LETTER TO ROBERT S. WALKER FROM CLAIR E. GEORGE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00845R000100100004-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 8, 2010
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: June 13, 1984
• Content Type: LETTER

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Central Intelligence Agency
13 J U is 1584
The Honorable Robert S. Walker
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
STAT
Thank you for your letter of 30 May and the enclosed
8 May newspaper article from The Christian Science Monitor.
It is the general policy of the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) to neither confirm nor deny allegations about its
activities appearing in the various media. However, the'CIA
considered the allegations contained in the above article to
be so harmful and untrue that a statement was issued as
follows:
"An article in the 8 May Christian Science Monitor
makes the outrageous allegation that CIA officials have
condoned death squad activities in El Salvador, provided
training in torture techniques, and stood by while
individuals were tortured. The CIA does not condone,
participate in or promote, by instruction or by any other
means, murder or the use of torture. Moreover, the U.S.
intelligence services are prohibited from engaging in
assassination by Presidential Executive Order."
In addition to this denial, you may be interested in
advising your constituent of the findings of the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) following
its investigation of these charges in response to a "Resolu-
tion of Inquiry Concerning the Central Intelligence Agency
and Death Squads in El Salvador," introduced by The Honorable
James M. Shannon, House Resolution 467 (Report No. 98-709).
On 25 April, the HPSCI met in closed session to consider the
Resolution. HPSCI reached the following conclusions
concerning these death squad allegations in the above report:
"Based on its rigorous review of intelligence
documents and records which relate to or make mention of
either Colonel Caranza or Mr. D'Aubuisson, the committee
found no evidence of any Agency complicity in death squad
activities in El Salvador. Nothing in the materials
reviewed by the committee suggests any Agency violation
of the Executive Order or applicable Agency policies."
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"The committee's limited, but exhaustive, review
within the confines of House Resolution 467 uncovered no
facts which suggest improper Agency relationships."
"The committee considers that its review of appli-
cable documents and files has been thorough."
Since the House Report 98-709 was printed on 25 April, it
is regrettable that The Christian Science Monitor news
reporter did not, it appears, take into consideration its
findings, nor did he attempt to contact the Agency, as most
news reporters do, for comment on the allegations before the
article was published.
I hope these comments will alleviate the concerns
expressed by your constituent.
Sincerely,
i r T, Clair E. George
Director, Office of Legislative Liaison
STAT
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ARTICLE 4Pp n
CI P6GE
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
8 May 1984
Salvador death squads, a CIA connection?
By Dennis Volman
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
1984, The Christian Science Publishing Society, all rights reserved
San Salvador
The United States Central Intelligence Agency and US
military advisers have helped organize and have
financed, trained, and advised special Salvadorean Army
and intelligence units which, although presumably set up
for counter-intelligence purposes, subsequently have
engaged in "death squad" activities. _
These units, in-the course of their counter-intelligence
activities, frequently torture and sometimes kill
Salvadorean citizens - apparently with the knowledge of
their US mentors.
These charges are made by two well-informed sources,
closely connected with the upper reaches of the
Salvadorean political and military power structure. Cir-
cumstantial evidence backing up their charges comes
from sworn testimony given to the leading human rights
group in El Salvador, the legal protection division (Tutela
Legal) of the Roman Catholic Archbishop's office. -
In Washington, according to well-placed congressional
sources, the US Senate's Select Committee on Intelli-
gence is currently opening an investigation of
Salvadorean death squads. Some senators on the com-
mittee have raised questions about possible CIA connec-
tions with the death squads.
One of the Monitor's two main sources for the charges
about a US connection with death squad activities is a
politically conservative, very prominent Salvadorean ci-
vilian, widely respected for his moral probity. The other
is a Salvadorean of high military rank with strong links
to Salvadorean intelligence circles.
Both sources discussed the charges at length with this
correspondent and made additional allegations about the
involvement of senior Salvadorean officials in death
squad activities. They refused to allow their names to be
published for fear of retribution. The two sources have no
direct links with each other but, for different reasons,
both say the bulk of their direct knowledge of the situa-
ended in December 1983. However, they believe the
tion
situation has not substantially changed since then.
The civilian source has knowledge of death squad ac-
tivities in three ways: through a high-ranking civilian
professional working in the Salvadorean Army general
staff headquarters, where many of the acts reportedly
have taken place; through close friendship with some of
the victims, some of whom were tortured and released
and others tortured to death; through his close contacts
with high-level Salvadorean military officials. He is mor-
ally outraged that such activities, and what he sees as the
US connections with them, are taking place and says he
believes it essential that they be made public knowledge.
"How absurd you Americans are," this civilian
source remarked bitterly. "With the one hand you send
your vice-president here to control the death squads, and
with the other you participate in them."
His reference to the US vice-president was to George
Bush's visit to El Salvador in December last year in
which Mr. Bush pressed the Salvadorean authorities to
put an end to death squad activities and remove officers
allegedly involved in them.
Last year, there were more than 5,000 unsolved mur-
ders, abductions, and disappearances in El Salvador, ac-
cording to the archbishop office's Tutela Legal. Most of
these acts are attributed to rightist death squads and
their allies in the Salvadorean military and security
forces. After the Bush visit, the figures declined in Janu-
ary and February; but they went back up in March, al-
though they remained significantly lower than before the
vice-president's visit.
The Monitor's military source is closely connected
with El Salvador's military-security structure. A man of
strong conservative views, he says that his overriding
motive for speaking out is a deep concern about a possi-
ble communist takeover if there are not major changes in
the country's political-military structure. He is con-
vinced that these changes cannot occur without an end to
the killing and corruption, and to what he too is con-
vinced are US links with death squad-type activities.
This latter opinion is also reflected among some
prominent US congressional staffers who say that little
progress can be made in bringing about reforms in Cen-
tral America until CIA policies in the region are curbed
and the CIA's political influence within the Reagan ad-
ministration and Central America is diminished.
According to both of the Salvadorean sources, the
Salvadorean group most directly linked with the CIA is
the National Intelligence Agency (ANI). This is an oper-
ations-oriented counter-intelligence group originally set
up under CIA direction about four years ago, and still fi-
nanced and advised by the CIA.
As part of its function, the two sources say, ANI
keeps watch over, detains, interrogates, generally tor-
tures, almost always beats, and sometimes kills suspects
that it believes have links with leftist organizations. ANI
is under the command of Col. Rinaldo Goelcher and Col.
Gabriel Contreras who, according to the military source,
are in .close and regular contact with the CIA station
chief at the American Embassy.
ANI headquarters, says the military source, are lo-
cated three blocks from the entrance of Colonia San
Francisco, an upper-class residential neighborhood in the
capital city of San Salvador. A visit to the area shows a
high-walled building under military guard. ANI also has
military intelligence branches in the provinces of San
Vicente and La Union, adds the military source.
Most of the killings, both Monitor sources say, result
from the tortures used in attempts to extract intelligence
information. People die during torture, they say, or are
killed because the torturer leaves marks on the bodies
which he realizes could be used to prove what was done
to the victims.
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The conservative civilian source adds that ANI has
also participated in the more traditional death squad ac-
tivity of "disappearing" people - that is, kidnapping
victims, often from their homes, killing them, and then
dumping their bodies into the sea or remote areas.
He says that the victims are not necessarily people
with left-wing views. He cites one leading Salvadorean,
professional of moderate political views who was ar-`
rested by the security forces. When the source was able
to meet this professional again later, he had been turned
mentally into a "child" by torture.
Both of the Monitor's main sources say that closely
connected to ANI are the two intelligence departments of
the Salvadorean armed forces general staff, Department
2 and Department 5. While ANI is operations-oriented,
they add, these general staff departments-are directed to-
ward intelligence-gathering and have US military advis-
ers who are mainly Cuban-Americans.
According to the civilian source,, the two departments
pick victims up and torture them, sometimes to death.
The tortures, he says - usually beatings, burnings, and
electric shocks - are often conducted in the building
housing the headquarters of the armed forces general
staff in San Salvador. He stresses that the existence of
the torture activities is common . knowledge at
Salvadorean general staff headquarters and rules out the
possibility that the US advisers are unaware of them.
The civilian source states that both Departments 2
and 5 were originally under the direct personal control of
the then-armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Rafael Flores
Lima. In the spring of 1983, Col. Mario Reyes Mena took
over the position for only a few months. Then, when Col.
Adolfo Onecifero Blandon replaced Reyes Mena as
armed forces chief of staff in 1983, according to
Salvadoran military sources, he also took over the direc-
tion of Departments 2 and 5.
Colonel Blandon is described by a number of
Salvadorean sources as deeply involved in the activity of
death squads when he was provincial commander of
Santa Ana Province before becoming armed forces chief.
General Flores Lima is now vice-minister of defense.
According to the civilian source, US Army Col. David
Rodriguez, a Cuban-American, helped to organize gen-
eral staff Departments 2 and 5 several yearsago.
Both ANI and general staff Departments 2 and 5 grew
out of the original Salvadorean National Security
Agency (ANSESAL). According to leading military
sources in El Salvador, ANSESAL was created in 1962
with heavy CIA and US military participation. At the
same time, the agency helped organize parallel organiza-
tions in Guatemala and Nicaragua (then ruled by
Anastasio Somoza Debayle), called ANSEGAT and
ANSENIC, respectively.
Over the years, ANSESAL received consistent CIA
advice and training. The Salvadorean agency was dis-
solved after the first liberal military coup in October
1979. Salvadorean military officials say the agency was
responsible for hundreds of cases of torture and death.
After ANSESAL was dissolved, there was a
restructuring of the military junta (more, conservative
members were added) and ANI and general staff Depart-
ments 2 and 5 were organized to replace ANSESAL in
the early '80s. Thus the connection between ANI and the
general staff departments on the one hand and-the CIA
on the other has a longstanding institutional base.
According to the conservative civilian source, the US
military advisers to the general staff Departments 2 and
5 have met regularly at 10 at night in a flower shop in San
Salvador with a US Embassy official of Cuban-Ameri-
can background who officially works in the consular sec-
tion of the embassy. The Monitor has been given his
name, but will not publish it. There are legal prohibitions
on naming possible US CIA agents.
The name of the flower shop is "Garden." It is owned
by a right-wing but anti-Somocista Nicaraguan woman
named Leandra Mora. Her role, if any, is unknown to the
civilian source.
Evidence that tends to back up some of the two main
sources' charges about US links to death squad-type ac-
tivities has appeared in sworn testimony submitted to
Tutela Legal.
In July 1983, four men and women working in the sec-
tion of refugee assistance of the archbishop's office were
arrested by Salvadorean security forces. The following
month they gave testimony in confidence to the archbish-
op's office, in the presence of Western officials, that dur-
ing the torture and interrogation to which they were sub-
jected, some of their interrogators were American and
constantly spoke English to each other. One of the group
testified that an English-speaking "American-looking
man" was present when he was picked up.
"I became aware that my interrogations took place on
the second floor of the National Police headquarters, dur-
ing which I always heard voices in English from people
around me and voices of people translating," said one of
the workers from the archbishop's office in his sworn tes-
timony. "When the English-speaking people were some-
times not in the interrogation room, I became aware that
sometimes the [Salvadorean] detectives would have them
called in order to consult on some detail with them."
Additional testimony came from a young official of
one of El Salvador's guerrilla groups, the People's Revo-
lutionary Army, who was arrested on May 30, 1983. In
sworn statements given to the archbishop's office in Au-
gust 1983, he describes his tortures, and interrogations
and states that one of his interrogators looked like an
American and spoke Spanish with an American accent.
(Allegations that the CIA helped train Salvadorean
security forces in torture techniques appeared in an arti-
cle in the May 1984 issue of the Progressive magazine.
The article by Allan Nairn included an interview with a
former member of, the Salvadorean Treasury Police
using the pseudonym of Rene Hurtado. He said that
members of the Treasury Police - one of El Salvador's
three main police forces with the National Police and Ha-
cienda Police - were given a course in torture methods
by US instructors for one month in 1980. The course, like
the tortures said to be practiced by Departments 2 and 5,
was held in Salvador's armed forces staff headquarters.)
The Monitor's military source says that the man he
describes as the top-ranking officer on the CIA payroll,
Treasury Police chief Nicolas Carranza, was also the of-
ficer most actively involved with the death squads.
(A New York Times report of March 22 asserted that
Carranza received $90,000 a year from the CIA. This re-
port was confirmed by sources in the CIA, the Senate's
Select Committee on Intelligence, and the State Depart-
ment. Carranza has denied the allegations.)
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Salvadorean armed forces chief of staff Adolfo
Blandon has told US legislators and prominent
Salvadoreans that Colonel Carranza will be removed
from his post. The Monitor has learned that he is likely
to be made a general and sent to a post in Rome.
Further charges against Carranza and the
Salvadorean military staff are made by the Monitor's
military source. According to him, the only death squad
that is allowed to carry out politically delicate assassina-
tions like that of Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar
Arnulfo Romero in March 1980 is the squad run by
Carranza in the Treasury Police.
According to this military source, although Carranza
carried out day-to-day supervision of the squad's activi-
ties, ultimate approval of all of its major actions has to be
given, directly or indirectly, by the Armed Forces Secu-
'
Council. This council is made up of the top military
rity
leaders including, among others, armed forces chief of
staff Colonel Blandon, Defense Minister Gen. Carlos
Eugenio Vides Casanova,-Vice-Minister of Defense Gen-
eral Flores Lima, Air Force chief Jose Rafael Bustillo,
Treasury Police chief Colonel Carranza, and National
Police director Col. Carlos Reynaldo Lopez Nuila.
According to the Monitor's civilian source, one mem-
ber of the council especially implicated in the death
squads is Air Force General Bustillo. He describes
Bustillo as "today, the great untouchable strong man of
the death squads." One Western official states that the
Salvadorean Air Force's torture methods are the most
sophisticated in the country.
Another Salvadorean Security Council member said
to be involved in the death squads is Colonel Lopez
Nuila, head of the National Police. The Monitor's
mili- tary source added further charges to an article published
in this newspaper Dec. 7 last year which asserted that
one of the most notorious death squads in El Salvador
had direct ties to the National Police. The military source
states that Colonel Lopez Nuila lent his men to' Mr.
d'Aubuisson to participate in death squad actions. The
colonel also, according to this source, organized such
death squad actions himself.
American officials and Salvadorean sources say
Lopez Nuila, a member of the official Salvadorean Hu-
man Rights Commission, is trusted by, and close to, the
US Embassy.
Subsequent to the Monitor's article last December,,
Lopez Nuila conducted an investigation of the charges
against his own National Police forces. Although the top
levels of the US Embassy are convinced the investiga-
tion proved the charges to be groundless, an embassy of-
ficer following the investigation describes it as a "farce."
On a more general level, the US State Department and
its representatives at the embassy are putting increasing
pressure on the Salvadorean armed forces to control the
bloodshed. Many US officials are hoping that the elec-
tion of Christian Democrat Jose Napoleon Duarte (at
time of writing not finally confirmed) will help to bring
the killing under control. -
There are reports that plans already have been made
to try to remove some of the Salvadorean officers, such
as Carranza, considered most responsible for death
squad activities. According to prominent Salvadoreans,
however,the soft treatment of Carranza underlines the
basic problem: The bloodshed is not just the work of one
or two high officers but rather was approved directly or
indirectly by the bulk of the top echelons of the armed
forces and is deeply rooted in the 'rriilitary structure.
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