YANKEE COUP ... 1964 OVERTHROW OF GUIANA LEFTISTS BLAMED ON UNION BANKROLLED BY CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000400180002-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 17, 1998
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 19, 1967
• Content Type: NSPR

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d overthrow c y i ana leftists
le l ed on unio , n r lied by CIA
4- T MUrVt
L
d
S
,
o
on
on
unday Times
- 11, e use
ol Conlin-".
rdaicruu;, r,,in v .u,nistcr Harold Wilson
faced a more than usually leading ques-
t ion a Labor Party mem-
nor sked:
oinister make a state:
polio toward efforts which
ccu,tg made by the United States
ural Intelligence Agency and other
;,Led States intelligence organizations
1n infiltrate and influence organizations
;i'clt function in British-administered
, ritorics for purposes of subversion
of law and order?"
Although Newens didn't say so, Wilson
anew 'lie referred ~t least in part to
reports of events in' Guyana before the
former colony. ;.10..11 known as British
Guiana, bee:. .:-governing.
Sidestepp question, Wilson said
the Brifi ]-; r.?,.;ient had no responsi-
bility. a.,_ - _ .ed that he was not re-
spons1hic fo: events before October 1964.
"i no activities of this kind
.n British administrative territories," he
said
A,htough Newens himself appeared to
kno,. .,,fining of the details, he was
hinting at a substantial case.
TL;s s the downfall of the left-wing
Cheddi .Jagan government in the colony
:;' British Guiana (now independent
C;.yana) in 1964. Inquiries by the, Lon-
con Sunday Times last week made it
clear that this was engineered largely
by the CIA.
The only cause for a certain amount
of parliamentary unease would seem , to
be that this government. happened. ' to
be in a British colony. And the cover
which the CIA used was a London-based
international trade-union secretariat, the
Public Services International (PSI).
Dever a Really Happy Colony
As coups go, it was not expensive:
Over five years the CIA paid out some-
thing uv,r $700,000. For the colony,
.aiana, the result was about
170 dead, untold hundreds wounded,
roughly $28 million in damage to' the
economy and a legacy of racial bitterness.
British Guiana, perched on the north-
east corner of South America, was never
one of Britain's happiest colonies. '
Jagan. Tic and his wife, Janet, did seem
a trifle left-wing, but the Colonial Office
reasoned - correctly -- that he had won
not because of his politics but because
of his race.
Race his, always split the country:
the rural areas, 200,1)00 Africans cluster- The financial crisis was resolved, quite
ing mainly in the. towns and about 100, ldden]y, by the PSI's main American
000 people of various origins. aaffiliate union, the Federation of
The Indians voted fairly solidly for State, County and Municipal employes.
the ascetic left-wing Jagan. The Africans ' ',Its boss, Dr. Arnold Zander had, he. told
voted equally solidly for Forbes Burn- the- PSI executives, "been shopping,"
1 ham, an African lawyer well to the right. and had found a donor.
To Britain's intense surprise... -Tacna
meant his left-win..^, words. lie moved The spoils were modest at first-only
against the foreign sugar companies- several thousand dollars in 1958. It
he lasted three months. Then the British was, the kind donor had said, for Latin
government moved in to quell the uproar, PSI America. The money went toward a
recruiting drive" ve in the northern
flung out Jagan and stayed until 1957. countries of Latin America by one Wil
Jagan, saying exactly the same things, ' ' Liam J. Doherty Jr., a man with some
won the 1957 elections, too. ' previous acquaintance of the CIA.
It began to dawn on everybody- The donor was
most forcibly upon the Americans look- presumably pleased,
ing somewhat' apprehensively southward because next year, 1959, Zander was able
-that only an upheaval would ever to tell the PSI that his union was opening
unseat him. a full-time Latin-American section on the
PSI's behalf. The PSI's representative,
With 40,000 members cutting across said Zander, would be Howard McCabe.
all races and parties, the Local Trade, McCabe, a stocky, bullet-headed Ameri-
Union Congress was an admirable ready-. Lan, appeared to have no previous union
made opposition. Fortunately, the twos 1' history, but the PSI liked him. When he
dominating unions were already some came to its meetings, he distributed ciga.
what anti-Jagan. The Sugar Workers' retie lighters and photographs of himself
Union had been dealing with the pianta- 1 doling out food parcels to peasants. The
,t ion owners quite successfully wi1.11out lighters and the parcels were both in-,
interference from Jagan-and, anyway, scribed, "With the compliments of the,
though racially mixed, the union sup- PSI,
ported.Forbes Burnham's African Party.
Nobody Asked Where It Came From
The other power base, the Civil .
Servants' Union, was anti-Jagai pri- The full ludicrousness of this situation
nlarily becaus few of its members were appears not to- have dawned on the PSI..
Indians. All that was needed was organi- Zander's union had about 210,000 mem-
zation. bers at that time, and a monthly income
of about $1,680-barely enough to cover
-PSI Had Low Finances Its own expenses. Yet everyone in the
PSI knew that the 'Latin-American opera-
The Public Services International had
been in contact with the Guyana Civil
Service Union since the early 1950s.
It was one lof 'the weaker and less
prestigious of the various' international
networks which exist to export the
In 1953, the fi"t gpyyprniment Selected under an I~ladidai &441,
roved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000400180 Sued
CPYRGHT
union lcniow-how ol.' advanced'- industrial
countries to less developed -societies.
By 1958 its "finances were low, and
its stocks were low with its own parent
body, the International Confederation of