Saturday, December 30, 2006
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Seattle Liberation Front
The Seattle Liberation Front, or SLF, was a radical anti-Vietnam War organization in Seattle, Washington, in the United States. The group, founded by then-University of Washington professor and political activist Michael Lerner, carried out its protest activities from 1970 to 1971.
The most famous members of the SLF were the "Seattle Seven" — seven SLF members charged with "conspiracy to incite a riot" in the wake of a violent protest at a courthouse. The members of the Seattle Seven were Lerner himself, as well as "The Dude"Jeff Dowd, Joe Kelly, Susan Stern, Michael Abeles, Chip Marshall, and Roger Lippman.
The most famous members of the SLF were the "Seattle Seven" — seven SLF members charged with "conspiracy to incite a riot" in the wake of a violent protest at a courthouse. The members of the Seattle Seven were Lerner himself, as well as "The Dude"Jeff Dowd, Joe Kelly, Susan Stern, Michael Abeles, Chip Marshall, and Roger Lippman.
Interpreting the 1954 U.S. Intervention in Guatemala: Realist, Revisionist, and Postrevisionist Perspectives
Stephen M. Streeter
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario
AT NINE IN THE EVENING of June 27, 1954, Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán announced his resignation. The beleaguered colonel had many reasons for abandoning the presidency. His 1952 land reform program, known as Decree 900, had enraged wealthy planters and United Fruit Company (UFCO) officials, who spread propaganda tagging Arbenz as a Communist. Earlier in 1954, at the Tenth Inter-American Conference in Caracas, Venezuela, the Eisenhower administration had isolated Guatemala by bludgeoning members of the Organization of American States (OAS) into adopting an anticommunist resolution which insinuated that the Arbenz regime had become a Communist beachhead. Then, on June 17, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas and his band of several hundred peasant soldiers--the so-called Liberation Army--had invaded Guatemala from Honduras with logistical support from a covert U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation code-named PBSUCCESS. As the Liberation army stumbled its way through the countryside, unmarked planes strafed Guatemala City while radio broadcasters jammed the airwaves with rumors that the government was collapsing. Although the early stages of the invasion had gone poorly for Castillo Armas, the Guatemalan army decided on the 25th to abandon the battlefield in Zacapa. The high command refused the president's order to arm the civilian militias, and instead demanded that he step down. Feeling exhausted, confused, and cornered, Arbenz surrendered the government to the army, hoping desperately that the invaders might still be repelled. But U.S. officials threatened, cajoled, and bribed Castillo Armas's military rivals, so that by July 1st the "Liberation" had triumphed. 1
The chain of events that led to Arbenz's downfall has intrigued historians for decades. How important was PBSUCCESS to Castillo Armas's victory? Did President Eisenhower know about the operation? If so, why did he order Arbenz's removal? What role did the UFCO play in the intervention? Many Eisenhower administration officials, including the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen who headed the CIA, owned stock in the company, so did the Liberation really represent a conspiracy between United States public and private economic interests? And what about Arbenz? Was he a Communist? How influential was the Communist Party in Guatemala and was it tied to the Soviets? In short, was there really a communist threat in Central America that the Eisenhower administration prudently removed? Or did anticommunism serve merely as the pretext for overthrowing a nationalist regime that threatened U.S. hegemony? 2
Historians' answers to these questions have both shaped and reflected the debate among realists, revisionists, and postrevisionists over the wellsprings and consequences of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Realists, who concern themselves primarily with power politics, have generally blamed the Cold War on an aggressive, expansionist Soviet empire. Because realists believe that Arbenz was a Soviet puppet, they view his overthrow as the necessary rollback of communism in the Western Hemisphere. Revisionists, who place the majority of the blame for the Cold War on the United States, emphasize how Washington sought to expand overseas markets and promote foreign investment, especially in the Third World. Revisionists allege that because the State Department came to the rescue of the UFCO, the U.S. intervention in Guatemala represents a prime example of economic imperialism. Postrevisionists, a difficult group to define precisely, incorporate both strategic and economic factors in their interpretation of the Cold War. They tend to agree with revisionists on the issue of Soviet responsibility, but they are much more concerned with explaining the cultural and ideological influences that warped Washington's perception of the Communist threat. According to postrevisionists, the Eisenhower administration officials turned against Arbenz because they failed to grasp that he represented a nationalist rather than a communist.1 3
The root of the realist interpretation can be traced to propaganda spread by the architects of PBSUCCESS. After the covert operation concluded, the Eisenhower administration as well as Castillo Armas and his followers asserted that the Liberation represented a popular revolution against a Communist dictatorship. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Henry F. Holland, for example, declared that "the people of Guatemala rose and dispersed the little group of traitors who had tried to subvert their government into another communist satellite."2 The State Department also denied that its opposition to Arbenz could be traced to the Fruit Company's financial woes. Several weeks before the invasion began, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced: "If the United Fruit matter were settled, if they gave a gold piece for every banana, the problem would remain as it is today as far as the presence of Communist infiltration in Guatemala is concerned."3 4
Arbenz and his supporters, by contrast, denigrated the Liberation as an international conspiracy masterminded by U.S.-based multinational corporations. "Our crime," Arbenz explained in his resignation speech, "is having enacted an agrarian reform which affected the interests of the United Fruit Company."4 A 1955 study by the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (PGT, Guatemalan Communist Party) identified the UFCO and various Rockefeller interests as the major culprits in the plot against Arbenz. Guatemalan exiles portrayed Castillo Armas as a Wall Street lackey, who received Washington's backing because he promised to return land to the UFCO.5 These conflicting versions of the Liberation played out separately in the United States and Latin America. To cover-up PBSUCCESS, the State Department derailed an OAS investigation and issued several white papers on Guatemala that branded Arbenz as a Communist. U.S. journalists and reporters churned out sensational narratives in which Castillo Armas, the heroic "Liberator," saved the Guatemalan people from the ferocious tyranny of the communist dictator, "Red" Jacobo. This disinformation campaign succeeded admirably in the United States, but it flopped badly in Latin America. Demonstrations led by students, labor organizations, and nationalists castigated the Eisenhower administration for coming to the defense of United Fruit.6 The State Department's troubleshooter for Latin America, Adolf A. Berle, told his diary: "We eliminated a Communist regime-at the expense of having antagonized half the hemisphere."7 Kalman Silvert, a North American academic who specialized in Latin American studies, reported in 1956 that a famous Mexican bookstore had sold thousands of books by Arbenz's supporters, but only five copies of the most prominent Liberacionista tract.8 5
In the 1950s, anticommunist scholars such as Daniel James, Ronald Schneider, and John Martz asserted that the Eisenhower administration had accurately gaged the Communist threat in Guatemala. According to these realists, Washington and the rest of the hemisphere turned against Arbenz after U.S. intelligence revealed a secret shipment of Czech arms bound for Guatemala aboard the Swedish freighter Alfhem.9 Political tracts by Castillo Armas's supporters also glorified the Liberation as a heroic defeat of communism, but they made little or no mention of outside assistance.10 Even as hard evidence of PBSUCCESS began to leak out, U.S. officials continued to insist that the Arbenz regime posed a grave security threat to the United States. CIA agent David Atlee Phillips, for example, later reflected that documents left behind by Arbenz had "revealed a paradigm of Soviet Cold War expansionism, a program clearly intended to establish a power base in the Western Hemisphere."11 6
Revisionists, by contrast, defended Arbenz as a nationalist, not a communist, and they blamed his downfall on Yankee imperialism. The financial ties between U.S. government officials and the company, the massacre of at least 1,000 banana workers on a UFCO plantation immediately following the Liberation, and Castillo Armas's decision to return land confiscated from United Fruit under Decree 900, all seemed to point toward a conspiracy.12 Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, who served as president from 1958 to 1963, published memoirs charging that in 1954 several CIA agents had tried to recruit him to lead the Liberation on behalf of U.S. corporations with investments in Guatemala.13 Two Fruit Company public relations agents, Thomas Corcoran and Edward L. Bernays, bragged openly that they had promoted news stories about the Communist threat in Guatemala in order to convince the U.S. government to remove Arbenz.14 7
For several reasons the revisionist interpretation of the Liberation gradually gained favor among U.S. academics during the 1960s and 1970s. The rise of the New Left and the legacy of the Vietnam War caused some historians to question many of the prevailing dogmas of the Cold War. Revisionist historians such as William Appleman Williams, Richard J. Barnet, and Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, for example, argued that the United States generally opposed democracy in the Third World. In their view, the Open Door policy had led to countless U.S. interventions in underdeveloped regions such as Latin America in order to protect trade, markets, and North American businesses such as the UFCO.15 8
The rise in the popularity of dependency theory in the 1970s also encouraged Latin American scholars to view episodes such as the U.S. intervention in Guatemala as an example of how economic interests of the core, or First World, dominated the periphery, or Third World.16 As one dependista explained, "the UFCO propaganda campaign in combination with such factors as the prevalent ideological climate in the United States and the close linkages with governmental decision makers, among others, led to a positive assertion of core interests that for all practical purposes constituted a defense of UFCO interests in Guatemala."17 The North American Congress on Latin America, a leftist think tank which served as the leading proponent of the dependency school in the United States, proposed that an "intervention lobby" had managed to prod the Eisenhower administration into deposing Arbenz. The lobby, according to the political scientist Suzanne Jonas, formed "part of a broad network of power on Wall Street and in Washington that included or had ties with nearly all interest groups involved in foreign policy formation. On its own board, and through its law firms, banks, etc., UFCO integrated the principal Eastern groups-the Rockefellers, Standard Oil interests, the Morgans, and the Boston bluebloods-which dominated the foreign policy apparatus." At the center of this "intervention nexus" stood the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, a highly influential lobbyist for United Fruit. John Foster Dulles, who had been a senior partner for Sullivan and Cromwell in the 1930s, had helped broker the deal that enabled the UFCO to control Guatemala's only railway.18 9
The popularity of the revisionist interpretation peaked in the early 1980s with the appearance of Bitter Fruit, a cloak-and-dagger thriller that described in lurid detail how Fruit Company officials had conspired with the Eisenhower administration to topple Arbenz. The two journalists who authored the study, Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, insisted that the UFCO had played a "decisive" role in the coup because, had the company not redbaited Arbenz and exaggerated the Communist threat, the Eisenhower administration probably would have ignored Guatemala. Numerous ties between company and government officials, Schlesinger and Kinzer asserted, gave the UFCO extraordinary influence in Washington. Before launching PBSUCCESS, CIA Director Allen Dulles allegedly promised a top UFCO official that any government which succeeded Arbenz would protect the company's interests.19Bitter Fruit received great accolades in the mainstream press. One awed reviewer exclaimed, "It's a fantastic yarn--yet it all actually happened."20 In truth, Schlesinger and Kinzer's study relied on selective and circumstantial evidence, some of it highly disputable.21 Richard Bissell, the CIA official who directed PBSUCCESS, later recalled, "I never heard Allen Dulles discuss United Fruit's interests."22 Adolf A. Berle told Costa Rican leader José Figueres: "Of course, we expected American rights to be protected, including the United Fruit Company; but the United Fruit Company's interests were secondary to the main interests."23 10
The first archival-based account of PBSUCCESS, which appeared at roughly the same time as Bitter Fruit, challenged the conspiracy thesis of Schlesinger and Kinzer. The CIA in Guatemala, by Richard H. Immerman, defended the revisionist view that the Arbenz regime did not constitute a Soviet threat to the United States. The study also revealed that the CIA's logistical assistance proved crucial to Castillo Armas's victory. According to Immerman, however, the Eisenhower administration decided to remove Arbenz, not because of lobbying pressure from United Fruit, but because U.S. officials had confused communism and nationalism. The State Department had failed to grasp that Arbenz was a "middle-class reformer" who had enacted a land reform to prevent, not encourage, the spread of communism.24 11
By emphasizing how misunderstandings had led to the overthrow of Arbenz, Immerman's study encouraged investigations into how psychology, bureaucratic politics, and cultural bias shaped Washington's conception of the Communist threat in Guatemala and elsewhere. Eisenhower postrevisionists, for example, have argued that the president and his advisors routinely confused anticolonialism and nationalism with communism in the Third World.25 Cole Blasier, a former State Department official who has analyzed U.S. responses to revolutions in Latin America, has emphasized how exaggerated fears of communism distorted U.S. policymaker's judgments during the Cold War.26 Diplomatic discourses also provide clues to the intervention in Guatemala. The tendency to divide the world into "good" and "evil," or "prophetic dualism," as one study has put it, enabled the Eisenhower administration to stifle public debate over Guatemala.27 Another scholar has contended that Washington's "dependent image" of Guatemala helped U.S. officials create a stereotype of Arbenz that could not be challenged by conflicting evidence.28 The CIA's success in toppling the nationalist regime in Iran in 1953 also influenced Eisenhower's approach to Guatemala. "Quick fix crisis management" and false analogies help explain why covert action became the weapon of choice against Arbenz.29 12
The combination of archival research and critical theory enabled postrevisionists to correct and refine the interpretation of revisionist studies, many of which suffered from excessive counterfactual reasoning and economic determinism. But the postrevisionist school also had its weaknesses. The social critic Noam Chomsky complained that Richard Immerman's account failed to explain the root cause of the U.S. intervention in Guatemala. Most imperial minded leaders, Chomsky observed, "come to believe the propaganda they produce in an effort to justify brutal and murderous acts undertaken in the interests of dominant domestic forces."30 Likewise, the historian Ronald Pruessen found Immerman's description of anticommunism excessively broad. What combination of "political, strategic, economic, psychological and/or ideological factors," Pruessen wondered, led Washington to remove Arbenz.31 13
But perhaps the biggest mistake the postrevisionists made was to ignore the role of the Guatemalans themselves. By focusing exclusively on the U.S. documentary record, many scholars fell into the trap of reproducing "the world according to Washington."32 In 1991 Piero Gleijeses published a path-breaking account of the Guatemalan episode that overcame many of these weaknesses. Shattered Hope uncovered many new sources and clarified three major interpretive issues. First, Gleijeses presented a much clearer picture of the Communist threat in Guatemala. Interviews with Arbenz's widow and high-ranking members of the Guatemalan Communist Party revealed that although Arbenz himself never joined the Communists officially he became highly influenced by their ideas. It was precisely because Arbenz sympathized with the Communist vision that he enacted the land reform. According to the crude Marxist theory endorsed by the party, Guatemala was still in its feudal stage and had to pass through capitalism before it could make the transition to socialism. At the same time, Gleijeses also emphasizes that Moscow clearly did not control the Guatemalan communists. To the contrary, although Guatemalan Communist party members desperately sought Soviet advice and aid, Moscow wasn't interested. 14
Second, Shattered Hope verified the claim of postrevisionist studies that Eisenhower administration officials had viewed the Fruit company's plight as a "subsidiary" problem, secondary to the issue of communism. In the 1940s the United Fruit Company had been able to influence Washington because U.S. diplomats knew almost nothing about the region. According to Gleijeses, U.S. reporting on Guatemala during the Truman administration reflected arrogance, ethnocentrism, and immense ignorance. As the embassy became more sophisticated in its understanding of Guatemala, however, the company's influence dwindled. José Manuel Fortuny, the former leader of the Guatemalan Communist party, summed up well the insignificance of United Fruit to the U.S. intervention in Guatemala: "They would have overthrown us even if we had grown no bananas."33 15
Third, Eisenhower administration officials worried less about the impact of Arbenz's land reform on United Fruit than they did about its impact on the countryside. One intelligence estimate warned that the agrarian reform would "mobilize the hitherto inert peasantry in support of the Administration" and "afford the Communists an opportunity to extend their influence by organizing the peasants as they have organized other workers."34 Gleijeses's interviews reveal that U.S. intelligence had accurately depicted the Communists' intentions. According to Fortuny, the party believed that by administering Decree 900 through local committees, it would be laying "the groundwork for the eventual radicalization of the peasantry." The PGT elicited the support of Arbenz, who agreed to help "foster the control of the reform from below," and sow "the seeds of a more collective society."35 U.S. officials understood that Guatemala's nationalist revolution was far more likely to spread by example than by force. One State Department official warned in late 1953 that Guatemala threatened the stability of Honduras and El Salvador because "its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; [and] its broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors where similar conditions prevail."36 16
Although Shattered Hope appeared to be the last word on the U.S. intervention in Guatemala, new documentation recently released by the CIA has helped clarify some of the mysteries surrounding its role in overthrowing Arbenz. In 1992 the agency hired the historian Nicholas Cullather to write the official account of PBSUCCESS. The CIA's chief historian, Gerald Haines, also wrote a separate report on the agency's proposed assassination plots against the Arbenz regime. Both studies remained classified until 1997, when the CIA decided to release them as part of its so-called new openness policy. 17
Perhaps the most startling revelation in these new studies is confirmation of earlier reports that the CIA had contemplated assassinating high-ranking officials in the Arbenz administration.37 The CIA originally devised assassination plots as part of PBFORTUNE, the first covert action plan to depose Arbenz. When that operation aborted in 1953, CIA officers drew up hit lists and offered training for Castillo Armas's "K" groups, which had been formed to eliminate prominent Guatemalan leaders during PBSUCCESS. Certain State Department officials considered these proposals for a brief period in April 1954, but they eventually ruled them out as "counterproductive." Unfortunately, censors have removed the names of most officials from Haines's report, so we don't know how high up the plan went or even if the hit list included Arbenz.38 18
Cullather's report, which has since been published by Stanford University Press, offers a close look at PBSUCCESS through the eyes of the intelligence community. Like the postrevisionists, Cullather downplays the role of United Fruit and highlights security concerns. Indeed, it was the CIA rather than the UFCO that persuaded the State Department to pay attention to Guatemala. Agency analysts feared, not that the PGT was going to seize power immediately, but that the land reform offered the Communists an unprecedented opportunity to organize the masses.39 19
The CIA study also offers new evidence regarding two important historical issues. First, why did the agency choose Carlos Castillo Armas instead of Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes or Juan Córdova Cerna to lead the Liberation? According to Cullather, PBSUCCESS officers passed over Ydígoras because they considered the general to be too "ambitious, opportunistic, and unscrupulous." They also scratched Córdova Cerna from the list because he served as legal counsel to United Fruit, which might have given credence to charges of banana imperialism. Castillo Armas, in contrast to the other candidates, appeared more innocent, likeable, and pliable. Aside from anticommunism he had no clear political philosophy, and therefore could be told what to do. The colonel also did not look like the traditional caudillo or strongman. "This is no Latin American dictator with a whip," commented one agency informant.40 20
The second issue concerns the importance of PBSUCCESS to Castillo Armas's victory. In 1990 the historian Frederick Marks tried to revive the "realist" interpretation that the Liberation represented a popular revolution against communism. According to Marks, historians have exaggerated the CIA's role in securing Castillo Armas's victory just as they have underestimated the military achievements of the Liberation army.41 However, Cullather's study verifies the criticisms of Stephen Rabe, who found major flaws in Marks's research, including an excessive reliance on accounts by Castillo Armas's supporters and a failure to consider contradictory evidence.42 Castillo Armas's soldiers did not have rockets or artillery, as Marks claimed, nor did they outfight the Guatemalan army. Castillo Armas did gain some followers as the invasion proceeded, but only in towns where the soldiers met no resistance. These new recruits may actually have been more of a hindrance than an asset because as they had to be fed and equipped.43 21
Some analysts have judged the CIA's air support for Castillo Armas as the crucial component of PBSUCCESS that defeated Arbenz. To demonstrate the importance of air power, numerous studies cite Allen Dulles's comment to President Eisenhower on June 23 that the chances of victory stood at only twenty percent unless he ordered more planes. Richard Bissell considered air support as the most "decisive" factor in Arbenz's downfall.44 Cullather observes, however, that the aircraft did not improve the military situation in the field. He discounts as an "agency legend" the explanation that Arbenz resigned because he had lost his nerve in the face of the air attacks and radio propaganda.45 In truth, the CIA got lucky. There is evidence of incompetence, near misses, and operational fiascoes: the botched attempt to depose Arbenz in 1953 (PBFORTUNE); Castillo Armas's military incompetence; Arbenz's complacency (such as waiting too long to arm the popular militias); major breaches of security (Arbenz's spies penetrated PBSUCCESS); disinformation flops (the Guatemalan press discounted as a fake the cache of Soviet arms planted by the CIA); the dropping of bombs that turned out to be duds; near backfiring of bribery attempts; and staffing the psywar radio operation with untrained illiterate technicians. 22
Considering all of this, Cullather joins many analysts in attributing the downfall of Arbenz to his army's lack of loyalty. Had the high command chosen to fight seriously they could have easily crushed Castillo Armas's ragtag band. Most military officers chose to abandon Arbenz, however, because they had grown weary of the ethnic conflict triggered by the land reform and because they feared that thwarting PBSUCCESS would only invite a much larger U.S. military intervention. The transition between Arbenz and Castillo Armas represented, in reality, a military coup, not a mass-based revolution against communism.46 23
One might be tempted to conclude from this lengthy review of the U.S. intervention in Guatemala that the topic has been exhausted. But historiography also teaches that our interpretation of momentous events can change slightly or dramatically as new evidence becomes available or as the popularity of certain historical theories rise and fall. There are still major gaps in the historical record that would be worth filling. Certain portions of the U.S. documentary record remain classified or sanitized, and the United Fruit Company has yet to open its archives. Still, it might be useful to take stock of the debate, because certain interpretations can be laid to rest. The Soviet Union did not control Guatemala in 1954, nor were local Communists on the verge of seizing power. The Liberation never would have succeeded without PBSUCCESS, which is not to say that Arbenz would have remained in power indefinitely. The historian Jim Handy, for example, has shown that many military officers had become disturbed over Arbenz's land reform for both personal and ideological reasons. Plotting against Arbenz had begun in early 1954, and it seems likely that Arbenz would have fallen regardless of the U.S. intervention.47 The original revisionist claim that United Fruit masterminded Arbenz's defeat also appears untenable. Company's records, if they ever become available, are unlikely to provide the smoking gun. If the UFCO was so important, then why is there so little evidence of its influence in the U.S. declassified record? It is possible, of course, that key documents are still being withheld from researchers, but there is no longer any reason to protect the company. Immediately after PBSUCCESS concluded, the Eisenhower administration permitted the Justice Department to proceed with a long delayed antitrust suit against United Fruit that weakened its monopoly and contributed to the company's eventual disintegration. 24
If there is any controversy left, it will probably continue to revolve around the reasons for the Eisenhower administration's decision to topple Arbenz. For some scholars, it may seem pointless to try and rank the causes of the intervention. "To emphasize either strategic or economic motives in analyzing U.S. policies toward Guatemala," the historian Stephen G. Rabe has written, "is perhaps to draw distinctions without differences."48 But for others, the Eisenhower administration's motivation for intervening in Guatemala bears directly on the issue of American responsibility for the violence that engulfed the country after Arbenz's departure. Between 1954 and 1994 Guatemala experienced a gruesome civil war that left more than 150,000 dead.49 The scholar Robert Pastor exculpates Washington for this tragedy; the policymakers who engineered PBSUCCESS were honest, sincere, and well-intentioned men, even if they were wrong to regard Arbenz as a Communist. To Piero Gleijeses, however, the Eisenhower administration's pursued its hegemonic objectives in Guatemala without regard for the fate of the Guatemalan people. U.S. officials stand guilty, in his words, of "wanton criminal negligence."50 25
Like the longstanding controversy over the origins of the Cold War, the debate over the U.S. intervention in Guatemala is not likely to be resolved solely by the discovery of new documents. What is known now about PBSUCCESS is so vastly superior to the evidence available forty years ago that historians can concentrate more on interpreting the evidence than on uncovering more of it. Advancements in historical interpretation usually depend on the discovery of new sources and/or new theoretical approaches. In this case, the historical literature on the U.S. intervention in Guatemala has matured to the point where it is now possible to narrate fairly clearly the series of events that led to Arbenz's downfall. Much more contentious will be how to deconstruct this story now that the Cold War is over. 26
Notes
1 For definitions of realism and revisionism, see Bruce W. Jentleson and Thomas G. Paterson, eds., Encyclopedia of U.S. Foreign Relations (New York, 1997); on postrevisionism see John Lewis Gaddis, "The Emerging Post-revsionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War," Diplomatic History 7 (Summer 1983), 171-190. For the heated debate over revisionism and postrevisionism, see Michael J. Hogan, ed., America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941 (New York, 1995), pp. 1-155.
2 Text of Holland's address before the Washington Board of Trade Group, undated, Record Group 469, ICA Mission Director Subject Files, box 5, folder: "Information - Speeches 1955," United States National Archives, College Park, MD [hereafter RG].
3 Transcript of a news conference, 8 June 1954, U.S. Department of State, American Foreign Policy, 1950-1955: Basic Documents (Washington, DC, 1957), vol. 1, p. 1310.
4 Translated in embassy despatch 1028, 29 June 1954, RG 59, 714.00/62954.
5 Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo, La intervención norteamericana en guatemala y el derrocamiento del régimen democratico (Guatemala, 1955), p. 1718; Unión Patriotica Guatemalteca letter to Dag Hammarskjold, (translation), 14 November 1956, Lot 60 D 647, Guatemala Subject File (1957, ICA, to 1958, Antillon Hernandez), box 4, folder: "1957 Guatemala United Nations," U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD; Unión Patriotica Guatemalteca, Guatemala contra el imperialismo (Guatemala, 1964), p. 21. For participant accounts with a similar slant, see Guillermo Toriello Garrido, La batalla de Guatemala (Buenos Aires, 1956); Juan José Arévalo, The Shark and the Sardines (New York, 1961).
6 For a summary of Latin American reactions to the Liberation, see Burgin memorandum to Raine, 23 June 1954, RG 59, 714.00/62354.
7 Quoted in Jordan A. Schwarz, Liberal: Adolf A. Berle and the Vision of an American Era (New York, 1987), p. 318.
8 K. H. Silvert, "Guatemala 1955: II-Internal and International Consolidation," American Universities Field Staff Mexico & Caribbean Area Series 3:2 (1956), 8-9.
9 Daniel James, Red Design for the Americas: Guatemalan Prelude (New York, 1954), p. 304, 316; Ronald Schneider, Communism in Guatemala: 1944-1954 (New York, 1958); John D. Martz, Communist Infiltration in Guatemala (New York, 1956).
10 Congreso Continental Anticomunista, El libro negro del comunismo en Guatemala (México, 1954); Jorge del Valle Matheu, La verdad sobre el "caso de Guatemala" (Guatemala,1956); Mario Efraín Nájera Farfán, Los estafadores de la democracia (hombres y hechos en Guatemala) (Buenos Aires, 1956).
11 David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watch (New York, 1977), pp. 35, 53.
12 Julio Castro, Bombas y dolares sobre Guatemala (Montevideo, 1954); Gregorio Selser, El guatemalazo: la primera guerra sucia (Buenos Aires, 1954); Alberto Suarez, La lucha del pueblo de Guatemala contra el imperialismo yanquí (Montevideo, 1954); Raúl Osegueda, Operación Guatemala $$ OK $$ (México, 1955); Manuel Galich, Por qué lucha Guatemala: Arévalo y Arbenz, dos hombres contra un imperio (Buenos Aires, 1956); Julio Castello, Así cayó la democracia en Guatemala: la guerra de la United Fruit (La Habana, 1961); Benjamín Carrión, "Oración fúnebre por la OEA," Cuadernos Americanos 141 (julio-agosto 1965), 25-26. On the United Fruit Company massacres, see K. H. Silvert, "Guatemala 1955: I-Problems of Administration," American Universities Field Staff Mexico & Caribbean Area Series 2:2 (2 February 1956), 56; Comité de Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, La violencia en Guatemala: dramática y documentada denuncia sobre "El tercer gobierno de la revolución," la "democracia" de Mendez Montenegro (México, 1969), pp. 13-14; Ricardo Falla, Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcán Guatemala (Boulder, CO, 1994), p. 56; Jim Handy, Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944-1954 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1994), p. 194.
13 Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, My War with Communism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1963), pp. 49-50.
14 Thomas P. McCann, An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit (New York, 1976), 58-59; Edward L. Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of a Public Relations Counsel (New York, 1965), pp. 762-66.
15 William Appleman Williams, Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York, 1972); Richard J. Barnet, Intervention and Revolution: The United States in the Third World (New York, 1968); Joyce Kolko and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954 (New York, 1972).
16 Mark Berger, Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies and U.S. Hegemony in the Americas (Bloomington, IN, 1995), pp. 113-14.
17 José Aybar de Soto, Dependency and Intervention: The Case of Guatemala in 1954 (Boulder, CO, 1979), p. 237.
18 Suzanne Jonas and David Tobis, eds. Guatemala (Berkeley, CA, 1974), pp. 64-65.
19 Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Garden City, NY, 1982), pp. 106, 120. This edition is now out of print, but in 1999 Harvard University Press reissued the study with a new introduction by Latin American historian John Coatsworth and a new afterward by Stephen Kinzer.
20 Jim Miller of Newsweek, back cover of the first paperback edition of Bitter Fruit.
21 Hugo Murillo Jiménez, "La intervención norteamericana en Guatemala en 1954, dos interpretaciones recientes," Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos [Costa Rica] 11:2 (1985), 154.
22 Richard M. Bissell, Jr., Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs (New Haven, CT, 1996), p. 90.
23 Adolf A. Berle, Navigating the Rapids, 1918-1971, eds. Beatrice Bishop Berle and Travis Beal Jacobs (New York, 1973), p. 616.
24 Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin, TX, 1982), pp. ix, 182-86.
25 Stephen G. Rabe, "Eisenhower Revisionism: A Decade of Scholarship," Diplomatic History 17 (Winter 1993), 112-13; Thomas M. Leonard, "Nationalism or Communism? The Truman Administration and Guatemala 1945-1952," Journal of Third World Studies 7 (Spring 1990), 169-91.
26 Cole Blasier, Hovering Giant: U.S. Response to Revolutionary Change in Latin America (Pittsburgh, 1985), pp. 221, 229.
27 Martin J. Medhurst, Robert L. Ivie, and Robert L. Scott, Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor, and Ideology (New York, 1990), pp. 157-163.
28 Martha L. Cottam, Images and Intervention: U.S. Policies in Latin America (Pittsburgh, 1994), p. 40.
29 Kenneth Lehman, "Revolutions and Attributions: Making Sense of Eisenhower Administration Policies in Bolivia and Guatemala," Diplomatic History 21 (Spring 1997), 213; Alex Roberto Hybel, How Leaders Reason: U.S. Intervention in the Caribbean Basin and Latin America (Oxford, UK, 1990), p. 68.
30 Noam Chomsky, "What Directions for the Disarmament Movement? Interventionism and Nuclear War" in Beyond Survival: New Directions for the Disarmament Movement, eds. Michael Albert and David Dellinger (Boston, 1983), p. 293.
31 Ronald W. Pruessen, "Revisionism 2," Radical History Review 33 (September 1985), 162.
32 Sally Marks, "The World According to Washington," Diplomatic History 11 (Summer 1987), 265-82.
33 Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, p. 4.
34 National Intelligence Estimate 84, 19 May 1953, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954 (Washington, DC, 1984), vol. 4, pp. 1064, 1700.
35 Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, p. 152.
36 Quoted in ibid., p. 365.
37 William Corson, The Armies of Ignorance: The Rise of the American Intelligence Empire (New York, 1977), p. 356.
38 Gerald K. Haines, "CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals 1952-1954," RG 263, CIA History Staff Analysis, June 1995, box 1, National Archives, College Park, MD.
39 Nicholas Cullather, Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operation in Guatemala, 1952-1954 (Stanford, CA, 1999), pp. 24-27.
40 Ibid., pp. 49-50.
41 Frederick W. Marks III, "The CIA and Castillo Armas in Guatemala, 1954: New Clues to an Old Puzzle," Diplomatic History 14 (Winter 1990), 67-86.
42 Stephen G. Rabe, "The Clues Didn't Check Out: Commentary on 'The CIA and Castillo Armas'" Diplomatic History 14 (Winter 1990): 87-96.
43 Cullather, Secret History, pp. 72, 96.
44 Ibid., 75-76; Bissell, Reflections, p. 86.
45 Cullather, Secret History, pp. 97-99.
46 Handy, Revolution in the Countryside, pp. 184-90; Neale J. Pearson, "Guatemala: The Peasant Union Movement, 1944-1954" in Latin American Peasant Movements, ed. Henry Landsberger (Ithaca, NY, 1969), pp. 323-73; Philip B. Taylor, "Guatemala Affair: A Critique of U.S. Foreign Policy," American Political Science Review 50 (September 1956), 787-806; Francisco Villagrán Kramer, Biografía política de Guatemala: los pactos de 1944 a 1970 (Guatemala, 1993), p. 150. Susanne Jonas, who originally placed most of the emphasis for Arbenz's defeat on the U.S. intervention, now concedes that the army played a vital role. Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power (Boulder, CO, 1991), p. 36.
47 Jim Handy, "'A Sea of Indians': Ethnic Conflict and the Guatemalan Revolution, 1944-1954," The Americas 66 (October 1989), 203. For similar perspectives, see Edelberto Torres-Rivas, "Crisis y coyuntura crítica: La caída de Arbenz y los contratiempos de la revolución burguesa," Revista Mexicana de Sociología 41 (enero-marzo 1979), 298; Pruessen, "Revisionism 2," 161.
48 Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (Austin, TX, 1988), pp. 59-60. For similar views, see James Dunkerley, Political Suicide in Latin America (London, 1992), p. 105; Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy (Garden City, NY, 1981), p. 231.
49 Stephen M. Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala, 1954-1961 (Ohio University Press, forthcoming).
50 Cullather, Secret History, pp. xxviii-xxix.
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McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario
AT NINE IN THE EVENING of June 27, 1954, Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán announced his resignation. The beleaguered colonel had many reasons for abandoning the presidency. His 1952 land reform program, known as Decree 900, had enraged wealthy planters and United Fruit Company (UFCO) officials, who spread propaganda tagging Arbenz as a Communist. Earlier in 1954, at the Tenth Inter-American Conference in Caracas, Venezuela, the Eisenhower administration had isolated Guatemala by bludgeoning members of the Organization of American States (OAS) into adopting an anticommunist resolution which insinuated that the Arbenz regime had become a Communist beachhead. Then, on June 17, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas and his band of several hundred peasant soldiers--the so-called Liberation Army--had invaded Guatemala from Honduras with logistical support from a covert U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operation code-named PBSUCCESS. As the Liberation army stumbled its way through the countryside, unmarked planes strafed Guatemala City while radio broadcasters jammed the airwaves with rumors that the government was collapsing. Although the early stages of the invasion had gone poorly for Castillo Armas, the Guatemalan army decided on the 25th to abandon the battlefield in Zacapa. The high command refused the president's order to arm the civilian militias, and instead demanded that he step down. Feeling exhausted, confused, and cornered, Arbenz surrendered the government to the army, hoping desperately that the invaders might still be repelled. But U.S. officials threatened, cajoled, and bribed Castillo Armas's military rivals, so that by July 1st the "Liberation" had triumphed. 1
The chain of events that led to Arbenz's downfall has intrigued historians for decades. How important was PBSUCCESS to Castillo Armas's victory? Did President Eisenhower know about the operation? If so, why did he order Arbenz's removal? What role did the UFCO play in the intervention? Many Eisenhower administration officials, including the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen who headed the CIA, owned stock in the company, so did the Liberation really represent a conspiracy between United States public and private economic interests? And what about Arbenz? Was he a Communist? How influential was the Communist Party in Guatemala and was it tied to the Soviets? In short, was there really a communist threat in Central America that the Eisenhower administration prudently removed? Or did anticommunism serve merely as the pretext for overthrowing a nationalist regime that threatened U.S. hegemony? 2
Historians' answers to these questions have both shaped and reflected the debate among realists, revisionists, and postrevisionists over the wellsprings and consequences of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Realists, who concern themselves primarily with power politics, have generally blamed the Cold War on an aggressive, expansionist Soviet empire. Because realists believe that Arbenz was a Soviet puppet, they view his overthrow as the necessary rollback of communism in the Western Hemisphere. Revisionists, who place the majority of the blame for the Cold War on the United States, emphasize how Washington sought to expand overseas markets and promote foreign investment, especially in the Third World. Revisionists allege that because the State Department came to the rescue of the UFCO, the U.S. intervention in Guatemala represents a prime example of economic imperialism. Postrevisionists, a difficult group to define precisely, incorporate both strategic and economic factors in their interpretation of the Cold War. They tend to agree with revisionists on the issue of Soviet responsibility, but they are much more concerned with explaining the cultural and ideological influences that warped Washington's perception of the Communist threat. According to postrevisionists, the Eisenhower administration officials turned against Arbenz because they failed to grasp that he represented a nationalist rather than a communist.1 3
The root of the realist interpretation can be traced to propaganda spread by the architects of PBSUCCESS. After the covert operation concluded, the Eisenhower administration as well as Castillo Armas and his followers asserted that the Liberation represented a popular revolution against a Communist dictatorship. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Henry F. Holland, for example, declared that "the people of Guatemala rose and dispersed the little group of traitors who had tried to subvert their government into another communist satellite."2 The State Department also denied that its opposition to Arbenz could be traced to the Fruit Company's financial woes. Several weeks before the invasion began, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced: "If the United Fruit matter were settled, if they gave a gold piece for every banana, the problem would remain as it is today as far as the presence of Communist infiltration in Guatemala is concerned."3 4
Arbenz and his supporters, by contrast, denigrated the Liberation as an international conspiracy masterminded by U.S.-based multinational corporations. "Our crime," Arbenz explained in his resignation speech, "is having enacted an agrarian reform which affected the interests of the United Fruit Company."4 A 1955 study by the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (PGT, Guatemalan Communist Party) identified the UFCO and various Rockefeller interests as the major culprits in the plot against Arbenz. Guatemalan exiles portrayed Castillo Armas as a Wall Street lackey, who received Washington's backing because he promised to return land to the UFCO.5 These conflicting versions of the Liberation played out separately in the United States and Latin America. To cover-up PBSUCCESS, the State Department derailed an OAS investigation and issued several white papers on Guatemala that branded Arbenz as a Communist. U.S. journalists and reporters churned out sensational narratives in which Castillo Armas, the heroic "Liberator," saved the Guatemalan people from the ferocious tyranny of the communist dictator, "Red" Jacobo. This disinformation campaign succeeded admirably in the United States, but it flopped badly in Latin America. Demonstrations led by students, labor organizations, and nationalists castigated the Eisenhower administration for coming to the defense of United Fruit.6 The State Department's troubleshooter for Latin America, Adolf A. Berle, told his diary: "We eliminated a Communist regime-at the expense of having antagonized half the hemisphere."7 Kalman Silvert, a North American academic who specialized in Latin American studies, reported in 1956 that a famous Mexican bookstore had sold thousands of books by Arbenz's supporters, but only five copies of the most prominent Liberacionista tract.8 5
In the 1950s, anticommunist scholars such as Daniel James, Ronald Schneider, and John Martz asserted that the Eisenhower administration had accurately gaged the Communist threat in Guatemala. According to these realists, Washington and the rest of the hemisphere turned against Arbenz after U.S. intelligence revealed a secret shipment of Czech arms bound for Guatemala aboard the Swedish freighter Alfhem.9 Political tracts by Castillo Armas's supporters also glorified the Liberation as a heroic defeat of communism, but they made little or no mention of outside assistance.10 Even as hard evidence of PBSUCCESS began to leak out, U.S. officials continued to insist that the Arbenz regime posed a grave security threat to the United States. CIA agent David Atlee Phillips, for example, later reflected that documents left behind by Arbenz had "revealed a paradigm of Soviet Cold War expansionism, a program clearly intended to establish a power base in the Western Hemisphere."11 6
Revisionists, by contrast, defended Arbenz as a nationalist, not a communist, and they blamed his downfall on Yankee imperialism. The financial ties between U.S. government officials and the company, the massacre of at least 1,000 banana workers on a UFCO plantation immediately following the Liberation, and Castillo Armas's decision to return land confiscated from United Fruit under Decree 900, all seemed to point toward a conspiracy.12 Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, who served as president from 1958 to 1963, published memoirs charging that in 1954 several CIA agents had tried to recruit him to lead the Liberation on behalf of U.S. corporations with investments in Guatemala.13 Two Fruit Company public relations agents, Thomas Corcoran and Edward L. Bernays, bragged openly that they had promoted news stories about the Communist threat in Guatemala in order to convince the U.S. government to remove Arbenz.14 7
For several reasons the revisionist interpretation of the Liberation gradually gained favor among U.S. academics during the 1960s and 1970s. The rise of the New Left and the legacy of the Vietnam War caused some historians to question many of the prevailing dogmas of the Cold War. Revisionist historians such as William Appleman Williams, Richard J. Barnet, and Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, for example, argued that the United States generally opposed democracy in the Third World. In their view, the Open Door policy had led to countless U.S. interventions in underdeveloped regions such as Latin America in order to protect trade, markets, and North American businesses such as the UFCO.15 8
The rise in the popularity of dependency theory in the 1970s also encouraged Latin American scholars to view episodes such as the U.S. intervention in Guatemala as an example of how economic interests of the core, or First World, dominated the periphery, or Third World.16 As one dependista explained, "the UFCO propaganda campaign in combination with such factors as the prevalent ideological climate in the United States and the close linkages with governmental decision makers, among others, led to a positive assertion of core interests that for all practical purposes constituted a defense of UFCO interests in Guatemala."17 The North American Congress on Latin America, a leftist think tank which served as the leading proponent of the dependency school in the United States, proposed that an "intervention lobby" had managed to prod the Eisenhower administration into deposing Arbenz. The lobby, according to the political scientist Suzanne Jonas, formed "part of a broad network of power on Wall Street and in Washington that included or had ties with nearly all interest groups involved in foreign policy formation. On its own board, and through its law firms, banks, etc., UFCO integrated the principal Eastern groups-the Rockefellers, Standard Oil interests, the Morgans, and the Boston bluebloods-which dominated the foreign policy apparatus." At the center of this "intervention nexus" stood the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, a highly influential lobbyist for United Fruit. John Foster Dulles, who had been a senior partner for Sullivan and Cromwell in the 1930s, had helped broker the deal that enabled the UFCO to control Guatemala's only railway.18 9
The popularity of the revisionist interpretation peaked in the early 1980s with the appearance of Bitter Fruit, a cloak-and-dagger thriller that described in lurid detail how Fruit Company officials had conspired with the Eisenhower administration to topple Arbenz. The two journalists who authored the study, Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, insisted that the UFCO had played a "decisive" role in the coup because, had the company not redbaited Arbenz and exaggerated the Communist threat, the Eisenhower administration probably would have ignored Guatemala. Numerous ties between company and government officials, Schlesinger and Kinzer asserted, gave the UFCO extraordinary influence in Washington. Before launching PBSUCCESS, CIA Director Allen Dulles allegedly promised a top UFCO official that any government which succeeded Arbenz would protect the company's interests.19Bitter Fruit received great accolades in the mainstream press. One awed reviewer exclaimed, "It's a fantastic yarn--yet it all actually happened."20 In truth, Schlesinger and Kinzer's study relied on selective and circumstantial evidence, some of it highly disputable.21 Richard Bissell, the CIA official who directed PBSUCCESS, later recalled, "I never heard Allen Dulles discuss United Fruit's interests."22 Adolf A. Berle told Costa Rican leader José Figueres: "Of course, we expected American rights to be protected, including the United Fruit Company; but the United Fruit Company's interests were secondary to the main interests."23 10
The first archival-based account of PBSUCCESS, which appeared at roughly the same time as Bitter Fruit, challenged the conspiracy thesis of Schlesinger and Kinzer. The CIA in Guatemala, by Richard H. Immerman, defended the revisionist view that the Arbenz regime did not constitute a Soviet threat to the United States. The study also revealed that the CIA's logistical assistance proved crucial to Castillo Armas's victory. According to Immerman, however, the Eisenhower administration decided to remove Arbenz, not because of lobbying pressure from United Fruit, but because U.S. officials had confused communism and nationalism. The State Department had failed to grasp that Arbenz was a "middle-class reformer" who had enacted a land reform to prevent, not encourage, the spread of communism.24 11
By emphasizing how misunderstandings had led to the overthrow of Arbenz, Immerman's study encouraged investigations into how psychology, bureaucratic politics, and cultural bias shaped Washington's conception of the Communist threat in Guatemala and elsewhere. Eisenhower postrevisionists, for example, have argued that the president and his advisors routinely confused anticolonialism and nationalism with communism in the Third World.25 Cole Blasier, a former State Department official who has analyzed U.S. responses to revolutions in Latin America, has emphasized how exaggerated fears of communism distorted U.S. policymaker's judgments during the Cold War.26 Diplomatic discourses also provide clues to the intervention in Guatemala. The tendency to divide the world into "good" and "evil," or "prophetic dualism," as one study has put it, enabled the Eisenhower administration to stifle public debate over Guatemala.27 Another scholar has contended that Washington's "dependent image" of Guatemala helped U.S. officials create a stereotype of Arbenz that could not be challenged by conflicting evidence.28 The CIA's success in toppling the nationalist regime in Iran in 1953 also influenced Eisenhower's approach to Guatemala. "Quick fix crisis management" and false analogies help explain why covert action became the weapon of choice against Arbenz.29 12
The combination of archival research and critical theory enabled postrevisionists to correct and refine the interpretation of revisionist studies, many of which suffered from excessive counterfactual reasoning and economic determinism. But the postrevisionist school also had its weaknesses. The social critic Noam Chomsky complained that Richard Immerman's account failed to explain the root cause of the U.S. intervention in Guatemala. Most imperial minded leaders, Chomsky observed, "come to believe the propaganda they produce in an effort to justify brutal and murderous acts undertaken in the interests of dominant domestic forces."30 Likewise, the historian Ronald Pruessen found Immerman's description of anticommunism excessively broad. What combination of "political, strategic, economic, psychological and/or ideological factors," Pruessen wondered, led Washington to remove Arbenz.31 13
But perhaps the biggest mistake the postrevisionists made was to ignore the role of the Guatemalans themselves. By focusing exclusively on the U.S. documentary record, many scholars fell into the trap of reproducing "the world according to Washington."32 In 1991 Piero Gleijeses published a path-breaking account of the Guatemalan episode that overcame many of these weaknesses. Shattered Hope uncovered many new sources and clarified three major interpretive issues. First, Gleijeses presented a much clearer picture of the Communist threat in Guatemala. Interviews with Arbenz's widow and high-ranking members of the Guatemalan Communist Party revealed that although Arbenz himself never joined the Communists officially he became highly influenced by their ideas. It was precisely because Arbenz sympathized with the Communist vision that he enacted the land reform. According to the crude Marxist theory endorsed by the party, Guatemala was still in its feudal stage and had to pass through capitalism before it could make the transition to socialism. At the same time, Gleijeses also emphasizes that Moscow clearly did not control the Guatemalan communists. To the contrary, although Guatemalan Communist party members desperately sought Soviet advice and aid, Moscow wasn't interested. 14
Second, Shattered Hope verified the claim of postrevisionist studies that Eisenhower administration officials had viewed the Fruit company's plight as a "subsidiary" problem, secondary to the issue of communism. In the 1940s the United Fruit Company had been able to influence Washington because U.S. diplomats knew almost nothing about the region. According to Gleijeses, U.S. reporting on Guatemala during the Truman administration reflected arrogance, ethnocentrism, and immense ignorance. As the embassy became more sophisticated in its understanding of Guatemala, however, the company's influence dwindled. José Manuel Fortuny, the former leader of the Guatemalan Communist party, summed up well the insignificance of United Fruit to the U.S. intervention in Guatemala: "They would have overthrown us even if we had grown no bananas."33 15
Third, Eisenhower administration officials worried less about the impact of Arbenz's land reform on United Fruit than they did about its impact on the countryside. One intelligence estimate warned that the agrarian reform would "mobilize the hitherto inert peasantry in support of the Administration" and "afford the Communists an opportunity to extend their influence by organizing the peasants as they have organized other workers."34 Gleijeses's interviews reveal that U.S. intelligence had accurately depicted the Communists' intentions. According to Fortuny, the party believed that by administering Decree 900 through local committees, it would be laying "the groundwork for the eventual radicalization of the peasantry." The PGT elicited the support of Arbenz, who agreed to help "foster the control of the reform from below," and sow "the seeds of a more collective society."35 U.S. officials understood that Guatemala's nationalist revolution was far more likely to spread by example than by force. One State Department official warned in late 1953 that Guatemala threatened the stability of Honduras and El Salvador because "its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; [and] its broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors where similar conditions prevail."36 16
Although Shattered Hope appeared to be the last word on the U.S. intervention in Guatemala, new documentation recently released by the CIA has helped clarify some of the mysteries surrounding its role in overthrowing Arbenz. In 1992 the agency hired the historian Nicholas Cullather to write the official account of PBSUCCESS. The CIA's chief historian, Gerald Haines, also wrote a separate report on the agency's proposed assassination plots against the Arbenz regime. Both studies remained classified until 1997, when the CIA decided to release them as part of its so-called new openness policy. 17
Perhaps the most startling revelation in these new studies is confirmation of earlier reports that the CIA had contemplated assassinating high-ranking officials in the Arbenz administration.37 The CIA originally devised assassination plots as part of PBFORTUNE, the first covert action plan to depose Arbenz. When that operation aborted in 1953, CIA officers drew up hit lists and offered training for Castillo Armas's "K" groups, which had been formed to eliminate prominent Guatemalan leaders during PBSUCCESS. Certain State Department officials considered these proposals for a brief period in April 1954, but they eventually ruled them out as "counterproductive." Unfortunately, censors have removed the names of most officials from Haines's report, so we don't know how high up the plan went or even if the hit list included Arbenz.38 18
Cullather's report, which has since been published by Stanford University Press, offers a close look at PBSUCCESS through the eyes of the intelligence community. Like the postrevisionists, Cullather downplays the role of United Fruit and highlights security concerns. Indeed, it was the CIA rather than the UFCO that persuaded the State Department to pay attention to Guatemala. Agency analysts feared, not that the PGT was going to seize power immediately, but that the land reform offered the Communists an unprecedented opportunity to organize the masses.39 19
The CIA study also offers new evidence regarding two important historical issues. First, why did the agency choose Carlos Castillo Armas instead of Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes or Juan Córdova Cerna to lead the Liberation? According to Cullather, PBSUCCESS officers passed over Ydígoras because they considered the general to be too "ambitious, opportunistic, and unscrupulous." They also scratched Córdova Cerna from the list because he served as legal counsel to United Fruit, which might have given credence to charges of banana imperialism. Castillo Armas, in contrast to the other candidates, appeared more innocent, likeable, and pliable. Aside from anticommunism he had no clear political philosophy, and therefore could be told what to do. The colonel also did not look like the traditional caudillo or strongman. "This is no Latin American dictator with a whip," commented one agency informant.40 20
The second issue concerns the importance of PBSUCCESS to Castillo Armas's victory. In 1990 the historian Frederick Marks tried to revive the "realist" interpretation that the Liberation represented a popular revolution against communism. According to Marks, historians have exaggerated the CIA's role in securing Castillo Armas's victory just as they have underestimated the military achievements of the Liberation army.41 However, Cullather's study verifies the criticisms of Stephen Rabe, who found major flaws in Marks's research, including an excessive reliance on accounts by Castillo Armas's supporters and a failure to consider contradictory evidence.42 Castillo Armas's soldiers did not have rockets or artillery, as Marks claimed, nor did they outfight the Guatemalan army. Castillo Armas did gain some followers as the invasion proceeded, but only in towns where the soldiers met no resistance. These new recruits may actually have been more of a hindrance than an asset because as they had to be fed and equipped.43 21
Some analysts have judged the CIA's air support for Castillo Armas as the crucial component of PBSUCCESS that defeated Arbenz. To demonstrate the importance of air power, numerous studies cite Allen Dulles's comment to President Eisenhower on June 23 that the chances of victory stood at only twenty percent unless he ordered more planes. Richard Bissell considered air support as the most "decisive" factor in Arbenz's downfall.44 Cullather observes, however, that the aircraft did not improve the military situation in the field. He discounts as an "agency legend" the explanation that Arbenz resigned because he had lost his nerve in the face of the air attacks and radio propaganda.45 In truth, the CIA got lucky. There is evidence of incompetence, near misses, and operational fiascoes: the botched attempt to depose Arbenz in 1953 (PBFORTUNE); Castillo Armas's military incompetence; Arbenz's complacency (such as waiting too long to arm the popular militias); major breaches of security (Arbenz's spies penetrated PBSUCCESS); disinformation flops (the Guatemalan press discounted as a fake the cache of Soviet arms planted by the CIA); the dropping of bombs that turned out to be duds; near backfiring of bribery attempts; and staffing the psywar radio operation with untrained illiterate technicians. 22
Considering all of this, Cullather joins many analysts in attributing the downfall of Arbenz to his army's lack of loyalty. Had the high command chosen to fight seriously they could have easily crushed Castillo Armas's ragtag band. Most military officers chose to abandon Arbenz, however, because they had grown weary of the ethnic conflict triggered by the land reform and because they feared that thwarting PBSUCCESS would only invite a much larger U.S. military intervention. The transition between Arbenz and Castillo Armas represented, in reality, a military coup, not a mass-based revolution against communism.46 23
One might be tempted to conclude from this lengthy review of the U.S. intervention in Guatemala that the topic has been exhausted. But historiography also teaches that our interpretation of momentous events can change slightly or dramatically as new evidence becomes available or as the popularity of certain historical theories rise and fall. There are still major gaps in the historical record that would be worth filling. Certain portions of the U.S. documentary record remain classified or sanitized, and the United Fruit Company has yet to open its archives. Still, it might be useful to take stock of the debate, because certain interpretations can be laid to rest. The Soviet Union did not control Guatemala in 1954, nor were local Communists on the verge of seizing power. The Liberation never would have succeeded without PBSUCCESS, which is not to say that Arbenz would have remained in power indefinitely. The historian Jim Handy, for example, has shown that many military officers had become disturbed over Arbenz's land reform for both personal and ideological reasons. Plotting against Arbenz had begun in early 1954, and it seems likely that Arbenz would have fallen regardless of the U.S. intervention.47 The original revisionist claim that United Fruit masterminded Arbenz's defeat also appears untenable. Company's records, if they ever become available, are unlikely to provide the smoking gun. If the UFCO was so important, then why is there so little evidence of its influence in the U.S. declassified record? It is possible, of course, that key documents are still being withheld from researchers, but there is no longer any reason to protect the company. Immediately after PBSUCCESS concluded, the Eisenhower administration permitted the Justice Department to proceed with a long delayed antitrust suit against United Fruit that weakened its monopoly and contributed to the company's eventual disintegration. 24
If there is any controversy left, it will probably continue to revolve around the reasons for the Eisenhower administration's decision to topple Arbenz. For some scholars, it may seem pointless to try and rank the causes of the intervention. "To emphasize either strategic or economic motives in analyzing U.S. policies toward Guatemala," the historian Stephen G. Rabe has written, "is perhaps to draw distinctions without differences."48 But for others, the Eisenhower administration's motivation for intervening in Guatemala bears directly on the issue of American responsibility for the violence that engulfed the country after Arbenz's departure. Between 1954 and 1994 Guatemala experienced a gruesome civil war that left more than 150,000 dead.49 The scholar Robert Pastor exculpates Washington for this tragedy; the policymakers who engineered PBSUCCESS were honest, sincere, and well-intentioned men, even if they were wrong to regard Arbenz as a Communist. To Piero Gleijeses, however, the Eisenhower administration's pursued its hegemonic objectives in Guatemala without regard for the fate of the Guatemalan people. U.S. officials stand guilty, in his words, of "wanton criminal negligence."50 25
Like the longstanding controversy over the origins of the Cold War, the debate over the U.S. intervention in Guatemala is not likely to be resolved solely by the discovery of new documents. What is known now about PBSUCCESS is so vastly superior to the evidence available forty years ago that historians can concentrate more on interpreting the evidence than on uncovering more of it. Advancements in historical interpretation usually depend on the discovery of new sources and/or new theoretical approaches. In this case, the historical literature on the U.S. intervention in Guatemala has matured to the point where it is now possible to narrate fairly clearly the series of events that led to Arbenz's downfall. Much more contentious will be how to deconstruct this story now that the Cold War is over. 26
Notes
1 For definitions of realism and revisionism, see Bruce W. Jentleson and Thomas G. Paterson, eds., Encyclopedia of U.S. Foreign Relations (New York, 1997); on postrevisionism see John Lewis Gaddis, "The Emerging Post-revsionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War," Diplomatic History 7 (Summer 1983), 171-190. For the heated debate over revisionism and postrevisionism, see Michael J. Hogan, ed., America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations since 1941 (New York, 1995), pp. 1-155.
2 Text of Holland's address before the Washington Board of Trade Group, undated, Record Group 469, ICA Mission Director Subject Files, box 5, folder: "Information - Speeches 1955," United States National Archives, College Park, MD [hereafter RG].
3 Transcript of a news conference, 8 June 1954, U.S. Department of State, American Foreign Policy, 1950-1955: Basic Documents (Washington, DC, 1957), vol. 1, p. 1310.
4 Translated in embassy despatch 1028, 29 June 1954, RG 59, 714.00/62954.
5 Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo, La intervención norteamericana en guatemala y el derrocamiento del régimen democratico (Guatemala, 1955), p. 1718; Unión Patriotica Guatemalteca letter to Dag Hammarskjold, (translation), 14 November 1956, Lot 60 D 647, Guatemala Subject File (1957, ICA, to 1958, Antillon Hernandez), box 4, folder: "1957 Guatemala United Nations," U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD; Unión Patriotica Guatemalteca, Guatemala contra el imperialismo (Guatemala, 1964), p. 21. For participant accounts with a similar slant, see Guillermo Toriello Garrido, La batalla de Guatemala (Buenos Aires, 1956); Juan José Arévalo, The Shark and the Sardines (New York, 1961).
6 For a summary of Latin American reactions to the Liberation, see Burgin memorandum to Raine, 23 June 1954, RG 59, 714.00/62354.
7 Quoted in Jordan A. Schwarz, Liberal: Adolf A. Berle and the Vision of an American Era (New York, 1987), p. 318.
8 K. H. Silvert, "Guatemala 1955: II-Internal and International Consolidation," American Universities Field Staff Mexico & Caribbean Area Series 3:2 (1956), 8-9.
9 Daniel James, Red Design for the Americas: Guatemalan Prelude (New York, 1954), p. 304, 316; Ronald Schneider, Communism in Guatemala: 1944-1954 (New York, 1958); John D. Martz, Communist Infiltration in Guatemala (New York, 1956).
10 Congreso Continental Anticomunista, El libro negro del comunismo en Guatemala (México, 1954); Jorge del Valle Matheu, La verdad sobre el "caso de Guatemala" (Guatemala,1956); Mario Efraín Nájera Farfán, Los estafadores de la democracia (hombres y hechos en Guatemala) (Buenos Aires, 1956).
11 David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watch (New York, 1977), pp. 35, 53.
12 Julio Castro, Bombas y dolares sobre Guatemala (Montevideo, 1954); Gregorio Selser, El guatemalazo: la primera guerra sucia (Buenos Aires, 1954); Alberto Suarez, La lucha del pueblo de Guatemala contra el imperialismo yanquí (Montevideo, 1954); Raúl Osegueda, Operación Guatemala $$ OK $$ (México, 1955); Manuel Galich, Por qué lucha Guatemala: Arévalo y Arbenz, dos hombres contra un imperio (Buenos Aires, 1956); Julio Castello, Así cayó la democracia en Guatemala: la guerra de la United Fruit (La Habana, 1961); Benjamín Carrión, "Oración fúnebre por la OEA," Cuadernos Americanos 141 (julio-agosto 1965), 25-26. On the United Fruit Company massacres, see K. H. Silvert, "Guatemala 1955: I-Problems of Administration," American Universities Field Staff Mexico & Caribbean Area Series 2:2 (2 February 1956), 56; Comité de Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, La violencia en Guatemala: dramática y documentada denuncia sobre "El tercer gobierno de la revolución," la "democracia" de Mendez Montenegro (México, 1969), pp. 13-14; Ricardo Falla, Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcán Guatemala (Boulder, CO, 1994), p. 56; Jim Handy, Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944-1954 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1994), p. 194.
13 Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, My War with Communism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1963), pp. 49-50.
14 Thomas P. McCann, An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit (New York, 1976), 58-59; Edward L. Bernays, Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of a Public Relations Counsel (New York, 1965), pp. 762-66.
15 William Appleman Williams, Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York, 1972); Richard J. Barnet, Intervention and Revolution: The United States in the Third World (New York, 1968); Joyce Kolko and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954 (New York, 1972).
16 Mark Berger, Under Northern Eyes: Latin American Studies and U.S. Hegemony in the Americas (Bloomington, IN, 1995), pp. 113-14.
17 José Aybar de Soto, Dependency and Intervention: The Case of Guatemala in 1954 (Boulder, CO, 1979), p. 237.
18 Suzanne Jonas and David Tobis, eds. Guatemala (Berkeley, CA, 1974), pp. 64-65.
19 Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Garden City, NY, 1982), pp. 106, 120. This edition is now out of print, but in 1999 Harvard University Press reissued the study with a new introduction by Latin American historian John Coatsworth and a new afterward by Stephen Kinzer.
20 Jim Miller of Newsweek, back cover of the first paperback edition of Bitter Fruit.
21 Hugo Murillo Jiménez, "La intervención norteamericana en Guatemala en 1954, dos interpretaciones recientes," Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos [Costa Rica] 11:2 (1985), 154.
22 Richard M. Bissell, Jr., Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs (New Haven, CT, 1996), p. 90.
23 Adolf A. Berle, Navigating the Rapids, 1918-1971, eds. Beatrice Bishop Berle and Travis Beal Jacobs (New York, 1973), p. 616.
24 Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin, TX, 1982), pp. ix, 182-86.
25 Stephen G. Rabe, "Eisenhower Revisionism: A Decade of Scholarship," Diplomatic History 17 (Winter 1993), 112-13; Thomas M. Leonard, "Nationalism or Communism? The Truman Administration and Guatemala 1945-1952," Journal of Third World Studies 7 (Spring 1990), 169-91.
26 Cole Blasier, Hovering Giant: U.S. Response to Revolutionary Change in Latin America (Pittsburgh, 1985), pp. 221, 229.
27 Martin J. Medhurst, Robert L. Ivie, and Robert L. Scott, Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor, and Ideology (New York, 1990), pp. 157-163.
28 Martha L. Cottam, Images and Intervention: U.S. Policies in Latin America (Pittsburgh, 1994), p. 40.
29 Kenneth Lehman, "Revolutions and Attributions: Making Sense of Eisenhower Administration Policies in Bolivia and Guatemala," Diplomatic History 21 (Spring 1997), 213; Alex Roberto Hybel, How Leaders Reason: U.S. Intervention in the Caribbean Basin and Latin America (Oxford, UK, 1990), p. 68.
30 Noam Chomsky, "What Directions for the Disarmament Movement? Interventionism and Nuclear War" in Beyond Survival: New Directions for the Disarmament Movement, eds. Michael Albert and David Dellinger (Boston, 1983), p. 293.
31 Ronald W. Pruessen, "Revisionism 2," Radical History Review 33 (September 1985), 162.
32 Sally Marks, "The World According to Washington," Diplomatic History 11 (Summer 1987), 265-82.
33 Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, p. 4.
34 National Intelligence Estimate 84, 19 May 1953, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-1954 (Washington, DC, 1984), vol. 4, pp. 1064, 1700.
35 Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, p. 152.
36 Quoted in ibid., p. 365.
37 William Corson, The Armies of Ignorance: The Rise of the American Intelligence Empire (New York, 1977), p. 356.
38 Gerald K. Haines, "CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals 1952-1954," RG 263, CIA History Staff Analysis, June 1995, box 1, National Archives, College Park, MD.
39 Nicholas Cullather, Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operation in Guatemala, 1952-1954 (Stanford, CA, 1999), pp. 24-27.
40 Ibid., pp. 49-50.
41 Frederick W. Marks III, "The CIA and Castillo Armas in Guatemala, 1954: New Clues to an Old Puzzle," Diplomatic History 14 (Winter 1990), 67-86.
42 Stephen G. Rabe, "The Clues Didn't Check Out: Commentary on 'The CIA and Castillo Armas'" Diplomatic History 14 (Winter 1990): 87-96.
43 Cullather, Secret History, pp. 72, 96.
44 Ibid., 75-76; Bissell, Reflections, p. 86.
45 Cullather, Secret History, pp. 97-99.
46 Handy, Revolution in the Countryside, pp. 184-90; Neale J. Pearson, "Guatemala: The Peasant Union Movement, 1944-1954" in Latin American Peasant Movements, ed. Henry Landsberger (Ithaca, NY, 1969), pp. 323-73; Philip B. Taylor, "Guatemala Affair: A Critique of U.S. Foreign Policy," American Political Science Review 50 (September 1956), 787-806; Francisco Villagrán Kramer, Biografía política de Guatemala: los pactos de 1944 a 1970 (Guatemala, 1993), p. 150. Susanne Jonas, who originally placed most of the emphasis for Arbenz's defeat on the U.S. intervention, now concedes that the army played a vital role. Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power (Boulder, CO, 1991), p. 36.
47 Jim Handy, "'A Sea of Indians': Ethnic Conflict and the Guatemalan Revolution, 1944-1954," The Americas 66 (October 1989), 203. For similar perspectives, see Edelberto Torres-Rivas, "Crisis y coyuntura crítica: La caída de Arbenz y los contratiempos de la revolución burguesa," Revista Mexicana de Sociología 41 (enero-marzo 1979), 298; Pruessen, "Revisionism 2," 161.
48 Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (Austin, TX, 1988), pp. 59-60. For similar views, see James Dunkerley, Political Suicide in Latin America (London, 1992), p. 105; Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy (Garden City, NY, 1981), p. 231.
49 Stephen M. Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala, 1954-1961 (Ohio University Press, forthcoming).
50 Cullather, Secret History, pp. xxviii-xxix.
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Let's Bomb Iran
Ein satirisches Video, welches einen möglichen Militärschlag gegen den Iran vorwegnimmt.
Monday, December 11, 2006
We
Arundhati Roy
In 1997 Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize for her novel "The God of Small Things". In ... Alle » 2004 she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize.
The film examines the widely unregarded worlds of Anthropology and Geopolitics in a very dynamic manner, and is probably stylistically quite unlike any documentary that you have previously seen.
It covers the world politics of power, war, corporations, deception and exploitation. It is particularly hard hitting when it comes to the United States and western powers in general.
Its unconventional style has proven to be very successful in engaging younger viewers - many of whom find more traditional content dealing with these subjects quite dry and uninteresting. It is almost in the style of a music video, featuring contemporary music (lush, curve, love & rockets, boards of canada, nine inch nails, dead can dance, amon tobin, massive attack, totoise, telepop, placebo and faith less) overlaid with the words of Arundhati Roy, and images of humanity and the world we live in today.
In 1997 Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize for her novel "The God of Small Things". In ... Alle » 2004 she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize.
The film examines the widely unregarded worlds of Anthropology and Geopolitics in a very dynamic manner, and is probably stylistically quite unlike any documentary that you have previously seen.
It covers the world politics of power, war, corporations, deception and exploitation. It is particularly hard hitting when it comes to the United States and western powers in general.
Its unconventional style has proven to be very successful in engaging younger viewers - many of whom find more traditional content dealing with these subjects quite dry and uninteresting. It is almost in the style of a music video, featuring contemporary music (lush, curve, love & rockets, boards of canada, nine inch nails, dead can dance, amon tobin, massive attack, totoise, telepop, placebo and faith less) overlaid with the words of Arundhati Roy, and images of humanity and the world we live in today.
Arundhati Roy
This clip is a reflection of the political rhetoric that the U.S. government uses in the post 9/11 world. Arundhati Roy is the recipient ... Alle » of the 2004 Sydney Peace Prize & author of Booker prize-winning novel “The God of Small Things”.
The clip also discusses the U.S. role in the Chilean tragedy on 9/11/1973, where a U.S. backed coup led to the assassination of Salvador Allende and the imprisonment of thousands of non-violent political supporters.
For the full length feature of this film, visit www.archiveoflight.com. «
Weiteres Videomaterial unter archiveoflight.com
The clip also discusses the U.S. role in the Chilean tragedy on 9/11/1973, where a U.S. backed coup led to the assassination of Salvador Allende and the imprisonment of thousands of non-violent political supporters.
For the full length feature of this film, visit www.archiveoflight.com. «
Weiteres Videomaterial unter archiveoflight.com
United States intervention in Chil
The United States intervened in Chile's politics several times, including before and after Salvador Allende's election. The Marxist presidential candidate Salvador Allende was a top contender in the 1964 election, and the U.S., through the CIA, spent millions campaigning against him, mostly through radio and print advertising. Allende was defeated. Allende ran again in the 1970 presidential election, winning a plurality (near 37%), and was duly invested as President. The U.S. again used covert methods to discourage his election; further U.S. covert operations attempted to promote a military coup and thus to prevent Allende's inauguration. U.S. president Richard Nixon stated his fear that Chile could become "another Cuba", and the U.S. cut off most of its foreign aid to Chile and actively supported Allende's opponents in Chile during his presidency, intending to encourage Allende's resignation, his overthrow, or his defeat in the impending election of 1976. [1].
While the Nixon administration was clearly gratified by the Chilean coup of 1973, in which Allende died and Augusto Pinochet rose to power, several separate investigations (including the Church Commission Report) have concluded that it is likely that the U.S. had no direct role in bringing it about. [2]
Contents
1964 and 1970 elections
According to the 1975 Church Commission Report, covert United States involvement in Chile in the decade between 1963 and 1973 was extensive and continuous. The Central Intelligence Agency covertly spent three million dollars in an effort to influence the outcome of the 1964 Chilean presidential elections [3], and eight million dollars in the three years between 1970 and the military coup in September 1973, with over three million in fiscal year 1972 alone. Covert American activity was present in almost every major election in Chile in the decade between 1963 and 1973, but its actual effect on electoral outcomes is not altogether clear. Chile, more than any of its South American neighbors, had an extensive democratic tradition dating back to the early 1930s, and even before. Because of this, it is difficult to gauge how successful CIA tactics were in swaying voters.
1970
Efforts by the U.S. government to prevent Allende from taking office after his 1970 election are documented in U.S. materials declassified during the Clinton administration. For example, a formal instruction was issued on 16 October 1970 to the CIA base in Chile, saying in part, "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end, utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [United States Government] and American hand be well hidden..." [4], [Karamessines, 1970]
Immediately after the Allende government came into office, the U.S. sought to place economic pressure on Chile. U.S. National Security Council documents, later ordered released by U.S. President Bill Clinton [5], include decision memorandum no. 93, dated November 9, 1970, written by Kissinger and addressed to the heads of diplomatic, defense and intelligence departments. This document stated that pressure should be placed on the Allende government to prevent its consolidation and limit its ability to implement policies contrary to U.S. and hemispheric interests, such as Allende's total nationalization of several foreign corporations and the copper industry. Specifically, Nixon directed that no new bilateral economic aid commitments be undertaken with the government of Chile [Kissinger, 1970].
Between 1964 and 1970 (under Frei), over USD $1 billion in economic assistance flowed in; during the Allende's tenure (1970-73) disbursements were non-existent or negligible [Petras & Morley, 1974]. The reduction in aid combined with the fall in the value of copper from a 1970 high of $66 to a low of $48 per ton, which undermined Allende's proposed restructuring of the Chilean economy. As the program was dependent on government spending, this caused a decline in the socioeconomic circumstances of Chile's poorest citizens.
However, the U.S. did permit humanitarian aid for Chile in addition to old loans valued at $200 million from 1971-2. The U.S. did not invoke the Hickenlooper Amendment which would have required an immediate cut-off of U.S. aid due to Allende's nationalizations. Allende also received new sources of credit that was valued between $600 and 950 million in 1972 and $547 million by June 1973. The IMF also loaned $100 million to Chile during the Allende years.[2]
U.S. officials ordered measures up to and including support for a potential coup to prevent Allende from taking office, although there are conflicting views as to whether the U.S. later pulled back from this position. That the U.S. planned a potential coup in Chile is evident in a secret cable from Thomas Karamessines, the CIA Deputy Director of Plans, to the Santiago CIA station, dated October 16, 1970, after the election but before Allende's inauguration. "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup ... it is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [United States Government] and American hand be well hidden" [Karamessines, 1970].
Track I and II
Once it became clear that Allende had won a plurality of the votes in 1970, the CIA proposed two plans. Track I was designed to persuade the Chilean Congress, through outgoing Christian Democratic President Eduardo Frei, to confirm conservative runner-up Jorge Alessandri as president. Alessandri would resign shortly after, rendering Frei eligible to run against Allende in new elections. However, Track I was dropped, because Frei, despite being firmly anti-Allende, was also adamantly opposed to going against Chile's longstanding democratic traditions.
The CIA had also drawn up a second plan, Track II, in case Track I failed. The agency would find generals willing to prevent Allende from assuming the presidency and provide them with support for a coup. Presumably, a provisional military junta could then call new elections in which Allende could be defeated.
In September 1970, President Nixon informed the CIA that an Allende regime in Chile would not be acceptable and authorized $10 million to stop Allende from coming to power or unseat him. As part of the Track II initiative, the CIA tried to convince key Chilean military officers to carry out a coup. [3]
The killing of the Army Commander-in-chief
The kidnapping and death of General René Schneider shocked the public and increased support of the Chilean Constitution. Schneider was the army chief commander and a constitutionalist, which meant he would not support a coup. The CIA in Santiago kept contact with two groups inside the military and provided guns and money for kidnapping Schneider, but he was killed inside his car during the operation. This incident caused the citizens and the military to rally behind the just-elected Allende.
Originally the agency came into contact with General Roberto Viaux, who was planning a coup with loyal military officers. An important part of Viaux's plan was to kidnap Chilean Army Chief of Staff General René Schneider, who, as a constitutionalist, was opposed to the idea of a coup from a historically apolitical military. The CIA maintained contact with Viaux, but eventually decided against supporting his plot, instead looking for other generals willing to take part in a coup. About the Viaux situation, Kissinger said to Nixon on October 15, 1970, "This looks hopeless. I turned it off. Nothing would be worse than an abortive coup."
However, on October 22, Viaux went ahead with his plan, which was badly botched. Gen. Schneider drew a handgun to protect himself from his attackers, who in turn drew their guns and shot him in four vital areas; he died in Santiago's military hospital three days later. The event provoked national outrage. As far as American involvement, the Church Committee, which investigated U.S. involvement in Chile during this period, determined that the weapons used in the debacle "were, in all probability, not those supplied by the CIA to the conspirators."
On September 10, 2001, a suit was filed by the family of Schneider, accusing former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger of arranging Schneider's 1970 murder because he would have opposed a military coup [6]. However, CIA documents indicate that while the CIA had sought his kidnapping, his killing, which was committed by a rebel military group led by General Roberto Viaux that had been in contact with the CIA, was never intended. Kissinger declared the coup "hopeless" and said he "turned it off".[2] By contrast, CIA officials, especially Thomas Karamessines, deputy director of plans, said they operated before and after October 15 with knowledge and approval of the White House.[4] The CIA maintained contacts with the group in the lead-up to and after Schneider's death, and they continued with preparations for a Track Two coup. Weapons to a group led by General Camilo Valenzuela were given in October 22.[2]
1973
Main article: Chilean coup of 1973
While U.S. government hostility to the Allende government is unquestioned, the U.S. role in the coup itself remains a highly controversial matter. Claims of their direct involvement in the actual coup are neither proven nor contradicted by publicly available documentary evidence; many potentially relevant documents still remain classified. Regarding Pinochet's rise to power, the CIA undertook a comprehensive analysis of its records and individual memoirs as well as conducting interviews with former agents, and concluded in a report issued in 2000 that the CIA "did not assist Pinochet to assume the Presidency." [7]
The CIA was notified by contacts of the impending Pinochet coup two days in advance, but contends it "played no direct role in" the coup. On September 16, 1973, after Pinochet had assumed power, the following exchange about the coup took place between U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon:
Nixon: Nothing new of any importance or is there?
Kissinger: Nothing of very great consequence. The Chilean thing is getting consolidated and of course the newspapers are bleeding because a pro-Communist government has been overthrown.
Nixon: Isn't that something. Isn't that something.
Kissinger: I mean instead of celebrating – in the Eisenhower period we would be heroes.
Nixon: Well we didn't – as you know – our hand doesn't show on this one though.
Kissinger: We didn't do it. I mean we helped them. [Garbled] created the conditions as great as possible.
Nixon: That is right. And that is the way it is going to be played.[5]
The coup, regardless of the degree of U.S. involvement, achieved the U.S. government's objective of eliminating democratically elected Salvador Allende.
Chilean coup of 1973
There is no evidence that the U.S. directly backed Pinochet's successful coup in 1973, but the Nixon administration was undoubtedly pleased with the outcome; Nixon had spoken with disappointment about the failed coup earlier that year. Had Allende managed to complete his six-year term, the CIA would likely have simply provided funds and propaganda support to a non-Marxist opponent, as it had done in 1964 and 1970.
The U.S. did provide material support to the military regime after the coup, although it criticized them in public. A document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000 titled "CIA Activities in Chile" revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military, even though some were known to be involved in human rights abuses.[6] The CIA's publicly announced policies on paid informants have since been modified to exclude those involved in such abuses, but at the time they were evaluated on a case-by-case basis and measured with the value of the information they provided.
The documents produced by various U.S. agencies were provided by the US State Department in October 1999. The collection of 1,100 documents dealt with the years leading up to the military coup. One of these documents establishes that U.S. military aid was raised dramatically between the coming to power of Allende in 1970, when it amounted to USD $800,000 annually, to $10.9 million in 1972. The U.S. government supported Pinochet's government after he came to power.
The CIA also had provided funding and propaganda support to political opponents of Allende in the 1964 and 1970 Chilean presidential elections, as well as during the Allende administration.
The U.S. government under Richard Nixon never hid its dislike of the Allende regime, so they could hardly have been expected to render Allende active support. Whether the United States' economic policy towards Chile caused the economic crisis or merely aggravated what was already an intractable situation for Allende is unclear. It is realistic to remark that these policies did adversely affect Allende's chances of alleviating the crisis.
The coup, regardless of the degree of U.S. involvement, achieved the U.S. government objective of eradicating the perceived threat of socialism in Chile and brought about a regime sympathetic to their own interests. In her evaluation of United States foreign policy around the time of the coup in Chile, Jeane Kirkpatrick, later U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, highlighted her country's lack of overt aggressiveness in the developing world while events were transpiring in Chile. "In the last decade especially we have practiced remarkable forbearance everywhere." [Kirkpatrick, 1979] While this is the case for overt U.S. policy, severely constrained by the movement that had grown up in opposition to the Vietnam War, nonetheless, as discussed above, at the very least United States policy regarding aid helped lead to Allende's downfall and the U.S. at some times actively supported coup planning, although possibly not that of the coup that actually occurred.
Support for Pinochet
See also: Operation Condor
deutsch
Siehe auch: Operation Condor: Cable Suggests U.S. Role
The U.S. provided material support to the military regime after the coup, although criticizing it in public. A document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000, titled "CIA Activities in Chile", revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military, even though some were known to be involved in human rights abuses.[6]
CIA documents show that the CIA had close contact with members of the Chilean secret police, DINA, and its chief Manuel Contreras (paid asset from 1975 to 1977 according to the CIA in 2000). Some have alleged that the CIA's one-time payment to Contreras is proof that the U.S. approved of Operation Condor and military repression within Chile. The CIA's official documents state that at one time, some members of the intelligence community recommended making Contreras into a paid contact because of his closeness to Pinochet; the plan was rejected based on Contreras' poor human rights track record, but the single payment was made due to miscommunication. [8]
On March 6, 2001, the New York Times reported the existence of a recently declassified State Department document revealing that the United States facilitated communications for Operation Condor. The document, a 1978 cable from Robert E. White, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, was discovered by Professor J. Patrice McSherry of Long Island University, who had published several articles on Operation Condor. She called the cable "another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor." [7]
In the cable, Ambassador White relates a conversation with General Alejandro Fretes Davalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who told him that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America". This installation is "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries". White, whose message was sent to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, was concerned that the US connection to Condor might be revealed during the then ongoing investigation into the deaths of Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt. "It would seem advisable," he suggests, "to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in US interest."
The document was found among 16,000 State, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Department records released in November 2000 on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington's role in the violent coup that brought his military regime to power. The release was the fourth and final batch of records released under the Clinton Administration's special Chile Declassification Project.
Later comments and actions by U.S. officials
In her evaluation of United States foreign policy around the time of the coup in Chile, Jeane Kirkpatrick, later U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, highlighted her country's lack of overt aggressiveness in the developing world while events were transpiring in Chile. "In the last decade especially we have practiced remarkable forbearance everywhere." [Kirkpatrick, 1979] While this is the case for overt U.S. policy, severely constrained by the movement that had grown up in opposition to the Vietnam War, nonetheless, as discussed above, United States policy regarding aid (at the very least) helped lead to Allende's downfall, and the U.S. actively supported coup planning on some occasions, although possibly not that of the coup that actually took place.
U.S. President Bill Clinton ordered the release of numerous documents relating to U.S. policy and actions toward Chile. [9] The documents produced by various U.S. agencies were opened to the public by the US State Department in October 1999. The collection of 1,100 documents dealt with the years leading up to the military coup. One of these documents establishes that U.S. military aid to the Chilean armed forces was raised dramatically between the coming to power of Allende in 1970, when it amounted to US$800,000 annually, to US$10.9 million in 1972.
In a 2003 interview on the U.S. Black Entertainment Television network, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked about why the United States saw itself as the "moral superior" in the Iraq conflict, citing the Chilean coup as an example of U.S. intervention that went against the wishes of the local population. Powell responded: "With respect to your earlier comments about Chile in the 1970s and what happened with Mr. Allende, it is not a part of American history that we're proud of." Chilean newspapers hailed the news as the first time the U.S. government had conceded a role in the affair.
2004 investigation
The lower house of the Chilean Congress announced on October 6, 2004 that an investigation would begin of alleged CIA activities in Chile over a period of several decades. Of particular interest are the CIA's efforts to prevent Allende's election in 1970. [10]
Quotes
* "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." — Henry Kissinger [8]
* "Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." — Edward M. Korry, U.S. Ambassador to Chile, upon hearing of Allende's election. [cite this quote]
* "Make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him" — Richard Nixon, orders to CIA director Richard Helms on September 15, 1970.[9]
* "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end, utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand be well hidden..." — A communique to the CIA base in Chile, issued on October 16, 1970[10]
* "I think this is in the best interest of the people in Chile, and, certainly, in our best interest." - Gerald Ford at a presidential news conference in reference to U.S. operations in Chile.[11]
References
1. ^ Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973 by Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive
2. ^ a b c Falcoff, Mark, "Kissinger and Chile", FrontPageMag.com, November 10, 2003.
3. ^ Hinchey Report CIA Activities in Chile. September 18, 2000. Accessed online 18 November 2006.
4. ^ See Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (1975), pages 246-247 and 250-254.
5. ^ The Kissinger Telcons: Kissinger Telcons on Chile, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 123, edited by Peter Kornbluh, posted May 26, 2004. This particular dialogue can be found at TELCON: September 16, 1973, 11:50 a.m. Kissinger Talking to Nixon. Accessed online November 26, 2006.
6. ^ a b Peter Kornbluh, CIA Acknowledges Ties to Pinochet’s Repression Report to Congress Reveals U.S. Accountability in Chile, Chile Documentation Project, National Security Archive, September 19, 2000. Accessed online November 26, 2006.
7. ^ Operation Condor: Cable suggests U.S. role, National Security Archive, March 6, 2001. Accessed online November 26, 2006.
8. ^ Cited in "The United States and Chili: Roots and Branches" Foreign Affairs Magazine Jan 1975 [1]
9. ^ Document reproduced as part of George Washington University's National Security Archive. Accessed online 22 September 2006.
10. ^ Document reproduced as part of George Washington University's National Security Archive. Accessed online 22 September 2006.
Notes
* Thomas Karamessines (1970). Operating guidance cable on coup plotting in Chile, Washington: National Security Council.
* Jeane Kirkpatrick (1979). "Dictatorships and Double Standards", Commentary, November, pp34-45.
* Henry Kissinger (1970). National Security Decision 93: Policy Towards Chile, Washington: National Security Council.
* James F. Petras & Morris H. Morley (1974). How Allende fell: A study in U.S.–Chilean relations, Nottingham: Spokesman Books.
While the Nixon administration was clearly gratified by the Chilean coup of 1973, in which Allende died and Augusto Pinochet rose to power, several separate investigations (including the Church Commission Report) have concluded that it is likely that the U.S. had no direct role in bringing it about. [2]
Contents
1964 and 1970 elections
According to the 1975 Church Commission Report, covert United States involvement in Chile in the decade between 1963 and 1973 was extensive and continuous. The Central Intelligence Agency covertly spent three million dollars in an effort to influence the outcome of the 1964 Chilean presidential elections [3], and eight million dollars in the three years between 1970 and the military coup in September 1973, with over three million in fiscal year 1972 alone. Covert American activity was present in almost every major election in Chile in the decade between 1963 and 1973, but its actual effect on electoral outcomes is not altogether clear. Chile, more than any of its South American neighbors, had an extensive democratic tradition dating back to the early 1930s, and even before. Because of this, it is difficult to gauge how successful CIA tactics were in swaying voters.
1970
Efforts by the U.S. government to prevent Allende from taking office after his 1970 election are documented in U.S. materials declassified during the Clinton administration. For example, a formal instruction was issued on 16 October 1970 to the CIA base in Chile, saying in part, "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end, utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [United States Government] and American hand be well hidden..." [4], [Karamessines, 1970]
Immediately after the Allende government came into office, the U.S. sought to place economic pressure on Chile. U.S. National Security Council documents, later ordered released by U.S. President Bill Clinton [5], include decision memorandum no. 93, dated November 9, 1970, written by Kissinger and addressed to the heads of diplomatic, defense and intelligence departments. This document stated that pressure should be placed on the Allende government to prevent its consolidation and limit its ability to implement policies contrary to U.S. and hemispheric interests, such as Allende's total nationalization of several foreign corporations and the copper industry. Specifically, Nixon directed that no new bilateral economic aid commitments be undertaken with the government of Chile [Kissinger, 1970].
Between 1964 and 1970 (under Frei), over USD $1 billion in economic assistance flowed in; during the Allende's tenure (1970-73) disbursements were non-existent or negligible [Petras & Morley, 1974]. The reduction in aid combined with the fall in the value of copper from a 1970 high of $66 to a low of $48 per ton, which undermined Allende's proposed restructuring of the Chilean economy. As the program was dependent on government spending, this caused a decline in the socioeconomic circumstances of Chile's poorest citizens.
However, the U.S. did permit humanitarian aid for Chile in addition to old loans valued at $200 million from 1971-2. The U.S. did not invoke the Hickenlooper Amendment which would have required an immediate cut-off of U.S. aid due to Allende's nationalizations. Allende also received new sources of credit that was valued between $600 and 950 million in 1972 and $547 million by June 1973. The IMF also loaned $100 million to Chile during the Allende years.[2]
U.S. officials ordered measures up to and including support for a potential coup to prevent Allende from taking office, although there are conflicting views as to whether the U.S. later pulled back from this position. That the U.S. planned a potential coup in Chile is evident in a secret cable from Thomas Karamessines, the CIA Deputy Director of Plans, to the Santiago CIA station, dated October 16, 1970, after the election but before Allende's inauguration. "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup ... it is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [United States Government] and American hand be well hidden" [Karamessines, 1970].
Track I and II
Once it became clear that Allende had won a plurality of the votes in 1970, the CIA proposed two plans. Track I was designed to persuade the Chilean Congress, through outgoing Christian Democratic President Eduardo Frei, to confirm conservative runner-up Jorge Alessandri as president. Alessandri would resign shortly after, rendering Frei eligible to run against Allende in new elections. However, Track I was dropped, because Frei, despite being firmly anti-Allende, was also adamantly opposed to going against Chile's longstanding democratic traditions.
The CIA had also drawn up a second plan, Track II, in case Track I failed. The agency would find generals willing to prevent Allende from assuming the presidency and provide them with support for a coup. Presumably, a provisional military junta could then call new elections in which Allende could be defeated.
In September 1970, President Nixon informed the CIA that an Allende regime in Chile would not be acceptable and authorized $10 million to stop Allende from coming to power or unseat him. As part of the Track II initiative, the CIA tried to convince key Chilean military officers to carry out a coup. [3]
The killing of the Army Commander-in-chief
The kidnapping and death of General René Schneider shocked the public and increased support of the Chilean Constitution. Schneider was the army chief commander and a constitutionalist, which meant he would not support a coup. The CIA in Santiago kept contact with two groups inside the military and provided guns and money for kidnapping Schneider, but he was killed inside his car during the operation. This incident caused the citizens and the military to rally behind the just-elected Allende.
Originally the agency came into contact with General Roberto Viaux, who was planning a coup with loyal military officers. An important part of Viaux's plan was to kidnap Chilean Army Chief of Staff General René Schneider, who, as a constitutionalist, was opposed to the idea of a coup from a historically apolitical military. The CIA maintained contact with Viaux, but eventually decided against supporting his plot, instead looking for other generals willing to take part in a coup. About the Viaux situation, Kissinger said to Nixon on October 15, 1970, "This looks hopeless. I turned it off. Nothing would be worse than an abortive coup."
However, on October 22, Viaux went ahead with his plan, which was badly botched. Gen. Schneider drew a handgun to protect himself from his attackers, who in turn drew their guns and shot him in four vital areas; he died in Santiago's military hospital three days later. The event provoked national outrage. As far as American involvement, the Church Committee, which investigated U.S. involvement in Chile during this period, determined that the weapons used in the debacle "were, in all probability, not those supplied by the CIA to the conspirators."
On September 10, 2001, a suit was filed by the family of Schneider, accusing former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger of arranging Schneider's 1970 murder because he would have opposed a military coup [6]. However, CIA documents indicate that while the CIA had sought his kidnapping, his killing, which was committed by a rebel military group led by General Roberto Viaux that had been in contact with the CIA, was never intended. Kissinger declared the coup "hopeless" and said he "turned it off".[2] By contrast, CIA officials, especially Thomas Karamessines, deputy director of plans, said they operated before and after October 15 with knowledge and approval of the White House.[4] The CIA maintained contacts with the group in the lead-up to and after Schneider's death, and they continued with preparations for a Track Two coup. Weapons to a group led by General Camilo Valenzuela were given in October 22.[2]
1973
Main article: Chilean coup of 1973
While U.S. government hostility to the Allende government is unquestioned, the U.S. role in the coup itself remains a highly controversial matter. Claims of their direct involvement in the actual coup are neither proven nor contradicted by publicly available documentary evidence; many potentially relevant documents still remain classified. Regarding Pinochet's rise to power, the CIA undertook a comprehensive analysis of its records and individual memoirs as well as conducting interviews with former agents, and concluded in a report issued in 2000 that the CIA "did not assist Pinochet to assume the Presidency." [7]
The CIA was notified by contacts of the impending Pinochet coup two days in advance, but contends it "played no direct role in" the coup. On September 16, 1973, after Pinochet had assumed power, the following exchange about the coup took place between U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon:
Nixon: Nothing new of any importance or is there?
Kissinger: Nothing of very great consequence. The Chilean thing is getting consolidated and of course the newspapers are bleeding because a pro-Communist government has been overthrown.
Nixon: Isn't that something. Isn't that something.
Kissinger: I mean instead of celebrating – in the Eisenhower period we would be heroes.
Nixon: Well we didn't – as you know – our hand doesn't show on this one though.
Kissinger: We didn't do it. I mean we helped them. [Garbled] created the conditions as great as possible.
Nixon: That is right. And that is the way it is going to be played.[5]
The coup, regardless of the degree of U.S. involvement, achieved the U.S. government's objective of eliminating democratically elected Salvador Allende.
Chilean coup of 1973
There is no evidence that the U.S. directly backed Pinochet's successful coup in 1973, but the Nixon administration was undoubtedly pleased with the outcome; Nixon had spoken with disappointment about the failed coup earlier that year. Had Allende managed to complete his six-year term, the CIA would likely have simply provided funds and propaganda support to a non-Marxist opponent, as it had done in 1964 and 1970.
The U.S. did provide material support to the military regime after the coup, although it criticized them in public. A document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000 titled "CIA Activities in Chile" revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military, even though some were known to be involved in human rights abuses.[6] The CIA's publicly announced policies on paid informants have since been modified to exclude those involved in such abuses, but at the time they were evaluated on a case-by-case basis and measured with the value of the information they provided.
The documents produced by various U.S. agencies were provided by the US State Department in October 1999. The collection of 1,100 documents dealt with the years leading up to the military coup. One of these documents establishes that U.S. military aid was raised dramatically between the coming to power of Allende in 1970, when it amounted to USD $800,000 annually, to $10.9 million in 1972. The U.S. government supported Pinochet's government after he came to power.
The CIA also had provided funding and propaganda support to political opponents of Allende in the 1964 and 1970 Chilean presidential elections, as well as during the Allende administration.
The U.S. government under Richard Nixon never hid its dislike of the Allende regime, so they could hardly have been expected to render Allende active support. Whether the United States' economic policy towards Chile caused the economic crisis or merely aggravated what was already an intractable situation for Allende is unclear. It is realistic to remark that these policies did adversely affect Allende's chances of alleviating the crisis.
The coup, regardless of the degree of U.S. involvement, achieved the U.S. government objective of eradicating the perceived threat of socialism in Chile and brought about a regime sympathetic to their own interests. In her evaluation of United States foreign policy around the time of the coup in Chile, Jeane Kirkpatrick, later U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, highlighted her country's lack of overt aggressiveness in the developing world while events were transpiring in Chile. "In the last decade especially we have practiced remarkable forbearance everywhere." [Kirkpatrick, 1979] While this is the case for overt U.S. policy, severely constrained by the movement that had grown up in opposition to the Vietnam War, nonetheless, as discussed above, at the very least United States policy regarding aid helped lead to Allende's downfall and the U.S. at some times actively supported coup planning, although possibly not that of the coup that actually occurred.
Support for Pinochet
See also: Operation Condor
deutsch
Siehe auch: Operation Condor: Cable Suggests U.S. Role
The U.S. provided material support to the military regime after the coup, although criticizing it in public. A document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000, titled "CIA Activities in Chile", revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military, even though some were known to be involved in human rights abuses.[6]
CIA documents show that the CIA had close contact with members of the Chilean secret police, DINA, and its chief Manuel Contreras (paid asset from 1975 to 1977 according to the CIA in 2000). Some have alleged that the CIA's one-time payment to Contreras is proof that the U.S. approved of Operation Condor and military repression within Chile. The CIA's official documents state that at one time, some members of the intelligence community recommended making Contreras into a paid contact because of his closeness to Pinochet; the plan was rejected based on Contreras' poor human rights track record, but the single payment was made due to miscommunication. [8]
On March 6, 2001, the New York Times reported the existence of a recently declassified State Department document revealing that the United States facilitated communications for Operation Condor. The document, a 1978 cable from Robert E. White, the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay, was discovered by Professor J. Patrice McSherry of Long Island University, who had published several articles on Operation Condor. She called the cable "another piece of increasingly weighty evidence suggesting that U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor." [7]
In the cable, Ambassador White relates a conversation with General Alejandro Fretes Davalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who told him that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America". This installation is "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries". White, whose message was sent to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, was concerned that the US connection to Condor might be revealed during the then ongoing investigation into the deaths of Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Moffitt. "It would seem advisable," he suggests, "to review this arrangement to insure that its continuation is in US interest."
The document was found among 16,000 State, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Department records released in November 2000 on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington's role in the violent coup that brought his military regime to power. The release was the fourth and final batch of records released under the Clinton Administration's special Chile Declassification Project.
Later comments and actions by U.S. officials
In her evaluation of United States foreign policy around the time of the coup in Chile, Jeane Kirkpatrick, later U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, highlighted her country's lack of overt aggressiveness in the developing world while events were transpiring in Chile. "In the last decade especially we have practiced remarkable forbearance everywhere." [Kirkpatrick, 1979] While this is the case for overt U.S. policy, severely constrained by the movement that had grown up in opposition to the Vietnam War, nonetheless, as discussed above, United States policy regarding aid (at the very least) helped lead to Allende's downfall, and the U.S. actively supported coup planning on some occasions, although possibly not that of the coup that actually took place.
U.S. President Bill Clinton ordered the release of numerous documents relating to U.S. policy and actions toward Chile. [9] The documents produced by various U.S. agencies were opened to the public by the US State Department in October 1999. The collection of 1,100 documents dealt with the years leading up to the military coup. One of these documents establishes that U.S. military aid to the Chilean armed forces was raised dramatically between the coming to power of Allende in 1970, when it amounted to US$800,000 annually, to US$10.9 million in 1972.
In a 2003 interview on the U.S. Black Entertainment Television network, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked about why the United States saw itself as the "moral superior" in the Iraq conflict, citing the Chilean coup as an example of U.S. intervention that went against the wishes of the local population. Powell responded: "With respect to your earlier comments about Chile in the 1970s and what happened with Mr. Allende, it is not a part of American history that we're proud of." Chilean newspapers hailed the news as the first time the U.S. government had conceded a role in the affair.
2004 investigation
The lower house of the Chilean Congress announced on October 6, 2004 that an investigation would begin of alleged CIA activities in Chile over a period of several decades. Of particular interest are the CIA's efforts to prevent Allende's election in 1970. [10]
Quotes
* "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." — Henry Kissinger [8]
* "Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." — Edward M. Korry, U.S. Ambassador to Chile, upon hearing of Allende's election. [cite this quote]
* "Make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him" — Richard Nixon, orders to CIA director Richard Helms on September 15, 1970.[9]
* "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end, utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand be well hidden..." — A communique to the CIA base in Chile, issued on October 16, 1970[10]
* "I think this is in the best interest of the people in Chile, and, certainly, in our best interest." - Gerald Ford at a presidential news conference in reference to U.S. operations in Chile.[11]
References
1. ^ Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973 by Peter Kornbluh, National Security Archive
2. ^ a b c Falcoff, Mark, "Kissinger and Chile", FrontPageMag.com, November 10, 2003.
3. ^ Hinchey Report CIA Activities in Chile. September 18, 2000. Accessed online 18 November 2006.
4. ^ See Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (1975), pages 246-247 and 250-254.
5. ^ The Kissinger Telcons: Kissinger Telcons on Chile, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 123, edited by Peter Kornbluh, posted May 26, 2004. This particular dialogue can be found at TELCON: September 16, 1973, 11:50 a.m. Kissinger Talking to Nixon. Accessed online November 26, 2006.
6. ^ a b Peter Kornbluh, CIA Acknowledges Ties to Pinochet’s Repression Report to Congress Reveals U.S. Accountability in Chile, Chile Documentation Project, National Security Archive, September 19, 2000. Accessed online November 26, 2006.
7. ^ Operation Condor: Cable suggests U.S. role, National Security Archive, March 6, 2001. Accessed online November 26, 2006.
8. ^ Cited in "The United States and Chili: Roots and Branches" Foreign Affairs Magazine Jan 1975 [1]
9. ^ Document reproduced as part of George Washington University's National Security Archive. Accessed online 22 September 2006.
10. ^ Document reproduced as part of George Washington University's National Security Archive. Accessed online 22 September 2006.
Notes
* Thomas Karamessines (1970). Operating guidance cable on coup plotting in Chile, Washington: National Security Council.
* Jeane Kirkpatrick (1979). "Dictatorships and Double Standards", Commentary, November, pp34-45.
* Henry Kissinger (1970). National Security Decision 93: Policy Towards Chile, Washington: National Security Council.
* James F. Petras & Morris H. Morley (1974). How Allende fell: A study in U.S.–Chilean relations, Nottingham: Spokesman Books.
Proect FUBELT
Project FUBELT is the codename for the secret CIA operations that were intended to undermine Salvador Allende's government and promote a military coup in Chile.
CIA memoranda and reports on Project FUBELT include meetings between U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CIA officials, CIA cables to its Santiago station, and summaries of secret action in 1970 — detailing decisions and operations against Allende's government.
Alle Dokumente können auf The National Security Archive eingesehen werden.
Genauer Fundort: Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents realating to the Militäary Coup, 1970-1976
CIA, Notes on Meeting with the President Nixon on Chile, September 15, 1970
These handwritten notes, taken by CIA director Richard Helms, record the orders of the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, to foster a coup in Chile:
l in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile!
worth spending
not concerned risks involved
no involvement of embassy
$10,000,000 available, more if necessary
full-time job—best men we have
game plan
make the economy scream
48 hours for plan of action
"Genesis of Project FUBELT" document dated September 16, 1970
These minutes record the first meeting between CIA director Helms and high agency officials on covert operations--codenamed "FUBELT"--against Allende. A special task force under the supervision of CIA deputy director of plans, Thomas Karamessines, is established, headed by veteran agent David Atlee Phillips. The memorandum notes that the CIA must prepare an action plan for National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger within 48 hours.
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
SUBJECT: Genesis of Project FUBELT
1. On this date the Director called a meeting in connection with the Chilean situation. Present in addition to the Director were General Cushman, DDCI; Col. White, ExDir-Compt; Thomas Karamessines, DDP; Cord Meyer, ADDP; William V. Broe, Chief WH [Western Hemisphere] Division; [Name deleted on national security grounds.] Deputy Chief, WH Division, [Name deleted on national security grounds.] Chief, Covert Action, WH Division; and [Name deleted on national security grounds.] Chief, WH/4.
2. The Director told the group that President Nixon had decided that an Allende regime in Chile was not acceptable to the United States.. The President asked the Agency to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him. The President authorized ten million dollars for this purpose, if needed. Further, The Agency is to carry out this mission without coordination with the Departments of State or Defense.
3. During the meeting it was decided that Mr. Thomas Karamessines, DDP, would have overall responsibility for this project. He would be assisted by a special task force set up for this purpose in the Western Hemisphere Division. [Sentences deleted on national security grounds.]
4. Col. White was asked by the Director to make all necessary support arrangements in connection with the project.
5. The Director said he had been asked by Dr. Henry Kissinger, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, to meet with him on Friday, 18 September to give him the Agency’s views on how this mission could be accomplished.
William V. Broe
Chief
Western Hemisphere Division
SECRET/SENSITIVE
EYES ONLY
CIA, Memorandum of Conversation of Meeting with Henry Kissinger, October 15, 1970
This memo records a discussion of promoting a coup in Chile, known as "Track II" of covert operations to block Allende:[1]
15 October 1970
MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION:
Dr. Kissinger, Mr. Karamessines, Gen. Haig at the White House—15 October 1970
[Section deleted on national security grounds.]
2. Then Mr. Karamessines provided a run-down on Viaux, the Canales meeting with Tirado, the latter’s new position (after Porta was relieved of command “for health reasons”) and, in some detail, the general situation in Chile from the coup possibility viewpoint.
3. A certain amount of information was available to us concerning Viaux’s alleged support throughout the Chilean military. We had assessed Viaux’s claims carefully, basing our analysis on good intelligence from a number of sources. Our conclusion was clear: Viaux did not have more than one chance in twenty—perhaps less—to launch a successful coup.
4. The unfortunate repercussions, in Chile and internationally, of an unsuccessful coup were discussed. Dr. Kissinger ticked off his list of these negative possibilities. His items were remarkably similar to the ones Mr. Karamessines had prepared.
5. It was decided by those present that the Agency must get a message to Viaux warning him against any precipitate action. In essence our message was to state: “We have reviewed your plans, and based on your information and ours, we come to the conclusion that your plans for a coup at this time cannot succeed. Failing, they may reduce your capabilities for the future. Preserve your assets. We will stay in touch. The time will come when you with all your other friends can do something. You will continue to have our support”.
6. After the decision to de-fuse the Viaux coup plot, at least temporarily, Dr. Kissinger instructed Mr. Karamessines to preserve Agency assets in Chile, working clandestinely and securely to maintain the capability for Agency operations against Allende in the future.
7. Dr. Kissinger discussed his desire that the word of our encouragement to the Chilean military in recent weeks be kept as secret as possible. Mr. Karamessines stated emphatically that we had been doing everything possible in this connection, including the use of false flag officers, car meetings and every conceivable precaution. But we and others had done a great deal of talking recently with a number of persons. For example, Ambassador [Edward] Korry’s wideranging discussions with numerous people urging a coup “cannot be put back into the bottle”. [Sentence deleted on national security grounds.] (Dr. Kissinger requested that copy of the message be sent to him on 16 October.)
8. The meeting concluded on Dr. Kissinger’s note that the Agency should continue keeping the pressure on every Allende weak spot in sight—now, after the 24th of October [the date Allende’s election would be ratified by the Chilean Congress], after 5 November [the date of Allende’s inauguration], and into the future until such time as new marching orders are given. Mr. Karamessines stated that the Agency would comply.
CIA Operating Guidance Cable on Coup Plotting in Chile, October 16, 1970
In a secret cable, CIA deputy director of plans, Thomas Karamessines, conveys Kissinger's orders to CIA station chief in Santiago, Henry Hecksher:
Restricted Handling
Classified Message
CITE Headquarters
Immediate Santiago (Eyes Only)
1. [unintelligible] policy, objectives, and actions were reviewed at high USG level afternoon 15 October. Conclusions, which are to be your operational guide, follow:
2. It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand will be well hidden. While this imposes on us a high degree of selectivity in making military contacts and dictates that these contacts be made in the most secure manner it definitely does not preclude contacts such as reported in Santiago 544 which was a masterful piece of work.
3. After the most careful consideration it was determined that a Viaux coup attempt carried out by him alone with the forces now at his disposal would fail. Thus, it would be counterproductive to our [blacked out] objectives. It was decided that CIA get a message to Viaux warning him against precipitate action. In essence our message is to state, "We have reviewed your plans, and based on your information and ours, we come to the conclusion that your plans for a coup at this time cannot succeed. Failing, they may reduce your capabilities for the future. Preserve your assets. We will stay in touch. The time will come when you together with all your other friends can do something. You will continue to have our support." You are requested to deliver the message to Viaux essentially as noted above. Our objectives are as follows: (A) To advise him of our opinion and discourage him from acting alone; (B) Continue to encourage him to amplify his planning; (C) Encourage him to join forces with other coup planners so that they may act in concert either before or after 24 October. (N.B. six gas masks and six CS canisters are being carried to Santiago by special courier ETD Washington 1100 hours 16 October)
4. There is great and continuing interest in the activities of Tirado, Canales, Valenzuela et al and we wish them optimum good fortune.
5. The above is your operating guidance. No other policy guidance you may receive from [blacked out] or its maximum exponent in Santiago, on his return, are to sway you from your course.
6. Please review all your present and possibly new activities to include propaganda, black operations, surfacing of intelligence or disinformation, personal contacts, or anything else your imagination can conjure which will permit you to continue to press forward toward our [blacked out] objective in a secure manner.
End of message
Siehe auch: CNN
CIA, Cable Transmissions on Coup Plotting, October 18, 1970
These three cables between CIA headquarters in Langley, VA., and the CIA Station in Santiago address the secret shipment of weapons and ammunition for use in a plot to kidnap the Chilean military commander, General René Schneider. "Neutralizing" Schneider was a key prerequisite for a military coup; he opposed any intervention by the armed forces to block Allende's constitutional election. The CIA supplied a group of Chilean officers led by General Camilo Valenzuela with "sterile" weapons for the operation which was to be blamed on Allende supporters and prompt a military takeover. Instead, on October 22, General Schneider was killed by another group of plotters the CIA had been collaborating with, led by retired General Roberto Viaux. Instead of a coup, the military and the country rallied behind Allende's ratification by Chile's Congress on October 24.
(The names are still blacked out for security purposes and cover identities written in by hand - in square brackets)
1. [Station cooptee] met clandestinely evening 17 Oct with [two Chilean armed forces officers] who told him their plans were moving along better than had thought possible. They asked that by evening 18 Oct [cooptee] arrange furnish them with eight to ten tear gas grenades. Within 48 hours they need three 45 calibre machine guns ("grease guns") with 500 rounds ammo each. [One officer] commented has three machine guns himself but can be identified by serial numbers as having been issued to him therefore unable use them.
2. [Officers] said they have to move because they believe they now under suspicion and being watched by Allende supporters. [One officer] was late to meeting having taken evasive action to shake possible surveillance by one or two taxi cabs with dual antennas which he believed being used by opposition against him.
3. [Cooptee] asked if [officers] had Air Force contacts. They answered they did not but would welcome one. [Cooptee] separately has since tried contact [a Chilean Air Force General] and will keep trying until established. Will urge [Air Force General] meet with [other two officers] a.s.a.p. [Cooptee] commented to station that [Air Force General] has not tried contact him since ref a talk.
4. [Cooptee] comment: cannot tell who is leader of this movement but strongly suspects it is Admiral [Deleted]. It would appear from [his contact's] actions and alleged Allende suspicions about them that unless they act now they are lost. Trying get more info from them evening 18 Oct about support they believe they have.
5. Station plans give six tear gas grenades (arriving noon 18 Oct by special courier) to [cooptee] for delivery to [armed forces officers] instead of having [false flag officer] deliver them to Viaux group. Our reasoning is that [cooptee] dealing with active duty officers. Also [false flag officer] leaving evening 18 Oct and will not be replaced but [cooptee] will stay here. Hence important that [cooptee] credibility with [armed forces officers] be strengthened by prompt delivery what they requesting. Request headquarters agreement by 1500 hours local time 18 Oct on decision delivery of tear gas to [cooptee] vice [false flag officer].
6. Request prompt shipment three sterile 45 calibre machine guns and ammo per para 1 above, by special courier if necessary. Please confirm by 2000 hours local time 18 Oct that this can be done so [cooptee] may inform his contacts accordingly.
The reply, which is headed "Immediate Santiago (Eyes Only [Deleted])" is dated October 18 and reads:
REF: Santiago 562
Sub-machine guns and ammo being sent by regular [deleted] courier leaving Washington 0700 hours 19 October due arrive Santiago late evening 20 October or early morning 21 October. Preferred use regular [deleted] courier to avoid bringing undue attention to op.
A companion message, also addressed to "Santiago 562", said:
1. Depending how [cooptee] conversation goes evening 18 October you may wish submit Intel report [deleted] so we can decide whether should be dissemed. 2. New subject. If [cooptee] plans lead coup, or be actively and publicly involved, we puzzled why it should bother him if machine guns can be traced to him. Can we develop rationale on why guns must be sterile? Will continue make effort provide them but find our credulity stretched by Navy [officer] leading his troops with sterile guns? What is special purpose for these guns? We will try send them whether you can provide explanation or not.
National Security Council, Options Paper on Chile (NSSM 97), November 3, 1970
A comprehensive secret/sensitive options paper, prepared for Henry Kissinger and the National Security Council on the day of Allende's inauguration, laid out U.S. objectives, interests and potential policy toward Chile. U.S. interests were defined as preventing Chile from falling under Communist control and preventing the rest of Latin America from following Chile "as a model." Option C--maintaining an "outwardly cool posture" while working behind the scenes to undermine the Allende government through economic pressures and diplomatic isolation--was chosen by Nixon. CIA operations and options are not included in this document. (23 pages)
CIA, Briefing by Richard Helms for the NSC, Chile, November 6, 1970:
his paper provides the talking points for CIA director Richard Helms to brief the NSC on the situation in Chile. The briefing contains details on the failed coup attempt on October 22--but does not acknowledge a CIA role in the assassination of General Schneider.
NSC, National Security Decision Memorandum 93, Policy Towards Chile, November 9, 1970:
This memorandum summarizes the presidential decisions regarding changes in U.S. policy toward Chile following Allende's election. Written by Henry Kissinger and sent to the Secretaries of State, Defense, the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness and the Director of Central Intelligence, this memo directs U.S. agencies to adopt a "cool" posture toward Allende's government, in order to prevent his consolidation of power and "limit [his] ability to implement policies contrary to U.S. and hemisphere interests."
TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE/EYES ONLY
National Security Decision Memorandum 93
TO: Secretary of State
Secretary of Defense
Director, Office of Emergency Preparedness
Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: Policy Towards Chile
Following the discussion at the meeting of the National Security Council on November 6, 1970, the President has decided that the basis for our policy toward Chile will be the concept underlying Option C of the Interagency paper submitted November 3, 1970 by the Department of State for the consideration of the National Security Council as outlined in the guidelines set forth below.
The President has decided that (1) the public posture of the United States will be correct but cool, to avoid giving the Allende government a basis on which to rally domestic and international support for the consolidation of the regime; but that (2) the United States will seek to maximize pressures on the Allende government to prevent its consolidation and limit its ability to implement policies contrary to U.S. and hemisphere interests.
Specifically, the President has directed that within the context of a publicly cool and correct posture toward Chile:
—Vigorous efforts be undertaken to assure that other governments in Latin America understand fully that the U.S. opposes consolidation of a communist state in Chile hostile to the interests of the United States and other hemisphere nations, and to the extent possible encourage them to adopt a similar posture.
—Close consultation be established with key governments in Latin America, particularly Brazil and Argentina, to coordinate efforts to oppose Chilean moves which may be contrary to our mutual interests; in pursuit of this objective, efforts should be increased to establish and maintain close relations with friendly military leaders in the hemisphere.
—necessary actions be taken to:
a. exclude, to the extent possible, further financing assistance or guarantees for U.S. private investment in Chile, including those related to the Investment Guarantee Program or the operations of the Export-Import Bank;
b. determine the extent to which existing guarantees and financing arrangements can be terminated or reduced;
c. bring maximum feasible influence to bear in international financial institutions to limit credit or other financing assistance to Chile (in this connection, efforts should be made to coordinate with and gain maximum support for this policy from other friendly nations, particularly those in Latin America, with the objective of lessening unilateral U.S. exposure); and
d. assure that U.S. private business interests having investments or operations in Chile are made aware of the concern with which the U.S. Government views the Government of Chile and the restrictive nature of the policies which the U.S. Government intends to follow.
—no new bilateral economic aid commitments be undertaken with the Government of Chile (programs of a humanitarian or private social agency character will be considered on a case by case basis); existing commitments will be fulfilled but ways in which, if the U.S. desires to do so, they could be reduced, delayed or terminated should be examined.
The President has directed that the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness prepare a study which sets forth the implications of possible developments in world copper markets, stockpile disposal actions and other factors as they may affect the marketing of Chilean copper and our relationships with Chile.
The President also has directed that the Senior Review Group meet monthly or more frequently as necessary to consider specific policy issues within the framework of this general posture, to report actions which have been taken, and to present to him further specific policy questions which may require his decision. To facilitate this process the President has directed the establishment of an Ad Hoc Interagency Working Group, comprising representatives of the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence, and the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, and chaired by the representative of the Secretary of State, to prepare options for specific courses of action and related action plans for the consideration of the Senior Review Group and to coordinate implementation of approved courses of action.
Henry A. Kissinger
Cc: Secretary of the Treasury
Administrator, A.I.D.
Director, Office of Management and Budget
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE/EYES ONLY
CIA, Report of CIA Chilean Activities, 15 September to 3 November, November 18, 1970:
The CIA prepared a summary of its efforts to prevent Allende's ratification as president and to foment a coup in Chile-- track I and track II covert operations. The summary details the composition of the Task Force, headed by David Atlee Phillips, the team of covert operatives "inserted individually into Chile," and their contacts with Col. Paul Winert, the U.S. Army Attache detailed to the CIA for this operation. It reviews the propaganda operations designed to push Chilean president Eduardo Frei to support "a military coup which would prevent Allende from taking office on 3 November."
Department of State, Memorandum for Henry Kissinger on Chile, December 4, 1970:
In response to a November 27 directive from Kissinger, an inter-agency Ad Hoc Working Group on Chile prepared this set of strategy papers covering a range of possible sanctions and pressures against the new Allende government. These included a possible diplomatic effort to force Chile to withdraw--or be expelled--from the Organization of American States as well as consultations with other Latin American countries "to promote their sharing of our concern over Chile." The documents show that the Nixon administration did engage in an invisible economic blockade against Allende, intervening at the World Bank, IDB, and Export-Import bank to curtail or terminate credits and loans to Chile before Allende had been in office for a month.
Quelle: Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents relating to the Military Coup, 1970-1976
CIA memoranda and reports on Project FUBELT include meetings between U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CIA officials, CIA cables to its Santiago station, and summaries of secret action in 1970 — detailing decisions and operations against Allende's government.
Alle Dokumente können auf The National Security Archive eingesehen werden.
Genauer Fundort: Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents realating to the Militäary Coup, 1970-1976
CIA, Notes on Meeting with the President Nixon on Chile, September 15, 1970
These handwritten notes, taken by CIA director Richard Helms, record the orders of the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, to foster a coup in Chile:
l in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile!
worth spending
not concerned risks involved
no involvement of embassy
$10,000,000 available, more if necessary
full-time job—best men we have
game plan
make the economy scream
48 hours for plan of action
"Genesis of Project FUBELT" document dated September 16, 1970
These minutes record the first meeting between CIA director Helms and high agency officials on covert operations--codenamed "FUBELT"--against Allende. A special task force under the supervision of CIA deputy director of plans, Thomas Karamessines, is established, headed by veteran agent David Atlee Phillips. The memorandum notes that the CIA must prepare an action plan for National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger within 48 hours.
MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
SUBJECT: Genesis of Project FUBELT
1. On this date the Director called a meeting in connection with the Chilean situation. Present in addition to the Director were General Cushman, DDCI; Col. White, ExDir-Compt; Thomas Karamessines, DDP; Cord Meyer, ADDP; William V. Broe, Chief WH [Western Hemisphere] Division; [Name deleted on national security grounds.] Deputy Chief, WH Division, [Name deleted on national security grounds.] Chief, Covert Action, WH Division; and [Name deleted on national security grounds.] Chief, WH/4.
2. The Director told the group that President Nixon had decided that an Allende regime in Chile was not acceptable to the United States.. The President asked the Agency to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him. The President authorized ten million dollars for this purpose, if needed. Further, The Agency is to carry out this mission without coordination with the Departments of State or Defense.
3. During the meeting it was decided that Mr. Thomas Karamessines, DDP, would have overall responsibility for this project. He would be assisted by a special task force set up for this purpose in the Western Hemisphere Division. [Sentences deleted on national security grounds.]
4. Col. White was asked by the Director to make all necessary support arrangements in connection with the project.
5. The Director said he had been asked by Dr. Henry Kissinger, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, to meet with him on Friday, 18 September to give him the Agency’s views on how this mission could be accomplished.
William V. Broe
Chief
Western Hemisphere Division
SECRET/SENSITIVE
EYES ONLY
CIA, Memorandum of Conversation of Meeting with Henry Kissinger, October 15, 1970
This memo records a discussion of promoting a coup in Chile, known as "Track II" of covert operations to block Allende:[1]
15 October 1970
MEMORANDUM OF CONVERSATION:
Dr. Kissinger, Mr. Karamessines, Gen. Haig at the White House—15 October 1970
[Section deleted on national security grounds.]
2. Then Mr. Karamessines provided a run-down on Viaux, the Canales meeting with Tirado, the latter’s new position (after Porta was relieved of command “for health reasons”) and, in some detail, the general situation in Chile from the coup possibility viewpoint.
3. A certain amount of information was available to us concerning Viaux’s alleged support throughout the Chilean military. We had assessed Viaux’s claims carefully, basing our analysis on good intelligence from a number of sources. Our conclusion was clear: Viaux did not have more than one chance in twenty—perhaps less—to launch a successful coup.
4. The unfortunate repercussions, in Chile and internationally, of an unsuccessful coup were discussed. Dr. Kissinger ticked off his list of these negative possibilities. His items were remarkably similar to the ones Mr. Karamessines had prepared.
5. It was decided by those present that the Agency must get a message to Viaux warning him against any precipitate action. In essence our message was to state: “We have reviewed your plans, and based on your information and ours, we come to the conclusion that your plans for a coup at this time cannot succeed. Failing, they may reduce your capabilities for the future. Preserve your assets. We will stay in touch. The time will come when you with all your other friends can do something. You will continue to have our support”.
6. After the decision to de-fuse the Viaux coup plot, at least temporarily, Dr. Kissinger instructed Mr. Karamessines to preserve Agency assets in Chile, working clandestinely and securely to maintain the capability for Agency operations against Allende in the future.
7. Dr. Kissinger discussed his desire that the word of our encouragement to the Chilean military in recent weeks be kept as secret as possible. Mr. Karamessines stated emphatically that we had been doing everything possible in this connection, including the use of false flag officers, car meetings and every conceivable precaution. But we and others had done a great deal of talking recently with a number of persons. For example, Ambassador [Edward] Korry’s wideranging discussions with numerous people urging a coup “cannot be put back into the bottle”. [Sentence deleted on national security grounds.] (Dr. Kissinger requested that copy of the message be sent to him on 16 October.)
8. The meeting concluded on Dr. Kissinger’s note that the Agency should continue keeping the pressure on every Allende weak spot in sight—now, after the 24th of October [the date Allende’s election would be ratified by the Chilean Congress], after 5 November [the date of Allende’s inauguration], and into the future until such time as new marching orders are given. Mr. Karamessines stated that the Agency would comply.
CIA Operating Guidance Cable on Coup Plotting in Chile, October 16, 1970
In a secret cable, CIA deputy director of plans, Thomas Karamessines, conveys Kissinger's orders to CIA station chief in Santiago, Henry Hecksher:
Restricted Handling
Classified Message
CITE Headquarters
Immediate Santiago (Eyes Only)
1. [unintelligible] policy, objectives, and actions were reviewed at high USG level afternoon 15 October. Conclusions, which are to be your operational guide, follow:
2. It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand will be well hidden. While this imposes on us a high degree of selectivity in making military contacts and dictates that these contacts be made in the most secure manner it definitely does not preclude contacts such as reported in Santiago 544 which was a masterful piece of work.
3. After the most careful consideration it was determined that a Viaux coup attempt carried out by him alone with the forces now at his disposal would fail. Thus, it would be counterproductive to our [blacked out] objectives. It was decided that CIA get a message to Viaux warning him against precipitate action. In essence our message is to state, "We have reviewed your plans, and based on your information and ours, we come to the conclusion that your plans for a coup at this time cannot succeed. Failing, they may reduce your capabilities for the future. Preserve your assets. We will stay in touch. The time will come when you together with all your other friends can do something. You will continue to have our support." You are requested to deliver the message to Viaux essentially as noted above. Our objectives are as follows: (A) To advise him of our opinion and discourage him from acting alone; (B) Continue to encourage him to amplify his planning; (C) Encourage him to join forces with other coup planners so that they may act in concert either before or after 24 October. (N.B. six gas masks and six CS canisters are being carried to Santiago by special courier ETD Washington 1100 hours 16 October)
4. There is great and continuing interest in the activities of Tirado, Canales, Valenzuela et al and we wish them optimum good fortune.
5. The above is your operating guidance. No other policy guidance you may receive from [blacked out] or its maximum exponent in Santiago, on his return, are to sway you from your course.
6. Please review all your present and possibly new activities to include propaganda, black operations, surfacing of intelligence or disinformation, personal contacts, or anything else your imagination can conjure which will permit you to continue to press forward toward our [blacked out] objective in a secure manner.
End of message
Siehe auch: CNN
CIA, Cable Transmissions on Coup Plotting, October 18, 1970
These three cables between CIA headquarters in Langley, VA., and the CIA Station in Santiago address the secret shipment of weapons and ammunition for use in a plot to kidnap the Chilean military commander, General René Schneider. "Neutralizing" Schneider was a key prerequisite for a military coup; he opposed any intervention by the armed forces to block Allende's constitutional election. The CIA supplied a group of Chilean officers led by General Camilo Valenzuela with "sterile" weapons for the operation which was to be blamed on Allende supporters and prompt a military takeover. Instead, on October 22, General Schneider was killed by another group of plotters the CIA had been collaborating with, led by retired General Roberto Viaux. Instead of a coup, the military and the country rallied behind Allende's ratification by Chile's Congress on October 24.
(The names are still blacked out for security purposes and cover identities written in by hand - in square brackets)
1. [Station cooptee] met clandestinely evening 17 Oct with [two Chilean armed forces officers] who told him their plans were moving along better than had thought possible. They asked that by evening 18 Oct [cooptee] arrange furnish them with eight to ten tear gas grenades. Within 48 hours they need three 45 calibre machine guns ("grease guns") with 500 rounds ammo each. [One officer] commented has three machine guns himself but can be identified by serial numbers as having been issued to him therefore unable use them.
2. [Officers] said they have to move because they believe they now under suspicion and being watched by Allende supporters. [One officer] was late to meeting having taken evasive action to shake possible surveillance by one or two taxi cabs with dual antennas which he believed being used by opposition against him.
3. [Cooptee] asked if [officers] had Air Force contacts. They answered they did not but would welcome one. [Cooptee] separately has since tried contact [a Chilean Air Force General] and will keep trying until established. Will urge [Air Force General] meet with [other two officers] a.s.a.p. [Cooptee] commented to station that [Air Force General] has not tried contact him since ref a talk.
4. [Cooptee] comment: cannot tell who is leader of this movement but strongly suspects it is Admiral [Deleted]. It would appear from [his contact's] actions and alleged Allende suspicions about them that unless they act now they are lost. Trying get more info from them evening 18 Oct about support they believe they have.
5. Station plans give six tear gas grenades (arriving noon 18 Oct by special courier) to [cooptee] for delivery to [armed forces officers] instead of having [false flag officer] deliver them to Viaux group. Our reasoning is that [cooptee] dealing with active duty officers. Also [false flag officer] leaving evening 18 Oct and will not be replaced but [cooptee] will stay here. Hence important that [cooptee] credibility with [armed forces officers] be strengthened by prompt delivery what they requesting. Request headquarters agreement by 1500 hours local time 18 Oct on decision delivery of tear gas to [cooptee] vice [false flag officer].
6. Request prompt shipment three sterile 45 calibre machine guns and ammo per para 1 above, by special courier if necessary. Please confirm by 2000 hours local time 18 Oct that this can be done so [cooptee] may inform his contacts accordingly.
The reply, which is headed "Immediate Santiago (Eyes Only [Deleted])" is dated October 18 and reads:
REF: Santiago 562
Sub-machine guns and ammo being sent by regular [deleted] courier leaving Washington 0700 hours 19 October due arrive Santiago late evening 20 October or early morning 21 October. Preferred use regular [deleted] courier to avoid bringing undue attention to op.
A companion message, also addressed to "Santiago 562", said:
1. Depending how [cooptee] conversation goes evening 18 October you may wish submit Intel report [deleted] so we can decide whether should be dissemed. 2. New subject. If [cooptee] plans lead coup, or be actively and publicly involved, we puzzled why it should bother him if machine guns can be traced to him. Can we develop rationale on why guns must be sterile? Will continue make effort provide them but find our credulity stretched by Navy [officer] leading his troops with sterile guns? What is special purpose for these guns? We will try send them whether you can provide explanation or not.
National Security Council, Options Paper on Chile (NSSM 97), November 3, 1970
A comprehensive secret/sensitive options paper, prepared for Henry Kissinger and the National Security Council on the day of Allende's inauguration, laid out U.S. objectives, interests and potential policy toward Chile. U.S. interests were defined as preventing Chile from falling under Communist control and preventing the rest of Latin America from following Chile "as a model." Option C--maintaining an "outwardly cool posture" while working behind the scenes to undermine the Allende government through economic pressures and diplomatic isolation--was chosen by Nixon. CIA operations and options are not included in this document. (23 pages)
CIA, Briefing by Richard Helms for the NSC, Chile, November 6, 1970:
his paper provides the talking points for CIA director Richard Helms to brief the NSC on the situation in Chile. The briefing contains details on the failed coup attempt on October 22--but does not acknowledge a CIA role in the assassination of General Schneider.
NSC, National Security Decision Memorandum 93, Policy Towards Chile, November 9, 1970:
This memorandum summarizes the presidential decisions regarding changes in U.S. policy toward Chile following Allende's election. Written by Henry Kissinger and sent to the Secretaries of State, Defense, the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness and the Director of Central Intelligence, this memo directs U.S. agencies to adopt a "cool" posture toward Allende's government, in order to prevent his consolidation of power and "limit [his] ability to implement policies contrary to U.S. and hemisphere interests."
TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE/EYES ONLY
National Security Decision Memorandum 93
TO: Secretary of State
Secretary of Defense
Director, Office of Emergency Preparedness
Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: Policy Towards Chile
Following the discussion at the meeting of the National Security Council on November 6, 1970, the President has decided that the basis for our policy toward Chile will be the concept underlying Option C of the Interagency paper submitted November 3, 1970 by the Department of State for the consideration of the National Security Council as outlined in the guidelines set forth below.
The President has decided that (1) the public posture of the United States will be correct but cool, to avoid giving the Allende government a basis on which to rally domestic and international support for the consolidation of the regime; but that (2) the United States will seek to maximize pressures on the Allende government to prevent its consolidation and limit its ability to implement policies contrary to U.S. and hemisphere interests.
Specifically, the President has directed that within the context of a publicly cool and correct posture toward Chile:
—Vigorous efforts be undertaken to assure that other governments in Latin America understand fully that the U.S. opposes consolidation of a communist state in Chile hostile to the interests of the United States and other hemisphere nations, and to the extent possible encourage them to adopt a similar posture.
—Close consultation be established with key governments in Latin America, particularly Brazil and Argentina, to coordinate efforts to oppose Chilean moves which may be contrary to our mutual interests; in pursuit of this objective, efforts should be increased to establish and maintain close relations with friendly military leaders in the hemisphere.
—necessary actions be taken to:
a. exclude, to the extent possible, further financing assistance or guarantees for U.S. private investment in Chile, including those related to the Investment Guarantee Program or the operations of the Export-Import Bank;
b. determine the extent to which existing guarantees and financing arrangements can be terminated or reduced;
c. bring maximum feasible influence to bear in international financial institutions to limit credit or other financing assistance to Chile (in this connection, efforts should be made to coordinate with and gain maximum support for this policy from other friendly nations, particularly those in Latin America, with the objective of lessening unilateral U.S. exposure); and
d. assure that U.S. private business interests having investments or operations in Chile are made aware of the concern with which the U.S. Government views the Government of Chile and the restrictive nature of the policies which the U.S. Government intends to follow.
—no new bilateral economic aid commitments be undertaken with the Government of Chile (programs of a humanitarian or private social agency character will be considered on a case by case basis); existing commitments will be fulfilled but ways in which, if the U.S. desires to do so, they could be reduced, delayed or terminated should be examined.
The President has directed that the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness prepare a study which sets forth the implications of possible developments in world copper markets, stockpile disposal actions and other factors as they may affect the marketing of Chilean copper and our relationships with Chile.
The President also has directed that the Senior Review Group meet monthly or more frequently as necessary to consider specific policy issues within the framework of this general posture, to report actions which have been taken, and to present to him further specific policy questions which may require his decision. To facilitate this process the President has directed the establishment of an Ad Hoc Interagency Working Group, comprising representatives of the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence, and the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, and chaired by the representative of the Secretary of State, to prepare options for specific courses of action and related action plans for the consideration of the Senior Review Group and to coordinate implementation of approved courses of action.
Henry A. Kissinger
Cc: Secretary of the Treasury
Administrator, A.I.D.
Director, Office of Management and Budget
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE/EYES ONLY
CIA, Report of CIA Chilean Activities, 15 September to 3 November, November 18, 1970:
The CIA prepared a summary of its efforts to prevent Allende's ratification as president and to foment a coup in Chile-- track I and track II covert operations. The summary details the composition of the Task Force, headed by David Atlee Phillips, the team of covert operatives "inserted individually into Chile," and their contacts with Col. Paul Winert, the U.S. Army Attache detailed to the CIA for this operation. It reviews the propaganda operations designed to push Chilean president Eduardo Frei to support "a military coup which would prevent Allende from taking office on 3 November."
Department of State, Memorandum for Henry Kissinger on Chile, December 4, 1970:
In response to a November 27 directive from Kissinger, an inter-agency Ad Hoc Working Group on Chile prepared this set of strategy papers covering a range of possible sanctions and pressures against the new Allende government. These included a possible diplomatic effort to force Chile to withdraw--or be expelled--from the Organization of American States as well as consultations with other Latin American countries "to promote their sharing of our concern over Chile." The documents show that the Nixon administration did engage in an invisible economic blockade against Allende, intervening at the World Bank, IDB, and Export-Import bank to curtail or terminate credits and loans to Chile before Allende had been in office for a month.
Footnotes
1. ^ A CIA group was set up in Langley, Virginia, with the express purpose of running a "two track" policy for Chile: one the ostensible diplomatic one and the other - unknown to the State Department, the 40 Committee, or the US ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry - a strategy of destabilisation, kidnap and assassination, designed to provoke a military coup. --Edited extract from The Trial Of Henry Kissinger, by Christopher Hitchens, in the Guardian newspaper, the article is Why has he got away with it?
Quelle: Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents relating to the Military Coup, 1970-1976
Bilderberg-Konferenz
Die Bilderberg-Konferenzen sind informelle Treffen von Geld-, Macht- und Funktionseliten aus Politik, Wirtschaft, Militär, Gewerkschaften, Medien, Hochschulen und dem europäischen Hochadel. Die meisten Teilnehmer kommen aus NATO-Staaten, seit 1989 nahmen zunehmend Personen aus anderen Staaten als den Natovertragsstaaten an den Konferenzen teil.
Die Konferenz wurde zum ersten Mal im Mai 1954 im Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek (Niederlande) veranstaltet. Bei der „Bilderberg-Gruppe” handelt es sich um keine formelle Organisation, es existieren weder Mitgliedschaft, Gründungsvertrag noch ein gewählter Vorsitz.
Ursprung
Der Name Bilderberg wurde vom ersten Tagungsort im Mai 1954, dem Hotel Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Niederlande, übernommen. Dieses erste private Treffen hochgestellter Persönlichkeiten erwuchs aus der Befürchtung, dass Westeuropa und Nordamerika möglicherweise nicht so eng zusammenarbeiteten, wie es die ernsten Probleme, denen sich die Staaten gegenüber sahen, erforderlich machten.
Ablauf
Bilderberg-Konferenzen sind drei Tage andauernde informelle Gespräche. Dabei werden vor allem Probleme der Weltwirtschaft und der internationalen Beziehungen besprochen. Die Gespräche münden nicht in eine Abschlusserklärung und werden auch nicht im Wortlaut veröffentlicht. Nach jeder Konferenz bekommt jeder Teilnehmer, sowie all diejenigen, die je an einer Bilderberg-Konferenz teilgenommen haben, ein Protokoll des Treffens zugesandt. Diese Protokolle sind keine Wortprotokolle, sondern nur Zusammenfassungen der Besprechungen, in denen Aussagen einzelner Redner niemals einem bestimmten Teilnehmer, sondern immer nur durch einen Verweis auf dessen Herkunftsland zugeordnet wird. Seit 1961 erhalten die Teilnehmer zusätzlich eine erläuternde Schrift, um das Bild einer solchen Konferenz zu vervollständigen. Diese Papiere sind besonders vertraulich zu behandeln (Offizielle Erklärung). Bilderberg gilt als anerkanntes, anpassungsfähiges, vertrauliches und informelles Forum für Führungspersönlichkeiten, auf welchem unterschiedliche Standpunkte vorgetragen werden können und das das gegenseitige Verständnis erhöhen kann. Die Bilderberg-Treffen finden in abgelegenen Hotels statt, um die Sicherheit prominenter Teilnehmer zu garantieren und Vertrautheit zu fördern. Die strenge Geheimhaltung der Gesprächsthemen der Konferenzen lieferten allerdings auch Stoff für Verschwörungstheorien.
Vorsitz
Die erste Konferenz wurde von Prinz Bernhard der Niederlande einberufen, der den Vorsitz 22 Jahre lang innehatte, obwohl er in der Öffentlichkeit wegen verschiedener Skandale (Waffenhandel mit den USA u.a.) nicht unumstritten war. Seine Nachfolge trat der frühere britische Premierminister Alec Douglas-Home für vier Jahre an. Bei der Bilderberg-Konferenz 1980 übergab Lord Home den Vorsitz an den früheren Bundespräsidenten in der BRD, Walter Scheel. Lord Roll of Ipsden, einer der früheren Präsidenten des Bankhauses S.G. Warburg, übernahm 1985 den Vorsitz von Scheel. Auf dem Treffen 1989 übergab Lord Roll den Vorsitz an Peter Carington (Lord Carington), den früheren Generalsekretär der NATO, der diese Tätigkeit bis 1999 ausübte. Für ein Jahr übernahm Victor Halberstadt, Professor am Lehrstuhl für Ökonomie an der Universität Leiden, den Vorsitz und übergab ihn danach an Étienne Davignon, ein früheres Mitglied der Europäischen Kommission.
Teilnehmer
Einladungen zu Bilderberg-Konferenzen werden durch den Vorsitzenden und die beiden ehrenamtlichen Generalsekretäre, nach Beratungen und Empfehlungen eines Lenkungsausschusses, ausgesprochen. Die Teilnehmer werden nach Bekanntgabe der offiziellen Organisatoren so ausgewählt, dass eine wohlinformierte, ausgeglichene Diskussion über vorgegebene Tagesordnungspunkte sichergestellt werde. Für gewöhnlich nehmen rund 115 Personen teil, von denen zwei Drittel aus Westeuropa und ein Drittel aus Nordamerika stammen. Etwa ein Drittel der geladenen Teilnehmer kommt aus Regierungen oder politischen Institutionen und zwei Drittel aus Finanzsektor, Industrie, Gewerkschaften, Hochschulen und Medien. Alle Beteiligten nehmen an den geheimen Konferenzen ausschließlich als Privatpersonen und nicht in ihrer offiziellen Position teil, obgleich natürlich ihre Stellung im öffentlichen Leben sehr wohl die entscheidende Rolle bei diesen Kooptationen spielt. Bilderberg-Konferenzen wurden seit 1954 von ca. 2.000 Personen aus ca. 28 Staaten und ca. 15 Internationalen Organisationen besucht.
Konferenzen
Bis Ende der 60er Jahre war es mithilfe der führenden internationalen Zeitungen und Agenturen gelungen, die Bilderberg-Gruppe weltweit weitestgehend geheim zu halten. Die jährliche große Konferenz ist das wichtigste Ereignis, das die Bilderberg-Organisatoren veranstalten. Nachdem in den 1950er Jahren zwei Treffen pro Jahr abgehalten wurden, ist es heute nur mehr eines. Bei den Treffen werden keine schriftlichen Beschlüsse gefasst, keine Abstimmungen vorgenommen und keine offiziellen Stellungnahmen abgegeben. Seit 1954 wurden 53 Konferenzen abgehalten. Die jeweiligen Teilnehmerlisten sowie die vereinbarten Tagesordnungspunkte werden der Presse zur Verfügung gestellt, die jedoch kaum über die Tagungen berichtet. Über informelle Gespräche und Absprachen untereinander wird öffentlich nicht informiert. 1960 wurde der Name von „Bilderberg-Gruppe” zu „Bilderberg-Konferenz” geändert. Jede vierte Konferenz findet in Nordamerika statt, um den amerikanischen und kanadischen Teilnehmern entgegenzukommen.
* 2004: vom 3. Juni bis 6. Juni in Stresa, Italien
* 2005: vom 5. Mai bis 8. Mai in Rottach-Egern, Deutschland
* 2006: vom 8. Juni bis 11. Juni in Ottawa, Kanada
* 2007: Mai in Istanbul, Türkei
Finanzierung
Die Auslagen für die Durchführung der Bilderberg-Konferenzen werden vollständig durch Spenden gedeckt, wenngleich die erste Konferenz indirekt durch Gelder des US-Geheimdienstes CIA zur Verfügung gestellt wurden; die Auslagen setzen sich zusammen aus den Kosten für das Sekretariat sowie die Druckkosten für die nicht-öffentlichen Protokolle der einzelnen Konferenzen. Die Kosten für die jeweilige Bilderberg-Konferenz werden vom gastgebenden Land getragen, die Anreise von jedem Teilnehmer selbst, ebenso die Verpflegung. Private Stiftungen, welche der Gruppe zur Verfügung gestellt werden, erleichtern die jährlichen Planungen erheblich (Alleine die Hotelkosten für die 3-tägige Konferenz in Wiesbaden 1966, beliefen sich auf 150.000.- DM). Allerdings haben sich etliche bundesdeutsche Politiker die ihnen entstandenen Kosten über ihr Landes- bzw. das Bundes-Parlament finanzieren lassen, in einigen Fällen wurden auch Studienreisen inoffiziell angeschlossen und über Steuergelder abgerechnet.).
Organisation
Das Sekretariat hat einen Sitz in New York und in Leiden. Der Vorsitzende der Konferenz wird in seiner Arbeit durch den ehrenamtlichen Generalsekretär Europas / Kanadas und den ehrenamtlichen Generalsekretär Amerikas unterstützt. 1956 wurde ein Lenkungsausschuss eingesetzt. Lenkungsausschussmitglieder können jeder Konferenz und jedem sonstigen Treffen beiwohnen. 1959 wurde ein Beratungsausschuss eingesetzt. Wie verlautbart, trifft er sich dann „wenn für notwendig empfunden”, in den ersten Dekaden meist im Soestdijk Palace, dem Stammsitz von Prinz Bernhard der Niederlande.
Von Anbeginn an wurde Bilderberg von einer kleinen Kerngruppe organisiert. 1956 wurde ein achtköpfiger Lenkungsausschuss - das so genannte Steering Commitee - geschaffen, welcher Prinz Bernhard bei den Vorbereitungen zu weiteren Bilderberg Konferenzen unterstützen sollte, ergänzt durch die Advisory Group, deren Mitglieder offenbar erst nach deren Ableben ersetzt werden. Beim Steering Commitee handelt es sich nicht um einen gewählten Ausschuss. Die Mitglieder werden vom Vorsitzenden der Konferenz ernannt und, nach Rücksprache mit diesen Mitgliedern, werden die Teilnehmer auf der jeweils kommenden Konferenz ausgewählt. Zwischen den jährlichen großen Bilderberg-Konferenzen finden nur zu wichtigen Anlässen Zusammenkünfte des Steering Commitees statt. Die ständige Kerngruppe besteht aus dem Vorsitzenden der Konferenz, dem ehrenamtlichen amerikanischen Generalsekretär, dem ehrenamtlichen europäischen und auch für Kanada zuständigen Generalsekretär, dem europäischen wie amerikanischen Sekretariat sowie dem ehrenamtlichen Leiter für Finanzen.
Entstehungsgeschichte
Der Impuls zur Gründung der Bilderberg-Konferenz ging von Joseph Retinger aus. Bereits während des Zweiten Weltkrieges hatte Retinger als Berater der polnischen Exilregierung in London Tagungen zwischen Vertretern von Exilregierungen und Außenministern europäischer Staaten organisiert. In diesen Konferenzen, die zwischen Oktober 1942 und August 1944 stattfanden, wurde das Nachkriegs-Zollabkommen zwischen den Benelux-Staaten geboren, der erste Schritt hin zu einer geplanten europäischen Einigung nach dem Krieg.
Nach dem Krieg legte Retinger während einer Konferenz im Chatham House seine Position hinsichtlich einer europäischen Einigung dar: „The end of the period during which the white man spread his activities over the whole globe saw the Continent itself undergoing a process of internal disruption.”
Zu diesem Zeitpunkt war Retinger Generalsekretär der, unter der Leitung des belgischen Premierministers Paul van Zeeland stehenden, Economic League for European Cooperation (ELEC), aus der später die Europäische Bewegung hervorging. Bald nach seiner Londoner Rede machte er die Bekanntschaft von W. Averell Harriman, dem amerikanischen Botschafter in England, der ihm einen USA-Aufenthalt arrangierte, bei dem Retinger für die Unterstützung der dortigen Regierung für die ELEC werben wollte. Unter anderem nahm Retinger in den USA Kontakt mit Adolf Berle Jr. und John Foster Dulles auf.
In der Folge erhielt die Europäischen Bewegung beträchtliche finanzielle Zuwendungen sowohl von Seiten der US-Regierung/CIA als auch aus privaten Quellen über das American Committee for a United Europe (ACUE) und anderen Institutionen. 1952 legte Retinger sein Amt als Generalsekretär der Europäischen Bewegung nieder und begann verstärkt inoffizielle und vertrauliche Zusammenkünfte zwischen europäischen und US-Politikern und Wirtschaftsführern zu fördern. Besonders sollten diese Gespräche die aufkeimenden Spannungen zwischen den europäischen Staaten und den USA beseitigen.
Er konsultierte den ehemaligen belgischen Premierminister Paul van Zeeland, der zu diesem Zeitpunkt Präsident des OEEC war, sowie Paul Rykens, den damaligen Vorsitzenden der Unilever und vormaligen Berater der in London exilierten niederländischen Regierung und entwarf mit ihnen Pläne für eine wiederkehrende Konferenz. Als Vorsitzenden und Symbolfigur für diesen transatlantischen Dialog gewann Retinger Prinz Bernhard der Niederlande.
Die Idee für die neue Gesprächsplattform war es, jeweils zwei Personen aus den bedeutenderen europäischen Staaten zu finden, um so den konservativen und liberalen Blickwinkel offenzulegen. Durch Bernhards Stellung und Retingers Verbindungen waren in kurzer Zeit zehn Personen gefunden:
* Antoine Pinay (Premierminister/ F)
* Panayotis Pipinelis (früherer Außenminister/ Griechenland)
* Alcide de Gasperi (Premierminister/ I)
* Sir Colin Gubbins (Generalmajor/ UK)
* Hugh Gaitskell (Parlamentsmitglied/ UK)
* Pietro Quaroni (Botschafter Italiens in Frankreich)
* Ole Bjorn Kraft (Außenminister/ DK)
* Guy Mollet (Parlamentsmitglied/ F)
* Max Brauer (Bürgermeister HH/ BRD)
* Rudolf Mueller (Präsident der Wirtschaftspolitischen Gesellschaft (WIPOG)/Rechtsanwalt/ BRD)
Worin die Vorbehalte der europäischen Staaten gegenüber den USA bestanden, wurde auf der ersten Konferenz der europäischen Kerngruppe am 25. September 1952 erörtert. Eine Zusammenfassung sollte den Amerikanern überbracht werden. Auf vertraulichem Wege gelangte das Papier in die Vereinigten Staaten, wo jedoch die Präsidentschaftswahlen des Jahres 1952 in vollem Gange waren. Für die Belange Prinz Bernhards war in dieser hektischen Situation kein Raum, so dass ein erneuter Versuch für die Zeit nach den Wahlen sinnvoll erschien. Aber erneut wurde die Idee zurückgewiesen, ehe sich Bernhard an Bedell Smith wandte. Smith war zu diesem Zeitpunkt Direktor der CIA. Dieser informierte seinerseits C.D. Jackson (Special Assistant to the President) über die Angelegenheit.
In Zusammenarbeit mit John S. Coleman und dem Committee for a National Trade Policy wurde ein Antwortschreiben formuliert. Weitere Personen wurden mit einbezogen, so Joseph E. Johnson (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), Dean Rusk (Direktor der Rockefeller Foundation) sowie David Rockefeller und H.J. Heinz II.. Dennoch dauerte es noch bis 1954 ehe alle organisatorischen Fragen geregelt werden konnten.
Max Brauer und Rudolf Müller übernahmen die Aufgabe, für die BRD sieben Personen für die Teilnahme an der „vertraulichen Tagung” zu benennen. Anfang Mai 1954 wurden die personellen Fragen gelöst. Am Nachmittag des 28. Mai trafen sich die Mitglieder der Gruppe im niederländischen Soestdijk Palace zu letzten abschließenden Besprechungen.
Am folgenden Morgen um 10 Uhr wurde die erste Konferenz im Hotel de Bilderberg durch Prinz Bernhard eröffnet. Auf der Tagungsordnung des Treffens wurden die Standpunkte gegenüber „dem Kommunismus und der Sowjetunion”, „den Kolonien und ihren Bevölkerungen”, „den Wirtschaftspolitiken und ihren Problemen” sowie „die europäische Integration und die Europäische Verteidigungsgemeinschaft” thematisiert. Es ging dabei nicht um eine "Lösung" der Fragen, sondern um einen Austausch der jeweiligen Stadnpunkte. Obgleich die Themen für die Tagung vorgegeben waren, kamen die Europäer während der Konferenz doch immer wieder auf die anti-kommunistische Kampagne von Senator Joseph McCarthy zu sprechen. Einige sahen in seinem Eifer die Gefahr, dass die USA sich zu einer Diktatur entwickle, was von den US-Vertretern aber zurückgewiesen wurde.
„Offensichtlich”, so Retinger, müssen die Teilnehmer an den jährlich stattfindenden Bilderberg-Konferenzen „einflussreich und allgemein respektiert sein sowie über Spezialwissen oder reichlich Erfahrung” verfügen, um durch ihre „persönlichen Kontakte und ihren Einfluss in nationalen wie internationalen Kreisen den von Bilderberg gesetzten Zielen” genügen zu können. Die Teilnehmer sollten von großer Offenheit sein, keine offensichtlich nationalen Überzeugungen vertreten und nicht mit Vorurteilen belastet sein, sowie die westlichen kulturellen und ethischen Werte teilen, um so dem Ziel, so viele Personen als möglich aus den verschiedensten Kreisen zu erreichen, entsprechen zu können. Die Organisatoren achten darauf, parteipolitisches Gleichgewicht zu halten, denn „es kann nicht schaden, wenn Kontroversen auch im Rahmen [...] [dieser] Konferenz polar ausgetragen werden”. Für die jeweilige Zusammensetzung jedes Treffens, so Retinger, wird ein Gleichgewicht angestrebt, welches so gut als möglich die vorherrschende Meinung des jeweiligen Landes zu den vorgegebenen Themen widerspiegelt.
Das ehemalige Mitglied des Steering Committees, George McGhee, sagte dem Biographen von Prinz Bernhard über die Fähigkeiten der Teilnehmer von geheimen Bilderberg-Konferenzen: „Ich glaube, sie können sagen, dass die Römischen Verträge, welche den Gemeinsamen Markt einleiteten, auf diesen Tagungen geboren wurden.”
Prinz Bernhard der Niederlande führte bis zur Aufdeckung seiner Verwicklung in den Lockheed-Bestechungsskandal den Vorsitz. Wie alle Bilderberg-Aktivitäten, wurde Bernhards Verstrickung äußerst diskret gehandhabt, so dass das für den 22. bis 25. April 1976 angesetzte Treffen in Hot Springs, Virginia, abgesagt wurde um der öffentlichen Aufmerksamkeit durch seinen Vorsitz zu entgehen. Prinz Bernhard legte im August des selben Jahres sein Amt nieder. Im April 1977 wurden die Tagungen, unter Vorsitz von Alec Douglas-Home, an alter Stelle aufgenommen und die Arbeit, unter mehrfach geändertem Vorsitz, bis zum heutigen Tag fortgeführt.
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