "Insurgent leaders participate in political contests as candidates for government office." Peaceful democratic activity is equated with terrorists. "It is important to note that many terrorists are very well trained in subversion of the democratic process and use the system to advance their causes," the manual said. "This manipulation ends with the destruction of the democratic system. Discontent that can become political violence can have as its cause political, social, and economic activities of terrorists operating within the democratic system," it adds. The manual describes the director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center, Tom Hayden, formerly a California state senator, as "one of the masters of terrorist planning." The CIA manual on "Handling of Sources," states that, "the CI agent must consider all the organizations as possible guerrilla sympathizers." Counterintelligence agents are instructed on targets for "neutralizing", which was a euphemism for execution of, "political leaders, and members of the infrastructure." The targets to be "neutralized" are what the manual describes as "front groups" for the guerrillas, such as "paramilitary groups, labor unions, and dissident groups." Citizens were put on "'black, gray or white lists' for the purpose of identifying and prioritizing adversary targets."

U.S. Army psychological operations manuals noted that unconventional warfare is "inherently psychological," instructing that it had a particular role in targeting "enemy civilians":

Civilians in the operational area may be...collaborating with an enemy occupation force. It may become necessary to take more aggressive action in the form of harsh treatment or even abductions. The abduction and harsh treatment of key enemy civilians can weaken the collaborators’ belief in the strength and power of their military forces. The elusive hit and run guerrilla can be built into a phantom image that is far beyond his actual potential.

— --Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism, 1940-1990

Project X was reportedly based on the CIA's Phoenix program in South Vietnam, an assassination program that killed tens of thousands of suspected dissidents, presumed to be Viet Cong sympathizers. The Phoenix doctrine was transmitted to the armed forces of 11 South and Central American countries, including El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, Ecuador, Peru, among others. The manuals were distributed through the Army’s Foreign Officer Course, Special Forces Mobile Training Teams (MTTs) and the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), a training center for Latin American armed forces, based in Fort Benning Georgia. The school's curriculum placed great weight on ideological conditioning and "steeped young Latin American officers in the early-1950-era anti-Communist dogma that subversive infiltrators could be anywhere." In 1992, all Project X material was ordered destroyed by the Department of Defense (DOD).

In 1977, the Carter administration announced a suspension of military aid and training programs to Guatemala, citing the Guatemalan government as a "gross and consistent human rights violator" while noting that the situation was improving under the administration of president Kjell Eugenio Laugerud García. Also precipitating the US aid suspension was the ongoing territorial dispute between Britain and Guatemala over the sovereignty of Belize. Despite this prohibition, US training, funds and military support for the Guatemalan army continued covertly. Although little training of Guatemalan officers occurred at the SOA in Panama between 1978 and 1985, the United States Army Special Forces continued to instruct Guatemalan officers in "direct action destruction patrols" and "helicopter assault tactics" at the Escuela Politecnica (the National Military Academy), and train Guatemalan army recruits at the Regional Center of Military Training (CREM) in Puerto Castilla, Honduras. Jesse Garcia, a 32-year-old Green Beret captain functioning in Guatemala at the time, described his job as "not much different" than that of US advisors in El Salvador in an interview with the New York Times in October 1982.

The CIA also continued its operations in Guatemala during the period of the aid embargo, and served as a conduit for US support to the military. In 1981, the Reagan administration approved a $2 million covert CIA program for Guatemala. In April 1982 (one month after Efrain Rios Montt took power) the CIA budget allocations for Guatemala expanded by an additional $2.5 million. In an investigative report, American newspaper columnist Jack Anderson revealed in August, 1981, at the height of the aid prohibition, that the United States was using Cuban exiles to train security forces in Guatemala; in this operation, Anderson wrote, the CIA had arranged for "secret training in the finer points of assassination." "What liberal Americans can reasonably expect is that a condition of military help to Guatemala should be an easing of the political persecution of the centre," the Economist observed in 1983.

In fiscal years 1978, 1979 and 1980 (the three years for which the Carter administration can be held responsible), the US delivered approximately $8.5 million in direct military assistance to Guatemala, mostly Foreign Military Sales credits, as well as export licensing for commercial arms sales worth $1.8 million, a rate which differs very little from that of the Nixon-Ford Administrations. In fiscal years 1981, 1982 and 1983, overt US military aid deliveries totaled $3.2 million, $4 million and $6.36 million respectively; a combined total of approximately $13.54 million (shipments included vital overhauls for previously acquired Bell UH-1 helicopters and A-37 counterinsurgency aircraft). Under contracts licensed by the US Department of Commerce, twenty three Jet-Ranger helicopters, worth $25 million dollars, were delivered to the Guatemalan armed forces between December 1980 and December 1982 (which shared interchangeable parts with previously acquired units and incoming military spare parts). Other arms provisions made through the US Department of Commerce between 1981 and 1983 included laser aimed sights for automatic rifles, grenade launchers, two transport planes, and eight T-37 trainers. With the coordination of the CIA and the Pentagon, ten U.S. M41 Walker Bulldog tanks, worth $36 million dollars, were delivered to the Guatemalan military in late-1981.

Human Rights Watch in 1984 criticized U.S. President Ronald Reagan for his December 1982 visit to Ríos Montt in Honduras, where Reagan dismissed reports of human rights abuses by prominent human rights organizations while insisting that Ríos Montt was receiving a "bum rap". The organization reported that soon after, the Reagan administration announced that it was dropping a five-year prohibition on arms sales and moreover had "approved a sale of $6.36 million worth of military spare parts," to Rios Montt and his forces. Human Rights Watch described the degree of U.S. responsibility thus: "In light of its long record of apologies for the government of Guatemala, and its failure to repudiate publicly those apologies even at a moment of disenchantment, we believe that the Reagan Administration shares in the responsibility for the gross abuses of human rights practiced by the government of Guatemala."

In 1988-89, the Bush administration strengthened ties with the Guatemalan armed forces. Increased US assistance to the military included approximately 16,000 M-16 assault rifles; the of training Guatemalan paratroopers in marksmanship, tactics and night-patrolling by Green Berets; parachute and jungle-survival training by U.S. Special Forces for Guatemala's elite Kaibil counterinsurgency troops; and training for flying A-37 attack planes and to repair C-47 transport planes. The United States announced that they were using the armed forces in 1990 "to promote economic and political stability" as they were reportedly involved in human rights abuses and in drug trafficking. Meanwhile, the CIA continued to support the Army's war by supplying them with intelligence on guerrillas, farmers, peasants and other opponents. The CIA station chief in Guatemala from 1988 to 1991 was a Cuban American. He had about 20 officers with a budget of about $5 million a year and an equal or greater sum for "liaison" with Guatemalan military. His job included placing and keeping senior Guatemalan officers on his payroll. Among them was Alpirez, who recruited others for the CIA. Alpirez's intelligence unit spied on Guatemalans and is accused by human rights groups of assassinations.

An Intelligence Oversight Board report from 1996 writes that military aid was stopped during the Carter administration but later resumed under the Reagan Administration. "After a civilian government under President Cerezo was elected in 1985, overt non-lethal US military aid to Guatemala resumed. In December 1990, however, largely as a result of the killing of US citizen Michael DeVine by members of the Guatemalan army, the Bush administration suspended almost all overt military aid." "The funds the CIA provided to the Guatemalan liaison services were vital to the D-2 and Archivos." The CIA "continued this aid after the termination of overt military assistance in 1990." "Overall CIA funding levels to the Guatemalan services dropped consistently from about $3.5 million in FY 1989 to about 1 million in 1995." The report writes that "the CIA's liaison relationship with the Guatemalan services also benefited US interests by enlisting the assistance of Guatemala's primary intelligence and security service – the army's directorate of intelligence (D-2) – in areas such as reversing the 'auto-coup" of 1993'" "In the face of strong protests by Guatemalan citizens and the international community (including the United States) and – most importantly – in the face of the Guatemalan army's refusal to support him, President Serrano's Fujimori-style 'auto-coup' failed." On a trip to Guatemala in 1999 after the publication of the Truth Commission report, U.S. President Bill Clinton declared that "It is important that I state clearly that support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression of the kind described in the report was wrong," and further apologized for "support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression of the kind described in the report".