RIPE FOR REVOLUTION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000302440015-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 15, 2010
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: June 1, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000302440015-4
STA
ARTICLE APPEARED
oN PAGE
Bitter Fruit:
The Untold Story of the
American Coup in Guatemala
S:-,'hen Schiesinger
and Stephen Kinzer
sense of what came before has
never been the strong suit of
Ameri:an journalism. Thus, I think,
vw ere Americans generally perplex-
ed-even frightened-by the collapse
of the Shah and the taking of
American hostages which, following
not long after the raising of a Viet
Cong flag over the U.S. embassy in
Saigon and the Sandanista triumph in
Nicaragua, seemed to usher in a new
age of American impotence and inter-
national anarchy.
Of course, our journalists were not
totally responsible for our national
failure to anticipate these rude shocks.
With notable exceptions, they have
relied on the official view from Wash-
ington or our embassies. It is not sur-
prising, then, that when the wave of
McCarthyism washed out the entire
top echelon of the State Department's
"China Hands"-men who for the
most part had grown up in China,
knew well the corruption of Chiang
Kai-Shek and the efficacy of the com-
munists under Mao Tse-tung, and thus
scoffed at the question, Who lost
China?-the journalists of the late
1950s and early 1960s, deprived of an
historical touchstone, would not pro-
perly be equipped to evaluate official
propaganda leading us into Viet Nam.
More simply put, journalists covering
the State Department had no one with
a dissenting view to talk to: not only
were men like John Stewart Service
hounded out of the State Department,
the anti-Red hysteria of the times
prevented them from getting any job in
Washington. Service ended up at a
steam-valve factory in Brooklyn.
Partly because of Viet Nam, times
have chanted. The old foreign policy
ect2nlishment has been forever
THE WASHB' C-T^N BOCK REVLF`r;
June/July 1982
Endowment for International Peacc
from where, high over Dupont Circle
they lob policy grenades toward tht
White House and Foggy Bottom.
During an interview in his office
there last July, I asked White whether
there was a purge going on in the State
Department in the early months of the
Reagan administration. Pointing to-
ward his own exile and that of other
ambassadors and high-level officials
under the Carter administration, Nkhite
thought there was. I noted that it
seemed similar to what had happened
in the State Department after the
Chinese Revolution. He answered:
Yes, but there's a big difference. In those
days, the ideologues of the Right were much
more naive, open, and honest. They were out
to get those guys in the State Department
because they had "sold out China." They
said so, and they went after them . The pre-
sent tactic is much more insidious becasue
they're pretending that everything is just nor-
mal and going forward routinely, and that no
one is being "purged." This purge, though, is
even more complete because the number of
people at senior levels who know or who are
involved in Central America are really very
few. The Reagan team has gotten rid of all of
them, and in a very shameful and vengeful
way.
The new metaphor for "losing
China," White agreed, was to have
been in favor of a human rights policy.
That is, if an official was in favor of
human rights as a policy tactic, he was
"soft on communism," White add-
ed. "They even talk about the
`traitorous' Carter administration"'
on the seventh floor of the State De-
partment.
So now the Reaganistas have had a
year and a half to apply their big stick
and "quiet diplomacy" in Central
America. What do they have to show
for it? They face an imminent disaster
in El Salvador and the failure of their
,
re
c-aci:ed. Tn_s, targets of the new era , _. ~..
just not comenient for the re
`
o
S:a:e Department purges under the ~~~_~ qu?irements or Americar, foreign
cult for the Reagan plan to overthrow
or rattle the Sandanistas into fatal
mistakes, to press a war in El Salvador
or nearby Guatemala and Honduras, is
their failure to banish dissenting
bureaucrats from the political land-
scape. A complementary factor is the
simultaneously emerging secret history
of U.S. policy in Central America
which, provides in great part through
the Freedom of Information Act, pro-
vides a critical tool for raking off the
pretensions of current Reagan strate-
gies to reveal what is really going on to-
day. It also made this engrossing,
startling, and often very funny book,
Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of
the American Coup in Guatemala,
possible. -
Authors Stephen Schlesinger and
Stephen Kinzer have put just the right
comic touch on this story of the brazen
plot of the CIA and the United Fruit
Company to overthrow a modestly-
progressive government in Guatemala.
They lovingly recreate, for example,
the bizarre and pathetic events follow-
ing the CIA's overthrow of Jacobo Ar-
benz Guzman. The Guatemalan Army
Chief of Staff, Carlos Enrique Diaz
had taken over and, to the American
ambassador's incredulity, was issuing
promises over the national radio to fol-
low Arbenz's policies in nationalizing
United Fruit's banana empire. The
CIA coup was going down the drain.
"Okay, now I'll have to crack down
on that s.o.b.," snapped Ambassador
John E. Peurifoy. He sent over two
CIA agents to straighten Diaz out and
lecture him on the evils of "commu-
nism." Diaz objected.
`'Wait a minute, Colonel," the agent
interjected. "Let me explain something
to you." Wagging a finger at Diaz, the
CIA man warned, "You made a big
mistake when you took over the
government."
He paused to let the words sink in.
Then he continued: "Colonel
you'
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/15: CIA-RDP90-00552R000302440015-4